Rush Limbaugh has made his considerable fortune from espousing extreme righ-twing views and attacking opponents with hate-filled, vitriolic rhetoric for years. A large portion of the American radio audience has long found it entertaining, although those numbers are starting to wane considerably. The nation’s first all-conservative talk radio station, KVI in Seattle, switched back to its classic rock format shortly after the elections in 2010, after 17 years of supporting right-wing talk shows. An Arbitron report released less than a year ago showed ratings for Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity had fallen sharply, down 33 percent and 28 percent respectively. Premiere Radio Networks, which syndicates both shows, expressed their lack of concern for the report, saying even with such a sharp drop Limbaugh and Hannity “continue to be No. 1 and No. 2.”
Such unmitigated support has allowed Limbaugh to really pull out all the stops in recent days and release his inner psychotic, unleashing an attack on Sandra Fluke, who testified before Congress about the problem of women’s lack of access to contraception, that bordered on, if not downright was, legally slanderous, calling the Georgetown University Law School student a “slut” and a “prostitute.”
“Who bought your condoms in sixth grade?” Limbaugh said, “Who bought your contraceptive pills in high school?" Then he mocked her in much the same way he mocked Michael J. Fox’s battle with Parkinson’s disease, impersonating Fluke in baby voice and pretending to cry. “I'm going broke having sex. I need government to provide me condoms and contraception. It's not fair.” He then took it one disgusting step further, telling Miss Fluke, “and the rest of you Feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you to post the videos online, so we can all watch.”
You only wish, you narrow-minded Oxycontin- popping pervert.
This, from the guy who along with four of his best buddies, most of them from Fox, flew to the Dominican Republic for a “stag party” on a Gulfstream IV jet owned by Premiere Radio Networks, which syndicates his radio program, along with 29 100mg pills of Viagra issued in someone else’s name. Methinks it’s not Georgetown law students who are abnormally obsessed with sex.
Stephen Colbert took on everything from President Obama's promise to let the Bush tax cuts expire, to a poll by The Hill showing that 75 percent of Americans think wealthy should pay 30 percent or less in taxes, to a bill in Florida that would slash minimum wage for tipped workers in his Word segment this Wednesday night.
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum says that 20 years ago people couldn't even imagine cell phones, but now they are commonplace because Americans "recognize the rights God has given every person."
Speaking to supporters in Chillicothe, Ohio on Friday, the former Pennsylvania senator explained that the U.S. had "transformed the world" with the a new form of government.
"In the previous 2,000 years, life did not change," he said. "And then America came around and said, 'No, no more dictators, no more kings, no more classes, no more nobility.' We believe in limited government, not an all-powerful state. We believe that if we liberate people, we recognize the rights that God has given every person then the world will change."
"How many people have a cell phone?" he asked. "The young folks here, 20 years ago, there were no cell phones to speak of. And now people who 20 years ago couldn't conceive of a cell phone, now can't live without one."
"Let me assure you if the government had taken over the technology sector of our economy 25 years ago, no one would ever have heard of a cell phone. Because what we would be doing is we would be making sure everybody had pagers and allocated them equivalently across everybody."
According to the nonprofit research institute SRI International, over 10 million Americans had cell phones by 1992.
EDITOR'S NOTE: And he said his grades were "docked" because he was a conservative. Cough.
Conservatives, including Republican presidential candidates, frequently claim that American corporations pay tax rates that are so high they harm businesses and cost jobs. They also claim that the U.S. corporate tax rate is among the highest in the world and that it is a vital economic imperative that the rates be cut.
These claims don't stand up to closer scrutiny, though, as a recent report from Citizens for Tax Justice shows. Because of subsidies and tax breaks, many corporations pay little or no taxes at all:
30 Companies average less than zero tax bill in the last three Years, 78 had at least one no-tax year.
Financial services received the largest share of all federal tax subsidies over the last three years. More than half the tax subsidies for companies in the study went to four industries: financial services, utilities, telecommunications, and oil, gas & pipelines.
U.S. corporations with significant foreign profits paid tax rates to foreign countries that were almost a third higher than they paid to the IRS on their domestic profits.
General Electric is a prime example of this trend. Despite being highly profitable and subject to a theoretical tax rate of 35 percent, GE paid only a 11.3 percent tax rate in 2011. And that number was the most they paid in more than a decade. In 2010, they actually paid no taxes and got a net tax benefit of $3 billion. For the 10 year period prior to that, their effective average tax rate was 2.3 percent.
Paying a much lower tax rate than their employees didn't stop GE from laying off those workers, either, despite having billions of dollars in profits during that same time.
Snow: "Here's the unmentionable secret," Snow said on an October 2003 edition of Fox News Sunday, "racism isn't that big a deal anymore." Snow argued that "no sensible person supports" racism, arguing that the problem is "quickly becoming an ugly memory."
Conservatives have been arguing for decades that they aren't racists and if there were a few, they're gone now. Then the tea party squad was created by FOX News and racist signs showed up everywhere. Even top ten lists were created, but we were told they weren't representative of their movement. OK, so why do we constantly see stories like this?
Reporting from Seattle— Montana’s chief federal judge Wednesday admitted forwarding an email to friends about President Obamathat appears to equate African Americans with dogs and raises questions about the president’s mixed racial ancestry.
“Normally I don’t send or forward a lot of these, but even by my standards, it was a bit touching. I want all of my friends to feel what I felt when I read this. Hope it touches your heart like it did mine,” Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull wrote before forwarding the email, a copy of which was obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
The email was sent from the judge’s court email account and immediately ignited a firestorm in Montana, where there were calls on social media sites for his resignation.
“We really feel that by circulating an email like this it really flies in the face of maintaining the honor and dignity of the position,” Travis McAdam, executive director of the Montana Human Rights Network, said in an interview. He said the organization had not yet decided on an official response to the issue.
Cebull, who has been Montana’s chief federal judge in Billings since 2008, was appointed to the bench by former President George W. Bush and took his seat in 2001. He is a graduate of the University of Montana School of Law and a former tribal court judge.
What racism? I'm sure Pat Buchanan is trying to book a TV show appearance so he can go and defend the judge. After all, it gave him tingly feeling and touched his heart. Now, can that be racism? And I'm sure he'll be very fair in his rulings.
Comedian Stephen Colbert and guest Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Institute, discussed the growing use of unpaid internships as free labor on Tuesday's show. While Colbert treated the issue with his usual satirical approach, Eisenbrey pointed out the real problem of more and more companies exploiting interns as a way to not pay for a growing portion of their workforce.
"When people work for free employers get the idea that they don't have to pay for labor. If Stephen Colbert can get away with it, if everyone can get away with it, I won't pay all of the entry level labor. . . . We have bigger and bigger profits and more inequality than we've ever had in our experience... in the Gilded Age...."
Many, if not most, of the newer unpaid internships are probably illegal:
“If you’re a for-profit employer or you want to pursue an internship with a for-profit employer, there aren’t going to be many circumstances where you can have an internship and not be paid and still be in compliance with the law,” said Nancy J. Leppink, the acting director of the department’s wage and hour division.
Ms. Leppink said many employers failed to pay even though their internships did not comply with the six federal legal criteria that must be satisfied for internships to be unpaid. Among those criteria are that the internship should be similar to the training given in a vocational school or academic institution, that the intern does not displace regular paid workers and that the employer “derives no immediate advantage” from the intern’s activities — in other words, it’s largely a benevolent contribution to the intern.
In a separate article, Eisenbrey pointed out that unpaid internships exacerbate class divisions and tend to exclude minorities:
Unpaid internships, in particular, exclude students from poorer families who can’t afford to work for nothing for a summer or a semester, especially after they graduate from college with tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt. The children of affluent families, on the other hand, can afford to live in the most expensive cities in the U.S., such as New York and Washington, making contacts, building their resumes, and sometimes even learning skills, while their parents pay for their room and board, travel and entertainment. Before even taking into account the family connections that reserve some of the best opportunities for the sons and daughters of the affluent, the $4,000-$5,000 cost of, for example, moving to Washington and living for 10 weeks prevents almost any working class kid from taking an unpaid internship.
Unlike New Jersey's blowhard-in-chief Chris Christie, Maryland Gov. Martin Malley didn't waffle. He did what leaders are supposed to do, and signed Maryland's HB 438 last night, making them the eighth state to make marriage equality legal:
Amid cheers and camera flashes from a crush of onlookers, Gov. Martin O'Malley signed into law Thursday his bill legalizing same-sex marriage in Maryland — legislation that raises his national profile and, advocates say, gives momentum to those pushing similar measures in three states.
"The way forward is always found through greater respect for the equal rights of all," said O'Malley, giving brief remarks before signing the legislation. "If there is a thread that unites all of our work here together, it is the thread of human dignity. … Let's sign the bill."
The ceremony was held in a marble hallway on the first floor of the State House, with O'Malley and the General Assembly's presiding officers seated before a staircase packed with supportive lawmakers and advocates.
Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller gave the crowd a thumbs-up. House Speaker Michael E. Busch beamed and pointed to supporters. After signing, all three handed out black pens — one of the first going to Del. Maggie McIntosh, the first openly gay Maryland lawmaker.
O'Malley invited the crowd to join him "across the street" in the governor's mansion for a reception open to the public.
The law doesn't take effect until 2013, and opponents have started the process to collect signatures for an attempt to repeal the measure in November.
"We're in full swing to put this on the ballot and let the people decide," said the Rev. Derek McCoy of the Maryland Marriage Alliance, which opposes the bill. "Not the governor, who brings a unique level of craftiness and tricks to the process."
