I heard something crazy on the radio this morning. But let me say first: I don’t make a habit of listening to “The Rush Limbaugh Show.”As disenchanted as I am with liberal orthodoxy, I cannot stomach Limbaugh... or that smug loudmouth Sean Hannity. (O’Reilly’s cool, though. He’s a gifted broadcaster, no denying it.)
So what happened was... I fell asleep with the radio on in the wee hours. And then a voice snatched me out of my dream sleep. It was a black man’s voice. On “The Rush Limbaugh Show.”
’Twas a talk-radio moment to savor. Click here and listen for yourself to “A.J. from Houston.”
(Then perhaps we can pitch in and explain to this brother what a passport is, and why illegal immigrants aren’t likely to have one.)
18 comments:
You're a shark for catching this. Its truly saddening/maddening. Even worse is that I just discovered that Rush's website shows up as a link on Google Ads.
Please check out my blog - I would love to read your comments.
Reminds of a clip from the Family Feud back in the day. Black family is one of the contenders.Category is, "Countries."
A few countries have been named already. Black girl, late teens, says "Africa!"
Richard Dawson, the host, asks her if she's sure. She is, and her family, I think, cheers her on enthusiastically.
BZZZZ! Aw.
(Africa not being a country is just one more way the man has of keeping us down.) ; )
david, you give bill o'reilly a pass? i hear rush on my car trips and i loathe the inflammatory nature that all of these red pundits use. i'm not in love with the democrats, either. but some of the more famous loudmouths on the right don't even fact check. yuck. read al franken's lies and the lying liars that tell them. i really would like to have another viable party choice -- one that can win.
i have to be honest...i like Limbaugh, at least out of all the radio personalities. He's conceited, his fans play into it, the callers just lay all kinds of praise on him. The show is just too too much, I can't help but laugh whenever I catch it. I can't say I'm an O'rielly fan, but he's okay.
As far as left and right pundits and politicians, they're all lyin' liars who say whatever they feel to get their point across.
Hmmmmm.
As a conservative?
1. I don't care for Limbaugh.
He's usually behind the curve on whatever issues are out there. He rarely adds anything valuable. His "3 hour show" is more like 30 minutes of actual show and 2.5 hours of advertisements.
And quite often he is pretty much completely wrong on issues.
Meh.
2. Hannity?
The guy couldn't talk his way through a checkout counter with a bag of oreos and a $10 bill.
Seriously. Every time I listen to Hannity, which is as little as possible, he gets things wrong so often it's a mess. And he is far too diffident on reining in his guests when they start going off on tangents or making statements that are either outright falsehoods or unsupportable by any evidence available to mankind.
As a talking head he's got a career. As a reliable pundit who knows what he's talking about? Not so much.
3. O'Reilly?
Meh. He's often wrong on issues too. And that "no spin zone" is utter nonsense. Plenty of people spin on his show but you have to be a friend of his to get away with it.
Like Geraldo on illegal aliens. Geraldo can lie out of his ass and O'Reilly will just sit there.
4. "(Africa not being a country is just one more way the man has of keeping us down.) ; )"
Pretty close to the truth IMO.
Frankly it's a crime that Africa has been left such a pest hole. The only problem is that most of the criminals responsible are Africans living in Africa.
So what to do about that, I don't know.
5. As for inflammatory. Really guys. Are you trying to tell me that the lefty pundits aren't inflammatory?
IMO it's pretty hard to take someone seriously when they start calling Bush a "nazi". Frankly if you line up all the things that Bush as done and simply masked the name, he'd look like the most accomplished liberal in decades.
Man I really regret voting for him in 2000 and 2004. But you Democrats, and I was one once, just had to put up Gore and Kerry.
ugh.
Hmm, and I thought Walter Williams was Limbaugh's number one fan, as he often guest hosts his show.
ItAintEazy: Point taken. My subject line should've been: "Rush Limbaugh's other black fan."
That reminds me... driving in the car one day last month, I caught Walter Williams hosting the show. And he went on this remarkable riff (except he was seriously) about how individuals should be allowed to sell their own organs... while they're alive. There should be no law against.
Which just goes to show you what happens when you place ideology above common sense. I believe in individual liberty and free markets too. But to combine both principles and say, "Why shouldn't a poor person be allowed to sell a kidney if he wants to?"... well, I was boggled. I was waiting for the punchline.
I wanted to track down the audio, but forgot. Maybe I'll get back on that one...
Rush's call screener must've gotten wood when this cat called in...assuming he's real.
Rush and O'Reily are just DJ's who spin conservative talking points instead of records. The listening audience is kind of a cult that wants to hear the same points made over and over, like Top 40 hot rotation.
Hannity is a more of a dimwitted bully...he'd be the weatherman who cheated his way through meteorology school.
Judith wrote: you give bill o'reilly a pass?
I guess it's more about entertainment value. (I speak of Hannity and O'Reilly's Fox TV work, by the way... I haven't heard their radio shows.)
O'Reilly I find very entertaining. And he has a kind of natural gleam on camera... just that gift of communication. Hannity needs to be slapped.
Olbermann I really can't stand. When he goes on those "very special" analytical discourses on the Iraq war, with the sourpuss face, taking himself so very seriously, all I can think is: "Maybe if our troops were caught using corked bats, I would care what Keith Olbermann has to say about it. Otherwise, no."
Hmmm.
That reminds me... driving in the car one day last month, I caught Walter Williams hosting the show. And he went on this remarkable riff (except he was seriously) about how individuals should be allowed to sell their own organs... while they're alive. There should be no law against.
*shrug* why not?
Take as an example ESRD, End Stage Renal Disease, or it's more common name "kidney failure". It's a tough disease, often fatal and the only hope is a kidney transplant. Some people can stand the treatments, some people die from them, some people suicide because they can't stand the needles the size of roofing nails and the secondary complications.
Right now there's more than 40,000 people hoping for a kidney transplant. Actually it's probably more than 100,000 but I'm too lazy to get the precise numbers from Google.
For a young healthy adult with no personal or family history of kidney, blood or heart disease selling off a kidney for $100k probably wouldn't sound like a bad deal. It would pay for a college education, down payment on a house and a serious start in life. Meanwhile you only need 1 kidney to stay healthy and another person has a chance at life.
And that doesn't even cover liver transplants. If you're in need of a liver transplant then you're going to die unless you get one. There is nothing that any doctor can do to keep you alive in the meantime.
And that's now. Wait a decade or so when the baby-boomers really start hitting the medical scene. With the substance abuse, high blood pressure and obesity problems many baby-boomers have the dialysis wards will fill to the brim. Which is why every hospital and medical treatment company are building dialysis centers like mad.
*shrug* but hey. I have ESRD so take what you will. It's a hard hard life enduring kidney disease.
Ultimately it's about market forces. Right now there's a ban on people selling organs so the only people who make money are the hospitals, doctors and the middlemen. And because there's a ban it acts like price controls so you end up with rationing. And because there's rationing the transplants can only be offered to those with the best chance of success. And for those that don't fit that precise profile, well there's the other side.
And yeah. It can be tough when you realize that you've got "pick out your coffin" on the todo list.
Hmmm.
Whoops. I think I should make a couple things clear since I got a bit maudlin in that last comment.
1. Not whining. Stuff happens, life is hard. I've had it good for many years, now it kinda sucks.
It all works out eventually.
2. The issue over availability of transplantable organs would be vastly simplified if the government allowed the sale of organs from recently deceased.
Not being a ghoul or anything and I'd hate to put a price tag on a beloved member of a family. But there currently is a huge amount of money changing hands with respect to body parts from deceased organ donors and absolutely none of it goes to the survivors of the deceased.
When you pay that bill to have a doctor put in a new ligament in your knee, that ligament came from an organ donor. And every single person in the chain from the time of donation to the time where the ligament was surgically installed made money. Except the donor.
Not for nothing but in a way it could be a substantial form of life insurance for a guy's family. Perhaps even non-taxable.
Here's to all the great moments you still have left memomachine. I've got the failing kidney thing too,- they kind of crashed about 12 years ago, but I've been hanging in there.
Hey, there ARE other countries where a kidney can be had. Rob a bank and get on a plane. Well, the way things are these days, better a slow boat with a dialysis machine on the way to the far east. Go for broke if the clock is running out anyway.
I certainly would.
And my pal UBM-- I am SO upset about your political scene, but that's life and you get to do what you want in the USA, so be my guest. I'm fortunate enough to be beyond the reach of the right wing blabfest where I live. And as to whether or not I like the Republicans, Democrats or Independents {includes Socialists, Libertarians and I guess Nazis now too} come on, baby-- I left the place long ago because I could no longer stand to listen to the same old fecality served up with different background music, nor could I any longer stand to be a member in either good or bad standing of the massive bumbling empire. That was in 1979, and by now I find it mind blowing to witness the pathetic farce played out upon the American masses every day. But I witness it from very far away.
I've got 6 siblings. The youngest is a Republican who used to support Bush, but he never talks about him now. Thank God Almighty.
I still think highly of my kid brother and I like you too, UBM.
But about the politics I am going to stick with the "do not step in that taint" mode.
No point in arguing points with the true believers. I prefer to just wait it out until they settle into a long hard disillusionment. Heh.
With illegal immigrants and passports he would be correct. All of the 9/11 hi-jackers were here on passports. Most people think of illegal immigrants as Mexican or South Amer. but a huge portion are people from China, Korea, Europe and other parts of Asia who come here on tourists or student visas and simply never return. I lived in the S.F. area and that was the case for many Asians and also Colombian and S. American people I met. (I was a recruiter) But back to the 9/11 guys, they were here on passports and we did not do an adequate job of tracking them. I think that's the issue he was trying to get at.
Hmmmm.
@ rc
Here's to all the great moments you still have left memomachine. I've got the failing kidney thing too,- they kind of crashed about 12 years ago, but I've been hanging in there.
Ouch. Sorry to hear about that man. It's tough having to deal with it. I hope you're not having any issues with infections. I went through an episode a few years ago where I was getting infections all the time, including a couple bouts with sepsis, and that was pretty awful.
IMO I'd never go to foreign country, particularly Asian, for a transplant because it would be nearly impossible to determine the provenance of the organ. From what I've heard a huge number of Japanese and South Korean kidney patients, along with some Americans, have gone to China to get organ transplants. I don't think I could live with the thought that some political prisoner got vivisected to provide transplant organs for me and that I would be walking around with them.
*shrug* what can I say. I have a particular set of ideals and, though life is sweet, I'm not willing to abridge them to live a little bit longer. Which is why I'm opposed to embryonic stem cell research too.
Perhaps it'll all work out.
Hope you're having a good time.
Tanyetta, you're right. I wasn't even thinking about that class of immigrants here on lapsed visas.
"A.J. from Houston" was still all mixed-up, though... because with those immigrants, the govt. doesn't want or need to "take their passports." In fact, couldn't take their passports, because their passports aren't U.S. property.
Anyway...
memomachine and rc: Damn... sorry to hear about the kidney issues.
The Walter Williams proposal is a fascinating thought experiment, if nothing else. Because what I think it illustrates is possibly an inherent "cruelty" in markets... which must be tempered with a little humanity.
If healthy people selling their organs was legal, and an economy grew up around it... obviously the human population would split into two groups: those rich enough to buy an organ, and those poor enough to want to sell one.
You'd have brokers out there trying to talk poor people into selling...
Hey, wait... this sounds like the premise of an interesting futuristic drama...
OK UBM, we want to see that Kidney Drama. Memo, I read you about the provenance, but there are ways to figure out where the kidney came from and I may have to do that one day too, but so far I'm not onto dialysis yet. I'm for the stem cell research and the implementation too.
I used to clone cells {vegetable} way back in 1967 and I am a bit amazed we do not have instant organs already.
Memo, take care of yourself and I hope you can hang in there until your kidney ship comes in.
UBM, the kidney story has legs, you ought to check it out.
Some real horror, official misconduct, organ harvesting, desecration of the dead, all kinds of freaky evil twists and turns and then some awfully grateful soul gets a kidney.
Knowing your mind by now, I bet you are already thinking "which George Clinton theme could we use while we show the Chinese firing squads?"
And thank you for the sympathy UBM.
I've had diabetes for 25 years and very debilitated kidneys for 12 years. I'm very very careful about what I eat, stopped drinking and using drugs {even prescriptions} ages ago and now I am mostly at risk from very high heat in the tropics. I have some serious problems in August and September each year. But I am leading a rather normal life all in all, work physically, have a garden, a nursery actually, and I survived being hit by a pickup truck, you guessed it, directly in the kidneys breaking vertebrae 5 and 6 in the process in August of 1999. Took years to learn to walk again. I do not have now and have never had medical insurance. I paid the whole tab from savings. Of course, by now I have no savings but I can walk normally, most of the time. Pretty good deal I would say.
So hey UBM, lay off the politics and check out the organ game. It's worth pitching that to someone.
Just do me a favor and don't make the person getting the organ a pathetic and pitiable shlub. We find that offensive. Yeah, we have a serious problem, but most of us cope by ignoring it almost all of the time and avoiding the black hole of self pity. That doesn't pay off very well.
Cheers to you and Memomachine.
Finally, it may be time to free yourself from Mental Slavery, Memo.
Re-examine those assumptions. Just saying that you might see some new angle to jump on the survival train. I'm hoping you do!
Hmmmm.
@ rc
Here's to the future! May we both live to see it become the past.
@ UBM
The thing to consider is that a lot of people already make a ton of money off donors, but the donors and their families make nothing. So the situation where people are pushed into becoming donors has already come to pass.
Consider college football. Enormous profits there. The TV conglomerates make a ton of money, the colleges make money. Even the football coaches can make multi-million dollar contracts. With billions of dollars involved just how much does a college football player make?
Not a damn thing.
Even worse the coaches and the colleges have an incentive to force the players into devoting all of their time to the sport because that'll make the coaches and the colleges more money. But when the shouting is over and the player "graduates". Precisely what does the average player graduate with?
And what about the injured player? A player who rips an ACL or a blows out a knee halfway through college. What happens to the full ride scholarship then? What happens to the player?
They get kicked to the curb and the same damn people make millions more on the next set.
...
I'm not advocating a rapacious system where poor people are treated like cattle. Not at all. What I'm advocating is a system where the market system that exists already is applied evenly across the board. Keep in mind that many of the same institutions that oppose reimbursing donors and their families are the ones making money hand over fist selling their organs and body parts.
Another thing to keep in mind is that one of the major reasons why people don't donate more often is fear of unknown consequences and lost income. Would you be so very willing to donate a kidney if you realized that you'd lose a month's income?
Post a Comment