John Bolton leads us on the path to peace

Prophets are rarely recognized in their own country, but it's even more rare for a prophet to not recognize himself.

John Bolton criticized Obama's call for reducing international violence, saying

You know, homo sapiens are hard-wired for violent conflict, and we’re not going to eliminate violent conflict until homo sapiens ceases to exist as a separate species.

But Bolton did a great job himself of avoiding violent conflict as a young man. If everyone else followed the path of Bolton and Limbaugh, the world would truly be a peaceful pace.

Rush wuz robbed

While I'm not crying tears over Rush Limbaugh getting kicked out of a bid for a football team, I agree with Nate Silver at 538 that he's been unjustly accused of things he never said. I think he's a bad actor who has said many other racially-biased things, (as well as countless other stupid lies, including climate denialism), but I also think shouldn't have been booted out of the bidding group as a non-managing, minority partner.

It's probably worth acknowledging that as a white male, I don't walk in the shoes of people who have been maligned by Rush. On the other hand, he would only be an investor in a business without the power to hire or fire people. I guess it's all a matter of where you draw the line. I personally would never work with him or be part of a business team that includes him, but that's a little different from broader social groups driving him out of a business deal where he wasn't in a position to hurt employees with his biased attitude.

I'm not sure if I completely agree with Conor Friedersdorf's article on the whole issue - while I would only accuse someone of "being a racist" where their behavior is far worse than the societal norm, I think doing or saying something racist is far more common. We've come a long way but have a long way to go on bias in our society. Rather than viewing the statement "what you just said was racist" as equivalent to an accusation of pedophilia, it would be better to examine the situation calmly, decide if it's true, rectify the situation if needed and move on.

The Arab-Obama thing's gone farther than I expected

I'd thought Rush Limbaugh's spouting off on the "Obama's not black, he's Arab" idea was just an example of the so-called rat-effing that even the dimmest of New York Times reporters might pick up on. It seems to have spread more among the rightwingers than I'd expected, though.

I suppose it could just have accidentally resonated in minds driven by ignorance, fear, and anger. The other possibility is that it was focus-group tested, and its test result was the reason why Limbaugh gave it so much play. Always interesting to speculate about what goes on behind the scenes on the dark side.

The other interesting thing to think about is that this made-up nonsense hasn't worked now, so in four years people are going to be even less interested in lies about Obama's distant past. Republicans will be forced to deal with Obama's record instead.

Rush Limbaugh, other conservatives insult Cindy and John McCain

Glenn Greenwald found a bunch of abusive quotations from the 2004 election criticizing John Kerry for marrying a wealthy heiress, and implicitly criticizing his wife as someone who patronizes a prostitute.

I assume people like Rush Limbaugh would never be two-faced, so they must be criticizing McCain the same way. To help them out, I took Rush's words, substituted McCain for Kerry, put in the correct dollar figures, and substituted Bush and war for Kennedy and programs. Everything else is just as Limbaugh said, so I'm sure he'd have no objection:

I mean, [McCain]'s been there, but he's basically a
skirt-chaser, folks. He's a gigolo. . . . McCain is cheap. Most gigolos
are. I mean -- I think it -- I think it goes with the, with the definition. . . .
[W]hat do you consider a fair wage? John McCain considers a fair wage a
wife with 100 million. So, he had to find a company that had one. Well,
there aren't too many of these companies that have little heiresses running
around that are single, have 100 million that some guy can marry into. . . .
Because see, Al Gore's daddy was a senator and Al Gore's daddy worked his way
up from wealth and power to wealth and power. I mean, he got more of it than anybody
ever dreamed of for having as little to go on. I mean, he's one of those old
boys. You know how that worked back then. Then John McCain 's daddy is his
wives. (laughter) I mean, he's a gigolo. Everybody knows this. There's
nobody in our party really has much respect for this guy and you can see it
last night, but I can't say that. I mean, you got sugar daddy wife back then. You
got sugar daddy wife now. He worked his way up from a blue blood to a platinum
American Express card, and it doesn't have his name on it.

Another:

[McCain] has lived the life of a millionaire living off
the inherited wealth of his two wives.... [As a]
millionaire who did not have to work for his fortune, Mr. McCain
never had to worry about the money he earned, the taxes he paid, or the war
he and George Bush forced the rest of us to pay for. . . . Mr. McCain is not
effected (sic) when these neighborhoods are destroyed and working class
families lose the largest asset in their retirement plans -- their home's value.

Recently I read at the Corner a whine that Dems supposedly opposed criticizing the wealth of a candidate's wife in 2004 but now embrace it. I think this type of abusive language is inappropriate but I haven't seen the Dems use it. I'd agree that any Dems who said noone's allowed to point out that Kerry was rich in 2004 would be two-faced to do something similar to McCain, but I'd like to see the Corner find an example.

UPDATE: I deleted an Ivy League reference that doesn't work for McCain, who instead was a legacy admit to the Naval Academy.