Shall we dispel the COVID is just the flu myth once and for all?

 Cumulative announced US COVID cases through 12/26/20 = 19,023,776

Cumulative announced US COVID deaths through 12/26/20 = 332,011

That works out to 1.745% of all COVID cases dying.

In any given year in the US, 30 million people get the flu. 

If 1.745% of 30 million died, that would come to 523,500 deaths, about 17 times worse than the average reality of 30,000 flu deaths annually.

That's the difference between 0.1% and 1.745%, which Rush Limbaugh could never figure out.

Fake News from Drudge vs. Trump reminds me of Fake News from Rush Limbaugh for Trump: "Economy in same place as Great Recession..."

 Anyone with any brains can see that the economy is about where it was at the beginning of 2019, not where it was in 2009, at least on paper.

Rush was telling us for months that businesses were being destroyed by the lockdowns and that they would not recover. Now he's telling us "we can survive a massive unknown hit like this thing by the coronavirus" and calling for "even more stimulus", i.e. what Democrats always call for, spending money we don't have, which is anything but conservatism from "The Big Voice on the Right".

The entire GOP signed off on the massive deficit spending to purchase this V-shaped recovery Drudge doesn't want to recognize, but 8.4 million still don't have the full time work they had just a year ago. That's a massive hit which will take years to recover. As in 2009, however, older workers who lost their full time jobs this time around won't recover them either. Full time will recover only as population grows. 

Neither Drudge nor Rush Limbaugh think too much of the intelligence of their patrons. Their understanding is thimble-deep.

But neither do Democrats nor Republicans. They go into panic mode to preserve as much of the status quo as possible with bailout gimmicks, same as ever. And when the bailouts end, the dispossessed will face what they always face: disillusionment. 

Sad!

Rush Limbaugh lies about COVID-19 right up to the bitter end

 Today, here:

Even with flu shots, the number of people who die every flu season is stunning. It is shockingly high. It’s greater numbers than people are dying of COVID. 

It is shocking, really. The Wuhan virus is the third leading cause of death in the US in 2020, 5.7 times worse than the flu, and there's Rush telling his listeners flu deaths are worse.

Trump won't lose because he dropped the f-bomb on the Rush Limbaugh Show, but it's a sign of the basic disrespect for his audience, his office and the American people which will be the reason

 Here.

Idiot caller from Michigan to Rush Limbaugh doesn't know Michigan's already a red state, claims Trump's $750 IRS payments were fees to file an extension when there are no such fees

LOL, when you file for an extension to file your taxes, it's entirely free. There are no fees. If you suspect you will owe taxes, however, you must make the payment at the time.

Crazy Michigan woman thinks she's a tax expert when even the IRS can't seem to decide how to finish its audit of Trump.

The New York Times article says Trump filed extensions to file and made various tax payments. He made payments totaling $5.2 million for the two years in question, 2016 and 2017, $1 million when he filed for an extension in 2016 and $4.2 million when he filed for an extension in 2017. His accountants carved out a nominal tax liability of $750 for each year when actually filing the two returns, on the assumption that the $5.2 million would be construed by the IRS as overpayments pending resolution of the claims made in the returns. Those moneys would then constitute pre-payment carry forwards for future tax years.  

The worst part of this call is that Rush Limbaugh just let this woman's BS out there without questioning it. He's as uninformed about this stuff as the next guy, and won't lift a finger to educate himself. It's irresponsible, but this is the same guy who calls the Minneapolis police "killers".

Rush Limbaugh is a horrible representative of conservatism. 

Today, here:

CALLER: Greetings from Michigan, Rush. We hope to be a red state soon.

RUSH: Yeah, that would be great.

CALLER: That would be great. You know, watching the debate was, you know, made your eyes want to bleed, but Chris Wallace set the pace with that first question about taxes. And don’t tell me he didn’t know that that $750 was the fee for an extension, not what he paid.

RUSH: He might not have known. I don’t know.

CALLER: How? If I know, it was in the news, he is the news —

RUSH: There we go. We’re making the assumption that people in the news business know more than you do. Don’t make that assumption.

It gets tiresome fact-checking Rush Limbaugh: Reagan "I'm paying for this microphone" was in Republican debate in New Hampshire 1980, not vs. Carter

 

It's been a bumper crop of stupid lately from the PhDs, from Boston University to Hillsdale College

Ibram Kendi of Boston University for The Atlantic completely slaughters the meaning of the traditional Latin motto of the United States, perhaps the most basic thing everyone used to remember from civics classes, and Ben Winegard of Hillsdale College doesn't have the foggiest idea that "contingency" is a philosophical concept derived from Aristotle by way of St. Thomas Aquinas (contingent being), and that Gould is actually arguing against egalitarianism.

You don't have to be Rush Limbaugh to be a big fat idiot these days.

Could be just about anybody, and too often is.

Beware dumbasses . . . everywhere.

Hey Rush Limbaugh, you big fat idiot, cancer isn't the cause of death in the majority of lung cancer deaths! 94% died of contributing causes!

The autopsies from 100 patients who died of lung cancer between 1990 and February 2011 were analyzed.

Tumor burden was judged the immediate cause of death in 30 cases. ...

Infection was the immediate cause of death for 20 patients. ...

Complications of metastatic disease were the immediate causes of death in 18 cases ... 6 cases of hemopericardium from pericardial metastases, 3 from myocardial metastases, 3 from liver metastases, and 3 from brain metastases. 

Other immediate causes of death were pulmonary hemorrhage (12 cases),

pulmonary embolism (10 cases, 2 tumor emboli),

and pulmonary diffuse alveolar damage (7 cases).

From a functional (pathophysiologic) perspective, respiratory failure could be regarded as the immediate cause of death (or mechanism of death) in 38 cases, usually because of a combination of lung conditions, including emphysema, airway obstruction, pneumonia, hemorrhage, embolism, resection, and lung injury in addition to the tumor.

For 94 of the 100 patients, there were contributing causes of death, with an average of 2.5 contributing causes and up to 6 contributing causes of death.

The numerous and complex ways lung cancer kills patients pose a challenge for efforts to extend and improve their lives. Lung cancer kills in many ways.

Bronchial obstruction from lung cancer can cause pneumonia, making pneumonia the immediate cause of death.

Lung cancer can invade and disrupt blood vessels with resulting fatal hemorrhage.

The hypercoagulable state of malignancy from lung cancer can cause fatal pulmonary thromboembolism.

The burden of tumor in the lungs or the liver can cause these organs to fail, resulting in a patient's demise.

The tumor burden of extensive widespread metastases can essentially starve to death a patient with lung cancer.

These are only some of the mechanisms of death from lung cancer.

Although lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide, including more than 150 000 deaths/y in the United States, little is published identifying or quantifying the causes of death for patients with lung cancer.

Paper.

But there you go today, still America's biggest dummy, having learned absolutely nothing about your own, pathetic situation and what the CDC is trying to tell you:

... the CDC. “For 6% of the deaths COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19 on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes.” These are called morbidities. In other words, folks, for 94% of deaths, the virus was there but didn’t cause the deaths.

No Rush, just the opposite. You always manage somehow to get these things totally ass-backwards.

Most of the things which will kill you because of your lung cancer wouldn't kill you if not for your cancer, same as most of the things which kill COVID-19 victims wouldn't kill them, and more importantly don't kill them, if not for the virus.

Hillsdale College, Rush Limbaugh's bastion of conservatism, employs an assistant professor of psychology who thinks human beings of no more significance than cicadas

If that's true, then we can exterminate human beings at will: Blacks, Muslims, Jews, Whites, Christians, Hindus, old people, infants, and our rotten, noisy neighbors. 

After which we can eat them, just like Rush Limbaugh's great Americans, the Donner Party. 

Conservative talk radio doesn't get it that Trump is president now

Both Todd Herman filling in for Rush Limbaugh yesterday and Michael Savage on his own show today keep talking about how law and order are going to disappear if Biden is elected and that Trump has to run on that issue.

But Trump IS president, and law and order have already disappeared.

A caller to Rush even pointed this out to Herman, who quickly changed the subject.

You can't run for re-election and win by promising to provide later what you're not providing now.

NOW.

It's the Limbaugh Theorem in action under a Republican president, pretending that the present problems aren't the president's problems.

Recipe for losing.

Rush Limbaugh today, wrong again: "If you make $55,000 a year you are in the top 10%"

What a shock, right?

He's not even close, per SSA.gov for 2018. You have to make $100k to reach the top 10%. $55k is simply top 30%. $60k puts you in the top 25%. 2019 data comes out in October.

$55k stopped being top 10% in the year 2000. 

If it's a number, Rush will have it wrong.

You'll recognize the conservatism of Russell Kirk in James M. Patterson's description of the American founding, but you'll never learn about it from dimwits like Rush Limbaugh or dilettantes like Mark Levin

The Dogmatic Rivalry at the Heart of America:

'In the American context, “liberalism” was not the term used to define the political foundations of the Declaration of Independence or the American Constitution. These documents were understood to be the extension of an older British tradition, even if the British themselves had failed to keep it. American colonists had, by 1776, over one hundred and fifty years of experience of self-government in covenanted and compacted governments, and the language of individual consent to government and rights reserved by individuals against the government were there at the very moment the colonies were chartered.

'Hence, as Donald S. Lutz finds that it is not right to call the Founding “Lockean” because the colonial origins of the Founding preceded Locke by decades. Rather, the Founders found in Locke something that articulated what their forebears already knew and understood when hewing logs to build a cabin in 1611. Moreover, during the Founding, Locke received attention only in the lead up to American Independence but faded into the background as matters of constitutional design arose upon the revolution’s success. During that period, jurist William Blackstone and republican theorist Montesquieu dominated the discourse, with David Hume, Samuel von Pufendorf, and Edward Coke each receiving more attention than Locke from 1780 onward. All were dwarfed by references to the Bible, especially, as Lutz discovered, to the book of Deuteronomy. One would only be surprised by this if one believed that the Founders were liberals. Some were, of a kind, but they were primarily republicans. Their appeal to “liberal” principles was, as James W. Ceaser, has argued, primarily to insist that the “rights of Englishmen” to which Americans, being no longer Englishmen, could no longer appeal. Rather, what made the rights of Englishmen truly rights was how they were grounded in nature, accessible by reason, and endowed by God. In addition, Paul DeHart has shown how this effort involved a combination of classical, Christian, and modern sources with the diverse and extensive experience in statecraft.

'For these reasons, it is simply ahistorical to apply a prefabricated concept of liberalism onto the American Founding or attribute it to a rather complicated mix of ideas and influences expressed among the leaders at the time.'

Rush Limbaugh, The Big Fat Idiot, imagines Vitamin D was known during the Spanish Flu Epidemic when it wasn't even first theorized until 1922

In the Face of COVID-19, We’re Not Acting at All Like Americans:

In the Spanish flu, ’17, ’18, ’19, 1917, much death. Do you know that there was not one mention of it by the president of the United States at the time, Woodrow Wilson? Never talked about it. There was no national policy to deal with it. There was no shutdown. There was just, “Hey, go outside, get some fresh air, stand in the sun as long as you can, get some vitamin D, feel better.”

Vitamin D:

In 1922, Elmer McCollum tested modified cod liver oil in which the vitamin A had been destroyed.[12] The modified oil cured the sick dogs, so McCollum concluded the factor in cod liver oil which cured rickets was distinct from vitamin A. He called it vitamin D because it was the fourth vitamin to be named.[194][195][196] It was not initially realized that, unlike other vitamins, vitamin D can be synthesised by humans through exposure to UV light.

Juries decide if someone murdered somebody, not Rush Limbaugh: He might as well be a member of the mainstream media

Rush's rush to prejudge this case and using all this inflammatory language to boot was simply outrageous and would be at any time, but especially while rioters and looters were attempting to burn down the country. He's no conservative, no friend of law and order, no friend of the police. He's a coward who didn't stand up for what's right at a time it was needed most.

The police arrest transcript is out and it shows that the attending officers had a thoroughgoing and reasonable belief from beginning to end that Floyd was resisting arrest under the influence of drugs, that police had called for an ambulance immediately after Floyd hurt himself and that Floyd was bleeding from the mouth long before Chauvin ever arrived and put him on the ground, that Floyd blamed his supposed breathing difficulties on having had COVID when asked directly if he were under the influence of drugs, and that Floyd's complaints about being unable to breathe persisted throughout the encounter which reasonably led police to believe their actions had had nothing to do with his breathing complaints and wouldn't.

The autopsy proved Floyd was under the influence, had in fact had COVID, and did not die of asphyxiation but of cardiac arrest. The police transcript says he crashed in the ambulance and did not die on the pavement.

George Floyd's death was an accident, but mostly of George Floyd's own making, beginning with taking drugs, hanging out with a woman but not his wife and the mother of his children, and ending with possession of multiple counterfeit bills and passing one off as legit.

June 1:

"And poor George Floyd, it’s been said that he lost his life. He didn’t lose his life. It was taken from him. He was murdered for no possible explicable, justifiable reason. It was just sickening, sickening to watch, sickening to see. And you look at the face of the cop involved in the video and the three who stood around and weren’t doing anything. And you just wonder, how stupid can you be..."

June 2: 

"None of this is something happens and these people see it and they get mad and take to the streets. They are waiting. They are programmed. They are waiting for the call to action.It’s not that George Floyd was murdered; it’s that somebody was at the hands of a cop, and that’s the go signal". 

June 2:

"George Floyd died in a blue city. He died in a deep blue city, in a deep blue state. He died in a place where there shouldn’t be any police brutality because the Democrats are not gonna permit it. The Democrats are gonna fix it. The Democrats are gonna make sure it doesn’t happen.And yet George Floyd was murdered in a deep blue state, in a deep blue city, and somehow this is because of systemic racism and white supremacy brought to you by — dadelut, dadelut, dadelut — Donald Trump?"

June 4:

"Coronavirus and the George Floyd Murder:

"What the cops did was obscene. It was. Look, I understand anybody repulsed by that. I was not just repulsed. I was livid. It was so damn stupid. It was mean. Every potential negative character trait that you could associate with it, it was."

June 5:

"But the point is that the Democrat Party, as it is constituted and as it is functioning today, all of this that’s happening that’s in relationship to the George Floyd murder, it’s all a failure. The fact that George Floyd was murdered is a testament to the failure of liberal Democrat politics. Where did it happen?"

As usual Rush Limbaugh is full of it: He says Lincoln ran an anti-slavery campaign for the presidency

The Republicans of 1860 pledged not to interfere with slavery in the states, but opposed its expansion into the territories. Lincoln's moderation on the issue upset abolitionists.

I check in for 5 minutes just to see what he's on about, and he gets something wrong. Every. Damn. Time.

Update with chapter and verse:

"The Republican Party was actually founded in opposition to slavery, and Abraham Lincoln was the Republican Party’s president. He ran on an anti-slavery agenda, including some other things. The Civil War was waged under his leadership and presidency, and 500,000 Americans lost their lives (mostly white) to end slavery".

Here.

Rush also gets the casualties wrong. Admittedly there is variation in estimates, but 500,000 isn't one of them.

"For 110 years, the numbers stood as gospel: 618,222 men died in the Civil War, 360,222 from the North and 258,000 from the South — by far the greatest toll of any war in American history.

But new research shows that the numbers were far too low.

By combing through newly digitized census data from the 19th century, J. David Hacker, a demographic historian from Binghamton University in New York, has recalculated the death toll and increased it by more than 20 percent — to 750,000".

More.

Rush Limbaugh the idiot: Sweden Proves the Lockdown Was Unnecessary

"RUSH: This guy, Neil Ferguson's predictions at the outset said 90,000 people in Sweden would die because they weren't gonna lock down, and 4,000 people died."

Rush Limbaugh's standard of expert opinion is always the guy who gets it wrong the worst.

That's called cherry picking, which is what idiots do.

Let's try to do it the right way.

Sweden deaths to date (no lockdown): 4,542 (18th in the world).

Deaths among fellow Nordics to date (with lockdowns):

Norway: 237
Finland: 321
Denmark: 580.

Sweden also has nearly 41,000 cases and rising. Daily new cases there are near record highs. Sweden is still feeding the beast. The other Nordics have 75% fewer total cases and even fewer than that. The other Nordics are doing enormously better than Sweden.

19 times better, 14 times better, 8 times better.

Rush can pretend this is over all he wants. This isn't over by a longshot, there or anywhere else, until new cases come down and fall to zero.

Sweden's fatality rate is more than twice as high as America's at 11%+. Expect 4,000 more deaths in Sweden at the minimum.

Dumb ass Rush Limbaugh says "coronavirus has vanished as an issue"

New cases in the last week: 150,557

Average new cases daily in the last week: 21,508

Expected new cases in the next 30 days at current level of spread: 645,240

Total current active cases: 1.138 million

Deaths expected from current active cases at 5.7%: 64,866

Deaths expected from projected new cases added in next month: 36,778

In other words, add another 102,000 deaths to the current 105,000 . . . and then add some more, and some more, and some more. 

Rioting is just a temporary little diversion from this United States of Shit Show under Trump.

Hey Rush Limbaugh, you dumb ass, they will never prove the cop intended to kill Floyd, who died of cardiopulmonary arrest while under the influence of fentanyl

Maybe you've heard of it?

You are an irresponsible jerk trying to queer the jury so that cop can't get a fair trial.

You are not on the side of law and order.

 

Rush Limbaugh yesterday turned his program into a shit show, called for George Floyd cop to be charged with first degree murder

Mr. COVID IS JUST A COLD DON'T SHUT THE COUNTRY OVER IT intervenes in a local police case and uses his damn microphone to enlist the whole country in calling for the cop to be charged with first degree murder.

Mr. Virtue Signaling, I say. Mr. I'm gonna die soon better burnish my reputation.

Now the medical examiner says Floyd died of cardiopulmonary arrest and was intoxicated with fentanyl.

And during the program Rush said if what happened to Floyd had happened to a white man we probably never would have heard about it.

Well, it did happen to a white man, and we didn't hear about it until now, not because no one cared, but because the case was deliberately kept from the public.

But as usual Rush flaps those gums before looking into anything too deeply. He's a lazy ass. Always has been. Just like Trump.

 

Beyond parody: Delusional Rush Limbaugh says red states are paying for all this emergency spending

Here:

"The red states are gonna create capital and money to transfer to pay these people their stupid welfare costs (and whatever else they’re using to bleed this country dry), while their population sits home, doesn’t work, waits for the federal check to show up — and they sit around and they trash the supposedly reckless red states. I cannot tell you how this irritates me".

No one is "paying" for anything. It's all borrowed. And Limbaugh's personal portfolio is probably buying a bunch of it, as is every portfolio out there, from individual investors to institutional, to sovereigns, etc. The entire world craves the safety and security of US Treasury securities and can hardly get enough of them, but Limbaugh thinks Republican states are carrying the whole world on their shoulders.

Even as Limbaugh was yammering away spouting stupid, 10-year Treasury securities were flying out the door at record low rates at auction:

"The U.S. Treasury held an auction for $32 billion of 10-year notes in Tuesday afternoon, selling them at a record low yield of 0.70%". 

Federal debt has soared from $23.5 trillion on March 16th to $25.1 trillion on May 11th, and it'll keep soaring.

The Federal Reserve Bank's balance sheet has soared from $4.1 trillion on February 26th to $6.7 trillion on May 6th, and it will keep soaring.

And they are just getting started:

"The central bank had previously balked at direct aid to nonfinancial businesses, but is set to finance trillions in relief across nearly every sector of the economy amid a historic downturn".

Meanwhile Federal Reserve lending operations at ultra-low rates continue to keep businesses alive which should have died long ago. They were doing it before Trump came along, did it with Trump's assent after his election, and will keep doing it.

The Trump administration has signed off on this gargantuan repudiation of free market capitalism, but Rush Limbaugh thinks it's all paid for by Joe Sixpack.

Trump marks the end of Republicanism's "fiscal conservative" brand for at least a generation, and that's what really irritates Rush Limbaugh. He's hitched his wagon to a wayward horse and now it's in the ditch along with the rest of the country.

Stupid is as stupid does.

Don't catch a "cold" down there in that puddle.