I went on a roadtrip this past weekend, where I preloaded my blog(With mixed results, LOL) well my son and I went to Tennessee to visit my mom and pops in Eastern Tennessee. Before we left we made our first stop
As the Running Joke goes, we stopped at the Kraznovian Embassy of Friendship and Waffles where we partaked of the goodness of breakfast, waffles and hot coffee and waffles and I have them add Pecans to them.(I'm from Georgia after all)
After making the 4 and half drive drive, we arrived at our first destination..
This place is 3 stories of knives, blades, historical items and they sell guns and ammo, but they had guns but not much ammo. I did pick up a couple of knives for work.
Yes I almost bought this at the Knife works....Only those that have faced the spoons know the pain....
The next day We had to return home and we stopped at the other store..
I took that pic being totally blinded by the sun, and I am surprised that it turned out as good as it did.
We immediately headed to the ammo area to see what they had....and NADA, what little they had we didn't have the bullet launchers to launch them....Oh well.
This was the interior shot I took while we were headed to the 2nd floor headed to the ammo area.
I did pick up a couple of Polo shirts in a smaller size because my other clothes are getting too big and the spousal unit comments that my clothes hangs on me like crap.
I almost bought this for the house, I thought it would have been really appropriate.
I saw several President Trump signs in Sevierville and near Knoxville, That area is serious Trump country. I still saw a bunch of President Trump signs on the cars and on the yards.
Yes I made the Kid drive a lot.....I'm the Dad, I can do that....Actually he volunteered and he did quite well.
This was supposed to drop tomorrow but I got the date off by one day, I had several days programmed in the scheduler thingie because I was out of town and wasn't home to load the 'puter with content for my blog. I had loaded the post below this to post on Sunday and apparently I did the same with this one...and set them 30 minutes apart....and I didn't catch it until I got home tonight....Oh well...
Man the meme is still rolling along.....
I am continuing my string of "bugaloo" songs. This discussion was started in the "Monster Hunter Nation, Hunters Unite", back in November of 2019? it is a Facebook group with enthusiast of the ILOH "International Lord of Hate" A.K.A Larry Correia. We were talking about what song would we use if we looked out of our window or glanced at our security camera and saw this.....
One of the alphabet bois lining up to take down your house...What would be your "Valhalla" song and you would set it up to play as you load up magazines set up the Tannerite Rover, turn on the water irrigation system and fill it with gasoline instead of water and prepare yourself.
I figured it would scar the alphabet boys if they come busting in and hearing a song about people standing for their beliefs and willing to fight for them no matter the cost, Good Music unlike that crap they listen to now. What can I say, My humor is warped....just a bit. Next week will be "I Wanna Rock" and they will be blinded by the light when the Tannerite Rover Barks, The Song by Twisted Sister, Now that should really cause some psych evals., hehehe, some poor ATF guy trying to explain the attraction to his mother because he is imaging himself as The savior of the American Way" instead of the initials of a convenience store....But hey it is ATF...and they ain't right
I decided to roll with "Blinded by the light", I was thinking for the song I can use for Monday Music and I happened to look at the light I use to illuminate the keyboard....as the spots faded away in my retina's I remembered this song by Manfred Mann's Earth Band. "Blinded by the light was my favorite song for many years until Don Henley "Boys of Summer a decade later. The mid 70's was to me the height of the "Superband's era". I was living in Germany, My dad was stationed there and I was getting my music at night from AFN Europe and the "Wolfman Jack" radio show. I jammed out a lot. I would have the radio behind my bed rolling out the music while I was going to sleep. It was a good time. I found out years later that Bruce Springsteen wrote the song but ManFred Mann's Earth Band made it a rock legend. Funny how that worked out.
The song came about when Columbia president Clive Davis, upon listening to an early version of Greetings from Asbury Park N.J., felt the album lacked a potential single. Springsteen wrote this and "Spirit in the Night" in response. According to Springsteen, the song came about from going through a rhyming dictionary in search of appropriate words. The first line of the song, "Madman drummers, bummers, and Indians in the summers with a teenage diplomat" is autobiographical—"Madman drummers" is a reference to drummer Vini Lopez, known as "Mad Man" (later changed to "Mad Dog"); "Indians in the summer" refers to the name of Springsteen's old Little League team; "teenage diplomat" refers to himself. The remainder of the song tells of many unrelated events, with the refrain of "Blinded by the light, cut loose like a deuce, another runner in the night". "Blinded by the Light" was the first song on, and first single from Greetings from Asbury Park N.J. Springsteen's version was commercially unsuccessful and did not appear on the music charts.
Manfred Mann's Earth Band's recording of the song features several changed lyrics. The most prominent change is in the chorus, where Springsteen's "cut loose like a deuce" is replaced with "revved up like a deuce." This is commonly misheard as "wrapped up like a douche" (the V sound in "revved" is almost unpronounced, and the S sound in "deuce" comes across as "SH" due to a significant lisp)." Springsteen himself has joked about the controversy, claiming that it was not until Manfred Mann rewrote the song to be about a feminine hygiene product that it became popular
Manfred Mann's Earth Band released a version of the song on their album The Roaring Silence. Their version includes the "Chopsticks" melody played on piano near the end of the bridge of the song. The song reached #1 on both Billboard's Hot 100 and on the Canadian RPM chart on 19 February 1977. The Manfred Mann's Earth Band recording of "Blinded by the Light" is Springsteen's only Number 1 single as a songwriter on the Hot 100. In 2002, Danish act Funkstar Deluxe released its disco version of this song. A "jazzified" version can be found on Springsteen's Live in Dublin album, recorded with the Sessions Band. The song is featured in the films Blow and Running with Scissors.
I saw this article from Kurt Schlichter I agree with his assessment, I always told people to join the service because I was proud of my military service and it was a legacy thing, as my father and grandfather before me and down the line, My family can trace our service all the way to the revolutionary war, it is how we pay our debt as citizens of the republic, but my son isn't joining and I am actually glad, because the military is really screwed up, the people in charge don't know what they are doing, the people that did know were forced out by the purges by President Obama and he moved his sycophant's in place and they promoted more like supporters of the democrats into higher positions of power. I am concerned what happens if we get into a fight with a peer power like China or Russia, we are going to get our clocks cleaned, they ain't dealing with the internal rot like we are and that is frightening, will we have to to rebuild after getting our asses handed to us, or will they double down on stupid and keep it up?
President Xiden nominee before Congress pledging to "Rid the Armed Forces of all right wing extremist elements" ...Funny that the the left wing wasn't mentioned....I suppose that those people will make the "Zampolits" that will be necessary to guarantee the "political loyalty of the Military"
Kurts Article:
It gives me no pleasure to say that I no longer recommend that young people join the military, and I’m not alone. The non-Blue Falcon veteran community is in full revolt against the conscious decision to decline embraced by our current military leadership. After failing to win a war in the last 20 years – and don’t say Syria, because the second President * woke up in the Oval Office wondering how he got there, more of our troops were heading back into the hellscape for reasons no one has bothered to articulate – the military has decided to target an easier enemy, i.e., other Americans.
See, the problem with me and the other vets who are disgusted by the brass’s choice to focus on SJW priorities instead of, you know, successfully deterring or defeating America’s enemies, is that we actually listened to what we were taught when we were coming up. Most of us were trained by the heroes who put the shattered American military together after the Democrat war in Vietnam broke it. We learned about leadership, about putting mission first but taking care of people always, and about objectives and how to attain them.
None of that’s a thing anymore.
So, count us out from complicity with the degeneration of our proud institution into a giant gender studies struggle session. And that’s a big deal. Do you know where the military gets a huge chunk on its recruits? Legacies. These are young troops who want to be like their father or grandfather or big brother or neighbor or other role model. I was the third-generation commissioned officer in my family, on both sides. Guess what? Right now, if one of my kids goes in, it’s against my advice. And again, I am not alone. I hear this over and over and over from other vets. And it makes me furious.
Congratulations, Pentagon. This is all on you.
You put two divisions behind wire in D.C. to protect against phantom insurrections by guys who dress like Vikings. And then you can’t even feed the troops, or house them. Gosh, if only there was a great big five-sided building full of generals just a couple miles away to square that idiocy away.
Oh, wait, there is.....
And now, though we have not won a war in two decades, our military has plenty of time to stop training and focus on purging the ranks of people who like the politicians the current administration opposes. I eagerly await the introduction to the new 69D MOS – political officer. A zampolit for every battalion – hell, why not every company?
And don’t patronize us with baloney about how this is just about rooting out all those secret “extremists” lurking in the ranks – that’s right up there with sending the new second louie down to the supply room to retrieve a box of grid squares. How about you stop trying to expel these mystery “extremists” and start firing the incompetents all around you?
Sadly, this trickle-down SJW foolishness is reaching what used to be the pointy end of the spear. Generals and colonels adopt it because if they don’t, they’ll get tossed out – if you invest three decades in the green machine, it must be awfully tempting to hold your tongue to nail down that retirement and then get the hell out ahead of the deluge. It’s the company grades who buy this pap who are most disconcerting. One lieutenant – for you civilians, lieutenants are the wisest officers in the military, according to lieutenants – went on Twitter to inform me and some other people who were actually alive and in the military the last time America won a war that when we Neanderthals were serving, the military was awash in “white supremacy.”Could have fooled me. When I got off active duty the first time 30 years ago this May, I was stunned at how often race came up back in the civilian world. It almost never did when I was in the service, though in basic training it would have been nice for the awesome power of my pallor to keep Drill Sergeant Whittlesey from dropping me for countless sets of 20.
But hey, some 23-year-old assistant S2 who operates the coffeemaker doubtless has better insights into stuff happening before he was born that those of us who were actually there. The only positive thing about my interaction with that guy was my relief in knowing that I was no longer the dumbest lieutenant in the history of the United States military.
We had our imperfections and misadventures back in the day, sure, but if some idiot had done something bigoted to another solder, we would have slammed him. The only thing that mattered when a new soldier showed up was whether or not he was squared away. But not now. No, winning battles is hard, but internal snipe hunts are easy and fun! Why focus on external warfare when the career payoff for witch-hunting within the organization is so much bigger? Check out this new Navy pledge – us vets’ enlistment/commissioning oaths were apparently insufficient for today’s woke battlespace:
“I pledge to advocate for and acknowledge all lived experiences and intersectional identities of every Sailor in the Navy. I pledge to engage in ongoing self-reflection, education and knowledge sharing to better myself and my communities. I pledge to be an example in establishing healthy, inclusive and team-oriented environments. I pledge to constructively share all experiences and information gained from activities above to inform the development of Navy-wide reforms.”
The most disconcerting part of this is that it was apparently written on purpose. Is the next thing we’ll see some sort of mandatory woke Space Force interpretive dance?
No, I do not recommend anyone subject themselves to this sort of four-year camo sociology seminar in which they must “pledge to advocate for and acknowledge all lived experiences and intersectional identities of every Sailor in the Navy” or any other branch. My intersectional identity is “America,” and I am utterly uninterested in any other identity.
Maybe the brass should focus on killing America’s enemies, and maybe not running ships into other ships? Both those things would be totally awesome.
War is a serious business, even for guys like me who ran heavily armed carwashes. But this current tail-chasing is not serious. The military is hollowing out as people vote with their combat boots. Word from inside is that it can’t keep troops from ETSing – that is, leaving the service when their obligation ends. If our troops want their thoughts controlled and to be programed into little lefty conformobots, they can go off to college – the Dems want to give it away to slackers for free anyway, so who needs to ruck march and attend Bill Kristol’s latest war to get the G.I. Bill?
The military used to be a welcoming safe space for patriots. But no more. With this insane babbling about “internal enemies,” does anyone think that potential recruits do not understand that this slur is what the liberal elite that the military brass obeys calls people like them and their families? Why would you join an organization that sees you as an enemy?
I wish I could believe that the generals and admirals will en masse reject this sack race to failure, but it may be too late, at least until we get a real president determined to unscrew this cluster. It will be hard. The academies and war colleges are already full of the same kind of liberal hacks that civilian education is infested with. I wish I could believe that the generals and admirals will en masse reject this sack race to failure, but it may be too late, at least until we get a real president determined to unscrew this cluster. It will be hard. The academies and war colleges are already full of the same kind of liberal hacks that civilian education is infested with.
We can laugh at the antics, but the terrible reality is that this crap is going to get a bunch of our young people killed. Let’s be very clear – when your priority is social justice nonsense instead of preparing to fight and win, you are opening up a lane for the enemy and the enemy is going to drive right through it.
But look on the bright side. When something horrible happens – maybe the Chinese will send a carrier to the bottom, for example – we can all take comfort in the fact that our sons and daughters, because it’s us patriots’ sons and daughters who usually fight and die in America’s wars, perished because our leadership failed to prepare, but at least they died fully aware of trans intersectionality.
I get this Digital Magazine in my email box because I am an airline employee and it has a lot of good stuff in it. I thought it had some cool stuff about Boeing and the problems the company is having. I have blogged before about Boeing and the Hiccups the company is having. We in the aviation industry are concerned about the future of the company. We don't see Boeing going away, but somehow it going away from its Commercial airplane division and focusing on government contracts and leaving the commercial planes to Airbus and the Chinese startups which would be a disaster for America.
Douglas Aircraft started down a 30-year path toward extinction when it merged with McDonnell in 1967. McDonnell management prioritized military programs and was not willing to make the investment necessary to maintain its commercial jetliner market position. By the time it merged with Boeing, Douglas’ jetliner products were on their last legs.
It has been nearly 25 years since Boeing and McDonnell Douglas merged. Given Boeing’s significant engineering cuts, program execution problems, clear prioritization of shareholder returns, extremely uncertain product development road map and deteriorating market share outlook, it is time to consider whether Boeing Commercial Aircraft (BCA) is destined to share Douglas’ fate. Three criteria are key.
1. Slashed engineering spending. Boeing announced it would cut BCA independent (noncontract) research and development (IR&D) by about 25%, and indeed, 2020 spending fell from 2019 by slightly more than that.
Yet over the past 10 years (2011-20), BCA spent $22.3 billion on IR&D, an average of 4.8% of BCA revenue in that period. McDonnell Douglas, by contrast, spent an average of just over $300 million annually on all noncontract R&D between 1993 and 1996, and this included military and space technology research. If McDonnell IR&D was two-thirds commercial, then BCA’s engineering spending has been about 10 times greater.
However, much of this BCA R&D budget was spent on rectifying problems with the 787 and 737 MAX. The rest was spent on derivatives. Boeing has not launched a clean-sheet jetliner since 2004, when the 787 began. Douglas went 30 years without a new jet launch; Boeing is at the 17-year mark.
2. Market coverage gaps. Douglas never had the product line needed to cover all market segments. But as new segments emerged, such as twin-aisle twinjets, Douglas’ coverage further deteriorated. Also, it lost single-aisle bandwidth as the MD-90 failed as a broader family.
BCA has much broader coverage, with no significant gaps relative to Airbus. But its midmarket-segment standing is a major problem (see graph). The A321neo is outselling the 737 MAX 9/10 by about 5 to 1. This implies a sizable market-share loss in coming years.
3. Abandoned product developments. McDonnell Douglas mooted multiple concept airplanes aimed at shoring up its market standing: the MD-XX advanced trijet, the MD-XX twinjet and the MD-12 quadjet, among others. The MD-90 was envisaged as a broad family of single-aisle jets; ultimately, just the 150-seat -30 was built, with the -10, -40 and -50/55 failing to launch.
Boeing’s history of failed concept jets is smaller but more concerning. Over the past five years, considerable engineering resources were expended on the new midmarket airplane (NMA). As Senior Editor Guy Norris wrote recently (AW&ST Feb. 8-21, 2021, p. 12), the NMA might be revived. But as I wrote four years ago (AW&ST April 3-17, 2017, p. 12), using a twin-aisle to compete with a single-aisle may be a badly flawed idea, and the idea of leveraging an existing model series—a larger 737 MAX, shrunken 787 or reengined 767—is an even worse option. Boeing needs to go back to the drawing board and create a new large single-aisle.
These three criteria are cause for concern for BCA. Yet if Boeing does not launch a new product, industry competitive dynamics might still save BCA or at least prolong its decline. The slow death of Douglas Aircraft took 30 years. But Douglas faced two very aggressive competitors that were constantly investing in the future. If Airbus refrains from new clean-sheet launches and is content with a 60-65% market share, Boeing, even without a new airplane, might be able to maintain its current position for decades. This remains an industry with very high barriers to entry.
But if a new jetliner prime emerges, one more credible than the longtime Russian or Chinese contenders, BCA’s aging product line would be an easy target. Alternatively, Airbus could decide to make a few key investments in jetliner product development, targeting, say, the 737 MAX 8 with a stretched version of the A220 or targeting the 787 with a new clean-sheet model.
Boeing, therefore, should not rely on the complacency of competitors—that is a poor substitute for strategy or investing in the future. And a Douglas-like fate would be a tragedy for the entire industry.
Remember my talking about a fellow blogger and he vanished...Well he is back under a new site, he was doxxed, threatened with arrest, and to have his livelihood wiped away all because some SJW didn't like what he said. This blogger had 84,000 lifetime post in 5 years. His stuff has been tamer than my stuff, but he got targeted. Scary time we live in. Well he asked me not to mention his "Old Name" until he is sure all the dust is settled. Here is the site for his new blog, go check it out and bookmark it!
I Heard that El Rushbo crossed over the rim late yesterday, I was kinda expecting it, but it still bummed me out. The influence he had on me was incredible and I will explain what I am talking about. When I got out of the service I had this belief that I was alone and that nobody else believed like I did and my belief structure was "Weird". Well one day after I took a job with a commercial courier company in Atlanta after I was done with Pizza Manager and being a security guard. The name of the company was "Direct Express" they were a subsidiary of "Southeastern Freight". I had high hopes for the company but I realized that after a while that the company wasn't going to grow any bigger than it was so any chance of my moving up as a driver was pretty nil. Don't get me wrong, it was a good company to drive for but there was no long term future but I digress. Well anyway I was riding with the senior driver and he was listening to the Local talk show guy named "Boortz," then to Rush, he went from AM750 to AM 640 in the afternoon and I was mesmerized, I heard people on the radio that sounded like "me."....do you realize what that sounded like in the early mid 90's what it sounded like to realize that you were not alone? So while I was doing my courier stuff, I would tune into Neal Boortz in the Morning and Rush in the Afternoon. After Hillarycare went down in flames after the 1994 Mid term election, Neal Boortz hosted a "Shred" party at the radio station and I drove my courier van off my route to go by there and got a mug and a sandwich bag with a shredded page of the defunct bill, It was glorious!
My souvenir mug with the shredded bill inside it on a shelf in my bonus room with some of my other souvenirs.
I than continued my route and switched over to Rush in the afternoon and that was my routine until I got hired by Ford Motor Company. I got paid a lot more money at Ford and the future prospects were much better since I was getting married. I did Miss the daily talk radio, I couldn't get it in the plant because of the noise but when I was off, I would still tune in and listen. Listening to them enabled me to formulate my thoughts and debate people much more effectively and.....
Rush was a huge influence in my life as in many others, he showed us that we were not alone, and for that alone, I am forever grateful to him.
This is Rush Limbaugh 2009 CPAC speech, it was about 90 minutes long and was totally off the cuff, I rank it there with Andrew Breitbart in 2012.
Rush will be missed by the Conservative movement.........
Rush Limbaugh, the monumentally influential media icon who transformed talk radio and politics in his decades behind the microphone, helping shape the modern-day Republican Party, died Wednesday morning at the age of 70 after a battle with lung cancer, his family announced.
Limbaugh's wife, Kathryn, made the announcement on his radio show. "Losing a loved one is terribly difficult, even more so when that loved one is larger than life," she said. "Rush will forever be the greatest of all time."
The radio icon learned he had Stage IV lung cancer in January 2020 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by then-President Trump at the State of the Union address days later. First lady Melania Trump then presented America’s highest civilian honor to Limbaugh in an emotional moment on the heels of his devastating cancer diagnosis.
"Rush Limbaugh: Thank you for your decades of tireless devotion to our country," President Trump said during the address.
He told Fox News on Wednesday afternoon: "There aren’t too many legends around, but he is a legend."
It was not clear exactly where Limbaugh died. He frequently broadcast his show from his home studio in Palm Beach, Fla.
Limbaugh is considered one of the most influential media figures in American history and has played a consequential role in conservative politics since "The Rush Limbaugh Show" began in 1988. Perched behind his Golden EIB (Excellence in Broadcasting) Microphone, Limbaugh spent over three decades as arguably both the most beloved and polarizing person in American media.
The program that began 33 years ago on national syndication with only 56 radio stations grew to be the most listened-to radio show in the United States, airing on more than 600 stations, according to the show’s website. Up to 27 million people tuned in on a weekly basis and Limbaugh has lovingly referred to his passionate fan base as "Dittoheads," as they would often say "ditto" when agreeing with the iconic radio host.
In his final radio broadcast of 2020, Limbaugh thanked his listeners and supporters, revealing at the time that he had outlived his prognosis.
"I wasn't expected to be alive today," he said. "I wasn't expected to make it to October, and then to November, and then to December. And yet, here I am, and today, got some problems, but I'm feeling pretty good today."
Limbaugh helped boost Trump’s influence prior to the 2016 election simply by taking him seriously as a candidate when other established conservatives didn’t want the former reality television star anywhere near the Republican Party. Many of Limbaugh’s listeners eventually became Trump supporters and the radio legend continued to defend Trump throughout his presidency despite occasional disagreements.
In the heat of the 2020 presidential election, Limbaugh hosted Trump in October for what was an unprecedented two-hour "radio rally", during which the president was virtually given control of the coveted golden microphone to answer questions from the host and his listeners.
Limbaugh, born in Cape Girardeau, Mo., on Jan. 12, 1951, began his radio career in 1967 as a "helper" when he was only 16 years old. He eventually graduated to disk jockey and worked at a small station roughly 100 miles south of St. Louis while attending high school.
"I was totally consumed," Limbaugh told the New York Times in 1990, noting that his idol was a Chicago radio host named Larry Lujack. By 1971, Limbaugh was a morning radio host in Pittsburgh, where he was oddly told to cover a certain amount of "farm news" because the area was surrounded by many agriculture communities. In 2007 he explained to listeners how the young radio host managed to keep listeners despite the bizarre requirement.
Rush Limbaugh in his studio in an undated photo. (mark peterson/Corbis via Getty Images, File)
"The last thing that the audience of my show cares about is farm news. If farm news came on, bam! They pushed the button and go somewhere else. So, we had to figure out, ‘Okay, how do we do this and protect the license?’ So I turned the farm news every day into a funny bit with farm sound effects and the roosters crowing and so forth, and I’d make fun of the stockyard feed prices or whatever it was, so that we could say, ‘We’re doing barn news,’ agriculture news. There was all kinds of things like that," Limbaugh told listeners.
The tidbit offered a glimpse into Limbaugh’s early days, proving that he was a master of keeping audiences engaged from a young age. Limbaugh has said he realized America was the "greatest country ever" when taking trips to Europe and Asia in his late 20s and early 30s, an experience that helped shape his political views.
"I’m aware that the United States is young compared to countries in Europe and Asia that have been around for hundreds of years. They’re thousand-year-old civilizations," he told listeners in 2013. "So, I go to Europe and say, ‘Wait a minute. Why is this bedroom so damned old-fashioned and doesn’t work? What the hell is this? They call this a toilet?’ So I started asking myself, ‘How is it that we, who have only been around 200 years, are light-years ahead of people that have been alive a thousand?’ So, I started thinking this. It was a matter of genuine curiosity to me, and not from a braggadocios standpoint."
Limbaugh continued the trip down memory lane: "I was literally interested in how that happened, and then I started to think about all the other things that we led the world in: Manufacturing, technology, innovation, invention, creation, and it all led back to liberty and freedom and the pursuit of happiness and dreams coming true and working hard for whatever you want and being able to do what you love, not just have to dream about it."
From that point forward, Limbaugh believed that "American exceptionalism" shouldn’t be frowned upon, and his conservative views became more prominent.
"We stood for the concepts that are in our Declaration of Independence: Right to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. We stood for that, and we were the beacon for it, and to this day that is why the oppressed of the world still seek to come into this country," he said.
Limbaugh also credited National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr. for teaching him how to articulate conservative views.
Rush Limbaugh at a Pittsburgh Steelers game in 2012. (George Gojkovich/Getty Images, File)
"He single-handedly is responsible for my learning to form and frame my beliefs and express them verbally in a concise and understandable way," Limbaugh once said.
In 1987, the Federal Communications Commission repealed the Fairness Doctrine, a policy that had been in place since 1949 and mandated that both sides of controversial political issues receive equal time on radio programs. The decision by the FCC paved the way for Limbaugh to broadcast his conservative views without fear of being punished by the government, quickly leading to the now-prominent talk radio format that he pioneered.
After local radio gigs in Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Sacramento, Limbaugh landed at WABC in New York shortly after the Fairness Doctrine was repealed. It was there that he changed talk radio forever when "The Rush Limbaugh Show" became a cultural phenomenon for both the message and the way it was delivered.
"Unlike most radio talkers, who affect a casual, intimate style, Limbaugh sounds like he's on a soapbox. He is intoxicated by words, especially those flowing from his own lips. His vocabulary is extensive; his diction tends to the grandiosely formal, though overblown to the point of self-parody. His nervous energy plays out through hands that never stop moving. They rattle the papers, slap the desk, punch the console. Whap! Whap! Whump! This muted percussion is often heard on the air, a rhythmic accompaniment to Limbaugh's voice," author Lewis Grossberger wrote in New York Times Magazine in 1990.
At one point after early struggles to find success in the radio business, Limbaugh temporarily left the industry and worked for the Kansas City Royals baseball team. Lucky for conservatives and "Dittoheads," he eventually returned to radio.
"Thanks for all you’re doing to promote Republican and conservative principles. Now that I’ve retired from active politics, I don’t mind that you have become the Number One voice for conservatism in our country," President Ronald Reagan once wrote in a letter to Limbaughthat was published by National Review in 2003.
"I know the liberals call you ‘the most dangerous man in America,’ but don’t worry about it, they used to say the same thing about me. Keep up the good work. America needs to hear the way things ought to be," Reagan continued.
Limbaugh was eventually enshrined in the Radio Hall of Fame and the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame. He was a five-time winner of the National Association of Broadcasters Marconi Award for "Excellence in Syndicated and Network Broadcasting," a No. 1 New York Times bestselling author and was named one of Barbara Walters’ 10 Most Fascinating People in 2008 and one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2009.
Rush Limbaugh speaking in San Jose, Calif., in 2005. (John Medina/WireImage, File)
While Limbaugh made his career on radio, a speech he delivered at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2009 is widely considered one of the most important moments of his career -- an explanation of "who conservatives are" that caused the crowd to erupt with chants of "USA! USA!"
"We love people. When we look out over the United States of America, when we are anywhere, when we see a group of people, such as this or anywhere, we see Americans. We see human beings. We don't see groups. We don't see victims. We don't see people we want to exploit. What we see -- what we see is potential. We do not look out across the country and see the average American, the person that makes this country work. We do not see that person with contempt. We don't think that person doesn't have what it takes. We believe that person can be the best he or she wants to be if certain things are just removed from their path like onerous taxes, regulations and too much government," Limbaugh told the crowd.
"We want every American to be the best he or she chooses to be. We recognize that we are all individuals. We love and revere our founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence," he continued. "We believe that the preamble to the Constitution contains an inarguable truth that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, Freedom and the pursuit of happiness."
In 2001, Limbaugh was diagnosed with an autoimmune inner-ear disease that drastically affected his hearing.
In 2003, Limbaugh checked himself into a treatment facility after becoming addicted to pain medication that he was prescribed following back surgery. Also in 2003, Limbaugh resigned from a brief role as ESPN’s "Sunday NFL Countdown" after making controversial comments about then-Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, who the broadcasting legend said was overrated by media members who wanted to see a Black quarterback thrive.
Limbaugh is survived by his wife.
Fox News’ Charles Creitz, Yael Halon and David Rutz contributed to this report.
