In the Cosmos

Poking their orange heads up throughout the LipsYard Garden are the Cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus.)
These happy, tall annuals add a dash of color when the other plants start to fade in the heat of summer.Cosmos add an airy balance to the LipsYard Garden.

Not adding balance (or fairness) to the daily news landscape are Rush Limbaugh and his national and local compatriots. They've created an alternate universe where right is wrong, up is down and "callers" (mega dittos, baby) to their staged shows always agree with the host (or get shouted down if they don't.)

When Bill Clinton was president for eight years, they ran a constant campaign of lies against him on radio shows across the country. For the last eight years of George W. Bush, they have conducted an incredibly unified and tightly scripted defense for the worst administration in American history. Now they've turned their Rove-Cheney directed sights on Barack Obama.

To defend themselves from critics, they call their programs "entertainment," when in fact, it's the only news source for regular listeners, who have been lulled into submission by their daily drumbeat of a "biased mainstream media."

There has never been this kind of one-sided, from the talking points, political advocacy in the history of the electronic media, and it has poisoned the political athmosphere like never before.