Liberals to the left of us -- Liberals to the right. . .

Is it possible to find enough nasty things to say about Rush Limbaugh? I don't have the vocabulary or the time fully to describe a man of such privilege that he can go relatively unpunished for drug charges that would have sent another man to prison, whose friends in high places (no pun intended) make sure that he can lie and vituperate and rave against the politics of our founding fathers and the philosophy behind our nation without let or restraint or consequence. But let me try.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, a political liberal is a man in favor of democratic reform and opposed to privilege. According to Rush, such a man is the radix malorum, the source of all our woes, while a man opposed to democracy and in favor of special privilege or plutocracy would of necessity be, like Rush, the answer to all that ails us, including apparently: paranoid schizophrenia.

Rush's April 19th attempt to show that the massively demented Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-hui, was in the grip of liberal fervor rather than an illness would be a new low for any other man, but in Limbaugh's vocabulary there is no word for bottom.

"This guy had to be a liberal. You start railing against the rich and all this other -- this guy's a liberal. He was turned into a liberal somewhere along the line. So it's a liberal that committed this act."

Anyone who call Liberals gun-grabbers while calling Cho Seung-hui a liberal is a fabulist on the order of Hitler. Anyone who can lump everyone from Jesus Christ to John Wilkes Booth into a category and make that category seem vile; anyone who can invent a language that makes such subhuman reasoning possible should be more understanding of mental illness, but as I said earlier, such people shy away from recognizing the existence of insanity because they are afraid of the obvious and unavoidable comparison. Worse than mental illness, in terms of culpability for one's actions, is the mission of Rush Limbaugh: to lie for money, to disrupt Democracy and American principles for money, to promote special privileges for plutocrats for his own gain, to shout down reasoned discourse by sheer volume and amplitude of lies, misstatements, half truths, distortions and hysterical departures from objective reality.

But it's neither a Conservative nor a Liberal, a communist or a democrat or a libertarian or Bolshevik or royalist or an anarchist who spoke those words -- it was Rush Limbaugh and it is Rush Limbaugh's every continued breath and heartbeat that confirms that there is no justice in this world unless we fight for it.

Dead story walking

I still subscribe to a Sunday paper, but my morning ritual usually includes making the rounds of internet news sources like Raw Story in order to get a few of the news items buried by the Mainstream Media under the VA Tech shooting and the antics of Mr. Baldwin. Of course the Virginia story is still stumbling around like an escapee from Night of the Living Dead and even Raw Story is going on and on about ludicrous and irrelevant details trying to keep the zombie walking.

Today's lurid contribution to the whole fulsome issue is titled VA Tech Killer bought Ammo on eBay. Astounded by this because I know eBay doesn't list live ammunition or firearms - even antique ones, I clicked on the headline to find that the actual article reads "ammo clips." That's the kind of come-on you expect, and get, at the National Enquirer.

It may seem a small difference to some people, but what he bought were empty magazines and as the article pointed out, you can get those anywhere. Interesting enough, in light of the fuss others have made about the end of the ban on magazines that held more than 10 rounds, the ones Cho bought were legal under the defunct ban.

He had a good eBay "feedback" rating, we're told and has been buying and selling there - like hundreds of millions do - for three years. None of this nonsense has any bearing on the motivation or execution of the crime nor will it enable any further degree of understanding of schizophrenia or Virginia or Federal gun laws. To people who only read headlines, it will seem like an indictment of eBay.

" Computer forensics have played a major role in the investigation into why Cho carried out the massacre that killed 32 people and himself."

We are told - as if questioning the usual suspects and looking at records will produce any understanding of mental illness such as schizophrenia or the illogical, irrational and terrified state that characterizes it, nor will any of this further progress toward the goal of diagnosing and isolating dangerously ill people who by law are forbidden to own firearms.