If I remember the Limbaugh biography correctly he was wasting away his life bouncing along on the low end of our society, job after job, loser after loser when, inadvertently, he fell into a part-time radio gig. Again, my memory is a little foggy but, I seem to recall he didn't do very well. Then, by some quirk of fate he "lost it' in one of his broadcasts, and said some really dumb things. Figuring his temporary insanity cost him his job, imagine his surprise when the ratings showed his "schtick" was a winner.

I only bring this up because I enjoy reading about people, and, that moment in life when they realize they'll never be the same again. Of course, for most people, "that moment" is usually more traditional. Like a singer, or a group, who play small venues for a long time until, out of the blue, an agent in the audience spots them, and, boom! "Elvis, Beatles, Aerosmith, or, whatever. Or, imagine a guy in New York in the 19th century, working some menial job when he happens to read in the paper about a gold strike in California. You know the rest, he make it to the west coast, strikes it rich, and lives like a king the rest of his life. These are all sort of "feel good" stories, but, I don't know what you'd call Limbaugh's moment.

Think about it, here's a guy with no unusually elevated intellect, no discernible talent, certainly no physical appeal, but, then, one day.....boom! The bell went off in his head, and, it was saying, "There's a goldmine in Stupid." Think about it, this complete mediocrity scores the brass ring realizing just how big the "stupid" constituency is in this country. In every field of endeavor you have to display at least a modicum of talent, whether low brow, or, highbrow, an entertainer has to show he/she is better, even slightly, than the audience.  But, Limbaugh discovered, "no, you don't." I can just imagine his glee when he realized there is no bottom to the moron-blessed audience. For an entertainer this must have been heaven. No matter how idiotic the verbiage he spewed was the faster his audience grew.

As the country was moving ahead rapidly on so many fronts: civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, science and technology, Limbaugh couldn't contain his joy. "When everything is going good in our society, just go the other way." Racism, ding! Misogyny, ding! Homophobia, ding. Winners all. Sure, 75% of the public got that he was a reptilian charlatan, but, 25% of three hundred million is one big jackpot.

Yup, just as so many genocidal maniacs throughout history Caligula, Genghis, Attila, To Jo, displayed some sort of demented genius, we have our little, tubby pervert playing Pied Piper to his band of knuckle dragging, mouth breathing, nose picking, almost literate, virtual human mutants.

S.A. is the lowest cost oil extractor in the world, while the U.S. "Fracking" Industry is the highest. S.A. has been getting annoyed with a few of the OPEC members that have been, surreptitiously, pumping more than their quota. They, also, are P.O'd at the American Fracking upstarts, selling more oil into the market than the Saudis feel is wise, and, rejecting calls to "cool it."

So, like they do every once in a while, just to establish who's "king of the hill" when it comes to Oil, they decided to teach the two renegades a lesson. Usually, when the market price of oil starts dropping, S.A. will cut back on production. (They're the only entity large enough to do it, and, rich enough to be able to sustain a lower income for sustained periods of time.) This time, however, they went the other way, causing the almost 50% drop in prices.

One of the reason's for today's 400+ jump in the stock market was the Saudi's letting it be known that the recent drop in oil prices was not the beginning of a secular drop in demand, but, rather a Saudi-controlled "adjustment" to the market.

And it wasn't the prosecutors who finally exposed her but the FBI investigators who did the diligence that the prosecutors didn't.

And yet at the end of a 2.5 hour performance before the GJ, she still stood by her discredited story -- every word of it -- and did not relent.

Don't worry, as mentioned above, no way I am getting in the middle of this, so anything mentioned isn't advise in that one one will be using it.

My complaint is that Yman, AKA Shadow1 and Mordoggian, AKA Shadow2, don't want to post my complete comments.

Instead they lie by omission. They don't provide
the full context.

Oh well, no surprise there.

And no. The link you provided does not open to the actual thread but to my comment #90 which leaves out the MKS's comment and my response.

What should Israel do?? Just accept the missiles??

Quit hiding behind useless UN resolutions and just admit that you are pro Palestinian.

And we hanged them because we won.

If we had lost they would have hung us.

WASHINGTON -- Two days after a  Republican-led committee found no intelligence failure or coverup in the deadly Benghazi ​embassy ​attacks,​ ​Republicans are moving to discredit the two-year investigation.

"I think the report is full of crap," said GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on CNN's ​"​State of the Union.​"​

The report by the House Intelligence Committee​,​ dumped Friday​,​ concluded there was no wrongdoing by the Obama administration and no one intentionally misled the American people regarding the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks that killed four Americans​ -- Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.

The panel is chaired by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), a vocal critic of President Obama. Rogers and his Democrat counterpart, Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, concluded "there was no intelligence failure prior to the attacks" in the report, which had little fanfare the Friday before Thanksgiving.

Now, technically speaking, a committee that contains even one member of the opposite party is bipartisan, but that isn't the same thing here, the Republicans were the majority of the committee, as the majority party always is in this cases, as anyone who stayed awake through high school civics class would tell you.

So, a vocal Republican critic of President Obama found no fault in the response to the Benghazi attack.

Srsly?

Not sure if you know but they are trying, using the recent revelations about witnesses like 40 And other things, to get the GJ no bill set aside to get another run at it.  Will they succeed?  Who knows.  I hope they do.

People, reasonable people-not like me-lots of them, disagree with your position on this.  Learn to live with it.

Sunny Hostin isn't really a legal analyst

Per CNN, Sunny Hostin really is a legal analyst. That is her job title at CNN.

The "but" here is that the Healthcare reform call--historically--defied everyone wanting change for decades. No matter how well-intentioned (geez, do I remember the single-payer call to action in 1993 and the earlier push by the late Senator Edward Kennedy) ... it didn't work. It didn't work, primarily, because too many interests and too much $$$$ had aligned against change since the 1930s when the Republicans fixed a way to prevent the change that large majorities said they wanted.  The opposition hit and played on all the fears that one could imagine ... costs, ideology, government bureaucracy and lack of any choice, etc.  

Before the close of this year, I say again: President Obama recognized the need for the deal ... that the competing interests needed to realize a benefit (the medical interests such as nurses, doctors, hospital associations, insurers, pharmaceuticals, and--clearly--the vast majority of those insured already and those not insured ... the goals of greater access for more people in the US defined insurance reform as this President gave some to get a lot; he obtained that access for so many millions at reasonable costs. The willingness to compromise definitely allowed gains in the Saul Alinsky, community building model, btw.  In the reality of 70 years, he realized meaningful change where others could not; and, for me and many others, that counts for more than I can express.

For politalkix: Indeed, the Vermont decision in recent days to jettison for now its goal of single-payer says even more. Theory or practice ... Vermont chose what it could do, and--for now--put aside the theoretically better approach.  Whether we say it or no, if typically progressive Vermont could not attain a progressive good, what chances would there have been in the US at large? For those who would not even have had the door opened for them, I'd say: Fat Chance.