I can’t believe it’s come to this.
I mean, I never saw it coming.
I’m totally and completely blindsided and I’m totally and completely unprepared for how I’m now feeling.
I hate to say this, I really do, but for the first time in my life I’m ashamed of Rush Limbaugh.
It didn’t bother me in the slightest when Rush was caught with someone else’s Viagra at a Florida airport following a jaunt to the Dominican Republic for a little it’s better not to speculate.
Or when he admitted that he was an oxycontin addict.
Or when he called Sandy Fluke a slut.
Or when he proclaimed that Donovan McNabb was a right shitey QB and the only reason anybody said otherwise was because he was black.
Or when he noted time and time again that Hillary Clinton ordered a hit on Vince Foster.
Nope. That shit didn’t bother me.
But now, things are different.
See, you may know this already, but Rush Limbaugh took the airwaves yesterday and let it be known that he was “ashamed to be an American.” And apparently, it has to do with the fact that Rush has finally realized that Congress is the world’s longest running kabuki-theater donkey-show bukkake flick, and that every action, every debate, every position is part of a time-tested script that the actors on both the Left and the Right follow to a TMJ. Rush said:
Folks, I’m sorry here. I can’t help but think that we are all being played for a bunch of fools, a bunch of suckers on this sequester business. I don’t know. Are you like me? Do you really think 800,000 people are gonna lose their jobs in the Pentagon because we cut $22 billion? Do you really think air traffic control’s gonna shut down? Do you really think there aren’t gonna be any meat inspectors? Do you really think that all of these horror stories are going to happen? I don’t.
I feel like I’ve been here. This is deja vu all over again. I remember the 1995 budget battle. That involved a legitimate government shut down. That wasn’t just $22 billion we were not gonna spend. We’re still gonna spend $3.5 trillion. We’re just not gonna spend $22 billion, if it happens.
He added:
Now, the government shutdown in 1995, yeah, we were gonna starve kids. That was the plan then. I’m just kidding. Snerdley I’m sorry, it’s all ridiculous to me. Every bit of this. I’ve been doing this — you get new perspective. I’m into my 25th year, and I think I mentioned to you last week and maybe the week before, I’ve been doing this long enough now to start seeing the repeat cycles on everything. I don’t care whether it’s the debt limit or the fiscal cliff or continuing resolution or the budget crisis of 2008 or TARP or the auto bailouts, and now the sequester, it’s the same playbook.
It is the same threats. It’s the same danger. It’s the same crisis. It’s identical. There’s nothing about it that changes, over and over. And everybody gets sucked into it. I try to escape, I try to get out of it, I try to leave it aside, I try to move on, but it just sucks me back in, too, until I realize that I have been sucked back in. And then there’s a part of me that says, “Well, wait a minute now.” You got not just Panetta, but now a uniformed military general, General Odierno, saying that he could lose 600,000 uniformed people, and the common sense of this doesn’t add up. Now we’ve got a guy comparing this to the Oklahoma City bombing.
And then he said:
Everything gets repeated. The cycle, the claims, the threats, the crisis, Armageddon, it’s the same. And we’re talking $22 billion. It’s not as though we’re not gonna spend anything. If the sequester happens, the first year is $44 billion. Half of that’s defense. We’re still going to spend $3.5 trillion or $3.3 trillion, even if we don’t spend the $22 billion.
I would like to think that this was a come-to-Jesus moment for Rush, but it’s not. Limbaugh is not that naive. He’s been to donkey shows before. Hell, he’s even performed in a few himself.
The truth is, Rush’s “I’m ashamed of America” moment is just another plot point that has to take place in this kabuki-theater donkey-show bukkake flick. He knows it. You know it. And I know it. But for whatever reason we act like we don’t. I guess that’s our place in this bit of political theater. We’re the reason the floors in this goddamn theater are so fucking sticky. I like tell myself it’s the popcorn butter and soda, but, deep down inside, I know that it’s not.
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