From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com (Steve Harris  sbharris@ROMAN9.netcom.com)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,talk.politics.misc,sci.med.pharmacy,sci.med
Subject: Re: FRY Rush Limbaugh
Date: 11 Oct 2003 13:01:31 -0700
Message-ID: <79cf0a8.0310111201.10903052@posting.google.com>

mmeron@cars3.uchicago.edu wrote in message
news:<biHhb.4$O4.1473@news.uchicago.edu>...
> In article <o94eov0ttued29m5evuqkbhfp4002fqpn2@4ax.com>, DarkMatter
> <DarkMatter@thebarattheendoftheuniverse.org> writes:
> >On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 18:16:38 GMT, "MorituriMax" <newage@sendarico.net>
> >Gave us:
> >
> >>At least people respect Rush, unlike you whom nobody respects.
> >
> >  Idiots respect Rush.
>
> Really?
>
> >  Most PEOPLE despise him for the twitted, opinionated retard that he
> >is.
>
> A classic case of projection, here:-)  Why do I even bother to read
> what you post, even as entertainment it is way below par.


COMMENT:

Yes, but referening another post this is one of the few times I agree
with the mad tj. Limbaugh is a hypocrite of first water. He's always
been a drug war warrior of the "throw away the key" type. But now,
when it's his OWN ample posterior headed possibly for the pokey, he's
singing a different tune. Now that they've caught him (he didn't turn
himself in) he's got a MEDICAL problem. He's headed for a REHAB clinic
(on advice of council). That's the extent of his vaunted "taking of
responsiblity". He's taking medical responsiblity but not criminal
responsiblity And the horrid thing is that he'll probably get away
with it.

But I saw the footage of what they found in his house. He had a stock
bottle of Oxycontin (a schedule II narcotic like morphine), and a
plastic bag with enough hydrocodone/APAP pills to choke a small horse.
He'd bought thousands of them from a housekeeper, according to
sources. All this is so much more stuff than than he could have gotten
from any doctor (short of being a hospice patient) that's it's beyond
cynical to call him addicted to "prescription drugs". These are not
prescription drugs, but black market diverted drugs. It doesn't matter
of you can get this stuff by prescription also. You can get cocaine by
prescription, too (nasal surgeons use it), but that doesn't save guys
caught with a lot of cocaine.

Now, had Limbaugh been some young Afican American guy caught on the
street with this much diverted pharmaceutical narcotic, instead of as
he was in his Palm Beach mansion, he'd be headed right now for the
Florida pen. Probably without even bail. This sheer quantity of stash
gets you in the "possession for intended distribution" category if
you're not a celebrity. You can't successfully argue that you have
this much only because you have a big personal habit yourself-- rather
the "intent to distribute" is based on quantity alone. Somebody reads
down a column and charges you. And if it's found in your car or house
(or mansion or yacht) the feds generally confiscate all that and
that's the end of it. Your house gets sold at auction and you're lucky
if your bank accounts aren't frozen before you can pay any lawyer a
retainer.

Wanna bet that anything like this will happen to Rush Limbaugh?  Not
on your life. He's the wrong color, and he's too rich and too famous.
Thus, hypocrisy.

You will remember Clinton's screwup brother who was convicted of drug
possession, which conviction Clinton claimed was "good for him."
Except that Clinton evidently didn't really beleive it, because
Clinton pardoned the brother later, so that his criminal record could
be wiped and expunged. Hey, we wouldn't want a drug conviction to
*ruin his life.* He's family, after all. Not a bad guy, you see.
Family.

The one thread which binds the left-wing Clinton and the right-wing
Limbaugh is this sense of special entitlement. Both of them would
vehemently deny that the drug war is really a class war, and that
penalties for drug possession generally do not fall the same on people
who have presidents for brothers or who live in Palm Beach mansions
and make millions. But the fact is, they do. And this allows people
like Clinton and Limbaugh to agree on the one thing that Left and
Right have generally been able to agree on these last few decades:
young men of color should be put away, when possible.

There is nothing like direct experience to teach. If Limbaugh went to
Federal prison and had to perform certain services for the guy with
the most cigarettes, he might come back to his radio show a little
more libertarian. The same might have happened to Clinton if his
daughter had ever had to attend public school in Washington DC without
a voucher.

But none of this is going to happen. The rich and the mighty continue
to be insulated from the effects of their own politics. On the Right
and the Left. Thus is it ever.


Steven B. Harris

From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com (Steve Harris  sbharris@ROMAN9.netcom.com)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,talk.politics.misc,sci.med.pharmacy,sci.med,
	alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Re: FRY Rush Limbaugh
Date: 12 Oct 2003 11:35:37 -0700
Message-ID: <79cf0a8.0310121035.6fd05ffe@posting.google.com>

billev@NOSPAMtidewater.com wrote in message
news:<3F88FFB8.AE4B452@NOSPAMtidewater.com>...

> "Steve Harris sbharris@ROMAN9.netcom.com" wrote:
> >
> >
> > COMMENT:
> >
> > Yes, but referening another post this is one of the few times I agree
> > with the mad tj. Limbaugh is a hypocrite of first water. He's always
> > been a drug war warrior of the "throw away the key" type. But now,
> > when it's his OWN ample posterior headed possibly for the pokey, he's
> > singing a different tune.
>
> Hey there Mr. Perfect, he's addicted. Plain and simple. And he
> had the balls to admit it, and is seeking help. Who made you
> the judge + jury?

COMMENT:

Oh, the answer is easy. Rush made himself his own judge, long ago.

Here is Limbaugh, according to ABCNews:

Back in 1995, Limbaugh told his audience on the syndicated Rush
Limbaugh, The Television Show that people who are obtaining drugs
illegally should be held responsible.

"Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And so if
people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused
and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up," he said
to his audience during the broadcast.

COMMENT

There you are. I'm merely judging Rush by the standards he's long
advocated to judge others. He's had a hand, as a famous public
opinion-maker and shaper, in the drug war as it stands in this
country. So he richly deserves a dose of his own medicine, for he has
reached an age where he should have some wisdom and yet he has learned
nothing.


> The authorities and DA have made it perfectly clear they were
> targeting the "sellers" and "pushers" and NOT the users.
> Perhaps they should prosecute the house keeper who sold him
> these dangerous drugs .... the same bitch who ran to the
> National Inquirer with a big story.

COMMENT:

You don't help yourself, there. To the extent that that drug war
targets dealers rather than end users, that's just another screwup and
hypocrisy of the system. That's like blaming the bartender and liquor
store, for the alcoholic. And I use that similie advisadly, because I
think that neither the quality-controlled manufacture, sale or use of
alcohol *nor any other drug* should be criminalized for adults.

Blaming the drug seller for drug addiction is just another way of
attempting to escape personal responsiblity. If you misuse a drug and
screw up your life--if get horribly drug-dependent or you drive while
intoxicated or beat your wife or neglect your children or lose your
job because you don't show up or don't perform, then that's YOUR
responsiblity. It's not the ethical responsiblity of the guy who sold
you the drug, the guy who prescribed it, recommended it, manufactured
it, refined it, or grew it thousands of miles away. Unless some of
them lied to you. But so long as the label and dose and ingredients in
a drug product are true (and this is a legitimate matter for
regulation) it's YOUR responsiblity as the user of the product what
happens to you when you put it in your mouth.  This is how an adult
would see it.

In Limbaugh's case he really doesn't have a leg to stand on, because
he abused ethical pharameuticals, in which the purity and dose were
spot-on. He knew exactly what he was buying and taking. And the people
who sold it to him were not being any more antisocial than the honest
bartender or the liquor store who sell you honest bottle or the drink
you order. Yes, they all broke the law. But it's a stupid and
unethical law. Let's face it. The drug war is just prohibition for
drugs other than alcohol, and it has all the crime problems that went
with alcohol when alcohol was illegal. But that doesn't mean we need
to blame alcohol per se.


> > But I saw the footage of what they found in his house. He had a stock
> > bottle of Oxycontin (a schedule II narcotic like morphine), and a
> > plastic bag with enough hydrocodone/APAP pills to choke a small horse.
>
> He's loaded with money and decided to stockpile. So what?


So nothing. I don't care ethically (if it weren't for the hypocrisy)
if he had a traincar of the stuff.

But at this point I have to retract what I said in a previous message.
I now see that they have not actually found any drugs in Limbaugh's
house. I saw a news report that he'd baught thousands of pills, and
over the top they showed video of thousands of pills all bagged up,
and I assumed that they were Limbaugh's. Nope, they were just
illustrative fluff. Wups. My error.

Apparently there's a fair evidence trail, including emails and
conversations, that he was using extremely heavily, though. If he were
president he'd easily be nailed on obstuction of justice. But
nevermind. In the present state of evidence, there may not be enough
case to legally indict him. Maybe not even if he as a Black rapper in
a $200 million mansion, with the same history. <g>.

SBH

From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com (Steve Harris  sbharris@ROMAN9.netcom.com)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,talk.politics.misc,sci.med.pharmacy,sci.med,
	alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Re: FRY Rush Limbaugh
Date: 19 Oct 2003 17:38:58 -0700
Message-ID: <79cf0a8.0310191638.6f47c21e@posting.google.com>

toor@iquest.net (John S. Dyson) wrote in message
news:<bmujls$im9$1@news.iquest.net>...

> In article <RFdkb.443$In4.389918@monger.newsread.com>,
> 	"Robert E. Lewis" <rlewis@brazosport.cc.tx.us> writes:
> >
> > John S. Dyson <toor@iquest.net> wrote in message
> > news:bmqh21$2cck$1@news.iquest.net...
> >
> > ...
> >
> >> >>
> >> >> Back in 1995, Limbaugh told his audience on the syndicated Rush
> >> >> Limbaugh, The Television Show that people who are obtaining drugs
> >> >> illegally should be held responsible.
> >> >>
> >> >> "Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And so if
> >> >> people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused
> >> >> and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up," he said
> >> >> to his audience during the broadcast.
> > ...
> >
> >> >
> >> Rush wasn't initially seeking a high, and is a poster boy for
> >> avoiding addictive drugs (especially illegal use.)  Rush didn't
> >> have ANY INTENTION of being a druggie, and he despises that notion.
> >
> > Is it your contention that the average person smoking marijuana for the
> > first time, or trying cocaine or heroin or whatever, for that matter has the
> > *intention* of becoming a drug addict?
>
> It is my contention that the 'average' person who tries an illegal
> drug KNOWS that they are doing something 'wrong' (illegally or
> simply unwise.)  Someone who starts with a 'script' is following
> doctors advice.



COMMENT:

The medical word is "scrip," actually. The physical piece of paper on
which is written a doctor's prescription. Same root but different word
for a different technical use. It's sort of like materiAl and
materiEl.

My comment is that, first of all, it's not clear if Limbaugh ever had
a prescription for any narcotic. And if he did, I've no doubt it was
for hydrocodone/APAP and not the much more powerful oxycontin. What's
the difference between using a drug and a dose no doctor would give
you, and just using heroin?  Eh?

Perhaps you're saying it would be excusable to wind up on, and finally
strung out on, heroin if you'd FIRST found yourself hooked on vicodin
or maybe even darvocet prescribed for your back pain.  An interesting
argument, but not one that I ever heard Limbaugh make as a
conservative. I don't think the idea that many drug users started out
taking legal alchohol or legal pain or tranquilizers ever occured to
him. And if it did, he didn't say so.

The idea that the lower classes who get busted for illegal drug use,
might be using drugs to self medicate, is also something lost on
conservatives. Why, the very idea that trailor trash might have
physical pain!  We all know that's reserved for the overfed rich upper
class Republicans. Of which we can all think of examples. When the
Lower Class Scum use drugs, we all know that they merely are using
them to get "high."  Not to deal with pain, because they don't have
any. They're like draft animals in that regard.  ;)  No refined
sensitivies as one might expect of people of breeding...



Two observations: the first is that there's not that much difference
between physical and mental pain. If you have the first, you're likely
to have the second. And if you have the second and you're over about
30 years old, you're going to have the first. Opiates treat both, and
that is one reason they cause such dependence.

Second: At doses such as those Limbaugh was on, trying to get off
drugs causes pain everywhere. I'd had addicts tell me their skin hurt.
They said their HAIR hurt. You can start with minor pain, and after
you've ramped your dose up enough for long enough (given  a certain
brain chemistry) now you're going to hurt a LOT whenever you try to
cut back.

Gee, I thought "just say no" Republicans understood all this? As
Carrie Fisher famously observed of her pain pill habit "I wanted pain
reduction and mind expansion, but instead I got pain expansion and
mind reduction."  You should have listed to Hollywood a little more,
there, Rush.

Don't blame Rush's docs, if he had any. If he did, at some point WAY
before this, they tried to cut him off, and had he listened, he would
have gone through a lot less pain. If he wound up on handfuls of
Oxycontin a day, there must have been very many points along
Limbaugh's course where he tried to cut back, and found that he hurt a
lot more. And had he stopped at any of them, particularly had he
stopped at the point where he took no more drug than was legal, he'd
have been in a lot less world of hurt.

But he never stopped at any of those points. He didn't stop till his
cover was blown and supply cut off cold turkey (since you can bet he
did a lot of drug flushing the day the Enquirer article hit the
stands). Which tells me that he must be rather weak-willed. It's one
thing to get off handfuls of Oxycontin a day without help, but quite
something else to get off a couple of Vicodin a day. Rush couldn't do
EITHER. Remember, please, that he must have passed beyond the pale of
the law at best when he was on comparitively very small doses of drug.
For somebody who advocates locking up lawbreakers, that says something
about Rush's powers of imagination and empathy also.

So. No will, no imagination, no guts, no empathy. No brainpower if he
couldn't see clearly where all this was ultimately leading.  I don't
know what Rush thinks he had on loan from God, but I can't see that it
was very much of anything, except lard.

I have to say I AM amused to hear all of Rush supporters talking about
how he never committed any crimes get money for drugs, and never hurt
anybody but himself. Indeed. Very libertarian sounding arguments.  And
that's the thing about the average voter: libertarian when it comes to
the people he/she loves, very fascist/totalitarian when it comes to
anybody else. (Libertarians merely try to add imagination and empathy
to politics). Limbaugh's supporters are acting exactly like the
average family when they find some member with a drug problem. They
don't want jail, or at least not much jail, and not a jail record (see
Clinton). Big prison time is for those BAD people who use drugs. The
strangers. The outsiders. The scum.

Not the good guys that we all *know.* Not for *family*.

SBH

From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com (Steve Harris  sbharris@ROMAN9.netcom.com)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,talk.politics.misc,sci.med.pharmacy,sci.med,
	alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Re: FRY Rush Limbaugh
Date: 19 Oct 2003 18:34:09 -0700
Message-ID: <79cf0a8.0310191734.4e786b2b@posting.google.com>

toor@iquest.net (John S. Dyson) wrote in message
news:<bmutt6$m43$1@news.iquest.net>...

> Too many quotes are taken out of context by the
> leftist prevaricators (including the often touted
> statement made by Rush in approx 1995 WRT drugs...)
> That statement was clearly made WRT the dangers and
> damage from drugs.


Clearly it was not, since it was Rush saying that people who USE
illegal drugs should go to jail.



> Rush is a prefect example of
> such damage, but most of the damage against Rush seems
> to come from maleavolent human vermin.  The most
> judgemental attitudes do seem to come from where
> it is expected (by those of us who are critical of
> the far right and the left):  the intolerant and
> narrow minded idealogues on the left.
>
> The fact is that Rush has already suffered more
> pain than can be imposed by leftist hate mongers.
> The drug dealer who took advantage of Rush's
> weakness should certainly be seriously punished.


ROFL! Was it the drug dealer who took advantage of Rush, or Rush who
took advantange of the dealer?  Is it the hooker who takes advantage
of the John or (forgive pun) vice versa?

Don't look now, but you're already far down the road to "narrow minded
left ideology" if you think you can look at any given free trade and
tell who is the one being objectively taken advantage-of. That's
almost the definition of a Leftist-- somebody who thinks that in all
free trades, somebody is being screwed.



> The best kind of 'punishment' for Rush would be
> for him to fund some serious anti-illegal-drug and
> prescription drug addiction awareness programs.


Oh, yeah, that's a great idea.  This is a guy who was the paragon of
right-wing awareness, and it got HIM.  How is it that you think he can
educate people, if his political and moral and religious views didn't
even work on him of all people?  He preaches right wing awareness and
responsiblity FOR A LIVING already. And makes good money at it.

You remind me of the people who say we should give up more civil
liberties to deal with drug criminals.  Except there's a big drug
problem inside prisons where everyone has far fewer civil liberties
than you or I would ever agree to. So that's not the answer. And when
you look at the great conservative educator who got caught habituating
himself to opiates, you can see that more converative education for
the average person isn't likely to be the answer, either.

Moron.

SBH