Monthly Archives: March 2012

John McCain is once again eager for this country to go to war. If this man had been elected president, we'd be in about nine by now.

There's a lot I don't understand about women's bodies but even I know that if a woman decides to take birth control pills, she takes them on a regular basis, regardless of how much sex she's having…and also that there are sometimes medical reasons to take them even when she is not having sex.

As several of you have pointed out to me, the David Frum piece I linked to in the previous post is three years old. That may say something about my powers of observation but I think it also says something about how nothing has changed in this regard. Everything Frum said is still valid.

David Frum gives his take on the Limbaugh situation. He says some of the same things I said earlier but he says 'em better. Take a look and get a preview of the Civil War coming soon to a Grand Old Party near you.

I'm of about four minds on this whole matter of Rush Limbaugh calling that lady a "slut" and demanding that she post porn videos of all the sex she has when the public is paying for her contraception. He's issued a tepid apology for the first part of that but I'm still of the four minds, the first being that he doesn't seem to have even listened to the testimony before attacking her. She wasn't testifying about her own sex life at all.

The second mind worries me because it's not all that different from what Rick Santorum said and any time I'm not clearly on the opposite side to him, I feel like I'm probably wrong. He said Limbaugh is an entertainer who deals in the absurd. I don't find Rush particularly entertaining but I think that's his job description. When I hear him described as the unofficial leader of the Republican Party and/or the Conservative movement, I shake my head vigorously. Seems to me the man's not even attempting to lead either or to say what they should do. Seems to me he's doing the only thing he's good at which is to say what fires up a certain segment of the population and keeps them listening to his show. Deep down, I suspect Rush is elated when a Clinton or Obama wins or the Democrats score a victory. It's good for his ratings.

The third mind is that of a guy who hopes Rush's core audience loses big in the coming elections. I don't like to see women degraded or the promotion of unhealthy, Cro-Magnon views of sex but I have to smile at how it hurts G.O.P. candidates at the polls.

And the fourth mind thinks a lot like Evan McMurry, who thinks that the subtext of Limbaugh's whole assault was that women should shut the hell up, particularly about issues that primarily impact women. And that maybe it's good that that's becoming more obvious.

So I really don't know what I think about all this except that Rush is probably sitting there asking himself, "Why did people get so upset about this? I say this kind of stuff all the time and I get away with it."

Ezra Klein on what various medical procedures cost in this country as opposed to what they cost elsewhere. I'm always amazed at the people who don't think we have a health care crisis in this country and that really nothing needs fixing.