Rush to Has-Been-Ville

By the time I'm writing this it's already ancient history in our 24 hour news cycle, but I want to comment on the latest controversy featuring everyone's favorite blowhard, Rush Limbaugh.

You might be wondering why I haven't been posting much lately and I'll tell you that I'm concentrating much of my effort right now in other places. I've reached a point with politics that I've given up on the notion that my ideas or rhetoric is going to have a substantial enough effect to warrant such dedication to it. Often I'm either preaching to the choir or lecturing to a brick wall, and I don't have time to do either of those things. There's plenty of other things in my life where my time and energy have much higher return on investment.

I do want to tell the world that I don't care about what Rush Limbaugh said this time in his little rant about Sandra Flule. It doesn't matter to me. Don't get me wrong when it comes to Rush, I agree with Wanda Sykes... I hope his kidneys fail. I just don't get in a huff every time he says some outlandish ignorant thing.

Rush is like Howard Stern or Opee and Anthony in that getting pissed at the outrageous things they say usually only keeps them relevant when people aren't paying enough attention to them. It's the old saying: "any publicity is good publicity." So I don't bother looking at his little side show freakyness.

What is exciting is how advertisers are fleeing him like he's got the plague [I also hope Rush gets the plague]. If this chapter in the book of Limbaugh seriously affects his show or career in a negative way, I will be made happy.

I don't care if someone disagrees with me politically. I expect people to have other opinions than mine, no matter how wrong they are to do so. What I care about is this: Like it or not, for now we all have to live on the same planet. We should try to debate with civility, negotiate in good faith, and compromise when necessary. Rush isn't a politician, but he fills politicians and voters with so much crap that it spews back out of their mouths. Rush Limbaugh hinders the process of running a country.

What will make me glad is if a few people will stop listening to lies, bullshit, and hype. Maybe there will be a little less of Rush's type of vitriol taking place in what should be reasonable debates about policy and law.

Why the National Defense Authorization Act is a Good Idea

In case you live on Mars, the United States Senate passed a controversial bill on December 1st, 2011. This bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, is renewed every year by congress in order to set the budget for the Department of Defense. The version that's just been passed will destroy the basic tenants of our democracy and is a swift kick in the nuts to everything for which our Founding Fathers stood. Yet this bill is necessary and mandatory if we are to deal with a very serious criminal problem faced by these United States.

Now while living on Mars, probably in a cave, you might in fact have your head up your butt. If this is true, then you probably don't understand why the National Defense Authorization Act is so controversial. If this bill passes then the entire United States of America is declared as a wartime battlefield.

Try turning the dial.

Two coworkers and I were musing today over a broken compressor. Troubleshooting was being done as we tried to understand why this particular scientific chiller wasn't chilling. A few minutes after we turned it on for the house HVAC whisperer, a clog in the line got forced through and serious chilling started to happen. Thus proving that our co-worker was in fact an HVAC whisperer. Either that, or it would have fixed itself anyway.

The whole thing reminded me of something that happened to me a long time ago.

Shout at Karl? You are Karl.

I just had this recent viral video grace the timestream of my social media activity.

You will see one of the biggest douchebags on the planet, Karl Rove, speaking at Johns Hopkins university. From the video it appears to be taking place at the auditorium in Shriver Hall. I've run sound there for similar presentations in the past, but it's been many years and I could be wrong about that.

Karl is prattling on about made up numbers that make Obama look bad without citing any sources when some of the 99% and Occupy Baltimore start shouting him down around the 1 minute 50 second mark.