The incredible shrinking country

Ladies and gentlemen, and children of all ages, our guest blogger today -- okay, it’s a link to a transcript of a part of his daily radio program yesterday -- is none other than the one, the only, Rush Limbaugh.

At least read it before dismissing it out of hand entirely.

It’s the least you can do while I try to gather what’s left of my wits about me.

Comments, anyone?

Hot raisins, anyone? No? Well, then, how about some nice burning brandy?

Trivia for a warm June day:

1. Shooting Parrots (Ian in Lancashire) has written a very interesting post about an obscure French scoundrel in V is for Eugène François Vidocq (approximate pronunciation: yew- ZHEN fran-SWAH vee-DOKE).

2. After a bit of silliness up front concerning two people on the Today show, Rush Limbaugh explains that whether you think the “Plan B” morning-after pill does or does not cause an abortion depends entirely on your definition of pregnancy.

3. The word “Lilith” (Hebrew: לילית) occurs only once in the Hebrew Bible, in Isaiah 34:14, and thus qualifies as a hapax legomenon. It is not translated as “Adam’s first wife” as some of the more well-read among you might think. It is translated as “screech owl” in the King James Version (KJV), “night monster” in the New American Standard Version (NASV), “night hag” in the Revised Standard Version (RSV), and “night creature” in several other versions. Make of it what you will.

4. The word “honorificabilitudinitatibus” is also a hapax legomenon (q.v., plural: hapax legomena) in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act V, Scene 1. According to Wikipedia,
it is used after an absurdly pretentious dialogue between the pedantic school- master Holofernes and his friend Sir Nathaniel. The two pedants converse in a mixture of Latin and florid English. When Moth, a witty young servant, enters, Costard says of the pedants, “O, they have lived long on the alms-basket of words. I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word; for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon.”

5. FYI, I mean FTIOANUKR (For the information of all non-U.K. readers), flap-dragon was (or is) a game which involved (or involves) trying to eat hot raisins from a bowl of burning brandy. That certainly explains why our U.K. friends talk so funny.

In the comments section of this post, send your own fascinating trivia factoid or factoids to me for possible use on another warm day. If I like it/them, I may use it/them. Whether I do or don’t is in no way related to whether I like you.

When The New York Times and Rush Limbaugh more or less agree...

...then we are in a heap of trouble. I believe the technical term is “Deep doo-doo.”

If you don’t believe me, read this and then read this and even this.

The first link is to a June 6th New York Times editorial entitled “President Obama’s Dragnet” and the second link is to a transcript of a portion of Rush Limbaugh’s June 7th radio program entitled “America in the midst of a coup d’etat” in which he referred to the Times editorial. The third link is to a portion of Rush Limbaugh’s program on June 10th (after whistleblower Edward Snowden surfaced in Hong Kong) called “The Question is Not Whether the Obama Regime Will Survive, But Will America as Founded Survive the Obama Regime?”.

Admittedly, Rush’s programs are a bit more strident than the staid old New York Times. Rush’s programs might even be called extreme by some (although he seems to me to be right on the money).

But I’ll tell you just how bad things are:

Even Yorkshire Pudding has stopped genuflecting.

Irrelevancy, Irschmelevancy, some people are just rude

...and perhaps too liberal for their own good, and apparently have never heard of the separation of church and state (British readers, it’s an American thing).

Here is a transcript of a portion of Rush Limbaugh’s radio program from yesterday, March 12th. It includes a video clip from this past Sunday’s CBS television program Face the Nation, hosted by Bob Schieffer. Mr. Schieffer’s guests on Face the Nation this week were Sally Quinn and Carl Bernstein. They were discussing the Catholic Church’s current gathering of cardinals in Rome to elect a new pope. I found Rush Limbaugh’s comments very interesting.

You are free to form your own opinion, of course, but as far as I’m concerned, it is people like Sally Quinn and Carl Bernstein who are on the way to irrelevancy.

And Rush Limbaugh and I are not even Catholic.

But our mamas raised us right.

You want irrelevant? It’s the girl in this cartoon video, which was produced by Lutherans trying to be funny and yet making a point.

I probably don’t need to point out that Cartoon Girl is a wickedly accurate portrayal of women like Sally Quinn. It’s all satire, of course.

Of course.

Thank God we still have freedom of speech.

There’s a minor -- well, maybe not so minor -- brouhaha going on in the U.S. right now involving President Barack Obama’s comments the other day about the Supreme Court’s current deliberating over the constitutionality of the 2009 healthcare law that is derisively termed “Obamacare.”

If you’re in another country you may not be aware of it, but here in what Mexicans insist on calling EE UU we are transfixed.

Rush Limbaugh (a radio talk-show host) had a lot to say about it on his program yesterday. Here is the transcript.

The breaks in the transcript are the spots at which commercial advertisements by the sponsors of the radio program were inserted.

Many people think the President overstepped the bounds when he referred to the nine justices of the Supreme Court as “an unelected group of people.”

For those who don't know, the U.S. Constitution specifies three equal branches of government: the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial.

Long may they wave.