Rush Limbaugh: Patriot and Junkie

It's been over a week since I posted, and I have to apologize. The postings will be more regular from this point forward.

On my trip from Washington to Nebraska, I traveled through the bright Red states: Bush country (a.k.a. Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Nebraska). To those of you who live in actual cities, this may come as a complete shock to you, but there are large stretches of highway in Wyoming where the only thing on the radio is one AM station. And that one AM station broadcasts Rush Limbaugh, all day long.

Believe me or not, I enjoy Rush Limbaugh because he makes such a mockery of conservatives, and he seems to relish in it. It's tough to even consider, but if I were a conservative, I would do everything in my power to get Rush off the air. As a liberal, I appreciate having conservative pundits like Hannity, Limbaugh and Coulter, because their arguments are so baseless and asinine, it puts the whole conservative worldview in its proper perspective.

This week in another act of self-contradiction, Rush criticized the reporter who helped a soldier frame a question to ask Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld about the lack of supplies for our troops in Iraq. The end result of the soldier asking Rumsfeld about the lack of sufficient armor and other crucial supplies was that the Army increased orders for such items. Rush accused the reporter (Edward Lee Pitts, who is embedded with the questioning soldier's unit in Iraq) of planting the question to take Rumsfeld down.

As an aside, my favorite part of the entire exchange was Rumsfeld's response to the soldier's question, which bordered between "beggars can't be choosers" and the Stones' famous lyric "You can't always get what you want." (Then again, the lyric would continue "But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need." So, I guess it really doesn't apply here.)

The best thing about Rush's unsolicited opinion on the issue is that it shows how quickly conservatives with abandon their "Support Our Troops" cries, when someone attacks the Bush administration. Rush supports the troops, as long as they shut up about the lack of support from the Department of Defense. You see, Rush wouldn't understand what it's like to go in to combat without armor, since he avoided military service altogether.

As far as the reporter "planting" the question, the reporter must have also planted a few hundred soldiers, who cheered when the soldier asked the question. I'm sure the whole thing was made up, just to make Donald Rumsfeld look bad. Furthermore, the end result was more armor for the troops, so I am not quite sure why Rush is so outraged, unless he really doesn't support our troops at all or doesn't care about their safety. Also, why would the Army need to increase order for armor and supplies later in the week, if our soldiers had everything they needed in the first place? Probably just to make Rumsfeld look bad, since the soldiers are obviously incredibly safe.

I love Rush Limbaugh because he serves as an uncensored, shining example of how selfish and self-righteous the conservative mindset can be, when you add an addiction to painkillers to the equation. Keep on rockin' Rush. The more crap you spout, the more polluted the septic tank of conservative ideas becomes. Megadittos, asshole.