11.07.2008

Dirt, denial & double-speak

Rush Limbaugh knows his audience. Caught a soundbite yesterday where the radio guru used the right-wing’s favorite Obama slur, “Raum Emanuel is a dirty Chicago street thug, just like Barack Obama is dirty Chircago street thug.” Rush loves the “name-calling device,” appeals to listeners with a collective IQ of a garden slug.

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Have you noticed the right’s post-election talking points? Last night Brit Hume and “The Fox All-Stars” – Mort Kondrake, Charles Krauthammer and Mara Liasson – continued the argument that the United States is now “center-right.” Everyone from Joe Scarborough to Bill O’Reilly is using this mantra to thwart any suggestion Obama’s victory indicates a move left of center. “Center-right.” Listen for it.

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And, how about a little double-speak?

From The Progress Report, Center for American Progress, 6 November 2008 (LINK):

“Pundits also are claiming that Obama's margin of victory does not give him a mandate for progressive change. Columnist Robert Novak wrote yesterday that Obama ‘neither received a broad mandate from the public nor the needed large congressional majorities.’ But in 2004, as Bush crowed about his ‘political capital,’ Novak argued that Bush's narrow victory was ‘of course’ proof of a conservative mandate. Winning 52.4 percent to McCain's 46.3 percent, Obama's popular vote margin stands at 7,401,289 -- more than twice Bush's 2004 vote margin -- and he netted 63 more electoral votes than Bush. Novak also dismissed the 57-seat Democratic Senate majority (with two more seats potentially up for grabs). But conservativism's so-called 2004 ‘mandate’ netted only four new seats, for a total of 55.”

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10:42 a.m. EST, Nov 7 '08 – Obama: 349 electoral votes, 53% of the popular vote, 65,000,916; McCain, 163 electoral votes, 46% of the popular vote, 57,140,394.

FOR LATEST VOTE RESULTS AND A GREAT U.S. MAP: LINK

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Would the last person leaving the Republican Party please turn out the lights?

Anonymous said...

The thing about Obama that intrigues me is how we can move on from the past. It's what we have waited for. In the last eight years we have become so used to having our noses rubbed in the other side of reason that we continue to think about them. But it might be that they will just not be relevant anymore, in any real sense. Yes, Frodo, I agree. But if there is a vindictive soul in the room--please email Sarah and thank her for this victory, for she played a very great part. Not innocently but with great hybris. A class act.

B.J. said...

We have not achieved Utopia. We are only at the birthing. I posted this merely to show the desperation of fools. I listened for three days to the exuberance of the left and thought it time to find out what the right is thinking. They are conceding that the Republican Party has hit rock bottom, must find new leaders and a new direction. Time and again the lack of “fiscal responsibility” was mentioned as their downfall. (Perhaps that is a gentle avoidance of bringing up George W. Bush.) I find that encouraging: that a “confederacy of dunces” seeks a new direction.

The persons mentioned in this post make their living defiling Democrats and liberals and see their liveliehood at stake. Not once, thought, on Fox News tonight did I hear anyone mention Obama’s “First Gaffe,” although I, myself, was stunned by it. That’s encouraging, too.

Finally, throughout the campaign Obama supporters never used the words “United States” or “America.” They always used “the United States of America.” So, often was the whole name used that it was obvious it had become a talking point. How can we be truly the United States of America if we do not all seek “the great, common human heart of us all.” Obama supporters promised unity. We have more to achieve.