YouTube videos: Song parodies from The Rush Limbaugh Show

Two and a half days later and Rush Limbaugh's absence from the airwaves continues to haunt.  I tried calculating how many hours I listened to him over the years, and couldn't do it.  From summer of 1992 until I started college at Elon three years, I was listening to him at least nine hours a week.  In the past few years I sort-of rediscovered him and listened as much as possible.  There was none like him before, nobody compared when he was with us, and it is doubtful that anyone will ever really succeed him.

It wasn't just his brilliant commentary, it was also the hysterically funny comedy that was a huge part of Limbaugh's show.  Especially the song parodies.  Most of them came courtesy of a chap named Paul Shanklin.  There were a few others also.  I remember one guy who was in the Bay Area.  Another was from Massachusetts.

So in Rush's memory I thought it would be appropriate to share some of the song parodies and other material that he played on his show.

I forget who made this one.  It might have been Shanklin.  "The Philanderer", a spoof of "The Wanderer":

"In A Yugo", parody of Elvis Presley's "In The Ghetto":

This next one is a clip from "Weird Al" Yankovic's movie UHF, Rush played it on his show every so often.  The commercial for Spatula City:

One of my personal favorites: "They're Coming To Take Ross Away", a parody of "They're Coming To Take Me Away" by Napoleon XIV.  And I liked Ross Perot!

The Barnacle Brothers 60-Second Sale spot:

And finally (but far from the only remaining parody that Rush did on his show), "Al Gore Paradise", a send-up of Coolio's "Gangsta Paradise":

If I spot any more I'll post 'em here! :-D

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Rush Limbaugh is gone

 The very sad word broke a little while ago that Rush Limbaugh passed away earlier today.

I learned more from listening to his show, especially in my late teens and early twenties, than from a lot of other things put together.

Going to forever treasure the audio cassette of when I called into his show in December 1993.  I was nineteen.  I started off the call saying hey to my coworkers at Libby Hill Seafood in Reidsville.  For the next week and a half people kept coming into the place wanting to meet the guy who talked with Rush.

That's my own little anecdote about the life of Rush Hudson Limbaugh III.

I did not agree with him on everything.  Indeed, at times I posted some very harsh things about the man.  He was often too much of a partisan (dare I say even a "hack"?  Or might that be inaccurate?).  And I stopped calling myself a "dittohead" long ago.  But even so, there was a lingering respect for Limbaugh.  He was always honest about himself, and to his listeners, wherever he happened to be along the road of his ideologically self-discovery: something I believe he was earnest about.

Going to pay homage to him with the photo of the time when I first discovered him.  The cover of his bestselling first book.  How I'll always best remember Rush.

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This is what American politics has turned into

A high-tech, glorified pissing match between the Democrats and Republicans.

Some people have written to me asking why I'm not doing much political commentary anymore. To be honest: it's become a very boring thing to me. I'd rather devote time to considering and then articulating about real ideas, not empty ideology.

And maybe also it's because I cannot help but on some level have already written of America as a lost cause, if she must be dependent upon people like Dick Cheney and Barack Obama and Rush Limbaugh and Nancy Pelosi.

These people and many more have completely forgotten what it means to serve others. They actually believe that because something so eternally vapid as their political parties have given them a measure of power, that it means that God Himself has somehow anointed them over all others.

I'm not here to cheer on any among the morally impotent. I am here to find and celebrate those who possess clarity of character and a higher vision. This blog is going to honor those who have the sense to realize that it is God and not they themselves who are at the center of the universe.

They're out there. And most of them have the unique quality of having never asked for any amount of power at all. They are the ones we should be encouraging to step up to the plate in this country, not the professional political pigs of self-parody.

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Bankrupt of principles, Republicans now turning on each other

What is going on in recent days with the Republican Party and its adherents who still proclaim to be "conservative" reminds me terribly of the events of John Carpenter's The Thing. The men of Antarctic base Outpost 31 in that movie grow increasingly paranoid, even violent toward each other. As Wilford Brimley's character tells MacReady (Kurt Russell) at one point: "I don't know who to trust."

I don't think the Republicans have been infiltrated by aliens just yet (as happens in another John Carpenter movie, They Live) but ever since this past weekend's annual Conservative Political Action Conference you would think that the party is divvying up and preparing to go at it with flamethrowers and fire axes. But I think that the "mainstream press" (now more worthless than ever) is missing the real story here. This power struggle among so-called "conservatives" is only happening because the Republicans are so utterly void of foundational principles, that it now stands revealed - and just as much as the Democrats - as being only concerned with the acquisition and maintaining of political power. For all the cooing of how "wonderful" Rush Limbaugh's speech was about getting Republicans back in control of the White House and Congress, nobody among these people are daring to ask themselves "Do we deserve to be in power?"

I propose that the Republicans/conservatives' failure to address this with the humility it deserves, cries out that they don't deserve any more power. They had eight years to do as they pleased, and they did absolutely nothing substantive with it. Why should we trust them with more opportunity and authority? How can we respect them when the only thing they accomplished the last time was radically increasing the size of government and wasting a countless amount of our money?

The sooner we accept this truth, the sooner this country can begin on the road to real recovery: neither of the two major political parties has America's best interest at heart. There is no faith to be had whatsoever in either the Democrats or the Republicans. Together, these two "factions" are driving this nation full-bore toward the cliff. I can't see how arguing about who's at the steering wheel is going to make any real difference.

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Some random musings on things...

A few months ago George W. Bush proposed wasting hundreds of billions of dollars of our money and it was called "bailout" and some politicians approved it. Today Barack Obama is proposing wasting hundreds of billions of dollars of our money and it's being called "stimulus" and those same politicians deride it as unacceptable.

I would like to quote "Oceania is at war with Eurasia, Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia" to the Powers That Be, but sad to say, they most likely wouldn't get it.

And now that he's President, doesn't Obama have better things to do than to get into the proverbial "pissing contest" with a radio commentator who is nothing more than a shameless shill for the "other side"?

Don't we have better things to do than to even care about such a non-story involving two men with apparently arrested development?

Pat Buchanan is right: we have become an unserious people in a serious time.

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Limbaugh: "I alone have the power" to pick nominee, accuses Paul supporters of spamming

Once upon a time, I was a "dittohead". I discovered Rush Limbaugh not long out of high school: first from his syndicated TV show and then his radio show (which I listened to religiously). I read his books, I phoned and faxed my reps whenever he said we needed to make our voices heard... heck I was even a caller on his show one day in December 1993.

Thank the Lord that I came to my senses.

I still have my copies of The Way Things Ought To Be and See, I Told You So, along with other relics from the strange days of my youth. Back when I couldn't see past the two-party fraud. By the time The Matrix came out in '99 I had already taken the proverbial Red Pill and started seeing the way things really are in this world. Like, how people like Limbaugh aren't so much interested in pursuing a righteous cause as they are with feeding their inflated egos. And I've come to realize something else: that the ones who insist on perpetrating this Democrat/Republican "either/or" sham do so for the primary reason of exploiting America instead of serving her.

Limbaugh has said some things over the years that have confirmed my later beliefs about him, but this one tops them all: Rush Limbaugh has declared that he will be the one who decides who the Republican nominee is... and that it definitely won't be Ron Paul. Then he accused Paul's supporters with "spamming" the post-debate polls so as to inflate their candidate's popularity figures...

Limbaugh's remarks came today during his analysis of last night's GOP presidential debate in South Carolina, as a caller urged Rush to throw his support behind Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, as the caller claimed Paul was the most conservative of the field of candidates.

"I don't think Congressman Paul has a snowball's chance," Limbaugh said.

"You have the power yourself to make him the Republican nominee," the caller responded.

"That is very true, and that is why I must exercise this power responsibly, not as a cheerleader," said Limbaugh, "which is why I'm not picking a name right now. I alone have the power to move the [Republican] base."

But we all know that he would never pick Ron Paul, or any other candidate who believes in adherence to the Constitution. Rush Limbaugh is now nothing more than a mouthpiece for the status quo. For all his long-standing boasting of being "the new media", he has only proven that he is not much different than "the old media" and just as corrupt. And like the old media, he knows that his stature would be direly threatened as never before if someone as serious-minded as Ron Paul came into the Oval Office and began rocking the boat.

Once again, it's a case of the press wanting to be lazy.

Somebody please 'splain to me how it is that Limbaugh is now supposed to be better than "the liberal media".

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