Month: March 2009

Letterman on Rush’s Exposed Skin: ‘Oh Yeah, You Think Rush Limbaugh, You Think Ooh Let’s See a Little Flesh’

Jon Ponder

Yesterday, we offered sartorial advice to Rush Limbaugh: Button Your Shirt, Rush – No One Wants To See All That Skin.

Last night, David Letterman also noticed Rush’s exposed flesh:

DAVID LETTERMAN: What about this bonehead Rush Limbaugh? Honest to God, I mean what is going on there?

KATIE COURIC: Dave, don’t do this to me, please! Don’t do this to me.

LETTERMAN: He gets up in Washington and he’s the keynote speaker at some function, and he comes up, he looks like an Eastern European gangster. You know, he’s got the black jacket on, the black silk shirt and it’s unbuttoned, like, “oh yeah, you think Rush Limbaugh, you think ooh let’s see a little flesh.” [audience laughter] Honestly, you know, what is he doing?

COURIC: On a serious note, although I’m thrown by the Rush Limbaugh flesh in one sentence, but I think it’s sort of indicative of this power vacuum that exists right now in the Republican party…

Button Your Shirt, Rush – No One Wants To See All That Skin

Jon Ponder

Others have looked at the substance, such as it was, in Rush Limbaugh’s “first national address” since ascension by fiat to head the Republican Party.

So let’s look at the style. Why did Rush Limbaugh show up with his shirt unbuttoned? Did he think he looked … sexy?

At BuzzFlash, Mark Karlin said “Limbaugh was dressed in black, as if he were the Pillsbury Doughboy trying to imitate Steven Seagal.” He added that that the CPAC crowd reminded him of the mass derangement scene in “Day of the Locust.”

Tom Watson at HuffPo described Rush as “[looking] for all the world like the sweating floor manager on the late afternoon shift at Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club in an unbuttoned shiny black shirt and undersized sport coat…” And: “Jowls rolling like thunder from the right via CNN’s unfortunate high-definition feed, Limbaugh took control of the sad and tattered remnants of the mainstream conservative movement, and urged continued allegiance to the noble Lost Cause of Reagan, metaphorically carrying his rebel-yelling followers into the hills like modern-day Quantrill’s Raiders standing firm against change.”

Taking a contrary view, Tom Trento, a Dittohead at Red County, was complimentary, of course, “Rush is classic, even looked classic in his black-on-black, open collar, tieless ensemble (whoa, I’m starting to sound like one of those designers!)” But: “Note to Rush: get back on the salads and veggies, the movement needs you around a bit longer.”

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

Every day I read the news about North Korea’s latest threat, to launch this or bomb that — then I yawn and turn the page. This isn’t new behavior. It just doesn’t scare me anymore.

— South Korean restaurateur Kim Myung-guy.

New GOP Lie: Regulations are the Problem

Trish
More of this doesn’t help

Jon already noted the falsity of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s (R-La.) assertion that regulations were responsible for the Bush administration’s failed response to Hurricane Katrina. So why did Jindal, who later admitted things didn’t exactly happen the way he said they did in his rebuttal to Pres. Obama’s “state of the union” speech, go there?

According to a local editorial, written presciently before either speech, Republicans intend to use stimulating the economy as an excuse to gut regulations. And loosening regulations, if anyone remembers, is at the heart of the economic problem. Anne Schindler, in Folio Weekly, a northeast Florida alternative weekly whose articles are unfortunately not available online, detailed how Republican legislators in Florida are making the same play.

Lobbyists’ arguments are simple, if a bit non-linear: Though regulations have nothing to do with the collapsing real estate market, developers want to ease regulations in order to kickstart business

While lawmakers desperately plug budget holes and draft legislation aimed at restarting Florida’s failing economy, development lobbyists are descending on Tallahassee…[Their] argument is simple, if a bit non-linear: Though regulations have nothing to do with the collapsing real estate market, developers want to ease regulations in order to kickstart business.

…Lobbyists working for Associated Industries…[are] distributing a booklet titled “Economic Stimulus Package 2.0,” which calls for “reductions in regulatory red tape as a way to stimulate business activity.” What kind of “red tape” do they want to hack through?

You can guess. Schindler goes on to enumerate bills that would eliminate impact fees, which help switch the burdens of infrastructure needed for new development from the taxpayers to the speculators, and builders who propose to “streamline” environmental permitting, which is Republican-speak for “Let the party start.” But, she says, these modest government measures are not the problem.

To be clear: Florida’s economic woes have nothing to do with gopher tortoise protections or wetland buffers. They stem from plummeting home prices and tightening credit…

There are currently some 300,000 vacant homes and hundreds of unoccupied strip malls in Florida. There is also a staggering backlog of already permitted but not-built homes…Adding to that glut by building more homes is not the way to climb out of Florida’s economic quagmire. Neither is dismantling the state’s few and fragile regulatory protections.”

But such facts won’t stop Republicans, like Bobby Jindal, from using the economic crisis to make power grabs. Greed is not hindered by details like the truth. It’s up to us to remain vigilant and on-message and make sure their attempts fail.