Boortz gets points for creativity here. Proposing that tax rates on the top 2% of earners return to Soviet Clinton-era levels is usually attributed to Obama's "Marxism." That it's because of mental illness, exacerbated by a hatred for George W. Bush (who's he again?) is truly a new twist.
Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, the chief law officer in Pima County, Arizona, is under attack from the flying monkeys of the Right -- particularly the winged armies assembled by Rush Limbaugh -- for getting up Saturday and telling the truth about the environment of fear and hatefulness that right-wing hate talkers have created in this country, because it was in that environment that Saturday's tragedy in Tucson occurred.
Here's what Limbaugh says:
LIMBAUGH: Sheriff Clarence Dupnik is on the path here of attempting now to expressly personally associate me with this event. We have a law enforcement officer, the sheriff of that county, admitting he's got no facts for what he's speculating about. I don't know. Maybe Pima County would have been better served by a real sheriff, one who spent his time trying to lock up nutbags and criminals, rather than finding ways to excuse them. He hasn't pointed out a single thing that I have said that would inspire such a heinous act.
This means, naturally, that Dupnik and his office are being inundated with vicious hate mail and death threats as we speak.
Dupnik was on Chris Matthews' show yesterday and admitted he "had no idea" the kind of forces he was calling down upon his head for having uttered this plain and simple truth.
But it's important that Dupnik stand his ground -- and that he knows he has the full backing of the rest of non-right-wing America for standing up the way he has.
Because not only was what Dupnik said the truth, it was an important truth that needs to be defended head-on from the all-out assault on it being waged by the right-wing noise machine -- the very faction, in fact, that it is intended to call to account.
The core kernel of hard truth he's been trying to convey is, in truth, a fairly simple one:
There's been a lot of crazy talk coming from the American Right the past couple of years. And crazy talk, especially when it is sanctioned at the highest levels of media and politics, has a powerful way of fueling crazy people who engage in crazy -- horrifically crazy -- acts.
Here's how he put it to Matthews:
DUPNIK: There's no doubt in my mind. Particularly troubled personalities, which is what we're dealing with here, are very vulnerable to the emotion that comes out, especially anger, hate, paranoia, and so forth. And when you were talking about Sarah Palin-- I happen to be a not -- only an admirer and somebody who respects Gabby Giffords, I was involved in her campaign. And you talk about the crosshairs on Gabby Giffords. Well, I want to tell you that her opponent, who was heartily endorsed very vocally by Sarah Palin, had an event, a fund-raising event, where the people were invited I think to a barbecue or something with the -- after the barbecue, if they wanted to, they could each come up and fire an automatic rifle, a semi- automatic rifle. And this same individual had hundreds of campaign ads starting out by saying, Are you as mad at Washington? Boy, I want to tell you, I sure am.
Seriously, do people on the Right expect the rest of us to sit and listen to them talk about how we progressives are a "cancer" out to destroy America, how the Tea Party "a second revolution" and how they need to reserve the right to armed insurrection, to watch them bring guns to public political gatherings because it's their "right", to see them run ads using targets over people, to hear the irrational screaming anger at their rallies ... and then NOT conclude they've played a role when someone shoots a Democratic Congressman in one of the main hotbeds of such angry talk?
Obviously, they do. They have a big awakening coming.
In a remark extraordinary even by the standards of conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio heavyweight declared on his program Wednesday that the United States needed to return to racially segregated buses.
Referring to an incident in which a white student was beaten by black students on a bus, Limbaugh said: “I think the guy’s wrong. I think not only it was racism, it was justifiable racism. I mean, that’s the lesson we’re being taught here today. Kid shouldn’t have been on the bus anyway. We need segregated buses — it was invading space and stuff. This is Obama’s America.”
A full transcript of Limbaugh’s comments on his radio show is available at MediaMatters.org.
Limbaugh’s comments came after a called complained to say that local law enforcement said the attack probably wasn’t racially motivated. The incident had been hyped by the conservative Drudge Report, which posted a video of the fracas.
“Police initially said the beating of the white student by two black students appeared to be racially motivated,” the Associated Press wrote. “But police on Tuesday backed away from that.”
That didn’t stop Limbaugh from making his comments Wednesday.
“In Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, ‘Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on,” Limbaugh also said. “I wonder if Obama’s going to come to come to the defense of the assailants the way he did his friend Skip Gates up there at Harvard.”
“White Americans are racists who have created what they call free markets that really just enslave the rest of America and her trading partners,” Limbaugh also mocked. “I mean, it was white Americans that ran off Van Jones. No, look, let’s just follow Eric Holder’s advice and not be cowards about all this. Let’s have an open conversation, an honest conversation about all of our typical white grandmothers. You had one, I had one. Obama had one. They’re racists just like our students are. ACORN — hey, nothing but racism fueling the pursuit of ACORN.”
Limbaugh also suggested that racism itself was acceptable.
“If homosexuality being inborn is what makes it acceptable, why does racism being inborn not make racism acceptable?” the talk show host asked. “I’m sorry — I mean, this is the way my mind works. But apparently now we don’t choose racism, we just are racists. We are born that way. We don’t choose it. So shouldn’t it be acceptable, excuse — this is according to the way the left thinks about things.”
Really, isn't it time that decent people just said NO to Rush Limbaugh?
TP: "Right-wing radio host Brian James of KFYI in Arizona recently advocated murder as a way of dealing with undocumented immigrants. An excerpt."
James: "What we'll do is randomly pick one night-every week - where we will kill whoever crosses the border. Step over there and you die. You get to decide whether it's your lucky night or not. I think that would be more fun…[I'd be] happy to sit there with my high-powered rifle and my night scope."
He claims it's satire, but the debate cannot be allowed to be framed in this manner. Unfortunately-this is where the country is headed and some right wing radio talk show hosts and bloggers will lnead the charge. I wonder if Hugh Hewitt considers this "responsible radio?"
Fox News: Is right-wing radio "Truth Tour" in Iraq biased?
