The depths of hatred and rage within the former Party of Lincoln (now the Party of Strom) never cease to amaze.

Just think of it: in defense of “free speech” they go on a jihad against everyone else’s free speech.

I thought I’d tune in to Limbaugh to see how he’s dealing with things, and I was richly rewarded. Between 9:24 and 9:42 PST, he bounced between thoughts like a pinball, lighting up the bumpers. But in topsy-turvyland, you can read between the lines. Here’s a transcript from memory:

First the dismissal of the loss of advertisers. He growled about ABC, “who know better” because they’re obviously distorting things by acting like the loss of 28 (which he corrected several times this way and that) sponsors means anything. He’s on 600 radio stations, and has 18,000 sponsors. So, losing 28 (or 32, or whatever they’re reporting) is NOTHING. This happens all the time.  No big deal. Why, all those little stations have most of those sponsors, and this is inside baseball.

But I’m not hurt. Nosiree. “We move forward.”

Of course, this is the ultimate in false equivalence, substituting quantity for quality (the other version substitutes quality for quantity), since losing national advertisers isn’t the same as radio station KCUF in Ames, Iowa losing Bertha’s Scrapbooking Nook, but for the purposes of the rationalization, Rush maintains that Sears  = Bertha’s (without stating so explicitly, since that would give away the con).

Rush vacillates in a pronouncedly bipolar manner between it’s not important,  and it’s extremely important to understand how really unimportant this is and how little this means to him, he hasn’t been taken out, etc. etc.

And (here’s the kicker) it doesn’t really matter anyway. Most of these sponsors aren’t even really “my” sponsors. They advertise on these local stations and they falsely appalled (because, and this is unspoken in subtext: because how could anyone ACTUALLY be appalled that I spent nine solid hours of national public airwaves time attacking, belittling and demeaning a young woman for testifying before Congress (even though she never actually got to testify, since the Republicans famously wouldn’t allow her to speak at the literally patriarchal hearing of Darryl Issa, [Jerkweed, CA]) about an issue that touches her personally and intimately and touched Darryl Issa, Rush Limbaugh and none of the patriarchal religious figures personally AT ALL.

Hell, come to think of it (and no, I’m completely trashing the notion of linearity in a more precise but similar manner to Rush’s “Brutus is an honorable man” monologue) the only way that any of those male pricks could be personally touched by the contraception issue is if they had compassion or empathy for women they knew, and their entire appearance and testimony belies THAT possibility.

Rush insulates himself

Then Rush pulls the shell from where the rubes bet the pea was and voila: Most of these sponsors pulling out are just shifting their advertising on the local stations to not advertise on his show.

And then the cat almost slips out of the bag … “Just look at the stock prices of … oh I won’t go into it.”

Then, he bounces between a number of non-sequiturs (Oil is the fuel of freedom. Wind power and solar power are a scam. Dennis Kucinich was beaten. It’s a grand rejection of liberalism — which is wrong, the other Democrat is just as liberal as Kucinich. They were forced into the Roman Arena by Ohio GOP redistricting and placed in mortal combat so that the GOP could watch the blood sport as their wenches peeled grapes and delicately popped them into the mouths of the spectators. But, alas, this blood holds no joy for Rush, and he maunders this way and that.*

This is a well-known technique for NOT thinking about something. Think of seven consecutive NON-related images in a row.

Apple. Baker. Backstop. Locomotive. Cloud. Paris. Knickerbocker.

And the mind doesn’t track back to the thing and you move on. It works for people too, sometimes called the “Reagan meander” where, by degrees, a question is rephrased and then associated and then related and your question about nuclear reactor safety ends up with, “And that is why I will NEVER raise taxes on the American people. Now, Nancy and I have to get to a bar-b-que.”

[* the omission of the closed parenthesis is intentional, STET.]

Rush is not hurt. Rush didn’t lose any advertisers, actually. And, even if he did, they were local advertisers. And even they didn’t stop advertising on the local stations (there ARE no local stations. There are only franchisees, mostly a sales department and virtually no on-air talent. These are the monopolies Teddy Roosevelt went after and Howard Taft continued to go after with even greater zeal). They just moved their advertising off of his time bloc.

You see? Presto, change-o, nothing to see, and the rabbit has disappeared!

Cue magician’s assistant.

And then, the most hilarious (for those with self-awareness, that is) statement of all, capping it:

9:35: “Folks, I live in literal land. I am the mayor of reality-ville.”

Thus spake Zarathustra.

Cue tympanis.

Oh, and this floating turd bobbing in the great cesspool revealed in the monologue: “There IS no war on women. That’s ridiculous.”

Patriarchy in Action. (The only way it  could get more blatant, t’would seem, is if all the Male haters and their feMale enablers wore those FBI flak jackets with PATRIARCHY emblazoned on them.)

I have never gone along with the “patriarchy” narratives, but there is no doubt that the institutalized social mechanism of suppression and brutalization of women as less-than- persons, whatever you want to call it, is in full testosterone raging full-on bulldoze mode right now.

(I’m speaking, of course, of Michelle Malkin, Anne Coulter and Megan Kelly. You too, GOP gents.)

Which brings us back to that cat that almost got out of the bag.

Genuflecting at the pilonoidal cyst

You will recall that law perfesser William Jacobson launched the jihad on Sunday, less than 24 hours before insanely reversing himself and then versing himself yet again.

Welcome to total political war
Posted by William A. Jacobson
Monday, March 5, 2012 at 9:18am

And I’m not talking about the attempt to get advertisers to stop advertising on Rush Limbaugh’s show, or Fox News, although that would be bad enough.

I’m talking about the second-tier of the warfare, the attempt to intimidate those removed by one or more degrees of separation from the dispute, and to use them as tools against the target…

He were agin’ it afore he were for it before he can I start agin? (to quote Texas Governor Rick Perry).

Here is the cat that Rush choked back down into his bag (perhaps enraging the anacondas). From Foster Friess’ financed stooge and media hit man at the Daily Caller:

Investors flee Carbonite after Limbaugh announcement
Published: 4:30 PM 03/06/2012

By Jeff Poor – The Daily Caller

On Saturday, Carbonite CEO David Friend released a statement on his company’s website declaring that Carbonite had decided to “withdraw” advertising from Rush Limbaugh’s radio show in the wake of his controversial remarks involving Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke because it will “ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse”:

Even though Mr. Limbaugh has now issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising from his show. We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse…

However, it hasn’t done much to contribute to his company’s stock price. Since the market opened on Monday through its close today, Carbonite stock (NASDAQ:CARB) has plummeted nearly 12 percent, outpacing the drop of the NASDAQ index in that same time period by nine-and-a-half points. It was also one of the biggest decliners on the NASDAQ on Tuesday.

Bwah-hahahaha!

Distilling hatred into prose

And Jacobson chortles in his dungeon, as the lightning makes weird shapes on his laboratory wall, like two anacondas writhing in death struggle.

Announcing The Carbonite Accountability Project
Posted by William A. Jacobson
Tuesday, March 6, 2012 at 1:14pm

… This blog and many others have called attention to the fact that Carbonite’s advertising policy is not consistently applied.

Carbonite continues to advertise on the Ed Schultz Show, despite Mr. Schultz’s long history of verbal attacks on the Tea Party movement and conservatives, including calling conservative radio talk show host Laura Ingraham a “slut,” for which Mr. Schultz later apologized.

Given Carbonite’s very public announcement, it is appropriate to keep track of whether Carbonite is living up to its own standards.

A special Focus Page has been created as a place at which readers can post information and links documenting whether Carbonite is advertising on programs and venues (including websites) which have engaged in personal attacks or uncivilized discourse.

This is a sunshine project, not a boycott….

Our boycott isn’t a boycott, like those evil liberal lefties like Ed Schultz. We will retroactively Dixie Chicks either him or Carbonite and harm someone because someone withdrew their advertising from Rush Limbaugh – because he verbally abused an American girl, a young woman not long out of high school for having the courage to testify in front of the few, minority members of Congress who would listen to her.

Wait a minute? Isn’t this the same “the Boys’ Club” who wouldn’t let Ms. Sandra Fluke testify in the first place?

Besides when you’re exercising your free speech rights to protest others exercising THEIR free speech rights not to fund COMMERCIAL SPEECH (which is what Rush is, perfesser, look it up in your fancy law books), would that be unfree unspeech?

The Alter Boys of the Serprime Court have yet to announce their Olympian judgment.

And, thus, I am forced to leave you only with this transcription from Rush’s program that I only heard by merest chance (or perhaps my Martian monitors the airwaves) and rushed in here to transcribe it while it still rang in memory:

10:27  AM PST (sounds of pain, then a chortle, like two anacondas are wrestling inside Rush’s thorax.)

… I know people are tired of Republican presidential candidates that sound like dopes. They’d take Karl Marx is he could string two sentences together. Karl Mark is in this debate. Karl Marx Alinsky. This is the Barack Obama cycle.

Thanks, Milo. We go to a caller in …

Hulk Smash!

Courage.

================

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.

Helping to enact a new proposed Constitutional amendment to roll back Citizens United would seem to be right up the Occupy movement's alley.

The Occupy movement so far has steered clear of articulating any clear policy goals, or engaging at all in the political process. That’s been smart, because the movement’s been able to grow as quickly, and effectively, as it has precisely for this reason. If Occupy had become about this bill, or that legislation, or whatever, the movement easily could have become too narrowly defined and been diminished as a result.

But now a political issue has come along that is as big as Occupy itself; one that is at the core of what animates the movement, and itself would rely on the kind of geographically dispersed support that Occupy represents. It’s been said often that the Occupy movement is diverse, and that the protesters themselves have differing views. However, if there is any single overarching grievance behind the entire movement, it would be too much corporate influence in our lives, and in our government.

Several Democratic senators on Tuesday unveiled a new proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution, an amendment which would strike back specifically at last year’s Citizens United Supreme Court decision that gave corporations even greater unfettered reach into our government.

The constitutional amendment would authorize Congress to regulate the raising and spending of money for federal political campaigns, including independent expenditures, and allow states to regulate such spending at their level. It would also provide for implementation and enforcement of the amendment through legislation.

“By equating campaign spending with free speech, the Supreme Court has essentially ruled that the wealthiest among us should have the loudest voices in our elections,” says Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, one of the sponsors of the proposed amendment. “The American public is fed up with the outsize influence that money has on our politics. This constitutional amendment will restore the balance to our system that the American people expect in a democracy. It is time to return our elections to the hands of everyday citizens rather than the special interests.”

The fact is that it is hard, by design, to enact a new amendment to the Constitution. It’s been amended just 27 times in all of U.S. history, and 10 of those all came at once as the Bill of Rights. The Constitution’s not been amended successfully in 20 years. Even an amendment as basic as the Equal Rights Amendment has failed.

Given the fact that this new proposed amendment would cut into the influence of big, deep-pocketed corporations, you can bet those corporations will fight back hard to prevent it. It will take the sustained pressure of a movement the size and power of Occupy to get it done. Moreover, enacting a new amendment takes more than just convincing Washington to do so.

An act of Congress is only the start of a long process. To become enacted, an amendment must be ratified be three fourths of the state legislatures.

That’s 38 of the 50 states, and that’s where Occupy’s geographical reach comes in. Whether in Oakland, Calif., New York City, or Wichita, Kan., Occupy has proven its staying power to keep the pressure on its message. It will take that strength and commitment to ratify this new amendment. It would have to be the Occupy movement versus corporate influence, day in and day out, until that 38th legislature finally did the right thing.

It would seem to be just the kind of fight the Occupy movement was built for.

Scott Nance has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade. Capitol Idea is his regular column from Washington. This article originally was published as “The Political Issue Uniquely Suited to the Occupy Movement,” on Blogcritics.