Denny Crane!
It’s quite telling that Rush Limbaugh would compare getting quality health care to the relative size of one’s housing. It’s just another commodity to conservatives, just another business. If you’re rich, then you get health care, if you’re poor, then you just do us all a favor and slink away and die.
But see, Rush, that’s exactly what doesn’t happen. Viruses and bacteria don’t care how big your mansion is. Eventually, sometime, you have to go out among the public, and it benefits you in the short-term and the long-term if that public isn’t sick and dying and spreading their germs and infections to the people you love.
The very first sentence of the document that defines this country, our Founders wrote:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
I’m educated enough to know that the Founders’ “Welfare” does not equal the modern notion of “welfare”, as in “government assistance payments for food or rent”. But it does mean “health, happiness, or prosperity; well-being.” And we willingly accept government regulation and support of myriad organizations that promote the “health, happiness, or prosperity” of the general public, from student loans to public fire departments to meat inspections to small business assistance. If “general Welfare” of a nation doesn’t include its collective health, then the term is meaningless.
Rush is the cheerleader for the “I gots mine, you gets yours” amorality that infects the modern conservative movement he leads. It’s a narcissistic myopia that allows them to believe that “no man is an island” is a falsehood, that somehow a taxpayer-funded program to protect the public health is a case of Marxist distribution of wealth, and that funding basic health care for less-fortunate Americans is tantamount to cutting checks to promote laziness.
Howdy, Radicals! It’s been a long time since I posted here. I took the end of my show pretty hard and every time I thought about posting here again it just made me sad. Thank you so much for all the emails and comments expressing your love for the show and missing it. I miss it, too.
Many people have asked if I am returning to the air anytime soon. Probably not.
Here’s the deal: Not only was I the host of the show, but I also had to produce it, engineer it, record it, write it, sell it, promote it… basically aside from Stevie doing a fantastic job with answering phones and running the live engineering, everything about The Russ Belville Show was done by me. I won the talk radio contest and they put me on XM with no budget, no staff, no advertising, and no promotions. In fact, they were going to dump me six months into the deal when I rose a stink about being promised “a year-long contract” for winning the contest. As it turned out, being on for twenty months was 14 months longer than they expected and 8 months longer than I expected. Every show I put on the air actually ended up costing me $67 by the time you work through all the income vs. expenses.
(You want an idea why progressive talk radio is in the shitter? Do you think it is the talent of the hosts, or… y’all discuss it; any speculation from me would be seen as ’sour grapes’.)
Now, if someone from a progressive talk radio network called up and said, “Hey, we found your old shows and thought you’d be a hit. We’ve got a studio for you, a producer, and an engineer. We’ll begin a big ad campaign and we can start you on five of our network’s stations right off the bat. Interested?”, I’d be in the air faster than freeway chase in LA. But doing it all myself? No, never again.
So, what after three months has inspired me to return to the Radical Writ? Is it Obama backing away from nearly every campaign pledge? Is it the not closing Gitmo, not prosecuting torture, bringing in the insurance industry to ruin health care talks, giving money hand over fist to Wall Street thieves, snickering at the marijuana legalization question, not ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and tacitly endorsing every right-wing fraidy-cat terrists-gonna-kill-us FOX talking point?
Yeah, sure. But first, I want to talk about something REALLY important: the embarrassment that was the selection of Kris Allen as the next American Idol.
Michael Glitz writes at HuffPo:
But for a theory about how Kris pulled an upset over the wildly popular Adam Lambert, the Christian vote is a pretty good one. It’s certainly one factor. (So is talent, Tiger Beat ready looks and viewers who get tired of being told someone is a lock when they haven’t even voted yet.) In fact, look at seasons past and where there’s a clear Christian vs secular showdown, the Christians have been winning handily. Take that, Charles Darwin! Sometimes the survival of the fittest goes to the person with the best telephone prayer chain. Check it out. (And please keep in mind I’m not talking about their personal faith, just our perception of it from what we told on the show at the time they were competing. Someone I describe as worldly might be exceptionally devout while the contestant prominently sporting a cross might be at the juke joint on Saturday and never even make it to church on Sunday.)
Season One featured wholesome Kelly Clarkson vs the worldly, media savvy Justin Guarini. Clarkson won big time and set the standard for Idols to come.
Season Two: Clay Aiken and Ruben Studdard both held forth on their faith. Ruben had an edge perhaps from the tight-knit black churches that came out strong for him. But this was a Christian vs Christian finale so you can’t draw any conclusions from this one.
He continues on through the current season, pointing out how the contestant with the most “God cred” wins the Finals. (However, for Season 2, while both Ruben and Clay had the God card, don’t forget that Clay was “teh gay” for those Christian viewers.)
But I think the true theory is the Southern AT&T Text Messaging theory, only with the Christian vote acting as tiebreaker. In Idol voting, you’re allowed to call or text in ten votes per line. However, calls get you busy signals and you have to keep redialing to get just two votes, much less ten.
Text messaging, though, gets no busy signal and you can send in ten of them in the time it would take to get through one Idol phone call. Now, understand that anyone can call, but only AT&T subscribers can text, and AT&T’s subscriber base is largest in the South.
So when watching Idol Season 9, ask yourself, “Who would a 13-year-old girl in Mobile vote for?”
Evidence?
Allen (Arkansas) vs. Lambert (California)
7) Cook (Missouri) vs. Archuleta (Utah)
6) Sparks (Arizona) vs. Lewis (Washington) (Religion wins tiebreaker)
5) Hicks (Alabama) vs. McPhee (California)
4) Underwood (Oklahoma) vs. Bice (Alabama) (Religion breaks tie)
3) Fantasia (North Carolina) vs. DeGarmo (Georgia) (Religion breaks tie)
2) Studdard (Alabama) vs. Aiken (North Carolina) (”Not gay” breaks tie)
1) Clarkson (Texas) vs. Guarini (Pennsylvania)
What are the chances you’d get three finalists from Alabama and only two from California? Or that ten of sixteen finalists would be from former Confederate States and zero from the Northeast?
Rachel Maddow (one of my faves) has a complaint, wondering how could 9 out of 10 marijuana initiatives succeed at the ballot box, while 4 out of 4 anti-gay initiatives succeeded. (Updated with hyperlinks and bumped. — “R”R)
To be fair, I understand Rachel’s point about the anti-gay ballot amendments in California, Arizona, Florida, and Arkansas all passing – it’s despicable that we would treat gays and lesbians any differently under the law than we treat straights. However, that doesn’t mean there is some equivalence between reforming marijuana laws and discrimination against gays.
For one thing, I’d note that the only state that had statewide gay and marijuana initiatives was California, the only state where a marijuana initiative (Prop 5) failed. (Arkansas had anti-gay adoption, but Fayetteville, not the whole state, approved cannabis as lowest priority for law enforcement.) It wouldn’t be fair to say the anti-gay amendment also brought out anti-pot voters in California, would it?
I’ll admit, Rachel, that the results seem ironic and sad, though no more sad that Californians approving humane treatment of chickens at the slaughter while also taking away marriage rights from humans that already have those rights. But your casual dismissal of some very important gains by the cannabis community is not in keeping with your usual inclusive and tolerant beliefs.
In dismissing marijuana initiatives with “whatever, dude” and “Funyuns” comments, you are dismissing the thousands of seriously ill and disabled Michiganders who will no longer fear arrest and incarceration for simply using a plant to alleviate severe pain, nausea, spasticity, seizures, or the wasting that comes with chemotherapy treatments and HIV/AIDS. Rachel, didn’t you begin your career as an activist helping those with HIV/AIDS in prisons? You should know this better than most.
You’re also dismissing residents of Massachusetts who’ve chosen to put their law enforcement resources into crimes more serious than busting a college kid for a baggie of weed. Or are you supportive of criminal penalties for marijuana that endanger students’ financial aid, poor people’s housing, and working people’s jobs and professionals’ careers?
Perhaps we just did a better job of mobilizing our base and convincing the voters of our message. Yes, you had the financial might of the Mormon Church fighting to pass Prop 8 in California, but we’ve had the financial and prosecutorial might of law enforcement fighting us from their bully pulpit using our own tax dollars. And while it is a terrible injustice to deny the rights of gay people to marry or adopt, nobody is arresting 872,000 gay people a year for being gay, nobody is testing gay people’s urine for metabolites of homosexuality and declaring them DUIs, and nobody is incarcerating gay people for their “lifestyle”.
Yes, gay people face revolting acts of violence and discrimination most stoners never face, but we can still be arrested for our “lifestyle”. The government has an entire cabinet bureau dedicated to propagandizing against us, lying about us, defeating our ballot propositions, and arresting and convicting us.
We should be natural allies, Rachel. Our struggles are very different, but also quite similar. We need to come out of the closet, too. We need to educate ignorant people about us. While you may think the big difference is that gay is innate and stoner is a choice, don’t be so sure. We all have an innate desire to alter our consciousness, and for medical users, they really don’t have much of a choice.
Now pass the Funyuns!
Just a couple of quick thoughts regarding “Sarah Palin is the most popular governor in the nation! She has an 80% approval rating!”
Alaska has no income tax, no sales tax, and the government mails free $1,300 checks to every Alaskan from the oil company royalties. I’d be pretty happy about the governor, too.
Alaska is 75% male, and let’s just say a whole lot of those males aren’t paying real close attention to politics. Fisherman, loggers, oil rig dudes, spending a lot of time in the wilderness seeing few women, and the governor is naughty librarian hot. “Do you approve of the job Governor Palin is doing?” You mean the hottest governor in the coolest state who just sent me $1,300? Yeah, she’s great!
BTW, Tina Fey was awesome on SNL as Palin last night.  ”I can see Russia from my house!” Priceless. This could do as much to puncture Palin’s persona as Chevy Chase’s remaking Gerald Ford’s public image.
Heart to McCain/Palin: Back off on ‘Barracuda’ – Sound Effects – Boston.com
The rock group Heart has sent a message to John McCain and Sarah “Barracuda” Palin: quit playing our 1977 hit ”Barracuda.”
It seemed the cleverest musical choice of both conventions. Heart’s Ann and Nancy Wilson, like Alaska Governor Palin, are outspoken products of the Pacific Northwest, and the sisters’s tune also could refer to Palin’s Dazed-and-Confused-Era nickname of Sarah Barracuda, given for her intense high-school basketball play.
“Sarah Palin’s views and values in NO WAY represent us as American women. We ask that our song ‘Barracuda’ no longer be used to promote her image. The song ‘Barracuda’ was written in the late 70s as a scathing rant against the soulless, corporate nature of the music business, particularly for women. (The ‘barracuda’ represented the business.) While Heart did not and would not authorize the use of their song at the RNC, there’s irony in Republican strategists’ choice to make use of it there.”
No word so far on whether the tune would be dropped from the GOP playlist. “If the real thing don’t do the trick,” Ann Wilson sang in “Barracuda,” “You better make up something quick.”
The problem for the GOP is nearly all the great musicians support Democrats. You can’t have every event end with country songs about John McCain as a dried-up grape.
John McCain’s latest attack ad paints Obama, again, as the greatest celebrity in the world. It’s a weird line of attack to constantly remind people how popular your opponent is, but what’s weirder is how it paints the picture of Obama as a wealthy elitist who can’t understand how tough times are on the average folks.
Most semi-interested political watchers know that John McCain’s doing all right financially, what with the seven or eight houses and the beer executive wife with the private jet. McCain’s profile says his net worth is between $27-$45 million. Obama’s listed at between $450 thousand-$1.1 million. Is this line of attack fooling anyone?
Maybe. “Low-info” voters might think senators are rich and not go beyond that. Saying “McCain’s richer than Obama” might not have an effect. Maybe people assume when you’re on every magazine cover, you’re rich.
But what about “McCain’s richer than Paris Hilton?”
Estimates of Paris Hilton’s individual wealth are difficult to verify, until she really does run for president. Her dad’s worth $300 million, her granddad $2.3 billion. But granddad donated 97% of his wealth to charity and dad promised to do the same. Paris may have only gotten $20 million. Some random fan pages I found said she might be worth $50 million on her own, with her endorsements and fragrances and whatever else it is she sells.
John McCain’s trollop of a wife (his words, not mine, and I spared you the other one) Cindy is a money making machine. She’s a high-level lieutenant in a major drug pushing operation and has a worth estimated at $100 million.
I only went to public school, but I believe ($145,000,000 McCains) > ($50,000,000 Paris) > ($1,100,000 Obamas).
John McCain. Richer than Paris Hilton, but not quite as smart. See you at the debates, bitches!
©2009 Au Gratin Productions Inc.
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