Jonas Rushman – 10/9/07

This page was last updated on October 17, 2007.

Brilliant; Jonas Rushman; Beaver County Times; October 9, 2007.

This is the seventh letter during the last couple of years I’ve noticed from Mr. Rushman. In addition to being a consistent Bush basher, two of those letters claimed there is no liberal bias in the media and that “Fahrenheit 9/11” is a good source of documented facts.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“Reading Friday’s letter ‘Democrats rush to judgment,’ I couldn’t help but laugh. Letter writer Cathy Lane chided the Democratic-led Senate for denouncing Rush Limbaugh’s ‘phony soldiers’ comments. It’s a waste of our time and money, she claims.

I assume she forgot about the eight years and $45 million the Republican-controlled Congress spent on investigating the Whitewater ‘scandal,’ a nefarious scheme hatched by the Clintons to invest, and summarily lose, a quarter of a million dollars of their own money.

Brilliant!

She also neglected to mention the bill introduced by a Republican representative from Georgia, Jack Kingston, to commend Limbaugh for the same comments.

She upbraids the Democratic-controlled Congress for its lack of action, ignoring the fact that everything the Democrats attempt to push through is blocked by the Republicans.

Should they actually succeed in getting a bill to The Decider’s desk, it is immediately vetoed. Lacking a sufficient majority to override a presidential veto due to Republican obstructionism, the bill dies.

This is known as partisan gridlock.

Funny how Bush never got out his veto pen until the Democrats took over Congress. Hopefully, the will of the people will prevail and remedy this situation come November 2008.

Finally, the irony of using the word ‘propaganda’ to defend Rush Limbaugh - enough said. I’m hurting from laughing so hard.”

[RWC] Below is what I wrote in a comment I posted on the Times website.

“In another thread (‘A case of misplaced outrage’), Rich Laughlin expressed interest in my comments about Mr. Rushman’s letter so here they are.

“Regarding Whitewater, Mr. Rushman failed to note at least 12 individuals were convicted for various felonies, including the Clintons’ business partners and the governor of Arkansas for fraud. Bill Clinton pardoned one of those business partners (Susan McDougal) on his last day in office.

“Regarding Mr. Rushman’s comment that ‘everything the Democrats attempt to push through is blocked by the Republicans,’ while the ‘everything’ portion is not true (The minimum wage increase is an example.), it’s no different than when Democrats blocked legislation favored by Republicans when Republicans held the majority. What do you expect? How many judicial appointments did Democrats filibuster? If Democrats and Republicans agreed on everything, they wouldn’t be in different parties. I could be wrong, but given the content of Mr. Rushman’s letters over the last couple of years, I suspect he considers it ‘obstructionism’ and ‘partisan gridlock’ only when practiced by Republicans. After all, I didn’t see any letters from Mr. Rushman complaining about the same behavior by Democrats over the last several years.

“Regarding Mr. Rushman’s comment that ‘Bush never got out his veto pen until the Democrats took over Congress,’ not exactly. President Bush issued his first veto on July 19, 2006, for a bill that would have provided federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. That was almost four months before Democrats regained the majority in Congress. That said, I believe President Bush should also have vetoed the No Child Left Behind Act, the Medicare prescription drug plan, the McCain/Feingold campaign finance bill, et cetera.”

FYI, if you don’t check out the comments on the Times website, I recommend you give it a try. For example, Vince Avedon of Ellwood City responded to my comments with “patooey” and “patooey agin [sic].”