Never Mind The Center

At Calculated Risk, the site that's catnip for financial and economic data wonks like myself operated by Bill McBride, I spotted a post entitled "Foreclosures: Movin' On Up!" about the increasing number of mortgage defaults in the "million-dollar and up slice of the [real estate] market" as reported by the Los Angeles Times.

The number of homes in the $1-million-and-up slice of the market that have become bank owned has tripled in the second quarter compared with the same period three years earlier in Los Angeles County, which has the majority of Southern California's high-priced REO houses. And the trend has shown little sign of slowing, according to data from ForeclosureRadar.

"We believe the high end is ready to fall apart," [Bryan Ochse of Media West Realty in Burbank, which works with 11 lending institutions and specializes in REO sales] said.

The freefall continues. We've plunged into a cloudbank; it's difficult to say whether you're falling at all, when you can't see the ground. People around us are shouting that we're hovering now, that everything's fine.

Yeah; right, good. I'm only a Dog, and if I can't get a parachute, I'll settle for a really big tablecloth.

---

In The Beginning Was The Word

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

 

Glenn Beck, At Lower Right Surrounded By Private Security Guards, Waits To Begin The Rally behind A Poster Of A Native American (Photo: Brendan Smialowski, New York Times Online, 8/28/10) 

It isn't really important that someone staged a religious rally in Washington, D.C.; that's been done before. The Moral Majority and Christian Coalition have staged them, and the 'Million-Man March' comes to mind. But this is the first religious rally that is overtly political, a demand to link or merge church and state, organized by evangelical christians with the general theme of turning America back to god -- through the general emergence of a new political force, the vaguely-defined 'Tea Party'. And it is happening at a time when the mainstream media continually portrays the state of National politics as confused at best and governing against the will of the People at worst. 

And, this rally is happening at a time when many people are out of work, angry and vulnerable, and ready to listen to a "new message". The Times stated that NBC news estimated 300,000 people lined the Mall between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument; the event's spokespersons said it was half a million. "But," said the Times, "by any measure it was a large turnout," which to me is disturbing.

 

The Rally (Photo: New York Times / Jacquelyn Martin - AP) 

 It was organized by Glenn Beck -- an eager entertainer who has the backing of Little Rupert's News Corp., the most powerful media conglomerate on the planet. Ten years ago, Glenny was just another drive-time talk jock. Now, he's standing with the Lincoln Memorial at his back, believing he speaks for god and preaching a mixture of biblical interpretation and Rightist garbage.

   

The Most Something Name In News: Reflecting Beck's Penchant For Truthyness And Factitiousness (Screencapture: CNN)

It's a Meaglomaniac's dream come true. However, the phrase, "Jesus wept," is invoked for a reason. There are a large number of people who see Beck attempting to equate his little monologue with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech in the same place, on the same date -- an address of hope and a demand for equality and justice, that has nothing to do with the ego of a tubby con man enabled by a media oligarch. And they're not happy. 

"For too long, this country has wandered in darkness,” Beck said to a nearly all-Caucasian crowd in a long, rambling speech that repeated themes from his Fox television program, his Clearchannel radio show, and his Web 'University', all of which push a bizarre amalgam of half-truths and boldfaced lies about American history. "This country has spent far too long worrying about ... and concentrating on scars," Glenny went on. "Today, we are going to concentrate on the good things in America, the things that we have accomplished, and the things that we can do tomorrow.”

   

"Under God": Tea Party Attendees Recited The Pledge Of Allegiance; Find A Black Person In This Photo And I'll Pay You 1,000 Quatloos (Photo: Brendan Smialowski, New York Times Online, 8/28/10)

Speaking of something many of the other tubby white men in the crowd would do, Sarah Palin spoke immediately after Beck; "We must not fundamentally transform America as some would want," Palin said. "We must restore America and restore her honor." The themes were consistent: America is on the wrong road; we need to regain our honor; we need to look to our glorious past; we need to turn back to religion as the basis for governing the country; and as Beck has been spouting for several years, the Federal government should be reduced in its power, and get out of the lives of its citizens... and all citizens should accept god, and live by godly principles.

 

Obligatory Cute Dead Animal Photo In Middle Of Blog Rant 

...the important thing is that all signs are that the next few years will be a combination of economic stagnation and political witch-hunt... This is going to be almost inconceivably ugly. -- Paul Krugman, "Failure To Rise"; NY Times, August 28, 2010 

 I believe a large number of people will snort out a laugh about Beck's rally, and his performance, today (even David Niewart, who has kept as close an eye on the totalitarian leanings of America's Right as anyone). After all, they'll say, we've heard all his themes before; nothing new there -- and they'll make fun of him. 

 But I also think people are uneasy at what they're seeing; all sniggers aside, the rally had a moderately respectable turnout (Definitely not half a million, and not 300,000; but respectable). And, because Beck wants nothing short of a revolution -- he's as much as said so. His enablers and investors (monkey-gland-fueled oligarchs like Little Rupert, and the Billionaire Boyz Club) think the Tea party will disappear, sooner or later -- but intend to make Progressives spend capital and resources fending it off ...and get something out of it for themselves.

 

And if it does become something; if the country ends up being ruled by nut jobs like Palin and Bachmann and Paul... well; it's nice to be on the right side of people who believe god speaks to them, isn't it? Because those people usually take a Dairy Queen full of people hostage and then demand money, a fueled jet, and "complete release". 

 Unless revolutions are seriously non-violent (as Dr. Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, or Mahatma Gandhi's long effort to win independence for India, were) and truly have justice and history on their side, they end in two ways -- a coup d'etat, because in order to survive, a government has to share power with the revolutionaries (Germany in 1933); or a seizure of power by force, (the French and Russian Revolutions), usually with some involvement by part of a country's professional military officers.

 

Who Wants To Swear Allegiance To Anything We Say, Or End Up In The Gulag? Soviet Citizens During The Purges Of The 1930's

In either case, the revolutionaries need scapegoats. In moving from the Old Order to the New, there will have to be punishments, a comeuppance. And, since it's a Revolution, the old notions of civility, fairness and justice won't apply. The revolutionaries suddenly in power will do whatever is necessary to keep it -- and to survive, people will have to swear allegiance to whatever those in power want them to. Because in the end, it is all about power; "Where the broom does not sweep," Mao Zedong said, "The dust will not vanish of itself." 

In order to bring about revolutionary change, the new leaders won't ask a society to do what they want -- they have to demand it, and behind that demand is always the barrel of a gun. In a political revolution, that's bad enough; ask the Czechs, the Romanians, the Bulgarians and the Russians; the Spanish and the Germans. 

But in a revolution created by religious True Believers, they will not only want you to agree that two and two make five; you will have to prove to them that you believe it with all your heart. Or else. The only way religious revolutionaries can build consensus is by attacking 'heretics' and 'unbelievers' as defined by their leaders, who claim to speak for god.

 

Francisco Goya, Inquisition; Prado Museum, Madrid 

 For example: Non-christians, agnostics or atheists may be identified by others in their neighborhoods to the authorities. They may be ostracized, their businesses boycotted. Eventually, they will be marginalized legally -- at first, laws may be passed requiring only recognized christians to hold public office or civil service jobs; then, to hold any job. Then, to own certain kinds of property. 

 And while all this is going on, the media is broadcasting the message that since the new leaders are informed by god, directives of the new government are directed by god as well -- in fact, will be equated with god's will. Those against the government, and certain non-christians, are evil; "in rebellion against god"; agents of Satan.

 

Nazi Auto-Da-Fe In The Operaplatz, Berlin A.R. Moritz, 1938

And, the things these evil people have made -- art; literature; scientific studies; architecture and design and theater ... all of it will become objects of official ridicule and discarded (even, burned in public) as evidence of moral degeneracy.

 

Exhibition Of 'Entartete Kunst' (Degenerate Art); Münich, 1937 -- An Exhibition Of Art Declared Against The Principles Of German Culture And Society As Defined By The Government (Wikipedia)

It's inevitable; at some point, witches will have to be be tried. There will be forced confessions (as with the Inquisition, or Soviet Purge trials, or Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge). If the accused don't recant, and accept whatever interpretation of religion the leaders direct as orthodox -- then, it ends in executions and anonymous graves.

 

Cambodian Teacher, Photographed Before Execution By The Khmer Rouge.

If you think this is science fiction, substitute the word "Jew", or "Homosexual" "Communist" "Monarchist", or "Liberal" for 'non-christian', 'atheist' or 'agnostic', and remember your history (only, recanting an unpopular opinion, or changing religious affiliation did nothing to help the Jews). If you spend even an hour listening to 'christian' radio, its broadcasts are long, ranting monologues about fire and sin that build slowly to a frenzy -- and always delivered by men, shouting, about seeking out and recognizing the devil and the ungodly, about punishment to come. 

Those who punish others out of a claim to know wickedness are blind to it in themselves. I'm a long way from saying we're on the cusp of a Rightist takeover of the government. More likely, the Teabaggers can try and ram god down the country's throat, and at some point the society will begin to choke.

Until then, it will look and feel like the McCarthy era, as incompetent evangelicals run the United States onto the rocks and brand everyone who blames them as agents of Teh Satan. However, make no mistake: any change of government in this country from its current, secular democratic Republic would have to end in the repression, imprisonment, and murder of anyone whom the new leaders saw as a threat. That is the nature of revolution; there are no exceptions. There never have been.

If Little Glenn Beck has another rally, and more people show up than there were today -- if this is pushed as a "populist" uprising by Right-wing media like Fox and bankrolled by billionaires with revenge on their minds -- then I would take note, and be afraid, because the days of living in a pluralist, secular and diverse society may be numbered.

All that is needed for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. [-- Quotations: Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797); Taste The Irony ]

__________________________________

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Culture Of More: Helicopter Ben, Part 8

(Original Photo: NYT; Courtesy Mongo Network)

Federal Reserve Chairman Benjamin S. Bernanke, in a strongly anticipated speech to other shape-shifting Acturian lizards open the Fed's annual conference, offered the same soothing, bullshit denial of reality that the “preconditions for a pickup of growth in 2011 appear to remain in place,” and added that “We have come a long way, but there is still some way to travel.”

Despite the collapse of personal net worth for the vast majority of the peasantry the recent slowing of growth in the economy after a period of GDP increases which allowed Secretary Timmeh! to claim the Recession was over, Bernanke laughing in the reptilian fashion of his alien people said "It is reasonable to expect a minimal amount some pickup in growth in 2011 and in subsequent years,” then covered all his bases with a handy disclaimer added that “the economy remains vulnerable to a takeover by Republicans who will start another war and line their pockets unexpected developments.”

Finally, Benny rammed his snout towards the microphone and hissed said to the other members of the Fed, For a sustained expansion to take hold, growth in private final demand--notably, consumer spending and business fixed investment--must ultimately take the lead. On the whole, in the United States, that critical handoff appears to be under way.

What Bernanke means is, any actual Recovery has to be led by regular people, buying things, and businesses investing in capital purchases. The problem is, consumer spending between The Crash (September, 2008) and today actually peaked in the Third Quarter of 2009 and has declined ever since.

Without jobs, no one can buy anything. People will not be able to pay their mortgage loans and car loans and credit card debt. As people don't buy things Businesses lose revenue. They will fire more employees. Unemployment rises, and the cycle continues. I mean, it actually is just that simple.


Helicopter Ben! Look Behind You! (Photo: Mongo, And Adobe)

However, the focus of the Obama administration, the Fed, Secretary Timmeh, and all the other Shape-Shifting Reptoids has not been to reduce unemployment. The Republican's TARP program went directly to the banks and investment houses. The majority of the $787 Billion-dollar "stimulus" package (which Obama and the Democrats moved heaven and earth to get through Congress) also went to the banking and investment industry.

The theory was, if banks and brokerage firms were stabilized, banks would begin to lend money to businesses, and everything would be just as it was. Only, the banking and investment industry doesn't give two fucks what happens to the rest of America, and so has not made loans available as expected...

... because the banking and investment industry is also holding billions (possibly trillions) in bad, mortgage-backed securities, sold to them by other investment houses. The government gave money to the banks to counterbalance those losses -- but all the TARP money under Bush, and the bulk of the $787 Billion under Obama, isn't enough to cover all the bad paper the Banksters are holding.

And here's the, uh, "money shot"; pay attention: The entire Derivatives industry depended upon creating mortgage-backed securities with no independently-established value. Banks, pension plans; investment houses which purchased these CDO's count them as part of their paper assets (as in, "Fifty billion dollars strong!"). But what they paid for them was based on an industry estimate which was overstated, and benefited the originators of those securities.

Someone, uh..."made bank" on all this. A relatively low number of middle-aged and older white males, to be precise.

If the "financial industry" were to do a solid analysis and re-value these securities at their true worth, the banks and investment houses, hedge funds, pension plans... all would lose billions, each, in assets. No one knows how much, but it's likely that many institutions would fail overnight, and that would start a global financial firestorm.

That couldn't be allowed to happen, so attempts by the Federal government to reverse damage done by the Banksters, has gone to the Financial industry. It has not been to help People. As long as helping the Banksters, and not Citizens, is the focus of government, this crisis will drag on for years, perhaps decades -- because the overvalued securities created a mountain of debt -- like intensely radioactive waste that can't be destroyed, only stored.


Obligatory Cute Animal Photo In Middle Of Blog Rant

Japan still is being affected by its "Lost Decade" (which really began with its own Real Estate bubble in the late 1980's); and the Great Depression, for America, lasted from 1929 until 1942 -- it took the Second World War to bring it to a close.

And, whether anyone wants to acknowledge it or not, This is not over. We are still in economic free-fall. Nearly a half-million people each month lose their jobs, and nothing is going to be the way it was, again, ever.

However, the entertainment industry, the teevee, media on the Intertubes, has been working overtime helping us deny the reality of our circumstances (I'm not suggesting we stop listening to Lady Gaga because there's an economic crisis; heaven forfend). And, the financial 'reforms' being discussed are all of the allowing Republicans to finally destroy the last vestiges of FDR's New Deal 'shooting Social Security in the head', and 'keep the Bush tax cuts in place for the wealthy'; 'make The People pay for what the Banksters have done' variety.

The teevee isn't reality, and the crap being spewed by politicians isn't reform. It's Chinatown, Jake.

As Paul Krugman noted ahead of Benny's speech, "... we can safely predict what [Bernanke] and other officials will say about where we are right now: That the economy is continuing to recover, albeit more slowly than they would like. Unfortunately, that’s not true: this isn’t a recovery, in any sense that matters."

---

More Random Barking

Armed Against A Future Filled With Teabags, Religious Crazies,
Internet And Water Rationing, And Poor Cell Phone Coverage

Both of my parents came of age during the Depression -- my father was fifteen, and my mother fourteen, when the 1929 Crash occurred, and had graduated from High School by the time Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated as President in March of 1932.

(If, at this point, you're trying to figure out how old I am -- and you probably aren't -- I was an unplanned, late puppy; very late.)

Both came from small towns, their families barely part of the American Middle Class, whose own parents managed to hang on to jobs and property long enough to send them out into a country and a world marked by twelve years of economic misery -- which only World War Two truly ended.

Storm tides recede, leaving all kinds of things behind -- some interesting, some comic, some destructive. All her life, my mother was obsessed in a minor-key way with stretching every dime, every piece of clothing, saving string and pencils, tinfoil and rubber bands for reuse. Like something out of a Leonard Cohen novel, we had an old, pitted pair of scissors in the far-right hand drawer of the kitchen, always referred to as "the new pair".

My father, whose two older brothers (the ones who emigrated with the rest of the family to America in 1920; the oldest brother stayed behind) had worked in a 'Gentleman's Clothiers', was concerned with dress and deportment; he believed appearances were everything: Clothes, manner, speech -- all of which were to provide you with a competitive edge in life, which was ultimately a brutal and disappointing contest.

Both of them in memory, now, strike me as living with a lump of fatalism at the core of themselves; a child's disappointment with the world not being a more gentle, fair and safe place. In no way were they failures at the basics of living -- but their response to life's experiences wasn't to create light in the darkness, to spit in the eye of the unknown and dance anyway. They carried on; that was all.

They were afraid of tragedy and loss, and while they put as brave a face on the day as possible, in the end they expected rejection, failure, a diminution. Their hopes lived side by side with expectations of the world that weren't particularly high. Catastrophe could occur at any moment, and nothing was certain or stable enough to be counted upon; the tide of fear won out over hope and faith every time.


Obligatory Cute Small Animal Photo In Middle Of Random Barking
(Photo [Who Could Have Predicted?]: The Great Curmudgeon)

It was clear they'd been marked by their times. I began to wonder -- that I'm aware of, no study has been published of the effects of so much stress upon a population as in the years between 1929 and 1942.

I'm not sure how you'd quantify it, but there had to have been a rise in all kinds of disorders that we now label Clinical Depression, Obsessive-Compulsive behaviors, psychosomatic illness. However, psychiatry was still a young science; perspectives on suffering and the mind (such as Post-Traumatic Stress) which we take for granted today would have found no support among medical professionals in the Thirties.

And, the effects of the Depression (even for people who didn't suffer the worst of it) was profound enough that artifacts of the stress of those times remained in the lives of most people, like flotsam left beached after a storm. They were things out of place; not serious enough neuroses to keep most people from functioning well enough to raise families, or hold jobs and conduct business.

But, I'd argue that as if they carried a physical scar, people had a mark on their psyches which affected them as long as they lived -- and for those who lived through the Depression and saw combat service in WWII, it was probably worse.

Now? Power being handed to juvenile sociopaths; a horrible terrorist attack, followed by equally-horrible ten-year war(s); the destruction of a major American city in Katrina; a decade of failure to regulate the financial services industry leading to unparalleled manipulation and greed; it ends with wealth and power protected, and everyone else kicked to the curb.

How many families and individuals have been blown apart so far? How many careers lost, addicts created, criminal acts committed; how many homeless children will there be this time? How much human misery will be heaped on our collective psyches -- because The Masters Of The Universe had to dominate everything they could see, and have More?

What's happening to us, to our children, as a result of these days? What kind of hidden marks will they carry? And what will their children passively accept as a sad inheritance out of bad times?

But, I'm only a Dog, and no one listens to me.

---

Tiger Woods Divorced

Respondent Admits And Agrees That Paragraphs 1-10 Of Petitioner's Complaint Are True And Correct

And I absolutely, completely, don't care.

What happens to people in Pakistan, or in Haiti, I do care about.

If all success teaches you is, being the best at something automatically grants you permission to act upon whatever desires pop into your tiny mind, no matter what the repercussions are for other people... then your life will be (as Tom Leher tells us) very much like a sewer: What you get out of it depends on what you put into it.

Stay Classy, Woody.

---

Red Land

Dinner With Bill, Sean, Mikey, Glenn, And Zeppo

A very mildly liberal christian friend, who had spent most of her formative years in Texas, just returned to California after a visit there, feeling bewildered and a little frightened.

At a restaurant dinner with the family of a close childhood friend, people around the table began questioning her about living in "that California": Wasn't there a lot of crime? Wasn't all that gay marriage stuff just terrible? So against god? What about "your illegals"; didn't she think we should do something about that?

Most of the people around the table had known my friend for at least a decade as she grew up in Texas and went to college. They lived in the same neighborhood. Their daughter and my friend have remained close over the twenty-plus years since; my friend is not a stranger to these people, and they're aware she's a christian.

My friend has also been unemployed for more than a year, raising three teenagers as a single parent, slowly spending her savings. She had nervously spent money to travel with her eldest son to see him ready to attend college this Fall (which he could do only because he had received a scholarship). Everyone at the table knew all of this, too.

She was a little nonplussed by their questions about California, and tried to answer noncommittally -- but it seemed that asking her these questions was just the family's way of introducing topics to monologue over:

>> Obama is "turning the country socialist", and "wants to build
that mosque"; "Somebody should do something."

>> Obama "is Muslim";

>> Many people on long-term unemployment are "lazy", and
any extensions of benefits are just "coddling" them;

>> One of the women around the table told my friend Europe
will be overrun by hordes of Islamists while the rest of the world
stands by, paralyzed by liberal softness: The woman had been
reading America Alone: The End Of The World As We Know It,
a book by Rightist author Mark Steyn published in 2006. (Little
Rupert's Fox hearts Steyn and his book.). In all seriousness, the
woman told my friend, "He [Steyn] is the finest writer I've ever read";

My friend (who had married a man from Jakarta, Indonesia, and
worked abroad) asked the people around the table if they had
traveled in Europe; the father in the family replied, "I've
never been outside the United States", almost with pride;

>> The threat of illegal immigrants is very real -- "They
think Texas and the Southwest is still their land, and they'll try
taking it back if we don't do something," a man said.

My friend had sat uncomfortably at the table, and said little in response. Finally, the grandmother in the family stood up, looked archly at my friend and said (as if it were a rebuke), "Yesterday I went to my first Tea Party meeting" -- then abruptly walked out of the room.

My friend has a number of health issues, and takes several medications (currently paid for through an expensive COBRA plan, which she will lose as it's too expensive), and one side effect is a decreased appetite. The father in the family paid for everyone's meal; when handing the bill and a credit card to the waiter, he turned to my friend and said, "S'that why you didn't order any food? 'cause you don't have any money?" And, he was in no way kind when he said it.

What dismayed and frightened my friend was how angry her friend's family seemed. "I'm not all that liberal, but the more they talked, the angrier they got -- I was from California, so to them I had to be some kind of hippie radical.

"What was really frightening was their ignorance," my friend told me. "They weren't thinking for themselves; they didn't want to listen to anything except the kind of right-wing radio junk they were regurgitating."

Remember: Most of the family around the table had known my friend for at least a decade as she grew up and went to college. Their daughter and my friend have remained close in the twenty-plus years since; my friend is not a stranger -- but these people went out of their way to demean and insult her over perceived and assumed matters of ideology.

They thought she was a "California liberal", and treated her according to their own code of conduct. My friend, committed to her faith, did not protest. That would not have been my choice of response.

As she recounted what she'd heard said around the table in a public restaurant, my friend also remembered these people kept repeating phrases like, if we don't do something... somebody needs to do something... we'd better do something.

I have a very, very bad feeling about the future.

(NOTE: This post was edited on August 20, 8:07AM PDST)

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Jobs Is On The Way!

London's Financial Times reports that "call center workers are becoming as cheap to hire in the US as they are in India, according to the head of the country’s largest business process outsourcing company."

As a Dog, I have a fair nose for things. Back in February, I added yet another extended rant a post about circumstances in the American economy:

Keep your eyes on the Fed Rate, and the CPI. If the first stays flat and the other continues to drop... well, hopefully other countries will outsource their call center and manufacturing work to the U.S., where there could be a huge pool of cheap labor in the not-too distant future.



Man; I hate to be right about some things. However, that's also vexing -- what happens if other stuff I've considered becomes real, too?


...Like A European Communist Uprising?


...Or Little Rupert's Dream Come True: Hitler Gets His Own Slot?

Well, we live in America: Land Of The Free, Home Of The Hip, where anything is possible. Don't we?

---

Get Happi Again

C'mon, America: Learn The Secret Known To The Ancients. Or, not.

---

Random Barking

The New York Times online reported that a suicide bomber in Baghdad killed forty or more today.

Over the past few weeks in my neighborhood, I've noticed uncollected garbage, discarded clothing and furniture, sitting on sidewalks -- and I live in a relatively affluent area on Nob Hill (not in the actual Rich Person's part of it, though).

And watching people act towards each other in public situations, there seems to be a harder edge, a what do you want; get the hell outta my way attitude; a presumption that the world sucks and will continue to suck even more as time progresses.

There's a lot of anger, even hatred, out there, looking for somewhere to flow. The Big Boys and Girls on the Right would like to channel that -- into votes, into advertising and commercial profit, into larger attendance in Megachurches.

They've already tried it, in the Teabaggers -- but they're not reading the poll numbers: People believe politicians suck; that the Dems suck -- but Repubs suck even more.

As The Great Curmudgeon noted, anything different is difficult for anyone to remember, now.

However, I keep thinking that it didn't have to have turned out this way. Or, perhaps (given what humans are), there really was no other outcome.

---

Anchored

"First and foremost, I’m a businessman. My first goal is to attract the largest audience possible so I can charge confiscatory ad rates. I happen to have great entertainment skills, but that enables me to sell airtime.” Then he added -- as if he had to after a rare moment of honesty -- "But in my heart and soul, I know I have become the intellectual engine of the conservative movement."
John McManus, "The Flap Over Limbaugh", New American, April 2009


(Photo: Courtesy Knowledge Rush.com -- No Joke)

Lard Boy, 63, racist homophobic misogynistic junkie and self-described shill "intellectual engine" for America's Rightist movement, was reeled in and moored over the weekend to wed 33-year-old Kathryn Rogers in a 'Hawaiian Themed' celebration at a Miami Beach hotel.

This the Blimp's fourth time into the Swine Unit mating chute, and the first for Ms. Rogers.

Guests at the wedding included Karl Rove, Rudy Giuliani, Lard Boy's personal anesthesiologist, and the reanimated corpse of Dean Acheson, who caused a moment of dismay when, as he stood up during the ceremony, his lower jaw fell off.


Lard Boy Salutes The Crowd With Bride And Undead Acheson

When the classic question was raised, If anyone here present knows of any reason why these two may not be joined in holy matrimony, the nose of Rove and a number of other conservatives who sat quietly grew in length by approximately 200 per cent.


Embraced By The Horror: The Couple At A Celebration Of Scotch

The most-remarked part of the celebration in the media was the evening's premiere entertainer, Sir Elton John.

After years of applauding Lard Boy's gay-bashing on-air -- just as they applaud his racist remarks and incitements to defy the government bordering on sedition, even revealing anti-semitism -- many conservatives and evangelicals were "dismayed" that Sir Elton's appearance at the wedding seemed hypocritical.


A Color Guard At The Wedding: Official Photo

However, Zav Chafets, the official biographer of the Michelin Man, hurried to defend his meal ticket remind us that not many people knew it, but Slobodan Milosevic was a deeply sentimental man; and that in his heart, Nikolai Chaucescu really loved dogs and children. A whole a lot.



In an interview last summer [Limbaugh] told me that he regards homosexuality as most likely determined by biology, considers other people’s sex lives to be none of his business and supports gay civil unions. I’m pretty sure that Elton John’s sexual orientation never even crossed Limbaugh’s mind.

I'm sure these samples of the Blimp's comments are proof of his deeply-held personal beliefs.

The new couple have made pleas for privacy. "We try to live our lives as normal people," Lard Boy said in a message on his website. We do not seek media attention. We do not want it, especially for this."


This government is governing against its own citizens.
This president and his party are governing against us.
We are at war with our own President, we are at war with
our own government.
Voice Of The Blimp, January 9, 2010

The media is, aber natürlich, all a-gog and a-twitter. The New York Daily News (competitor to Little Rupert's New York Post) reported "Rush Limbaugh marries gal pal Kathryn Rogers"; USA Today, always insightful, asks "But Will She Love His Cars Too?"

And, everyone, just everyone, wanted to see photos of the event. The Blimp allowed a controlled release, each with his tasteful trademark "Excellence In Broadcasting" stamp.


Excellence In Broadcasting Man Will Save Us From The Scary Awful
Evil Illegitimate Negro Leader, For Ten Gallons Of Fudge Ripple

Psychology Today also weighed in on the event:

Rush Limbaugh's multiple marriages is a 21st century American story... we Americans are crazy about both pair bonding and breaking up...

In his public comments about his marriages, Limbaugh seems to fall right into this conventional pattern of explanation for marital failure... Real insight into a divorce involves understanding one’s own role. Limbaugh at one time did show potentially deeper insight into why he was not good love material.

“I’m too much in love with myself,” he said once between marriages. I wonder if his new wife saw that quote, or this one: "If you want a successful marriage, let your husband do what he wants to do," he once said.

What seared me at the end of a troubling week is the public story line that it’s wonderful to keep trying to find a lifelong mate despite any evidence that the newlyweds have learned squat from past divorces.

Unless she's a brainless, Inflate-o Love Doll with no sense of self, taste, or personal hygiene, I sentence the happy couple to no less than two, and an absolute maximum of four, years.

Take a look at Rogers' body language in photographs of Limbaugh and herself; you could read her body tension as discomfort with the unfamiliarity of being a 'public person' and the focus of photographers. But when in that situation, the tendency would be to relax or lean closer to someone loved and yearned for; where you would feel safe. And -- sorry to harsh your extreme buzz, Rush -- I don't see that in Rogers' posture. Quite the opposite.


Blimp's End: 'Tucked In With A Spade' ; Or, A Large Crane

All I look forward to is seeing the Zeppelin's obituary in Little Rupert's papers ("Giant Of The Age Passes - And The World Mourns"). And (depending upon the language in the inevitable pre-nuptial she will have to sign), in my opinion, Rogers may be keeping that day in mind as she, uh, 'experiences' the connubial embrace of The Blimp. Over and over and over.

But, who cares? I'm much more interested in this.

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