Free Republic

I remember when I first moved to Seattle from Montana in the early 90s and occasionally the family I lived with would ask me to escort their first grade daughter from the library where she waited after school to her house when their schedules didn’t permit it. It was about 5 blocks, I think. I said, “Of course, I’m happy to do this, but I think when we were that age we walked home by ourselves.” The mother(from a small town in Nebraska) said, “Oh, of course we did, but but things are different now.” She was right, of course. I remember when I was 4 or 5, one of my jobs was driving the neighbors milk cows back toward their place and although it was only a quarter mile or so away, it was out of sight of our house. He let them out to graze the roadside and since we left our gate open a lot, they would come in and lounge around. The funny thing is I was a very sheltered child by the standards of the time. My mother forbad playing around building sites and other stuff that friends did. But by the standards of today, I was a free-range kid, I guess.

I never got the whole Sandra Fluke thing either. If you want to find fault with Rush, there are many more objectionable things he’s done and said. As I see it, Sandra Fluke went out of her way to get into the public eye with something controversial.(She was not a hapless person who found herself in the middle of some cause celebre.) When you do that, you have to be ready to accept the consequences. If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen, in other words.

I too began listening to Rush in the early 90s. I don’t listen regularly any more. Typically I listen to an hour or so of reruns on weekends and that’s about enough. A lot of the show seems to be references to old shows from years ago, and other unoriginal material. I have also been frustrated with his avoidance of certain topics. In some cases, he may have been right to avoid these topics, and it wasn’t evident until later, but still. There are other topics that he probably should avoid until he gets better informed. I think earlier this month he was talking about accusations that he was “out of touch”, and making kind of a joke out of it. But the truth is, I think he may he may be out of touch, to some extent. Not that he’s the only one, of course. So are many politicians, and a lot of other famous and influential people.The childrens’ book promotions are very tiresome too.

I think the show jumped the shark in early 2000s, 10 or 15 years ago. But that means that we got about 15 really good years.

Noory is a train wreck, lazy, hacky, by-the-numbers. If it’s true that Art is coming back, I know a lot of people who will be thrilled beyond words. Ian Punnett was my favorite, though.

OK, here’s what you have to believe in:

A pregnant teenage girl in the early 1960s who wants to fly to a foreign country(maybe not third world, but not exactly first world either)to have her first baby, away from her own mother and with strangers in a different culture.

The Honolulu Star Bulletin has a crystal ball and knows that this is one birth announcement that needs to be falsified.

In addition, the certificate of live birth which people were saying was not a legal document, just a souvenir, actually is a legal document. Mine is from Montana in 1956, but its probably similar. The thing with the footprints is actually a souvenir.

When I hear hoofbeats, I tend to think horses, not zebras, yes even in Kenya. This is my standard answer to all birthers, and all I will say on the subject.

And they have robots taking care of the elderly.

It’s pretty clear he’s a Devil Wears Prada, Nanny Diaries type of boss. You can detect it by the way he talks to and about them on the air, even. He probably makes them sign something promising not to talk or write about him publicly once they leave.

Must have been a long, long time ago. He denounced her as an anti-Semite years ago.

If my parents gave me a name like that, I think I’d change it.

He gives Levin a hard time for working under Ed Meese. Levin is actually quite proud of this part of his resume.

America has done worse.

I have not read most of these comments yet, but here’s my take on Trump. At first I agreed with people like Jen Rubin and Rich Lowery, who see a Trump candidacy as wholly negative, because of all the wrong kinds of tabloidish attention it will bring to the debates and campaigns, and resources and attention it may suck away from more worthy and thoughtful candidates(such as my favorite, Ted Cruz).

But after a few days of listening to callers, some who seem to admire Trump, on talk radio, particularly Mark Levin, I now don’t think it’s a bad thing to have him in the race. He is giving the other candidates an idea of the kind of issues, such as immigration, that are really concerning people, and will probably steer more of the debates to those subjects. He talks in a very plain and frank way, too, something people hunger for, after hearing so much politically correct bibble babble, and seeing anybody who doesn’t talk that way punished severely.

Now that being said,the business with Trump University a few years back is troubling to me. It’s easy to google this story and I recommend that anybody who’s considering endorsing him do so because it speaks to his character.

I had another thought this morning too. I think that the moderate RINO types(who seem most upset by his candidacy) might want to rein themselves in and not give him the satisfaction of pushing their buttons so much. I don’t really believe that his candidacy is part of a bigger conspiracy(concerning Hillary, for example) but it’s remotely possible. I think it behooves them not to let on they’re so spooked, just in case.

Not wandering into birtherism is a point in Rush’s FAVOR, as far as I’m concerned.

And whatever my issues with Rush are, it’s only one-tenth of my issues with with Savage.

The only thing that bothered me about the viagra incident was that he said that he was getting a prescription in somebody else’s name to protect his privacy or some such. Must be nice. If doctors really do this, it seems that it would leave a lot of room for abuse. Maybe they won’t do it with narcotics and controlled substances.

Dennis is the Man. Too bad 1590 the Answer has the signal strength of a refrigerator bulb and I can’t get in Everett. But I listen whenever I’m in Seattle.

I’m with you.

Frankly I think that the Sandra Fluke business was overblown—Sandra Fluke got what she had coming, as far as I’m concerned. The way I was raised, when you put yourself purposely in the public eye with something like that, you have to take whatever heat comes your way without complaining.

That being said, a lot of what Rush does has gotten old. He still hits it out of the park once in awhile, but the trick is knowing when the show will be good for all 3 hours and tuning in. Much of the time it’s like a soap opera—still hashing and rehashing the same stuff as months or years ago, with heavy emphasis on ANY mention of him in any segment of the media. He also has a habit of shooting his mouth off on subjects he clearly doesn’t know enough about. Some timely topics are conspicuous in their absence, for reasons known only to him. Thank goodness he doesn’t spend Mondays namedropping all the big shots he socialized with over the weekend any more. I think when I really lost considerable(not all, but considerable) respect for him was when he said that he makes up his mind about important questions based on who’s on what side. He was talking about climate change, but it could be anything. He said that because of who was on the other side was enough for him to decide what side he was on. Huh? Climate change aside, I don’t call that critical thinking. I was astonished that he would admit something like this.

Kuhner is one of the most ghastly sounding hosts I’ve ever heard, maybe not in content, but delivery.

This “must have been a governor” business is more magical thinking. Having been a governor is very good, but both bad and good presidents have had it, and there are lots of other ways of getting executive and leadership experience.

I know what you mean. My mental health and wellbeing index goes up when I don’t listen to him. Coast to Coast is preferable.

I haven’t waded through all the replies yet, and didn’t hear the original show(I have been trying to quit Savage, but it’s like quitting smoking is for a lot of people). But I remember very well back in 2008 how hard he was on her, and the Palin family. He said that they looked like an episode of “Cops” on the stage with McCain. For several days he urged McCain to dump her and replace with somebody else.(Don’t know if there’s any precedent for that.) he compared her unfavorably to Biden, saying at least Obama had the sense to choose someone with experience. He claims that she must have been forced on McCain, perhaps by someone trying to sabatoge him. Most embarrassingly, he put Michele Bachmann on the spot when she was a on his show, telling her her how favorably she compared to Palin. I thought that this was rude, because it put her in an awkward position—whether or not they were really friends, they did have occasion to work and appear together and he seemed to be goading her into throwing Palin under the bus. She handled it quite well, though.

Later, of course, he softened his attitude toward Palin. But I never really trusted him, when it came to her. After all a guy who worships Ivy League college degrees probably won’t take to somebody who got a degree from the University of Idaho (Big Sky conference, same as the University of Montana, where I went to college). And don’t forget that this is the guy who thinks emptying the prisons and siccing gangbangers on terrorists might be a good idea. And he has a lot of other halfbaked populist fantasies, some that contradict each other and change from day to day. No wonder he took to Trump so much.

This is one of the many beefs Levin has with him.

Ha, ha, did you hear him say a few days back that if there was any justice, he’d have a Nobel Prize? I like it when he babbles endlessly about his own great mind.

But, your’e right. Once every few weeks or so, he’s hitting on all cylinders. The trick is knowing when that will be. I understand he’s now doing all 3 hours live, instead of the spliced-up, rerun 3rd hour, which so many listeners hated. But I long ago got in the habit of switching to George Noory at 10, so seldom hear it.