Miss Fluke goes to Washington

When even casual sex requires a state welfare program, you're pretty much done for.

By Mark Steyn
The Orange County Register
http://www.ocregister.com/
March 9, 2012

I'm writing this from Australia, so, if I'm not quite up to speed on recent events in the United States, bear with me – the telegraph updates are a bit slow here in the bush. As I understand it, Sandra Fluke is a young coed who attends Georgetown Law and recently testified before Congress.

Oh, wait, no. Update: It wasn't a congressional hearing; the Democrats just got it up to look like one, like summer stock, with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid doing the show right here in the barn and providing a cardboard set for the world premiere of "Miss Fluke Goes To Washington," with full supporting cast led by Chuck Schumer strolling in through the French windows in tennis whites and drawling, "Anyone for bull****?"
Oh, and the "young coed" turns out to be 30, which is what less-evolved cultures refer to as early middle age. She's a couple of years younger than Mozart was at the time he croaked but, if the Dems are to be believed, the plucky little Grade 24 schoolgirl has already made an even greater contribution to humanity.

She's had the courage to stand up in public and demand that someone else (and this is where one is obliged to tiptoe cautiously, lest offense is given to gallant defenders of the good name of American maidenhood such as the many prestigious soon-to-be-former sponsors of this column who've booked Bill Maher for their corporate retreat with his amusing "Sarah Palin is a c***" routine ...)

Where was I? Oh, yes. The brave middle-age schoolgirl had the courage to stand up in public and demand that someone else pay for her sex life.

Well, as noted above, she's attending Georgetown, a nominally Catholic seat of learning, so how expensive can that be? Alas, Georgetown is so nominally Catholic that the cost of her sex life runs to three grand – and, according to the star witness, 40 percent of female students "struggle financially" because of the heavy burden of maintaining a respectable level of pre-marital sex at a Jesuit institution.

As I said, I'm on the other side of the planet, so maybe I'm not getting this. But I'd say the core issue here is not religious liberty, which in these godless times the careless swing voter now understands as a code phrase meaning that uptight Republicans who can't get any action want to stop you getting any, too.

Nor is the core issue liberty in its more basic sense – although it would certainly surprise America's founders that their republic of limited government is now the first nation in the developed world to compel private employers to fully fund the sex lives of their employees.

Nor is it even the distinctively American wrinkle the Republic of Paperwork has given to governmentalized health care, under which the "right to privacy" the Supreme Court claimed to have discovered in Griswold vs. Connecticut and Roe vs. Wade will now lead to thousands and thousands of self-insuring employers keeping computer records of the morning-after pills and herpes medication racked up by Miss Jones on reception.

Nor is the issue that America has 30-year-old schoolkids – or even 30-year-old schoolkids who expect someone else to pick up the tab for their extracurricular activities, rather than doing a paper route and a bit of yard work to save up for their first IUD, as we did back in my day. After all, the human right to government-mandated free contraception is as American as apple pie and far healthier for you. In my most recent book, I quote one of Sandra Fluke's fellow geriatrics gamboling in the groves of academe and complaining to the Washington Post about the quality of free condoms therein:

"'If people get what they don't want, they are just going to trash them,' said T Squalls, 30, who attends the University of the District of Columbia. 'So why not spend a few extra dollars and get what people want?'"

All of us are born with the unalienable right to life, liberty and a lifetime supply of premium ribbed silky-smooth, ultrasensitive, spermicidal, lubricant condoms. No taxation without rubberization, as the Minutemen said. The shot heard round the world and all that.

Nor is the core issue that, whatever the merits of government contraception, America is the brokest nation in history – although the Fluke story is a useful reminder that the distinction between fiscal and social conservatism is generally false.

As almost all those fashionable split-the-difference fiscally conservative/socially liberal governors from George Pataki to California's pathetically terminated Terminator eventually discover, their social liberalism comes with a hell of a price tag. Ask the Greeks how easy it is for insolvent nations to wean the populace off unaffordable nanny-state lollipops: When even casual sex requires a state welfare program, you're pretty much done for.

No, the most basic issue here is not religious morality, individual liberty or fiscal responsibility. It's that a society in which middle-age children of privilege testify before the most powerful figures in the land to demand state-enforced funding for their sex lives at a time when their government owes more money than anyone has ever owed in the history of the planet is quite simply nuts.

As stark staring nuts as the court of Ranavalona, the deranged nymphomaniac queen of Madagascar at whose funeral the powder keg literally went up, killing dozens and burning down three royal palaces. Indeed, one is tempted to arrange an introduction between "T Squalls, 30," now 32 going on 33, and Sandra Fluke, 30 going on 31, like a skillfully negotiated betrothal between two royal houses in medieval Europe. The student prince would bring to the marriage his impressive fortune of a decade's worth of Trojan Magnums, while the Princess Leia would have a dowry of index-linked RU 486s settled upon her by HHS the Margravine of Sebelius. They would not be required to produce an heir.

Insane as this scenario is, the Democrat-media complex insists that everyone take it seriously. When it emerged the other day that Amanda Clayton, a 24-year-old Michigan million-dollar lottery winner, still receives $200 of food stamps every month, even the press and the bureaucrats were obliged to acknowledge the ridiculousness. Yet, the same people are determined that Sandra Fluke be treated with respect as a pioneering spokesperson for the rights of the horizontally challenged.

Sorry, I pass.

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom," wrote Benjamin Franklin in 1784. In the absence of religious virtue, sexual virtue and fiscal virtue, one might trust to the people's sense of sheer preposterousness to reject the official narrative of the Fluke charade. Yet even that is not to be permitted.

Full disclosure: I will be guest-hosting for Rush Limbaugh this Monday, so it would not be appropriate for me to comment here on Rush's intervention. But let me say this. Almost every matter of the moment boils down to the same story: the Left's urge to narrow the bounds of public discourse and insist that "conventional wisdom" unknown to the world the day before yesterday is now as unquestionable as the Laws of Physics. Nothing that Rush said is as weird or as degrading as what Sandra Fluke and the Obama administration are demanding. And any freeborn citizen should reserve the right to point that out as loudly and as often as possible.

©MARK STEYN

Sandra Fluke’s choices

By Ekulf Ardnas

Freelance Writer

http://dailycaller.com/

March 3, 2012

Sandra Fluke has more choices with regard to her sex life and reproduction than any woman in history.

For those unfamiliar with Ms. Fluke, she is the 30-year-old third-year Georgetown University law student and left-wing activist who sat before an unofficial congressional committee on February 16. She testified that women like her need access to birth control, a point that almost no one disputes.

More controversially, however, she argued that Georgetown, a 223-year-old Jesuit institution, should be forced by federal law to pay for her contraception of choice without regard to Georgetown’s religious beliefs — and that somehow Georgetown’s current policy is a medieval infringement on her rights as a human being.

Perhaps it is worth outlining a few of the choices Ms. Fluke already enjoys in America in 2012.
She has an incredible array of birth control devices and techniques to choose from — including birth control pills, patches, caps, rings, shots, diaphragms, implants, spermicides (foam, jelly, cream, film), male condoms, female condoms, morning-after pills, Depo-Provera, IUDs, pulling out, tubal ligation and, yes, abortion. Do they still make chastity belts?

She has the choice to have her boyfriend or husband pay for her preferred method of contraception. This seems like a reasonable accommodation assuming only he, and not all of society, is enjoying the pleasure of her company.

She has the choice to shop around for less expensive birth control. As John McCormack pointed out in The Weekly Standard, generic Ortho Tri-Cyclen costs $9 at the Washington, D.C. Target store, or $297 for the 33 months of law school. This is 90 percent less than the $3,000 three-year cost that Ms. Fluke cited in her testimony.

She has the choice of buying health insurance from somewhere other than Georgetown University. A quick search of options for a single 30-year-old woman in the District of Columbia or northern Virginia reveals dozens of plans that cost around $150 a month. (In almost all cases, though, her co-payment for any kind of birth control would be higher than just buying it directly from Target, giving the lie to the perception that health insurance necessarily makes low-end health care services less expensive for the consumer at the point of purchase.)

She has the choice to economize on her routine expenses and not have cable TV, that evening out with friends or that new pair of shoes — and thereby free up money for contraception. Surely she would not testify that her neighbors should subsidize those things.

She has the choice to not have sex at all, thereby completely eliminating the risk of an unwanted pregnancy. This is crazy talk, of course.

She had the choice of sitting in front of Congress and therefore the American people and talking about her lifestyle. By taking that public course of action, she invited public scrutiny, even if some of it has been harsh and hurtful.

She had the choice of suggesting to Congress that someone else should pay for her lifestyle choice.
Again, few question her freedom to live her life as she sees fit. Asking for federal legislation that would compel people of faith to subsidize her sex life is the issue. Those who pay deserve some say.
As a woman who is obviously bright and accomplished enough to get into Georgetown’s law school, she had the choice of attending virtually all 200 accredited law schools in the United States, most of which are secular. But according to one report, she deliberately selected Georgetown so that she could fight this particular policy.

She had the choice of selecting a law school that costs $23,432.50 per semester in tuition alone. This begs the obvious question: How is $297 in birth control costs over three years overly burdensome in relation to $200,000 in overall law school debt? This is not to mention the fact that a Georgetown JD is a first-class, one-way ticket to the one percent.

And finally, she has the choice to call Rush Limbaugh an asshole or take the high road. To her credit, she has seemingly chosen to stay above petty name-calling, which is the bastion of those lacking coherent, logical arguments.

Sandra, your rights do not extend to anything that someone else has to pay for. The vast majority of us will gladly keep our hands out of your uterus if you keep your hands out of our wallets.

Ekulf Ardnas is the pseudonym of a freelance writer in the Washington, D.C. area.

Rally for Rush

Carbonite CEO tied to MoveOn.org: time for conservatives to fight blacklisting?

By Jeffrey Lord
The American Spectator
http://spectator.org/
March 5, 2012

So. Did you hear about Carbonite and Rush Limbaugh?

No, you didn't. Not the way you will in a minute. But first?

It's time to turn the tables.

It's time to stand up to the bullies.

It's time to Rally for Rush.

Rush Limbaugh has discussed at length -- at length -- what Sandra Fluke and her statist cronies are up to. Yes, he used the words "slut" and "prostitute" -- using the ludicrous to make his point. Ms. Fluke, in one of the most pathetic, shamelessly whining stories in recent memory, demands to be paid for her sex life because it costs $3,000 for three years of birth control while she's at law school. She demands that a Catholic university violate its fundamental right to religious liberty so she can have others pay for her sex life. So Rush asked the farcical obvious about somebody who demands that someone else pay her for her apparent, self-admitted prolific sex life. He spent two solid days relating her greed for other people's money and a lack of personal responsibility to the oldest of principles.

Right on cue, the blacklisting crowd came out of their Stalinist caves. Having driven Lou Dobbs from CNN, cut off Beck's windpipe at Fox, severed Pat Buchanan from MSNBC, thus emboldened they have now set their sights on Rush.

And Rush, threatened with his livelihood, has issued this statement:

For over 20 years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week. In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke.

I think it is absolutely absurd that during these very serious political times, we are discussing personal sexual recreational activities before members of Congress. I personally do not agree that American citizens should pay for these social activities. What happened to personal responsibility and accountability? Where do we draw the line? If this is accepted as the norm, what will follow? Will we be debating if taxpayers should pay for new sneakers for all students that are interested in running to keep fit? In my monologue, I posited that it is not our business whatsoever to know what is going on in anyone's bedroom nor do I think it is a topic that should reach a Presidential level.
My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices.

This, but of course, was not enough to satisfy. Sandra Fluke herself raced to the Ed Schultz show on MSNBC todenounce Rush. Yes, the same Ed Schulz who not long ago called conservative radio and TV commentator Laura Ingraham a "slut." And he wasn't joking either. But suddenly, Ms. Fluke simply didn't care. Why? Because this entire controversy over Rush's words was never about the actual subject. It was really about yet another drive to blacklist yet another conservative in the media.

Big mistake. Really big mistake.

Did I mention Carbonite yet? Hold on.

IN THE DAYS AFTER the death of Andrew Breitbart, perhaps the question can be phrased this way: "What would Andrew do?" Well, first, he would suggest you go to one of his sites to learn the facts -- and in this case a very interesting fact about Sandra Fluke's view of free speech. Here's the link at Andrew Breitbart's Big Government where you will find this opening in a story by Charles Johnson:

As a student at Cornell and treasurer of a pro-choice organization at the school, Sandra Fluke, helped shut down a pro-life speech on Cornell's campus by counter protesting. She argued that a pro-life organization at Cornell was about "manipulating [students'] emotions" with misleading statistics about abortion. But when it is her turn to speak on Capitol Hill, the third-year Georgetown Law Student demands she gets her say in a hearing that has nothing to do with birth control.

Well, well, well. So Sandra Fluke has a record of denying free speech to others? In addition to giving a pass to Mr. Ed on the slut business? Free speech for Sandra Fluke but not Rush Limbaugh or those pro-lifers at Cornell? Interesting, yes? Hypocritical and thuggish, definitely. She also walked out in protest of the congressional hearing where supporters of religious liberty were allowed to speak. It turns out, as reported here, that Fluke is no struggling law student -- she's already a professional far-left genderist, long deeply into the leftist scam of judging others by skin color or gender.

We all know the answer as to what Andrew Breitbart would do in this situation. He would stand up to the bullies.

So buckle in. And when you are finished reading -- don't sit there pondering. Stand up. Do something.
And yes…. I will have suggestions as to exactly what you can do to Rally for Rush.

As a matter of fact, let's start right there. Let's start with what you can do right now.

First, read this story from the Friday Huffington Post. It provides a snapshot of what's going on in the effort to intimidate Rush Limbaugh -- and in so doing intimidate the rest of us.

Now take a look at this story from Politico from January 12 of this year. That's right, the one that begins this way:

Conservatives continue to make up the largest segment of political views in the country, outnumbering liberals nearly two-to-one, according to a new poll Thursday.

The Gallup survey found that 40 percent of Americans consider themselves conservative; 35 percent consider themselves moderate; and 21 percent see themselves as liberal. The figures did not change from 2010.

You with me? Conservatives outnumber the left in this country by two-to-one. If you add in moderates, that means 75 percent of the American people do not identify with the kind of people these sponsors are so publicly trying to appease.

So let's start with that recognition as we go through the list of sponsors who are buckling to left-wing bullies. Caving in to thugs who claim to represent a mere 20 percent of the American public. Caving in to fanatics who, unable to sell their ideas by beating Rush Limbaugh in the ratings, seek to drive him from the air, wreck his career -- and most importantly, attempt to intimidate the 40 percent of the American people who self-identify as conservatives. Not to mention the other 35 percent who, as self-defined "moderates," surely don't support left-wing extremists who wish to shut down free speech. To shut us -- their various customers -- up.

These sponsors are:

Sleep Train
Sleep Number
Legal Zoom
Citrix
Quicken Loans
Carbonite

So also in The Huffington Post story is a tweet from Pro Flowers saying they will "reevaluate their marketing plan." They have now done so, and, as seen here, become the seventh sponsor to withdraw from Rush's show.

So what we have are seven intimidated ex-sponsors.

Perhaps it's time to confront every last one of them with a taste of their own medicine. Here's their information.

• Sleep Train:This gutless company says it has been advertising with Rush for 25 years. They should be ashamed of themselves. Absolutely ashamed. The founder of Sleep Mattress is Dale Carlsen.

Mr. Carlsen may be the salt of the earth, but he is about to give his employee-owned company and his employees an enormous, self-inflicted black-eye. Here's the information you need to reach Dale Carlsen.

This is the e-mail for Sleep Train's customer service:customerservice@sleeptrain.com.
This is the 800 phone number for Sleep Train: 1-800-919-2337
This is the 800 fax number for Sleep Train: 1-866-293-5719
This is the snail mail address for Sleep Train:

Sleep Train Mattress Centers
2204 Plaza Drive
Rocklin, CA 95765

• Sleep Number: The President and CEO of Sleep Number is Bill McLaughlin. This company has contact through an e-mail form they provide here.

More about McLaughlin in a minute.

• Legal Zoom: The Co-founders of this company are Brian Liu, Brian Lee, Eddie Hartman & Robert Shapiro. Again, more on these guys below. The contact info for Legal Zoom is as follows:
The address for e-mails is here.

The Corporate Headquarters phone number is: 1-323-962-8600. The fax number is: 323-962-8300
The Corporate Headquarters snail mail address is:

Legal Zoom.com101 N. Brand Blvd., 11th Floor
Glendale, CA 91203

• Citrix: Mark B. Templeton is the President and CEO, his bio here.
The contact info for the Citrix Corporate Headquarters is :
Toll Free Phone: 1-800-424-8749
Phone: 954-267-3000
Fax: 954-267-9319

Snail mail:

Citrix Systems Fort Lauderdale
851 West Cypress Creek Road
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33309

• Quicken Loans: Quicken, under the leadership of its Founder and Chairman Dan Gilbert (his info here) has gone the extra mile to antagonize the 40 percent. It has this statement on its website:

Due to Rush Limbaugh's continued inflammatory comments -- along with the valued feedback we have received from our clients and team members -- Quicken Loans has suspended all advertising on the Rush Limbaugh radio program."

Note: Quicken is so skittish the above message appears for mere seconds before vanishing. It took repeated tries to copy verbatim the simple, highly provocative message above.

The Quicken contact info is found on this page of their website. Note: The company has an online chat function on this page. Also:
Phone, Client Relations: 1-800- 863-4332
Snail Mail Address:

Quicken Loans - Main Office –Compuware
1050 Woodward AvenueDetroit, MI 48226

• Second last on the list is Pro-Flowers. Their contact info is here.

•Carbonite: OK. Now we'll talk Carbonite. And about Mr. McLaughlin of Sleep Number. And two of the co-founders of Legal Zoom.

Carbonite's statement was especially and curiously unctuous, its withdrawal of sponsorship coming as it did after Rush's apology. Here is Carbonite's CEO David Friend:

No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady. Mr. Limbaugh, with his highly personal attacks on Miss Fluke, overstepped any reasonable bounds of decency. Even though Mr. Limbaugh has now issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising from his show.

Friend added:

We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse.

Now. Carbonite really deserves some special attention.

David Friend is making his attack on Rush sound like he's one upset Dad with a couple of nice young daughters. And oh, yes, he wants a "more civilized public discourse."

Is that all there is to Mr. Friend? Quite aside that he gives a pass to Sandra Fluke for her obnoxiously intolerant behavior when it comes to the free speech of others, is there anything else going on here?

Yes. Of course.

Take a look here at this link to Bloomberg/Business Week which profiles Mr. Friend and affirms him as "General Partner" of an investment group called "Orchid Partners" in Boston, Massachusetts. And Orchid Partners? Yes indeed, they are the venture capital firm behind… Carbonite.

Where Mr. Friend is listed as "Co-Founder, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President."

So?

So when you cross check Mr. David Friend of Orchid Partners in Boston with the Federal Election Commission, one finds-- ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh shocker!……… that a Mr. David Friend of Orchid Partners in Boston has been a contributor to… ready? Here's the list of just where David Friend spends his political money:

MoveOn.org, America Coming Together and Democracy for America, all three listed here as George Soros funded groups, the latter set up by Howard Dean. Texans for Truth also drew Mr. Friend's support. This group, according toWikipedia, was set up by MoveOn.org spin-off Drive Democracy.org in 2004. Why? To… wait for it… challenge then-President Bush's service in the Texas National Guard. The precise same stunt for which CBS fired Dan Rather after documents were discovered to have been forged. The Bush-Cheney campaign said of Texans for Truth that it was "a smear group launching baseless attacks on behalf of John Kerry's campaign that will be rejected by the American people." They were. But that didn't quench Mr. Friend's affection for either the smear campaign or supporting leftist candidates such as Howard Dean, and John Kerry.

And get a load of this. Take a look right here at Ed "Laura Ingraham is a slut" Schultz's site for his radio show. Who is listed as a Schultz sponsor? That's right: Carbonite. Like Rush Limbaugh, Ed Schultz apologized. The difference? If Rush uses the word "slut" to illustrate the absurdity of the left-wing Sandra Fluke's views --David Friend is outraged. But when Ed Schultz refers in hostile fashion out of the blue to conservative and Catholic Laura Ingraham as a "slut" -- hey, no big deal for Carbonite.

In other words, to put it politely, Mr. Friend's woe-is-me I'm-withdrawing-my-company's sponsorship-from-Rush Limbaugh-because of-my-lovely-daughters is as close to certifiable BS as one can imagine. Mr. Friend, one can only suspect, placed Carbonite's ads with Rush Limbaugh because he knew it would make him money -- which he obviously then funneled to MoveOn and the rest. Meanwhile, he keeps advertising on the Ed Slut Show… sorry… Ed Schultz Show. His daughters? His daughters? What a deeply cynical man.

Not to mention Friend's chutzpah calling for a "more civilized public discourse" when he is busy contributing to MoveOn.org, the self-same group that put together this charmingvideo comparing George W. Bush to Hitler. Not to mention MoveOn's "Bush Lied" routine. This is pathetic.

And oh yes, Mr. Friend isn't the only Rush-drop out whose leftist connections are suspect in this episode. Sleep Number's CEO Bill McLaughlin, Sleep Number being a product of a company called Select Comforter? That appears to be the same "William McLaughlin" who identified himself to the FEC as being with Select Comforter of Minneapolis -- when he contributed to the same Soros-funded "America Coming Together" as Mr. Friend.

And how about two of the four guys running Legal Zoom? Mr. Brian Liu is recorded as giving tens of thousands of dollars to two Obama campaign outlets, including the Obama Victory Fund 2012. Brian Lee gives his bucks to the Democratic National Committee Services Corporation. Did I mention Mark Templeton of Citrix gave Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign $2,300?

Here is Carbonite's contact info, not that it will do you any good.

• Last on the list is the newly addedPro-Flowers. Their contact info is here. And yes, you got it. Founded by a now Democratic congressman, Jared Polis, the company is currently owned by Provide Commerce, itself owned by Liberty Media. Provide Commerce's CEO William Strauss is a contributor to the Pro-Flowers founder, the Democrat Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado.

NOW, LET'S UNDERSTAND a few things here. Let's pull back the curtain and see what's really going on.

Remember the recent spate of stories on Media Matters from Tucker Carlson's The Daily Caller?

The first one found here.

To summarize, the Daily Caller discovered the leftist Media Matters, along with other leftist groups, had engaged in an intense behind the scenes campaign to fire Don Imus, at one point employing some fifty people in the effort, while Media Matters head David Brock "personally called the heads of various liberal activist groups to coordinate a message. By the end of the week, Imus was fired."
Writes the DC:

Media Matters soon became more sophisticated in its campaigns against non-liberal cable news anchors. Lou Dobbs, then of CNN, was a frequent target.

"As part of the Drop Dobbs campaign," explains one internal memo prepared for fundraising, "Media Matters produced and was prepared to run an advertisement against Ford Motor Company on Spanish Language stations in Houston, San Antonio, and other cities targeting its top selling product, pick-up trucks, in its top truck buying markets."

Ford pulled its advertising from Dobbs's program before the television ad aired, but Media Matters kept up its efforts, working primarily with Alex Nogales of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and with the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and other self-described civil rights groups.

In November of 2009, Dobbs left CNN. "We got him fired," says one staffer flatly.
Certainly Media Matters deserves a lot of credit for the work they did," Nogales said in an interview. "They're very effective."

Glenn Beck, the former Fox News Channel host, drew the ire of a wide spectrum of liberal groups while his program aired nationally. But according to several people who watched the process from the inside, it was Media Matters that orchestrated much of the opposition to Beck.

"We called it 'fingerprint coverage,'" explains one former staffer, "where you know it was the result of your work." As an example, he cites the left-wing group Color of Change, co-founded by the controversial former White House "green jobs" czar Van Jones, which received much of the credit for pressuring advertisers to drop their sponsorship of Beck's show. But in fact, he says, Media Matters developed the campaign that cowed Beck's sponsors.

DO YOU GET the picture? The American Left -- whether it pops up in the form of Media Matters, Color of Change, MoveOn.org, Texans for Truth or other groups -- is determined to shut off conservative dissent from their agenda by whatever means necessary. Fueled in part by money like that they received from David Friend of Carbonite. To do this they are quite specifically going after conservative talk radio hosts and television commentators one by one by one. The fact that David Friend of MoveOn.org/Carbonite is there to stick it to Rush is all the better. The fact that Ed Schulz called Laura Ingraham a slut is one big no-big-deal to Sandra Fluke herself when she wants air time on with Mr. Ed. Why should David Friend care if Ms. Fluke doesn't? So, Carbonite continues as Mr. Ed's sponsor, sluts be damned.

As noted earlier, what began with Don Imus, Lou Dobbs, and Glenn Beck has just hit Pat Buchanan.
Now, they want Rush's scalp. So all these companies are bleating about angry customers demanding they stop sponsoring Rush? Mr. Friend of Carbonite has the gall to lay off his decision on his daughters when he's a card carrying leftist who gives the slut business the brush-off when it's Ed Schultz?? Are these people (other than Carbonite, whose CEO manifestly appears to have an agenda) really that professionally incompetent as a company that they don't understand what the Daily Caller story was saying?

Are they really, seriously that clueless when there is a very detailed story out there X-raying in graphic detail just how this anti-free speech game is played? Fifty people assigned just to get Don Imus alone?
The head of Media Matters personally calling "the heads of various liberal activist groups to coordinate a message" to fire Imus -- having the job done within a week? What don't these sponsors understand when a left-wing radical activist crows that "we" got Lou Dobbs fired? What don't they understand about "fingerprint coverage" designed to fire prominent conservatives?

Are these sponsors really that stupid that they aren't aware they are being played for suckers by leftist radicals? Or, in fact, like David Friend and Carbonite, are they shadowy, behind-the-scenes participants?

Once upon a time -- in 1962 when Ronald Reagan was the host of General Electric Theater on CBS -- there was a call for Reagan's scalp for the same reason. The Left didn't like what he was saying. In fact, Michael Reagan once wrote about the day GE fired his Dad for speaking what we now call truth to power. Wrote son Michael Reagan of his Dad's encounter with saying the politically incorrect:

General Electric wants us to feel warm and fuzzy every time we screw in a GE made-in-China twisty light. But I haven't felt warm and fuzzy toward GE since that day in 1962 when Dad came home and told us he had just been fired by GE and his show, "General Electric Theater," was canceled.

Dad explained that CBS hadn't canceled the highly rated show. Instead, GE had pulled the plug. As the company was negotiating some government contracts, Bobby Kennedy, the attorney general of the United States, bluntly informed GE that if the company wished to do business with the U.S. government, it would get rid of "General Electric Theater" and fire the host.

Dad had criticized the Kennedy administration in some of his speeches, and the administration fought back through the president's brother. Within 48 hours of Bobby Kennedy's call, Ronald Reagan was out of a job.

Ronald Reagan in 1962. Rush Limbaugh fifty years later in 2012. The left never changes.

But conservatives have changed in those last fifty years. In his last speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) just weeks ago, Andrew Breitbart stood at the podium and said: "Conservatives used to take it and we're not taking it anymore."

There isn't going to be any of this intimidation anymore.

Conservatives are the majority in this country politically. No longer are they required to sit meekly, just take it and shut up. Rush Limbaugh's audience doesn't have to put up with this garbage as conservatives of an earlier era once did.

Make no mistake. The question is now on the table: should the sponsors who allow themselves to be intimidated by these bullies into attacking Rush Limbaugh deserve commercial support from conservatives? Some are doubtless sponsors of other conservative shows. Carbonite is now instantly revealed by its own CEO as being a cynical player of a double game -- funding left wing groups who participate in blacklisting campaigns, giving a pass to lefty Ed Schultz for using the exact word as Rush, then helping from the inside and laying the blame for withdrawing Carbonite's ads from Rush on his daughters. But clearly, if they are abandoning Rush Limbaugh, this serves as an implied threat to every talk radio host in the land who has these companies as sponsors. By doing what they have now done, these one-time sponsors of Rush Limbaugh's show have now startlingly indicated that they are signing on with anti-First Amendment thugs.

How does the far left play this blacklisting game? They exploit race and gender to try and destroy First Amendment protections. People who support a philosophy long on record as supporting every racial gambit from slavery, segregation, lynching and the Ku Klux Klan right on through to the violation of voting rights by the Black Panthers, racial quotas and illegal immigration have no scruples. Genderism, as Sandra Fluke demonstrates anew, is not about individuals, it's about the left's concept of one gender. And, as Ed Schultz's slut comment about Ingraham demonstrated, if you don't fit that profile well -- you're a slut.

No one disputes the right of any would-be sponsor to choose where they place their advertising dollars. That simply isn't the question.

The question is: do these sponsors listed above, all willing participants in this thuggish behavior, understand that they are going out of their way to self-identify with those who have quite effectively demonstrated themselves to be anti-free speech thugs?

Do they understand that they are, with enormous effectiveness, voluntarily identifying themselves as peddlers not of mattresses, legal services, high tech gizmos, mortgages, computer back-ups or flowers -- but radical left wing politics designed to deliberately blacklist, insult, target and shut down the free speech of 40 percent of the American people? Their own customers? And that in some cases the people engaged in these efforts use their addiction to skin colorism or judging by gender to do these things? Clearly David Friend does believe this or he wouldn't be supporting MoveOn.org and Ed "The Slut" Schultz -- but the rest? (Note: Another Mr. Ed sponsor? That would be ESPN -- which forced Rush out after he suggested Donovan McNabb wasn't that great of a quarterback but the press covered for him because of his skin color. Apparently ESPN doesn't care about Schultz's slut problem either. Yet another double-standard.)

Do these companies understand that the message they are sending to every single Rush Limbaugh listener is that they are going to play hard ball with their own conservative customers?

If so, why in the world should any conservative -- part of that two-to-one 40 percent identified by the Gallup Poll -- ever in a million years want to buy a product from these people?

AND LAST BUT not least: Rush Limbaugh, now a very familiar figure on the American political scene, is one of the most decent human beings on the planet. He is well known to his listeners. There is zero need here to say a word about this man's character, his endless devotion to charitable causes, his staunch support for the American men and women in the military, and much more. The mindless treatment these sponsors are engaged in with this man is shameful. Disgraceful.

So. Let's note carefully. This is exactly the moment where a talk radio host -- this one the most prominent in the land -- needs help from his longtime listeners, fans and friends. For the record, it's safe to say I have not contacted Mr. Limbaugh or sought him out for contact on this story. He will be reading this for the first time.

As this Rush-drama unfolded over the weekend I had an over-the-Internet-transom e-mail from a woman identifying herself as a "Rush Fan -- Ellie from Akron." Said Ellie: "We all need to stick by Rush in this latest assault by the attack dog media…. how many of these cowardly, so-called 'indignant' sponsors deserting him now, came to Rush's defense 3 years ago when the NFL, CNN, ESPN were calling him a racist simply because he wanted to be part owner of a pro-football team."
Excellent question, Ellie from Akron.

It's time to fight back.

To take on Sleep Mattress, Sleep Number, Legal Zoom, Citrix, Quicken Loans, Carbonite and, now that they've caved, Pro-Flowers. And anybody else who wants to play this disgraceful blacklisting game with their customers.

To expose the hypocrisy and double standards. To make it crystal clear that that those who sell out our First Amendment rights to far left radicals are in fact going to be actively perceived as collaborating in a deliberate attack on their customers, real and potential.

It's time to stand up for free speech. To draw a line in the sand. And let these companies know that the blacklisting line stops with Rush.

It's time -- way past time -- to stand up to the blacklisting free speech bullies. By phone. By e-mail. Twitter, snail mail or whatever.


But however you do it?

It's time to Rally for Rush.

And yes, by all means: Pass it on!

Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political director and author. He writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com.

And the Winner in Iowa Is… Rush Limbaugh!

Rick Santorum's smartest move.

By Jay D. Homnick
The American Spectator
http://spectator.org/
January 4, 2012

[Note: Mitt Romney won yesterday's Iowa Caucus by eight votes (30,015 to 30,007). Romney and Santorum each collected 25% of the vote while Ron Paul came in at 21% and New Gingrich at 13%. - jtf]

At the time of this writing, one Eastern hour into January 4th of 2012, Rick Santorum is barely ahead in the Iowa caucuses with 29,968 votes to 29,964 for Mitt Romney. Iowa is not known for its consonance, but this kind of multiple avowal is unprecedented.

My home state of Florida has decided to freeze tonight in solidarity with Iowa, so this is somewhat akin to an on-the-scene report. Manning my media control center, I observe that Santorum is enjoying a honeymoon with the press that is certain to be limited to a one-night stand.

In the moment, all the correspondents are buzzing affirmatively, with the merest hint of a caveat: "Santorum peaked just at the right time… he was the last man standing… he won the game of musical chairs… he visited all 99 counties… he did 367 Town Halls… door to door… retail politics… for now he gets to be the anti-Romney… social conservatives… evangelical vote coalescing… probably not sustainable… not enough cash on hand… doesn't have the national network."

By morning, they will shake off their hangovers and try to change the channel, adjusting the narrative. The Tea Party was not much of a direct force in Iowa, but its aura will be invoked in trying to portray Santorum as the new incarnation of Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell. Once again, the forces of narrow-mindedness, mean-spiritedness and wrong-headedness had won a Pyrrhic victory. Richard-the-Lionhearted of tonight's proclamation will give way to Poor Richard in tomorrow's almanac.

For now, there is much talk of the hard work, the doggedness and the good timing. His virtues are being paraded even though their ticker will quickly run out of tape. But there is one piece of the saga that even these erstwhile enthusiasts will not verbalize, the fact that the biggest winner of all this night is Rush Limbaugh. That is because Santorum breached the First Commandment of Republican political consultants: Thou Shalt Not Take the Name of Limbaugh in Advertisement.

This has been one of the great anomalies of Republican politics the past two decades. The revolution in talk radio initiated by Limbaugh in 1990 is what gave conservative politics new life after Ronald Reagan's tenure in office elapsed. Reagan himself acknowledged as much, writing a letter to Limbaugh in 1992 essentially passing the baton of leadership.

Despite the fact that Republican candidates have always vied to get some air time on the show, the political consultants they hire have steered them away from quoting Limbaugh by name in other venues or using his name in advertising. The fact that he generally refrains from openly endorsing particular candidates has enabled them to get away with this brand of disloyalty. They can't very well be expected to cite him in an ad if he has not specifically expressed his backing, can they?

Thus the paradox. Five minutes on Limbaugh is worth more than all the campaign ads put together, yet mentioning him in a commercial is seen by campaign managers as taboo. It will anger the independents, they say, and the moderates… and the women… and the minorities… and on and on.

The consequence of this strategy is that we wind up with colorless compromisers like Bob Dole and John McCain as Presidential candidates, and elections are written off as losses before the first lever is pulled in the voting booth for a Republican or in the mortuary for a Democrat.

This time Santorum broke the mold. He ran a bold ad quoting accolades tossed in his direction by Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and Rush Limbaugh. That willingness to name names sent a powerful signal, electrifying the fence that most Iowa Republicans had been sitting on. There are an awful lot of conservative voters who have been waiting a long time to hear their heroes acknowledged. In my estimation, that single advertising spot put Santorum over the top in Iowa.

Can Santorum actually win the primaries pursuing this strategy? Well, the first bit of good news came along right away. The word is out that John McCain is about to announce his backing for Romney. This is a contest I will relish watching: Romney ads citing McCain versus Santorum ads citing Limbaugh. Stay tuned.


- Jay D. Homnick, commentator and humorist, is a frequent contributor to The American Spectator. He also writes for Human Events. Here he performs his original composition, "Buy You (Bayou) a Drink".