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wellfleation wrote:

Czachorski wrote:

Aqua OS X wrote:

<cough>
http://mediamatters.org/items/200611090005

A lot of conservatives are frustrated with the president and congress for moving away from traditionally conservative issue.  This makes Rush a hypochrite exacty how?

Did you read the link. He admitted to supporting these people, advancing their agendas even though he disagreed with what they stood for. He admits to falsely misleading his listeners.

What's your definition of a hypocrite?

I read them, and that's not what I read.  I read the same frustration with the so-called conservatives who were formerly in congress as I have.  Rush is a conservative guy.  Are you really going to take the stance that he is a hypochrite about that and try to defend it?  Be my guest, if you must, but it is a weak stance. 

It is also just further evidence of how the negative discourse in this country will not stop until we get both personal responsibility and dealing with issues on the level they deserve.  All you are doing is demonstrating your contributions to the problem.

Aqua OS X wrote:

crooks, liars and pork

and you aren't so naive as to think that a change in political parties inpower will change that, are you?

Czachorski wrote:

Aqua OS X wrote:

crooks, liars and pork

and you aren't so naive as to think that a change in political parties inpower will change that, are you?

Well, if the choice is between the party that recently brought us presidential BJs, some crook with a bunch of money in his fridge, and a decreased percentage of debt to GDP; vs the folks that have massively increased the GDP to debt ratio while serving up scandals pertaining to money laundering, crooked lobbyists, torture, wire tapping, secret prisons, and a war in another country pushed by cherry-picked intelligence. Ya... I'm going with the BJs and the fridge money. 

As long as condorcet and approval voting remain unused for congressional and presidential elections, and the choice is between a turd and a polished turd, I'm going for the polished turd.

Aqua OS X wrote:

polished turd.

As far as I am concerned, they are all polished turds.    You can slice any and all of them any way you want, and you still have turd.  If one side wants to gain some respect over the other, it will be the ones who first can take some personal responsibility, and second can keep the issues on the level they belong - not exaggerating for the sake of political stance, personal gain or just nastyness.  The one who can do that while meeting a few of the issues that are important to me will get my respect.

On the Rush thing -I don't care to get into the details of whether his words meant this, that or the other.  He does a 3 hour radio show 5 days a week - we can debate his words all day and get nowhere.  At the end of the day - I hear you saying he a hypochrite with respect to his conservative opinions.  I am simply saying that is a weak stance.  The sheer volume of words in his transcripts from 1000's of shows could probably always be diced to give examples to the contrary - are you really going to sit there and try to use them to say he does not believe his own conservative messages?  If so - why don't you love him now?  He really is a liberal afterall!

Id like to reiterate my point from the last page

Czachorski wrote:

I am simply saying that is a weak stance.  The sheer volume of words in his transcripts from 1000's of shows could probably always be diced to give examples to the contrary - are you really going to sit there and try to use them to say he does not believe his own conservative messages?  If so - why don't you love him now?  He really is a liberal afterall!

Personally, I could careless about his party affiliation. The point has more to do with Rush favoring taking points and political fanboy-ism before intelligent political discourse. He strikes me as someone you'd find sleeping in a tent in front of Toy 'R Us if he was 25 years younger and Newt Gingridge made game consoles.

Czachorski wrote:

D'Eyncourt wrote:

Actually, Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders did not but could do nothing about this because of a quirk in the licensing of music for radio play:

Compulsary licensing is hardly a quirk.  Very interesting info though.  I guess it shouldn't surprise me that some musicians are terrible business people and would put personal politics above prudent business decisions.  I wonder how true to her stance she would be if she found out that *gasp* half of all of her music sold was to the more conservative half of the country - being enjoyed by all those conservatives.

I bought the song on iTMS because of the Rush Limbaugh show.
It's a good song.

Czachorski wrote:

[stuff on compulsory licensing]

Regardless of the political leanings of those who buy her music, this is hardly in the same class of having a piece of Hynde's own music co-opted by someone to the point that all one has to do is start playing "My City Was Gone" to prepare many people to hear Limbaugh pontificating.

On the other hand I'm quite satisfied to know that if I start hearing Limbaugh talking over Hynde's "My City Was Gone" that this means that he is sending some money--hypocritically, I might add--to "animal rights wacko" PETA.

resedit wrote:

The drug thing is pure partisan spin.

Rush has back problems. He has had surgery several times that have not alleviated the problem.
Rush speaks out against the dope heads - and if the liberals on this board would use the brains Darwin gave them, they would see from the context that what Rush was speaking out against was the abuse of recreational drugs that is a serious problem in this country.

He was prescribed a medication for his back pain. He became addicted to it.
Yes - he broke the law when he continued to aquire it. Addiction is a bitch, and pain medications can be extremely addictive.

He was not however using the drug for recreational purposes, like the dope heads he speaks out against.

This is one of the more asinine arguments I have ever read on this board, and you make it constantly.

Addiction is addiction.  He would have had to have already be ignoring his dosing instructions in order to develop such a significant addiction, by a huge degree, to get to the point where he couldn't even get a doctor to keep his habit up. 

Pain pills make you feel good, Res.  Lots of people become addicted to them for that very reason, whether initially prescribed a small number or not.  Instead of seeking treatment for the problem as it developed, Rush undertook SEVERAL illegal acts in order to obtain pills to satisfy his desire for them, and even still he was never punished nearly as bad as others would have been in his position.  In fact many dealing with much less dangerous and addictive substances have received a much harsher treatment than him.

That's junky behavior, plain and simple.  Any attempt to draw a distinction between this behavior and behavior involving the use of street substances is nothing but "spin."

resedit wrote:

The drug thing is pure partisan spin.

Rush has back problems. He has had surgery several times that have not alleviated the problem.
Rush speaks out against the dope heads - and if the liberals on this board would use the brains Darwin gave them, they would see from the context that what Rush was speaking out against was the abuse of recreational drugs that is a serious problem in this country.

He was prescribed a medication for his back pain. He became addicted to it.
Yes - he broke the law when he continued to aquire it. Addiction is a bitch, and pain medications can be extremely addictive.

He was not however using the drug for recreational purposes, like the dope heads he speaks out against.

ARGH!

Usually I'm not so vehement against Rush as I'm about to be, but you've just stoked something up here and now it's flaming.  I usually consider his shows and positions distasteful at best, harmful at worst... but when people bring up his back problem as an excuse for his hypocrisies it makes my blood boil.

I have two herniated discs in my lower back, one of them fractured.  At its worst point it got so bad that I was almost unable to walk.  Any length of time on my feet would have me on my back for hours, and if I got so freaking bored that I tried to go for a walk (a massive, lurching limp, to be accurate) I'd be laid out all day the next day.

They prescribed 1600mg of Motrin 3x a day, muscle relaxants 3x a day, and vicodan 3x a day. 

The motrin didn't help.  The muscle relaxants?  Hell, the problem wasn't in the muscles. 

The vicodan?  Holy smurf, was that stuff strong!  It didn't reduce the pain in the slightest... but it made it so I didn't care about it.  God, what a feeling - NOTHING mattered, and I was free to do whatever I wanted.

...which mostly involved getting a bit of sleep.  The pain usually kept me up, despite the fact that so much Motrin should knock out a rhino.  The vicodan let me ignore it.

As I came down from my initial dose (when I woke up, that is) I recognized it as the most addictive substance I've ever put in my body.  I told my doctor as much and he agreed that I could scale it back to only use it when I couldn't take the pain anymore.

As I'd been in that condition for a couple of months already, I did my best to cut back.  Still had a couple of "you took your meds? You don't need to be at work right now, go back to bed, oatie" incidents. 

Perhaps you remember a while back when I said that I was going to be gone a lot?  And then perhaps (if it even occurred to you) you noticed that I'm doing a lot of posting here for someone who is supposed to be gone?  Fact of the matter is that I'm out of work at the moment while they fix my back.  The treatment is working again, the limp that was developing again has gone, and I should be back to work  soon.  I haven't needed anything as strong as vicodan in 5 years, but because I used it sparingly I only finished about 3/4 of the bottle without using the refill. 

No, you can't have the rest, I threw it away when I realized that I wasn't going to need it for pain.

At any rate, I've got a pretty solid base of experience to come from when I say that if he needs it, it's totally understandable.  Back pain can be debilitating, and sometimes it really does get to be too much to cope with. 

When it does, you go to the doctor and get yourself legitimately prescribed some pain medication.  When you have a legitimate need for it, THEY'LL GIVE IT TO YOU.  If not, THEY WON'T.



Now Rush, a celebrity who has time and again come out vehemently against people who obtain drugs illegally, saying that they should be sent up the river for a good long time, gets caught with prescription drugs that haven't been prescribed to him and he excuses himself by saying that he's addicted? 

Sorry, that's what everyone else says.  All the people he wants to go to jail, that's their story too - whether or not they started with a legitimate prescription or not, now they're addicted and can't stop on their own.

bullsmurf.  Vicodan, while it may be the most addictive substance I've ever used, is nonetheless easy to stop.  How?  Your prescription runs out and you don't take another pill, that's how.  Your pain goes down, and you have the maturity to not use the rest of the bottle, that's how.

And then Rush says that everyone else should be thrown in jail for a good long time, but for the same crime he should be let off?  It's TOTAL hypocrisy.   

Still, it's not too hard to ignore him, for the most part.  That is, until his bile gets so putrid that mainstream news agencies start picking up stories about him, like with the Michael J. Fox story.  But then he sinks back down into the background again, and we can forget about him.

Every now and again he comes into the spotlight for something positive - and it's always the same thing, that he uses Macs and that he promotes Macs to all his dittohead listeners.  In the grand scheme of things, considering the people he's vilified and the harm he's done in broadcasting his intolerance to people who don't know better, it's not much of a saving grace.  Still, it's better than not having anything good to say about him.

But WHY?  Why would his followers, who whole-heartedly agreed with him when he condemned drug users before, pronounce that he should be given a pass when he does it because it's really only partisans out to get him?  That doesn't make any sense!

WHY WOULD YOU EXCUSE HIM?  Because he's famous?  Because he's rich enough?  He's already condemned everyone else who has walked in his shoes, and his listeners agreed, but he gets a pass?  IT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE!

Please don't try to make excuses for him.  Not for this smurf.  No one who is really thinking about it is going to be convinced.

/rant

What else can be said?  Red Barchetta rocks.

Czachorski wrote:

My wife heard his show a few months ago when he got his Mac Pro.  I didn't hear it, but she told me he went on for a few minutes about how great Macs - some real nice, free PR.  Drag-addicts, hypochrites, presidential gropers, pot smokers, conservatives, liberals  --->  We can all be united by a nice shiney new Mac.

He always talks about the Mac computers he has at home, and the ones at work (his talk show). A few weeks ago, he offered a free subscription to one of his callers, but the caller said that he didn't have a computer because he could not afford one. The caller was very grateful for the offer,  and so he said. Rush asked him a couple of questions relating to computers, and then told the caller to hold on the line so he could arrange sending him a free Mac. The caller was incredibly humble, was not ashamed to be poor, and it seems that Rush felt sorry for him.  I think that it was a very good thing for Rush to do, regardless of his past drug use.

Last edited by Ra (2006-11-20 10:00 pm)