Posted on 11/28/2005 5:03:33 PM PST by mastercylinder
Edited on 11/28/2005 5:07:49 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Al Franken and the other liberals are probably still wondering why they had such little luck in their efforts to start a talk-radio network to bash George Bush from the left. They didn't consider the obvious explanation. George Bush has his left flank nicely covered. It's on the right that he's weak.
That is the theory of Michael Savage. Savage is the most right-wing of the right-wing talkers on the national airwaves at the moment. He is based in San Francisco, but he can be heard in the New York area on WOR in the evenings. He is a welcome change from those Karl Rove clones Hush Bimbo and Sean Vanity.
"Hush Bimbo" and "Sean Vanity" are the names Savage has pinned on Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity of WABC. In doing so, he has sparked a war between the members of his "Savage Nation" (slogan: "Borders, language, culture") and the so-called "Bushbots," that sizable number of gullible Americans who can be convinced that whatever policy Bush adopts is a conservative policy.
"What makes Bush a conservative?" Savage asked when I got him on the phone the other day. "On the economy, Bush has got more governmental workers than anybody before him. He's ballooned the government."
As regards the so-called "war on terror," Savage points out that you can't win a war when you're afraid even to name the enemy.
"He's never mentioned Islamofascism," said Savage.
No, he hasn't. Even the French have been more willing to defend their borders, language and culture than Bush. He's a multiculturalist and a mushy one at that. Instead of reducing the reach of Islamic fundamentalism, Bush has managed in Iraq to get 1,700 Americans killed in a war that will create yet another Islamic republic. Just yesterday we learned that the new constitution in Iraq will incorporate sharia, Islamic law.
That's why we right-wing commentators believe the Iraq war has been the biggest blunder in America's military history. As for Bimbo and Vanity, if I may employ Savage's labels, they are simply too uneducated to realize that the Iraq war represents a failed liberal exercise in nation-building.
"There is no college in Rush. There is no college in Hannity," said Savage. "He's a high school dropout. It's like listening to an uneducated, unthinking man on the radio."
Savage has a Ph.D. from Berkeley in epidemiology, an extremely challenging field. That makes him a bit overqualified for the verbal pro-wrestling matches that make up talk radio. But it also makes him interesting.
The Bushbots don't think so. On their Web sites, they call Savage a bigot and a racist, two terms the employment of which generally indicate that the speaker is losing an argument. Savage is a hero on those Web sites that attack Bush's open-borders approach to immigration. "Rush Limbaugh is a direct link to his president, El Traitor, Senor Bush," wrote one blogger. "The invasion by illegals has been going on now for a long time."
"You are 100 percent correct," said another of Limbaugh and Hannity. "They are nothing but blind, rubber-stamping followers of El Presidente Bush."
All of this is a lot of fun if you don't take it seriously. I certainly don't. But I do find talk radio to be a good barometer of the nation's mood. And the nation is slowly figuring out that the Bush-neoconservative-Troskyite- internationalist view of foreign affairs has not worked out so swimmingly for the good old U.S. of A.
"Bush is melting down our borders and making us into a polyglot nation in which no one speaks the language," says Savage.
Savage hears a lot from people who say that any criticism of Bush is a mark of disloyalty to conservatism.
"I can't stand listening to people who want me to be a lapdog for Bush," he told me. "We're supposed to be watchdogs, not lapdogs."
As for the rest of the radio talkers, "They may as well work for the Republican Party. There's nothing interesting if you can predict what a man's going to say by just going to the GOP Web site."
He's certainly got that right. Listening to an endless rehash of Karl Rove's talking points, leavened by a few Teddy Kennedy-is-a-drunk jokes, is not very entertaining.
As for the Al Franken approach, how can a nation-building, internationalist multiculturalist get any traction by criticizing another nation-building, internationalist multiculturalist? John Kerry had that problem as well, you might have noticed.
When you attack the Bush-Rove spin from the right, however, you realize that the neocons' grand social experiment has been tried most visibly in Iraq and has failed most visibly there. People are starting to notice. Eventually even the Bushbots may get a clue.
I agree. His anger is only for the stupidity of people who do nothing while this country is being destroyed by the enemies within. His observations are correct. It took Bush YEARS to name the enemy--and he does so in a roundabout apologetic way.....sickening.....no wonder why Savage is so irate with leaders like Bush.
Backoff? I don't think so. Your opinion of what his legacy will be is nothing more then that...one person's opinion.
OK fine. It is settled. You failed to name the person who has outspent Bush. I win. You lose.
Are you talking in dollars, or in % of the budget?
said Savage. "He's a high school dropout. It's like listening to an uneducated, unthinking man on the radio."
Dollars. Even inflation adjusted dollars would probably still have Bush as the #1 welfare spender in all of history.
"Borders, Language, Culture" is the heart of "the Savage Nation," Rush rarely brings up borders. Hannity will cover the border when the issue hits the headlines. Savage's savaging of other talk-radio hosts annoyed me until I realized that this is just part of his shtick.
He's talked himself into a corner trying desperately to gain a wider audience. If he truly believes what he spews, he's certifiable. If he doesn't, he's a hypocritical hack. His desperate gambit has failed. His audience didn't increase much, if at all, and he's alienated himself from all but the "eat nails and crap barbed wire" crowd. 74 posted on 11/28/2005 8:49:26 PM EST by Jokelahoma (Animal testing is a bad idea. They get all nervous and give wrong answers.)
Actually, Savage had risen from #5 in talk-radio in 2003, to #3 today; according to Talkers Magazine.
Interesting background article on Savage here, including the origin of his "Savage" name.
As a percentage of GDP, Reagan for one was higher. I sure there's more.
LOL! You really do have a difficult time understanding the difference between your "opinion" and reality...you're wrong again.
Those days are long gone.
"Public servant" -- our public servants don't know the meaning of the term.
We the taxpayers are now the public servants.
That is what Savage is all about! It is why I listen to him instead of Hannity and Rush. Hannity is way to nice and doesn't see the big picture and Rush is very wise, but may be bribed to soften his approach on the big issues.........No one has been able to bribe or shut-up Michael Savage. They have tried!!!
GDP comes and goes. Spending sticks. I was talking raw dollars.
Just curious, how did you total "welfare"? What functions, subfunctions from the OMB data did you total? Where did you get figures for canceled debt? Where did you get figures for IMF and World Bank spending from US funds? Did you really gather the data or are you just making a guess?
See table 1.2. Add the "Off-Budget as a Percentage of GDP" to the "On-Budget as a Percentage of GDP".
GDP represents the paycheck that the American people take home. Thus if fed spending was ~22% of GDP during Reagan, then federal spending on average was 22 cents on every dollar earned. I believe for Bush, it has averaged about ~21%.
Yes, but President Reagan had the war on terror and the damage of numerous destructive hurricanes to deal with as well.
As a % of GDP is not what I said. I said raw dollars.
However, it seems you made an error. The highest % of GDP spent on Human Resources during Reagan's time was 12.4%. Bush has been spending 12.7 up to 13.0% of GDP for Human Resources. So, it seems that Bush has outspent Reagan using your measurement, even though this is not what I stated (I stated raw dollars).
How could he not. Limbaugh sounds like he's on the government payroll, and Hannity has bored all his listeners to death.
i ignore that individual
Real intellects speak to "the better angels of our nature." They don't pander to the most primal.
What is a real intellect ?
Someone who tells you theres a lion in the street then hides under the bed ?
Or someone who tells you to hide under the bed while they kill the lion in the street ?
Or someone who asks if they can assist you in killing the lion in the street?
Or someone holds you up to the lion lest they might not be eaten first?
I think its someone who asks if they can assist you in killing the lion in the street and if your afraid of the lion which most individuals are including myself they help you bring out your primal self who has been hiding behind the kind and gentle persona
Savage {imho} is trying to wake people up to the lion in the street around the corner but PC is lulling the masses to sleep keeping their eyes hiden from the impending danger creeping ever so closer to the throat of the resting masses!
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