A Ticket For Rush

[filkertom]

You may have heard Rush Limbaugh promise, earlier this month, to leave the US for Costa Rica if health care reform passed.

Once it did, of course, he backtracked.

Some folks are wondering if it might be because he was short on ready cash. So they've started a web site to accept $1.00 PayPal donations toward Limbaugh's first-class airfare. If he doesn't accept, or they raise more (or less) than they need, any funds not going toward that plane ticket go to Planned Parenthood.

Let's all kick in and get A Ticket For Rush

(h/t huskiebear)

Comments

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

I also recall Rush advocating mandatory sentences for drug crimes, funny how he didn't do the time for his crimes.

[rmeidaking.livejournal.com]

There appears to be no assurance that it's only a one-way ticket, nor that Rush can't just use it to go on vacation. Besides, Costa Rica is still in this hemisphere. Sending Rush to, say, Indonesia or Myanmar (apparently they have his favorite sort of government there!), is something I could get behind.

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

If the statement of fundraising purpose and the conditions attached to the funds transfer are clear enough, then if Rush accepts the money and uses it for anything other than a permanent move to Costa Rica, he'd be legally in the same position as somebody who raised money for charity and spent it on blackjack and hookers.

Of course, getting away with breaking the law would hardly be unprecedented for him.

[alverant.livejournal.com]

You mean like Sean Hannity whose charity for war orphans who gave 93% of its fund to his friends?

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

I think I'm gonna be sad,
I think it's the day, yeah.
The guy that's making me mad,
ain't going away, yeah.

Let's buy a ticket for Rush,
Let's buy a ticket for Rush-ush-ush,
Let's buy a ticket for Rush,
and make him leave...

[kilbia.livejournal.com]

I'll take one for the team and make the obligatory catty comment:

You sure we won't need TWO first-class tickets?

(As a 300+ lb person myself, I figure I can get away with saying that. ;)

[atalantapendrag.livejournal.com]

Hey, if Kevin Smith does...

[tarkrai.livejournal.com]

I don't know. Aren't flight attendants part of a union (traditionally Democrat)? In which case, they'd throw him off for his politics? :)

[jovan-scorn.livejournal.com]

I've always found it ironic when outspoken and financially well off people make prouncements like this. The underlying statement is that, "If it gets bad here at least I can flee and live like a king in a poor country, you guys however are screwed. Later" Doesn't seem like it would foster unity but I guess his listners missed the subtext.

[umbran.livejournal.com]

I listened to those clips. He was explicitly asked where he'd go for health care. In answer to that he said he'd go to Costa Rica. He did not say he'd move there permanently.

People say any number of stupid things. But we do no good for the process of discussion in this country if we misrepresent what was said.

[skemono.livejournal.com]

So to protest the government interfering in health care, he'd go get treatment from a country that provides universal health care to its citizens?

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

It's cognitive dissonance (and/or hypocrisy) at its finest.

[mimiheart.livejournal.com]

Yup. I agree, and while what he said was incredibly stupid, it can stand on its own stupidity.

[umbran.livejournal.com]

Exactly!

[lariss.livejournal.com]

Absolutely right. He did say exactly that.

However, the fact that so many of us WANTED terribly for him to have said the other...well...you know.

[kengr]

No point. A travel agent offered to *give* Rush a one-way ticket to Costa Rica. The offer was not accepted.

[kilbia.livejournal.com]

There is *kind of* a point to this drive - namely that if Rush doesn't accept the plane ticket from this fundraiser, the money goes to Planned Parenthood.

So really, the main downside is that he might choose to take the ticket, and book his own flight back, just so that we can trade a little happy dance for a few hundred dollars' contribution to an organization he loathes.

[smoooom.livejournal.com]

He did say "five years from now" He also has no idea what he's talking about in regards to the Canadian health care system so I wouldn't put any weight in anything the man says. I suspect he likes to talk so he can stir things up and get people up set. He's an idiot.

[raven-ap-morgan.livejournal.com]

...but but but but - When I saw the title of this post, I thought someone was giving away a ticket to see my favorite band...

(running, ducking, hiding)

Raven

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

No shutting up around here (welcome, by the way, I don't recall seeing your LJ handle before). Being a liberal/progressive (proudly using both of the terms that Beck says are Endangering His Sob Snffff Sob Beloved Country), I note what you mention, a phenomenon called "false equivalence".

The general idea is that one side defends doing some evil shit by saying the other side has done the same or worse. Quite often in these cases, it's a false equivalence because the two situations are wildly out of proportion to each other. For instance, because some people call Rush Limbaugh fat*, the theory says it's okay to use ethnic slurs about President Obama and his wife and kids.

* I'm not one of those. I'm pretty sure I'm rather fatter than Rush, and have been for a long time. Fat has nothing to do with your political views, although you may eventually find yourself wanting better health care. :-7

ETA: Just in time, the incredible billmon (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/3/25/850840/-Spock-with-a-Beard:-The-Sequel) comes roaring back, directly on-topic.

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, Tom, you can say that, but then you get stuff like this in Courtland Malloy's March 23rd column in the Washington Post....

"I know how the "tea party" people feel, the anger, venom and bile that many of them showed during the recent House vote on health-care reform. I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their "Obama Plan White Slavery" signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads."

I mean, that's his lead paragraph.

Wildly out of proportion? There's dozens of examples on the Left over the last few months. Hell, (although you're innocent 99% of time) if we took the words of a number of the regular commenters on your blog here and substituted "Left" for "Right", "atheist" for "religious", "unbeliever" for "Christian", "black" for "white", and "female" for "male", you'd be in danger of getting accused of being a "hate" site.

Tom

[purpleranger.livejournal.com]

Hey, Alec Baldwin never made good on his promise to leave the country. Why should you hold Mr. Limbaugh to a higher standard?

[alverant.livejournal.com]

A lot of people called for Baldwin to leave. Why should you hold Mr.Limbaugh to a lower standard?

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

He could always sell some of his Oxycontin and afford his plane ticket that way...

[newjerseybadger.livejournal.com]

Sorry, Tom, you're wrong on this one. Rush said he'd have to go to Costa Rica to get private healthcare. I listened to the recording of the comments in question; his intent was clearly to say that he'd have to leave the U.S. _to get private healthcare_ and any other construction of his actual remarks is taking them out of context. In my opinion, of course.

I don't like the guy, I think he's a vicious lying blowhard, but he didn't say he'd move from the U.S. and it's a real stretch to make that construction from what he said.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

Please, don't feed the trolls.

[lariss.livejournal.com]

I remember when there was a site called "Movethemon.org" which promised liberals who wants to leave the country a free one-way plane ticket for every member of their family.

I went on the site and applied. Apparently a LOT of other people did, too.


None of us got our damned tickets.