Randi Rhodes Newsletter for Tuesday July 13th 2010

Warning: if you’re in the richest 1% of Americans, you probably won’t want to read this. Of course if you are, you probably have hired someone to do your reading for you. We’ve been talking recently about the growing income gap in this country. As a piece in the New York Times from Ross Douthat points out, part of the problem is systemic. The rich simply make the game to expensive for anybody but the rich to win. Speaking of which, did you hear that George Steinbrenner died? Yes, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner is dead at 80. He suffered a massive heart attack. Well, it was George Steinbrenner, so you knew it had to be massive. George Steinbrenner is not going to have a reasonably sized heart attack. Great. You know if Steinbrenner gets into Heaven, he’s going to bring in a bunch of very high-priced free agents. And that’ll end up making it too expensive for anybody else.
In news that isn’t really news at all, now the right wing is obsessed with the so-called "New Black Panthers." The rightwing has tried to tie Obama to the Black Panthers with this crap, and before that to the Weather Underground with David Ayers. Can’t they find any scary bogeymen from less than 40 years ago? What’s next? Are they going to start warning us about the dangers from those bongo-banging beatniks? And what about those immoral flappers with their bootleg gin and that crazy Lindy Hop they keep doing? In reality, the charges against the New Black Panthers were downgraded during the Bush Administration. But then when has the rightwing noise machine been concerned about what happens in reality?
Finally, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt is calling on Louisiana Senator David Vitter to donate his diapers to help sop up the oil spill. If you haven’t heard about Vitter’s diapers, David Vitter doesn’t have a problem with incontinence, he has a problem with hookers. The rumor that he liked to have hookers put diapers on him are unsubstantiated. The fact that David Vitter liked hookers—period—is well substantiated. Maybe David Vitter should embrace his reputation for liking diapers. I can see his campaign slogan now: David Vitter—change you can believe in. Today’s Homework