The Sunshine Empire

I find it amusing that Republicans by and large are most un-nerved by the president for the most Republican things he’s done. When he reformed health care by way of private insurance companies and the Heritage Foundation’s mandate to prevent free riders, they called him socialist. A Republican was the first presidential candidate to forgo public campaign financing but they call Obama doing it bad form. Conservatives gleefully declare liberals at war with Christmas every December but think it’s oversimplifying and deceptive for them to be labeled at war with women. After Obama has cut the taxes of nearly every single American, the elephant gang is left assuring us that multi-billionaires are small businesses. I’m most amused by their reaction to Obama bringing out the knives in attack ads and such. Republican operatives have spent years play-acting like they’re Lee Atwater, and now play the poor victim at Obama’s formidable campaign media operation. It was not please the emoprogs on Twitter, but it sure does drive conservatives around the bend.

Biggus Rickus: There are a lot of stupid truckers.
Senator Sunshine: When you have life that easy, why do you need book lernin
Senator Sunshine: The open road
Senator Sunshine: lot lizards
Senator Sunshine: meth
Biggus Rickus: You make it sound so idyllic, but you’re forgetting the trucker’s natural enemy, the hitchhiker.
Biggus Rickus: Hitchhikers are the leading cause of trucker death.
Senator Sunshine: that and Hep C
Biggus Rickus: You think Hep A and B feel like they started it all but C gets all the credit?
Senator Sunshine: They’re the GoBots of Hepititus
Biggus Rickus: It’s like how Glenn Frey and Don Henley feel about Joe Walsh.
Senator Sunshine: I heard an old interview that was on Stern Show Shuffle with him and Joe Walsh, in the late ’80′s
Senator Sunshine: He was drunk
Biggus Rickus: Joe Walsh?
Senator Sunshine: yes
Biggus Rickus: I think he’s been drunk since 1975.
Biggus Rickus: Would a sober man give up a fine solo career to join the fucking Eagles?
Biggus Rickus: I posit, no.
Senator Sunshine: no
Biggus Rickus: I, Posit is going to be my prequel to Asimov’s I, Robot.
Biggus Rickus: It’s about the guy who posited the theory that robots were possible.
Biggus Rickus: In a twist, he’s Asian.

Back from golf's fifth major, we talk The Players Championship. We also get down on some politics, drinking, Bluegrass, and Rickus Grab-bag throwback style.

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This week we discuss cooking shows, assault weapons and douchebags with Lamborghinis. Rickus and I stage our first stand-up comedians draft, and we are joined again by Jolemite for Quote-Game Empire.

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Today marks the one year anniversary of SEAL Team 6′s successful raid in Abbottabad that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. The man ultimately responsible for the deaths of nearly 3000 people on September 11th, 2001 was finally brought the justice he deserved, and most would think that this would be a moment of unity for the nation. But Republicans and conservatives seems almost disappointed that the accomplishment came on the orders of their most hated enemy, President Barack H. Obama. At the time Republicans tried to paint the achievement as having been the eventual result of George W. Bush’s policies. But they could not explain Bush’s actual words, “I don’t know where he is. I — I’ll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him.” Since the historic anniversary comes during a close election, the president has been using his executive decision in campaign commercials. Republicans have been in full court press to counter the Obama campaign’s use of this signature first term accomplishment.

Mitt Romney and the Republican party have come out swinging to counter the president’s media push on his icing OBL. Their main argument is essentially two fold. The first conservative argument is that Obama marking his achievement for political purposes is a manifest violation of good taste and manners. They say that president Obama is guilty of excessive celebration and deserves a 15 yard penalty. Yet as the GOP looks askance at Obama succeeding where their guy failed, it brings to mind their guy’s excessive celebration of his own. When George W. Bush and team decided that major combat operations in Iraq were over (roughly 9 years prior to them actually coming to a close), they decided to stage a political pep-rally on military property. They ordered the U.S.S. Lincoln to idle off the California coast so Bush could put on a costume and land on the deck of the carrier to deliver his “Mission Accomplished” speech. Many conservatives and Republicans gleefully bought dolls of Bush dressed in his costume. Now if president Obama had parachuted with the Harlem Globtrotters into Ground Zero for the bin Laden death anniversary, and there were action figures for sale, maybe Republicans would have a point.

The GOP also has made the point that any president would have gone after bin Laden and made the call to send SEAL Team 6 into Pakistan. Forgetting that conservatives universally mocked then Senator Obama in 2008 for stating he would, this also seems counter to conservative logic post 9/11. After the tragedy in September of 2001 the standard Republican line was, “Wow, good thing George W. Bush and not Al Gore is president when this happened.” The inference being that a President Gore could not have possibly invaded Afghanistan in response to the Taliban harboring bin Laden. As David Cross points out, Ralph Nader would have invaded Afghanistan. But the Republican party still considers war and the military to be their exclusive birthright. Such simplicity is easy to digest for the simple minded. Recalling again Bush’s dismissive attitude after years of failure to do what he promised, you can see that action minded executives get things done probably. Your Republican friends are also bullshitting you if they claim they would not have mercilessly savaged president Obama as personally responsible had the raid failed.

The real reason for the vociferous push back from Republicans on the anniversary of OBL’s end at the hands of the Obama administration is it strikes down two dear memes in GOP dogma. Candidate Obama was painted as someone who was weak on terror and would invite further attack. Representative Steve King, R-Crazytown said in 2008 “And I will tell you that, if he is elected president, then the, the radical Islamists, the, the al-Qaida, and the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11…” Yet now we see unprecedented bombing in terrorist safe havens, and OBL dead at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. This also lays bare the absurdity of the Republican party’s main political argument for a decade, that only the GOP can protect you from terrorism. Without these cherished memes, what argument based on record is left for the GOP?

This episode we talk music and we join Jolemite for another edition of Quote-Game Empire. We then observe the Hipster – Bro beer summit at the Shrine Auditorium and have another edition of Rickus Grab Bag.

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Biggus Rickus and I recount those movies so horrible they become great, and Jolemite stops by and quizzes both of us for the first round of Quotegame Empire. Lots of sunshine points up for grabs. We end with another in-the-car segment covering a light thunderstorm as your weather authority.

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On both Twitter and Facebook I have seen several postings of an article from Forbes regarding the University Of Florida eliminating its Computer Science department. The article also mentions, as if related, that the UF athletic budget will be going up by roughly $3 million as well. The basic insinuation is UF gave up on computer science in order to provide more money to the football and basketball teams. That makes for a fantastic incendiary post, but it is factually incorrect. There are those who believe that major college academic institutions have been corrupted by avarice and that they regularly disregard their core academic missions in favor of the glory of college sports. They feel that large public universities divert money that is meant for students to large athletic departments. They feel that students lose in the face of the needs of the football team.

The fact of the matter is the University Of Florida does not spend one dime of its own money on any facet of its athletic department. UF’s sports programs are funded completely by a non-profit corporation called the University Athletic Association. They draw funding from donations, licencing agreements, apparel sales and broadcasting rights. Not one dollar of the academic money is ever allocated to it. In fact, according to its budget, the UAA actually gave the University Of Florida over $6 million. Athletics is actually funding academics.

The true reason that UF is forced to cut its computer science department is the $300 million cut to higher education funding signed by Florida Governor Rick Scott. Scott played up the educational funding angle of his budget by signing it at an elementary school, but Governor Skeletor is just engaged in a grand bait and switch. While cutting deeply to the state’s existing 11 universities, Scott then created a brand new and completely un-needed 12th. All to satisfy a political favor to a prominent state senator.

So despite the University Of Florida not spending one dime on athletics, Steven Salzberg and Forbes would like you to believe the death of computer science is due to UF’s misplaced value of athletics. When in reality, the cause is the governor’s misplaced value of political favors over funding higher education. As for Dr. Salzberg I can only assume his post derives from an Ivy League elitist looking down on state universities. Either way, get the facts straight.

We discuss the war on Ann Romney, The legacy of Urban Meyer, and six legged cows. We also do half the show from a moving car on the way to Ben Folds.

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