You know the Rush Limbaugh audience has changed when there's an ad during the break for a podcast from the intersectional feminist perspective

LOL, it would seem that Mark Levin is now contesting just who it is who is inspired by Rush Limbaugh around here

American Crisis II: Mark Levin issues 1776-style ‘call for action’ :

Limbaugh did signal that Levin’s role was to rally the conservative base, as he does on his shows and through his books. “He signed something for me, which I'm really a little bashful to talk about, I haven’t said it to anybody,” said Levin. “It says, ‘To my dear friend Mark, the spirit of the movement. God bless you, Rush.’”

LOL, on a lazy day after the holiday I tune in to the Clay and Buck Show for the first time and get a double dose of stupid in mere minutes

 OK, maybe it was the second time, but still.

LOL, Clay Travis cites Martin Luther King Jr. maintaining that homosexuality is a mental disorder like that was a bad thing

 The Clay and Buck Globohomo Show.

LOL, how does Clay Travis graduate from Vanderbilt Law and say "drug across the finish line" out loud in front of God and everybody?

Just now on the show which replaces Rush Limbaugh.

Jason Lewis on the Rush Limbaugh Show this week was lighting his hair on fire about inflation

Jason Lewis' remedy for inflation, which came in at 5% year over year in May, actually 4.9%, is the standard remedy: The Fed should raise the interest rate, which is effectively zero at the moment and has been for some time.

Aggressive low-interest-rate policy has been the rule since 2002, with the brief escalation from 2005-2007 during the housing bubble being the exception. Over those 19 years through 2020, the average effective federal funds rate (DFF) has been 1.36%.

Contrast that with the 19 year period previous to that, from 1983-2001, when the DFF averaged 6.27%.

That should have kept inflation under control, right?

Well, no.

Under the low interest rate regime we've had an average annual change in CPI of just 2.01%. For the previous period with the higher DFF we had higher inflation, 3.24% per annum on average.

All inflation is bad. At 2% per annum the value of your pile of assets is cut in half in 35 years. At 3% it's closer to 20 years.

What kind of conservatism is it to advocate for either one?

Real conservatives believe in sound money. Less unsound money won't do.

The evidence is the two things, the fed funds rate and CPI, aren't correlated.

And CPI is rightly mocked because its components do not capture the inflation which has infected the cost of education, health care, housing, stocks, gold, intellectual property, et cetera in our life times.

It's the purchasing power of the dollar which has continued its inexorable decline which is the problem. We haven't had a sound dollar policy since the advent of the Great War in 1914. The desire for an independent monetary policy conducted by a Federal Reserve from 1913 came at the price of the ongoing robbery of the wealth of the people. World War couldn't have been financed without it, nor the Welfare State after it.

It's hardly a coincidence that political conservatism has been in retreat from the same time. You make a lie of the money in your pocket, you make a lie of everything else, too. Slowly at first, and then suddenly.

This American swindle will not continue forever.

 

Mark Levin is so pathetic: He can characterize what went on in America's streets last year as an insurrection when millions rioted . . .

. . . and yet he still insists on the principle of non-violence from the people to put it down. We should just sit there and take it, watch our cities, businesses and homes burn down while the government does NOTHING.

I don't expect normie conservatism EVER to advocate watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants and their mobs.

This is because normie conservatism is really just Republicanism. Its roots do not go back further than Lincoln and his "project" for racial equality, which was in truth nothing but a demagogue's ploy to keep from losing a war. And because of this it has disarmed itself for every other political conflict except for the cause of racial equality. For THAT they will gladly destroy the country and see it destroyed, but otherwise won't lift a finger when BLM and Antifa come knocking.

This is why Republicanism failed to stop the income tax and women's suffrage, Social Security and the welfare state, abortion and gay marriage, and a whole host of other things large and small they said they were against over the years but on which they eventually caved, and then eventually championed. It's the reason "conservatism" has failed, because Republicans aren't conservatives. They are, according to their own lights, simply better versions of Democrats.

For this reason Republicanism can never be about the American Founding, protest to the contrary as it may, boast otherwise as it may. Lincoln destroyed the Founding and redefined the country, by force of arms!, and Republicans are stuck with it, and we with them, unless someone can recover the original spirit of liberty. And Democrats exist to never let them forget it, to make them live by their new principles which only tie their hands and guarantee their ongoing defeat.

Meanwhile, don't look for the Founding spirit from Noon to 3 let alone from 6 to 9. Instead look for more of the same game played by Rush Limbaugh, the "they're the real racists" game.

Race, race, race. Black unemployment was never lower than under Trump.  Hunter Biden said the n-word and the fag-word and gets away with it. Blah, blah, blah, as your kid can't find a decent job to start his own life.

 

Today's Tuesday conservatism over at Real Clear Politics is so ho-hum

In the line-up today at Real Clear Politics is one Buck Sexton, who tells us in "Following Rush Limbaugh" . . . not very much.

Is there any there there? is the question I have after reading this introduction to the man who is supposed to be the conservative in the duo taking over for Rush Limbaugh.

Since radio is a word business and this piece reads more like an apologia for his elevation to his new role than a taste of what to expect, it's not a good sign that this Buckaroo calls Rush's opening monologues "severely entertaining".

Is Buck Sexton a Mormon? I mean, this sounds like Mitt Romney, who trotted out his wife to assure Republicans that he was a conservative, and not long after addressed CPAC and called himself "a severely conservative Republican governor".

I know, I know. It's just a coincidence that this Jesuit-trained fellow sounds like the Mormon. But if you have to tell people you thought Rush was severely entertaining, maybe to you he really wasn't. At any rate, severe is not a word which ever came to mind when listening to Rush Limbaugh. 

Then there's Stephen L. Miller, whose Twitter feed is enormously entertaining @redsteeze , but whose prose offerings are, shall we say, stilted? The guy writes like he's got a brick up his ass.

Taking yet another much-deserved whack at CNN's Brian Stelter, Miller not entertainingly resorts to wooden stock phrases like "petty star-gazing", "it should raise eyebrows", "not becoming of anyone", "all fine and good", "all well and good", and "for anyone wondering . . . look no further". With all this lumber neatly stacked in a pile, the final paragraph ends with mistakes like "gleamed off" for "gleaned off" and "who claim to be just as a rigorous and dedicated journalist as Brian".

Yes, Stelter falls far short as a journalist. It's good that a mediocre writer points it out to all the people who obviously ignore Brian Stelter by the millions. It's an easy beat for Miller to cover, but maybe he should move on.

Miller claims to be good at hockey. I hear Clay Travis has left an opening somewhere.

Then there's a Democrat over at The Hill wondering "whatever happened to conservatism?"

When you get to paragraph seven you'll learn that Jan 6 was an "armed insurrection" and, if you're living in reality, you'll stop reading there.

But if you are a glutton for punishment and read to the end, you'll learn that the answer is The John Birch Society finally won the battle for the soul of the Republican Party.

I'm sure the five people still alive who ever knew an actual John Bircher will find that extremely amusing, if for no other reason than "that's what they WANT you to think".

Have a day.

LOL, it turns out Clay Travis is the perfect cuck to replace Rush Limbaugh

 

The Big Voice on the Right has been replaced by a couple of little pipsqueaks playing deep in center field

 

Rush Limbaugh conservatism is so over, if it ever existed

The worst thing about the announcement of Clay Travis and Buck Sexton being hired by Premiere Radio Networks to fill the noon to three once occupied by Rush Limbaugh is that rushlimbaugh.com is promoting this. That wouldn't be happening without the support of Rush's widow.

Never mind what ex-CIA employee Buck Sexton agreeing to team up with this guy says about him, Travis is the last person to whom Rush's audience would ever warm:

A self-described "radical moderate" who is pro-choice and against the death penalty, Travis said he voted for former President Barack Obama twice and never voted Republican. In 2016, Travis voted for Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party. As an undergrad, Travis interned for U.S. Representative [Democrat] Bob Clement for four years while in college at George Washington University. In 2000, he worked on Al Gore's presidential campaign. Travis was hired to work on U.S. Representative [Democrat] Jim Cooper's 2002 congressional campaign but was fired for wrecking Cooper's wife's car.

Premiere rolled the dice on this duo and came up with snake eyes. They will have to build an entirely different audience, but it sure as hell won't be a conservative one.

You couldn't have asked for a better recipe to blow-up conservative talk radio.

Looks intentional to me. Is Travis on the Democrat payroll?

Just like that EIB, like Rush Limbaugh, passes into oblivion.

LOL, Rush Limbaugh time slot to be taken over by duo which includes political moderate Clay Travis

Pfffft.

Rush Limbaugh’s Radio Show to Be Taken Over by Clay Travis and Buck Sexton:

The Rush Limbaugh replacements are in, as Clay Travis and Buck Sexton will take over his three-hour conservative talk radio show time slot, said distributor Premiere Networks. ...

Premiere Networks has continued to syndicate “The Rush Limbaugh Show” using archived segments on topics relevant to the day’s news, with guest hosts filling in between clips. The program was attracting about 75% to 80% of its regular audience, according to a person familiar with the matter. ...

A self-proclaimed political moderate and independent, Mr. Travis last year announced he would be voting for former President Donald Trump, saying it would be the first time he would vote for a Republican for president. He has written several books, most recently 2018’s “Republicans Buy Sneakers, Too: How the Left Is Ruining Sports With Politics.”

The face when you thought you tuned in to the oldies station but got the chucklehead playing Rush Limbaugh reruns instead

 

.

.

LOL, it's funny hearing Jason Lewis fulminate about immigration on the Rush Limbaugh Show when all he could get was a C+ from NumbersUSA on the issue in his one term on The Hill

 

Well, I found one guy with the temerity to point out what a phony baloney plastic banana good time rock n rolla Rush Limbaugh was on immigration

From a good thread discussing possible replacements for Rush Limbaugh.

Commenters get it that playing reruns hosted by loyalists ain't gonna cut it.

Cumulus Media's Westwood One is challenging the time slot of Rush Limbaugh with Dan Bongino.

That should force EIB's hand to up their game.

Meanwhile under George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh licked his finger, checked the wind, and said what he said. Which was Rush's typical behavior. As Rush told 60 Minutes, he was there to see how much money he could make advertisers pay to be on his show. That meant keeping and growing a Republican audience. Rush was never about principle. He was just about convincing you that he was in order to keep you listening.

 

Now that Rush Limbaugh is dead, The Daily Beast fills the gap with a chopadickoffame story

 Inside the World of Backstreet Castrators, Cutters and Eunuch-Makers :

Some people born with penises and testicles want to keep the former, but lose the latter—though some choose to keep their empty scrotums. (There is a dedicated Reddit forum for the latter group to share photos of their genitals: Empty Sacks, “for those who had the balls to give theirs up.”) Others want to keep the genitalia they were born with and add new genitalia on top. ... (Mexico and Thailand have both been hot spots for quick-and-easy but largely unregulated clinical castrations, penectomies, and similar procedures for at least a couple of decades now.) ... the greater availability of open and official care—far more than horror stories and crackdowns—has led to a drastic decline in demand for cutters, which means there are now fewer of them practicing than there were five or ten years ago. 

Peggy Noonan has second thoughts, recalls with fondness the crabbed public square of Fairness Doctrine infamy

What a shock, right? Roman Catholic from Brooklyn thinks Methodist hick from Missouri should have been shut up long ago.

Rush Limbaugh’s Complicated Legacy :

By the 1980s it was being argued that the doctrine itself was hurting free speech: It was a governmental intrusion on the freedom of broadcasters, and, perversely, it inhibited the presentation of controversial issues. There were so many voices in the marketplace, and more were coming; fairness and balance would sort themselves out.

In 1987 the doctrine was abolished, a significant Reagan-era reform. But I don’t know. Let me be apostate again. Has anything in our political culture gotten better since it was removed? Aren’t things more polarized, more bitter, less stable?

I’m not sure it was good for America.

Imagine if religion were similarly circumscribed.

From 17 distinct religious groups in 1776 and about 3,200 congregations, today there are north of 300 groups and 300,000 congregations.

The lack of unanimity surely bothers devout believers in one or the other, some of whom are certain everyone else is going to hell, and something should be done to stop it.

I suspect the one true church of Peggy Noonan feels the same way, except its liberalism has invented the half-way house of Purgatory to roast malefactors until ready for Valhalla.

Deal with it, Peggy. It's still a Protestant country.

Rush Limbaugh dead at 70, FOX obituary includes famous "preamble to the Constitution" blunder from CPAC 2009

Rush Limbaugh, conservative talk radio pioneer, dead at 70 :

"We believe that the preamble to the Constitution contains an inarguable truth that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, Freedom and the pursuit of happiness."

The mistake is fairly typical, both of Rush, and of Rush's audience the Baby Boom for whom basic knowledge of civics had long been in decline. For Rush, and for them, conservatism was always more aspirational than actual, often conflating present perspectives with historical realities.

An example is the Straussians who in our time explicitly argued for the unity of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, giving Thomas Jefferson's more revolutionary, Enlightenment-tinged views in the former too much sway over the interpretation of the latter.

The irony of that fusionism was always that Jefferson sought for the United States "to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them", not the "exceptional" American position touted by Limbaugh as an heir of America's post-war position of global domination.

The Constitution's preamble expressed a matter-of-factly self-interested goal, "to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity", a country of Americans, by Americans, and for Americans, not a nation of immigrants, by immigrants, and for immigrants, not a nation of heroes marching forth in search of monsters to destroy. America's founding was above all modest, which is perhaps the surest indicator of its inherent conservatism.

If Rush Limbaugh slaughtered the important details on a regular basis, what made the show so enjoyable was the entertainment, which largely came from the sheer pleasure Rush derived from doing it and communicating it, "having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have". If nothing else, Rush Limbaugh was a conservative of enjoyment, and who doesn't want to be around people having a good time? It is one reason for Rush's tremendous success in a career spanning more than three decades.

Students of conservatism might think this a whimsy, not to be taken seriously, but no less a figure than Russell Kirk devoted a chapter to such conservatism in his "The Conservative Mind". Rush himself, from time to time, in his own non-academic way had observed how liberals are not funny and don't have fun, and in this he was on to something. Generally speaking conservatives possess contentment to a far greater degree than do liberals, derived from a judiciously formed view of the self as sinners saved by grace. It is a freeing thing which allows people to accept things as they are, even as God accepts sinners as they are.

Of course in the post-war there has been a tremendous amount for Americans to enjoy, to the point that we have become completely distracted by this. One may rightly say we have overdone it, and that enjoyment has frankly become conservatives' Achilles' heel. It has produced a myriad of problems, not the least of which has been a failure to reproduce, inattention to religion, and a proclivity for the easy politics of the executive where we look for one man to save us. As America was not built by Protestants enjoying religious entertainments and all-you-can-eat brunches on Sundays, it will not be recovered, if that is still possible, but by serious, religious people who work hard, deny themselves, and save.

Rush Limbaugh was an optimist about America because he still believed there were enough individual Americans remaining who exemplified the old virtues. America's future will depend on Rush having been right.

Rush Limbaugh reverts to the status quo ante Trump, reads Ben Domenech article on the air caricaturing Capitol MAGA

Here's Domenech, the husband of Megan McCain, daughter of John:

An apolitical viewer of the summer of 2020 would learn one distinct lesson: If you want to be heard, if you want to be listened to, you need to go into the streets, make a ruckus, set things on fire, and tear down icons of America. This disrespect will be welcomed, hailed, and supported if your cause is just and your motives are righteous.

Just about everyone who showed up on Capitol Hill yesterday believed that about why they were there . . ..

Anyone remotely familiar with the sequence of events on Wednesday January 6 recognizes that while Trump was still speaking at 1:07pm, and boring the huge crowd to death far away on the Ellipse, a smaller faction was already over at the Capitol breaking in at 1:03pm. The Blaze's Elijah Schaffer was there documenting the whole thing, and frankly, inflaming the situation as "revolution" when what it was was a juvenile stunt. Just look at the left's similar reaction to the event. This is an elementary playground squabble by grown-ups who never grew up, elevated to national importance by the children running the media and the Democrat Party.

We are not a serious country. But I repeat myself.

The bios of some of these flamboyant mental cases whose pictures you have probably seen after they broke into the Capitol reveal them to be anything but Trumpists, yet Domenech, and Limbaugh, are as content to lump them all together as the GOP House and Senate is to ignore the efforts of Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz to investigate Election 2020 improprieties.

Business as usual. The left and the media caricature the right, and Con Inc. joins right in.

The left wins because the right eats it own. Every. Damn. Time.