Waiting For Congress

This has been a slow news week with just the one story from last Saturday dominating the entire week. Otherwise realigning the zodiac signs wouldn’t make the news cycle. Congress has spent about one day in session this entire year and indications were even that session was brief. Since Monday the seventeenth is a holiday we look to Tuesday as the first day of any hope of political news. We are all curious what this congress is going to initiate. Some have suggested that John Boehner initiate research as to whether laws on assault rifles should be tightened. No Democrat even during the first two years of the Clinton administration dared to even raise this issue. The Republicans could all pleasantly surprise us if they started something. Pat Buchannon has praised the President’s speech in Tucson calling it “Splendid”. Glen Beck has said it’s the best speech he’s heard Obama give. Meanwhile Rush Limbaugh is having none of it. He's doing a big "up yours!" to the President mocking the whole idea of the memorial service in Tucson. He is continuing to deliver his incendiary remarks, throwing gasoline on the smoldering embers of contraversy. He's pulling these odd ball remarks out of his ass like "if they bring a knife to a fight, we'll bring a gun". What liberal ever said this. Nine year old Christine Taylor Green is an inspiration to all of us perhaps wanting to get into politics herself one day and serve the people. But Rush Limbaugh has mocked children ever since mocking some boy in a balloon for peace twenty years ago. Rush Limbaugh is truly a man without a heart and without feelings. If Democrats applaud something, then Rush believes it has to be something bad. Some have speculated that there is a new speech form called “socastic violence” mentioned by Thom Hartman yesterday. It’s funny how these words suddenly appear in our vocabulary like “blood libel, which means blaming the Jews for bloody rituals involving children. Now we hear that socastic violence has to do with praying and hoping there is some lone nut with a gun out there and that something you say will trigger that because secretly Republicans welcome these lone nuts. That’s what Hartman says. This goes beyond the usual “dog whistle speech” we’ve heard about where “your people” are signaled that you’re “one of them” by certain key words that you use. Some have said that Rush Limbaugh is actually doing a service by exposing and marginalizing the deeds of the far right. The tea party crowd is having a moral meltdown’ there is no doubt about that. The sooner they are completely out of the way the sooner we can get back to the real nuts and bolts business of governing. But when Glen Beck says that God has decreed for this nation to be “bathed in blood” you know all of this explosive rhetoric is not dead and buried yet but that somebody is listening to it.