Rush to Rehab

Rush Limbaugh fessed up today.... sort of. In a remarkable on-air confession, he admitted his addiction problem.

It wasn't all that remarkable that he confessed - he HAD to. There's $25 million per year at stake, and it was just a matter of time before all the dirty laundry went on display. What was remarkable was his humility. Read it for yourself.

That's the good news: another addict is going to take steps to learn to live with his problem.

Here's the other shoe dropping:
He referred to the abused substances as "prescription pain-killers". That term is right out of the spin-zone. You'd think that it took a tax-and-spend, anti-family, liberal, Democrat to create a fiction like that. Rush Limbaugh is addicted to Oxycontin. Technically, it could be a "prescription pain-killer". However, the carefully-selected term implies that somehow a licensed physican and an ethical pharmacist were involved in legally helping him with pain relief.

Nope.

Rush's mule was his housekeeper; using clandestine drug trafficking, she helped him feed his habit with out-of-the-way drop-offs and all-cash transactions

His black market drug of choice is known on the street as Hillbilly Herion; a dose or two per day was for his physical pain; the other 40-100 daily doses (I'm not making that up) were for the addiction and whatever psychic pain he was feeling. Yes, "feeling". I know that hard-righters denounce feelings as weak, evil, and irrational. Let's face it: no one takes Rush's risks without conflicted feelings.

Then there's that little matter of getting caught with 4700 (!!) doses of "prescription pain-killers" in a cigar box... and no prescription.

There's a word for how he's handling this situation: denial.

I wish him well with his new-found candor and humility, although a clean, humble, honest Rush Limbaugh might not be worth $25 million per year.

I wish him a "fair and balanced" legal process; may he be treated just like any other big-time junkie - white or black, rich or poor.

I wish him well with his attempt at recovery. It's a long, tough road ahead. Fare thee well, Mr. Bluster. Check in with us when you've left the land of denial.

Land of the free, home of the foolish

The free are us: the American Public. Unless, of course, we want to travel to Cuba.

The foolish are the neo-CONs who think that "tightening" travel restrictions to Cuba will somehow topple Castro. The Bushies want to clamp down on Americans who want to visit Cuba for any reason - especially if that travel would allow a few peach-and-mauve Jacksons into Cuba.

Hasn't anyone in that bunch read a newspaper since 1989?

FACT: Castro has had an iron grip on Cuba through more than 4 decades of US Sanctions, but nothing we've done has weakened him. His rule is slowly crumbling: Disidents are getting louder and more numerous; he has reached out to the US to improved relations; he has no sugar daddy to prop him up; Communism has become irrelevant in today's word. All of this is in spite of our futile efforts.

FACT: Even though the USA went nose-to-nose with USSR for nearly 45 years, the USSR unraveled completely on its own. Nothing that we did - arms races, military skirmishes, endless rhetoric, embargoes - brought down the Communists. They simply fell apart, unable to carry their own weight (especially with the size and misdirection of their military).

The best thing the USA did in those 45 years was to be (on rare occasions) a good example to the Soviet people. Opening trade and travel with them led to the simplest, cleanest, cheapest victory in history. Likewise, freeing up trade and travel with Cuba would quickly lead to the end of Castro. If we let the word out that Pep Boys has plenty of parts for '54 Chevys - Cubans would crawl over Castro to get there. Put a franchise in Havana, and the Secret Police would be too busy fixing their cars to worry about obeying orders.

We could sweeten the deal by letting Halliburton set up a car stereo shop in every hamlet. Whaddaya think, Dick? Let George know there's easy money in it.

No bloodshed, no taxpayer dollars down a sewer, no anger, no acrimony.

A few cellphones, some personal computers, and a rock-n-roll tour are more powerful than any WMD, more effective than any tax cut for the rich.

"Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright" (Wm. Blake)

The Detroit Tigers barely escaped becoming the worst team in Major League history. The backlash has been phenomenal: two tigers mauled their "owners", and Eldrick T. Woods got his groove back.

Did the President read the same "Kay Report" as the rest of the world did?

OK, he probably got excerpts that include material too confidential for we mere mortals. Nevertheless, I was struck by something odd - odder than the fact that we've dropped $150 billion, with at least $87 billion more to go [plus hundreds of "coalition" casualities and thousands of Iraqi casualties]. What was odd was the fact that the Kay Pros found zero - zip - nada WMDs, yet the Prez still declared victory.

The Kay Team's big find was "a vial of live C. botulinum Okra B. from which a biological agent can be produced". What we're talking about is Botox (I'm not making that up). For all we know, it might be that Mrs. Hussien never got an invite to one of those 90210 Botox parties - so Iraqi scientists brewed up a batch of Wrinkles Be Gone for her.

Beyond that, they found a bunch of Old News.

We already knew that Saddam had chemical weapons. We even knew who gave 'em to him (hint: rhymes with "Dummie", runs the Defense and State Departments). We also know that over a period of 7 years that UN inspectors oversaw the destruction of said chemicals.

We already knew that Saddam had forbidden missles. The UN inspectors found ~100, and oversaw the destruction of most of those just prior to when the US invaded. Perhaps the Kay Boys found the rest. Big Deal!

The list goes on, and frankly, I'm underwhelmed. If Kay gets his way, he'll have another $600 million (for a total of just under a billion bucks) to try to justify the war - just in time for the 2004 elections. I'm betting that at least some portion of that budget is for "evidence" to plant. Hmmmm...... no wonder the US doesn't want the UN doing the inspecting - even though the UN inspectors would be thorough, impartial, and, um, free.

It's time to Eject Bush in 2004.