Brutally Honest Rant - 04/11/07

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: Some recent things that bug me
Audio Transcripts
04/11/07

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – “American Idiot Remix” – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

Well I hope everyone managed to check out the rants for the past few weeks concerning changing our failing tax system. I’ve been calling it tax REFORM, but as was pointed out by RJ Evans over at Shocknetradio.com, what we really need is not tax REFORM, but rather tax DESTRUCTION! We need to actually SHUT DOWN our current tax system, literally destroy it, and start fresh. So thank you RJ for setting the record straight on that.

Meanwhile, of course, there have been some other things that have happened.

The most recent “thing” is this media BEAT-DOWN concerning longtime radio talking head Don Imus over what he said concerning a female college basketball team. And even the words “beat-down” are pretty weak to describe what the media is doing to him right now.

So let’s just get this out of the way. I know what Imus said. I heard the comments. And you know what? They were tasteless and crude and insulting. Here’s a female basketball team that made it to the championship game and then finished second… and Imus – and his co-host, because Imus pretty much parroted off what he said – had to try to get in a cheap shot about how they looked. It was stupid. It was pathetic. And it certainly was NOT funny!

But is it worth losing your job over?

Well that’s what the beat-down perpetrators want to have happen. Reverend Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, both of whom are equally guilty of saying offensive words in the past, want Don Imus to lose his job, lose his career, lose his ability to SPEAK, over this otherwise stupid insult.

Well I say unto Sharpton and Jackson, and to ALL of his supporters, a certain quote that these so-called “messengers of God” should know all too well… LET HE WHO HAS NOT SINNED cast the first stone!

Reverend Sharpton, Reverend Jackson, are you both willing to forfeit YOUR OWN jobs over some of the offensive and insulting words that YOU BOTH have said in the past? Are you both willing to lose YOUR voices, YOUR livelihoods, and YOUR ability to speak, over YOUR OWN words?

My guess is that they wouldn’t be willing to do that. They have way too much invested as publicity parasites to put their own pasts up for the same inspection. Besides, if they had to apply their own standards to themselves, they would have had to cut out their own tongues.

Mind you, Imus isn’t getting away with what he has said. He’s already lost a couple of weeks of work because of what he’s said. He’s getting grilled by every single media outlet you can find. He is having to apologize for everything that he’s said and just about every perceived SIN ever made by any demographic he belongs to.

But that is not enough for either so-called “ministers” or the other people who are hogging airtime on this subject. No, they want EVERYONE in the world to gang up on Imus and beat down on him and condemn him. They’re even parading this issue in front of all of the 2008 presidential wannabes and DEMANDING a condemnation from each of them.

So I’m going to extend my open challenge to ANYONE who wants to join in on this media-driven beat-down: if you think that Don Imus deserves to forever lose his work over what he said, I want you to put YOUR OWN JOB on the line for the things that YOU have said in the past! Go ahead. Do it. I DARE YOU!

Mind you, I’m not here to defend Imus. I’m not even a supporter of his show! I’ve listened to his show on occasion and find it boring and very dry and about as comical as a full IRS tax audit. But I am DISGUSTED at the media’s handling of this matter and of the publicity “ho’s” who are trying to make a name for themselves posing as “experts” who are quick to crucify Imus just so they can get some undeserving 15-minutes of fame. If you’re hell-bound to set some sort of measuring stick for free speech, then you had DAMN well better make sure that your own speech is squeaky clean first before you insist on imposing that standard on others!

At the end of the day, this matter is between Imus, his employers, and with the Rutgers University women’s basketball team. For everyone else, if you don’t like what Imus says, then you do what I did a LONG time ago: suck it up, count to 10, and stop listening.

(Audio Clip – “tiniest problems”)

Okay, the other thing that I REALLY have to talk about concerns the Iraq War.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m getting REALLY sick and tired of hearing the hypocrisy and doublespeak coming from Republicans concerning funding for the Iraq War.

Let’s go back a few months… the Democrats take control of the Congress, and one of the first things they do is draft resolutions to condemn our handling of the Iraq War. The Republicans immediately go into spin mode and say “Oh, the Democrats are just wasting valuable time on this nonsense! If they don’t like how the war’s been going, they should just CUT OFF FUNDING! That’s what they should do! They should just go ahead and CUT OFF FUNDING!”

Now mind you, this was the sentiment echoed from the White House, echoed from the GOP lemmings who got their talking points from Karl Rove, and from all of the con and neo-con and other Imperium ass-kissers out on talk radio! Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Neal Boortz… they ALL said the SAME THING! They all said “don’t waste our time with resolutions; if you’re opposed to how the war is being handled then CUT OFF FUNDING!”

That was their argument back then. That was their reason why they opposed the resolutions, and what they used to kill the Senate’s version of the resolution.

So now the Democrats are following through on that advice. They proposed a budget that included a cut-off date for funding if the troops are not home by fall of 2008. And now, of course, the Republicans – and especially those in the Bush Imperium – are throwing screaming temper tantrums over this.

And I don’t know why they’re bitching about this… because this is EXACTLY what they wanted! THEY are the ones who kept on saying “cut off funding if you don’t support the war”! THEY said it! Hannity, Limbaugh, Boortz, the GOP parrots in Congress… THEY were the ones who challenged the Democrats to do what they did. You don’t get to say that and then bitch when it happens!

And then there’s our Dufus-in-Chief. Where do I begin about him? Bush Junior is bitching and crying about what will happen if the Democrats cut off funding for the troops. He complains that the troops would be under-funded and under-supplied. He complains that they would have to serve longer tours with shorter leave time between tours.

Well let’s get brutally honest here… that crap is ALREADY happening! It is ALREADY going on RIGHT NOW! It’s been going on for almost FOUR FRIGGING YEARS!

We’ve had to deal with under-funded troops, ill-equipped troops, ill-trained troops, troops that have had their tours extended and their leave time reduced. And there was ANOTHER tour extension that was just announced this afternoon!

We have soldiers ending up with head traumas from the combat helmets they need to wear, because they lacked a simple piece of padding that could be retrofitted in a matter of seconds for PENNIES per soldier! Remember when whole communities pitched in to help buy the needed ARMOR for the vehicles their soldiers were driving in? And remember what the government did when they heard about it? Did they pitch in? NO! They forbid the practice! How about the abysmal conditions our wounded servicemen were facing over at Walter Reed?

And all that was WITH a Republican-controlled Congress rubber-stamping the Bush Imperium’s wishes! Where the hell was all of this concern about the welfare of our troops back when they had FULL control of the purse-strings and spent money like crazy? I’m a taxpayer and I WANT TO KNOW!

The absolute abject hypocrisy over the funding of this war is DISGUSTING! And mind you, I’m not happy that we’re talking about setting a specific calendar date either. At the same time, though, we have a White House that REFUSES to talk about what it would take to end our presence there. They are carrying on as though we are destined to be stuck there for ever and ever, and that is just plain WRONG!

Mister President, if you want start regaining the trust that you carelessly pissed away, then just come up with the conditions needed for us to go home! At what point, Mister President – condition-wise, not calendar-wise – do we get to say “we’ve done all that we can do, it’s up to the Iraqis now to do the rest”? THAT is what we need to hear! If you can just answer THAT question, sir, THEN you’d probably see a more receptive bunch of Democrats willing to give you that second chance that you claim that you need to get the job done.

(Clip – “Everything you touch turns to suck”)

Oh, I’ve got one more… how about the latest thing from the White House? It seems our Dufus-in-Chief is looking for someone to supervise the combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Someone who can answer to him. Someone who would supervise the activities and coordinate what’s going on with the Pentagon and make sure that everything is working the way it should.

Now the White House is calling this position a “WAR CZAR”… but you know, I think this is a really GREAT idea! Yeah, we NEED someone who can coordinate all of the WAR activities and make sure that the Pentagon people are up to speed as to what needs to be done. Someone close to the President… maybe even make this a CABINET position! Yeah!

But change the name, you know? “WAR CZAR” sounds too much like a communist position. We need a better-sounding title. Something… official. Something to fit in with the rest of the White House hierarchy. Something like a War… SECRETARY! Yeah! A SECRETARY OF WAR! Doesn’t that sound GREAT?

Oh, but wait a minute… we ALREADY have that position, don’t we? Yes we do! In fact we’ve had a “Secretary of War” for two centuries now! Only we changed the name of the job after 1947. Today the “Secretary of War” is called the “Secretary of Defense”… and the White House just PUT someone new in that position.

So if there is already someone whose JOB it is to coordinate all war efforts, why is the White House looking for another person... to do the same job? Maybe it’s because this “new” position would be someone that doesn’t have to answer to Congress like the current job-holder has to. I guess that would be sort of handy when you don’t have a bunch of rubber-stampers on your side, wouldn’t it?

I would hope that you guys would pick up on this… but then again, between being told to get “offended” over Don Imus, and getting obsessed over this Sanjaya guy on “American Idol”, and having to deal with whichever White House scandal is covering up the previous White House scandals, I suppose I shouldn’t blame you guys for being a little too… distracted.

(Computer – some timely stuff)
(Fade Music In – “Flawed Legacy” by Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori)

It’s becoming clear, at least to this commentator, that we are deal with a White House that is engaging in a bunker mentality, not just against Islamic terrorists, but also against anyone that doesn’t blindly support everything that they do. And that’s a dangerous mentality to engage in. It’s part of the reason why the Democrats managed to fumble their way into favor with voters.

This is a president that we have to put up with for two more years, and what the folks in the White House political bunker need to understand is that THEY also have to put up with US for two more years. Now they can either spend that time praying for the apocalypse to happen, or they can spend it trying to salvage what’s left of their positive image and actually work WITH the rest of this nation instead of trying to divide it.

Trust me, they’ll get a lot more done doing the latter.

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production; all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/“End of Recording”)

[End of program]
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