Rush joins Beck in hyping a supposed GE/NBC conspiracy concerning WH security breach

Apparently feeling that a cartoon is more important than a major presidential speech on the war in Afghanistan, Rush kicked off his show today by complaining that President Obama's address on the war would pre-empt tonight's showing of A Charlie Brown Christmas (now scheduled to air December 8). Not to worry, though, for Rush declared he was just concerned about America's children, and then he said Obama's ears are so floppy that the children would think they were watching a cartoon anyway. He also introduced his newest parody, focusing on the troop levels Obama plans to dispatch to Afghanistan.

After declaring that former Vice President Dick Cheney -- who apparently best represents the GOP's core values to 0.125 percent of Republicans -- is right about whatever criticism he decides to offer about Obama, Rush took issue with a Washington Post article about Obama's address from West Point tonight. Rush also claimed that Obama doesn't like the military and that "it's a nagging annoyance to him." Naturally, Rush claimed that Obama's stance on Afghanistan encouraged the Taliban.

Deciding to treat us to the benefit of his logic and wisdom, Rush engaged in the kind of gossip that most rational people don't consider news, citing the National Enquirer to discuss Tiger Woods' car accident. Rush then followed Glenn Beck in alleging a conspiracy involving NBC, GE, and the couple who crashed the White House state dinner last week, claiming it was all being done to provide cover for the Obama administration.

Rush blames Bill Clinton for letting bin Laden go

Back from a break, Rush continued an earlier attack on Democratic Rep. Maurice Hinchey for his comments about the recently released Senate Foreign Relations Committee report on our failure to capture Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora and claimed that the report is nothing but political cover for Obama with his base on Afghanistan. However, as The New York Times reported, this Senate committee report is based in part on a 2007 U.S. Special Operations Command report. Rush then used a Wall Street Journal editorial to bash Sen. John Kerry's timing on the release of the Foreign Relations Committee report. In the middle of all this, Rush amazingly declared that he has always believed that bin Laden was killed at Tora Bora, apparently contradicting the reported beliefs of the U.S. intelligence community. Later on, Rush claimed that his proof that bin Laden is dead is the fact that Obama hasn't captured him yet, and of course, in right-wing strawman land, Obama can do anything. Next, Rush blamed Bill Clinton and Richard Clarke for letting bin Laden go.

Apparently on a Wall Street Journal kick in his first hour, Rush then read in full a Journal op-ed by Fouad Ajami, a senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution. Rush interrupted his reading of the article a couple of times to rant that Obama was raised to hate the United States, something Rush seems to state just about every week:

LIMBAUGH: Mr. Obama was born and raised on the notion that this country is unjust and immoral, that it discriminates, that it is unfair, that it is bigoted, that it is racist, that it has stolen the world's resources. It is the cause of poverty around the world. He believes all of this. It is easily understood when you see him running around the world apologizing for this country. He is essentially thinking he's making friends by telling these people that hate us that he understands the hate and that their hate's justified.

Rush continues to claim "Climategate" proves global warming is "a hoax"

After briefly complaining that Obama has mentioned the cost of our wars several times and actually plugging for the "lefty website" CostofWar.com, Rush read in full a Politico op-ed claiming that the White House is more or less writing the media's script for coverage of Obama. Incidentally, Media Matters has repeatedly pointed out that Politico often functions as a GOP bulletin board. Rush used this piece to claim that in fact, Obama never agonized over the decision to deploy more troops to Afghanistan and did not have real meetings with military, security, and diplomatic advisers over the decision.

After another break, Rush took a caller who wanted to talk about the deployment of more troops to Afghanistan, since he has a son in the Marines who is slated to deploy in January. Rush changed the course of the discussion once the caller mentioned that he cannot see a difference between the Democratic and Republican parties, wanting to "nip this in the bud" and declaring that a third party is not the way to go. Later on, Rush pontificated several times that third parties go nowhere. Rush then took another caller who talked about Afghanistan, specifically seeming to cite the Senate Foreign Relations Committee report about the failure to nab bin Laden at Tora Bora. Rush argued with the caller, not seeming to believe that he was an independent voter because he was "parroting" Kerry. Rush then reiterated for a second time his belief that bin Laden died at Tora Bora. A little bit later, Rush felt the need to confront head-on the accusation that bin Laden slipped away at Tora Bora, reading a 2004 New York Times op-ed by retired Gen. Tommy Franks. Media Matters pointed out at the time that several of Frank's claims contradicted news reports on this matter.

Rush gets scared of talk of a conservative third party

Seemingly preoccupied with talk of third parties, Rush continued to savage the idea of a conservative third party, arguing that conservatism is in ascendency and that they can take the Republican Party back. Rush said he's for a third party only if someone like Ralph Nader runs on the left again. Rush then appeared to tie the tea-party movement to the GOP, claiming that "there would be no tea parties" if the Republican Party were the same as the Democratic Party. Trying to emphasize the differences between the two, Rush declared that the Republican Party is not trying to harm the intelligence community. Former undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame might disagree with that. Rush continued his tirade against a conservative third-party movement, stating that it would guarantee a Democratic majority in perpetuity.

Rush started off his third hour by taking a sexist potshot at the editorial staff of The Washington Post for publishing an article on loneliness. He then attacked Obama's upcoming unemployment summit, using an American Thinker blog post to complain about the private-sector experience of Obama's Cabinet appointees. Interestingly, the Congressional Budget Office just officially estimated that an additional 600,000 to 1.6 million people were employed in the country thanks to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Next, Rush continued to claim that Senator Mary Landrieu was bribed with $300 million in needed federal Medicaid assistance, and then continued to claim that the stimulus money is a "slush fund" to re-elect Democrats. Rush then made the incredible claim that the stimulus money is "a threat to our democracy":

LIMBAUGH: Looking for ways here to illustrate and dramatize the porkulus. Just how much money 800 billion dollars really is. And of course, we've -- we're told we've got a couple hundred billion in TARP money that hasn't been spent. So we've got basically a trillion-dollar slush fund for the executive branch, Obama to use. Now, even the liberals in Congress, and even some in the state-controlled media were shocked when they learned that Mary Landrieu was bribed with $300 million for her yes vote on Obamacare. But even that is chump change. The liberals have much, much street money to buy votes now. And that, more than anything, threatens our democracy.

Rush continues to push Alex Jones-esque conspiracy theories

Back for the final half-hour of his show, Rush gleefully reported that Phil Jones, head of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit is stepping down, pending an independent investigation that "he overstated the case for man-made climate change." Rush then proudly mentioned that his favorite climate-change-is-a-cover-for-global-government conspiracy theorist, Lord Monckton, released a report on "Climategate." Unsurprisingly, Monckton was recently pushing his load of garbage on noted 9-11 truther Alex Jones' radio show. Rush himself has recently promoted Jones' website.

Rush rounded out his show today by crowing about an AP report that Sarah Palin's book, Going Rogue, has gone "platinum." Of course, it helps to sell books when major retailers and conservative publications are deliberately losing money to try to get rid of their stockpiles of a book.

Zachary Aronow and Kate Conway contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

Highlights

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: You can count me among those who think bin Laden is dead, by the way. I have always thought it, just like I've always known that global warming is man-made hoax.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Mr. Obama was born and raised on the notion that this country is unjust and immoral, that it discriminates, that it is unfair, that it is bigoted, that it is racist, that it has stolen the world's resources. It is the cause of poverty around the world. He believes all of this. It is easily understood when you see him running around the world apologizing for this country. He is essentially thinking he's making friends by telling these people that hate us that he understands the hate and that their hate's justified.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Now, to Obama and his paid hacks on TV today. Tell me, I want to know: How many people has Barack Obama liberated? You say he's such a great president, he has such a command of all these foreign policy issues and military issues. How many people has Barack Obama liberated from bondage? Reagan liberated Eastern Europe. Reagan liberated Latin America. Bush 43 liberated 50 million Muslims. Obama hasn't liberated anyone, and he won't. Barack Obama likes Fidel Castro. He likes Hugo Chavez. He likes the dictators in the Middle East. He bows down to them. He kisses up to them.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Looking for ways here to illustrate and dramatize the porkulus. Just how much money 800 billion dollars really is. And of course, we've -- we're told we've got a couple hundred billion in TARP money that hasn't been spent. So we've got basically a trillion-dollar slush fund for the executive branch, Obama to use. Now, even the liberals in Congress, and even some in the state-controlled media were shocked when they learned that Mary Landrieu was bribed with $300 million for her yes vote on Obamacare. But even that is chump change. The liberals have much, much street money to buy votes now. And that, more than anything, threatens our democracy.

"Socialism" watch

LIMBAUGH: Anybody who is voting for anybody else in the Democrat Party is an -- a liberal. Or a progressive. The progressives call themselves that because "liberal" in politics is a dirty word. It's a harmful term. They come up with all other kinds of labels for themselves to hide who they really are. But who they really are in the modern parlance, modern lexicon, is liberal. If they are in the Democrat Party and voting for Democrats, if they don't know what they're doing or if they do know what they're doing doesn't matter. They're causing the problem. They are facilitating the problem. They are all leftists.

Some may be further left than the liberals you say are not as further -- far left as the progressives, but they're all voting Obama. They're all voting for Harry Reid. They have empowered Nancy Pelosi. They made Howard -- Harry Reid -- they empowered Howard Dean to become chairman of the Democrat Party, and he's out there saying that capitalism's dead, socialism is the order of the day, and so forth. So, in my attempt to communicate to people who think they're independent, who are moderate, who are not as ideological as I am, who I wish would become as ideological as I am -- the whole point of global warming debate is to say these people who have been caught engaging in fraud are the same people that are running the United States of America, proposing health care.

I don't want to get into distinctions here because it doesn't matter. We have an ideological chasm in this country, and the left, the far left, the kook fringe, whatever -- the combination of the American left is the greatest threat that we have right now. And the only way that that threat's going to be understood is through a simple, understandable explanation of who those people are. So, that's why I say: progressives -- eh, just trying to cover up the fact that they're leftists. They're socialists, they're Maoists, they're Marxists. They're all liberals, as far as I'm concerned. They're all leftists.

Rush on poll as most influential conservative: "This is news?"

Naturally, Limbaugh couldn't resist starting today's show promoting recent polling that put him as the nation's most influential conservative, although he was miffed that he earned only 26 percent of the vote.

Rush cited numerous examples of how America is being "scammed" by the Obama administration, including alleged state dinner crashers Tareq and Michaele Salahi's connections to one of the right's lamest bogeymen, Rashid Khalidi:

LIMBAUGH: Now, this stuff at the White House, these two intruders at the White House. I'm not so sure we're not being scammed here by the White House. I -- it turns out that these two people know Rashid Khali -- Khahil -- Khalil, who is the anti-- pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel adviser to Obama. He -- these two people, this guy was on a board -- his name's since been scrubbed -- but his name was -- he was on a board with Rashid Khalili -- I think that's his name. And apparently, these two people's faces were not unfamiliar to Obama. I'm still collecting data. I got something sent to me just before the program starts. I don't have time to digest it right now. But when it's the Obama White House, remember we're not dealing in the universe of reality.

Now, something clearly is going on up there. The Secret Service -- there were two checkpoints where these people's names were not on the list and yet they were passed on to the next checkpoint and ultimately admitted.

Rush compares climate scientists to tobacco companies

Back from the break, Rush discussed the "scam" of global warming and didn't really stop until the end of the show. He read from an American Thinker blog post asserting that emails from Britain's Climate Research Unit (CRU) weren't hacked, but rather were leaked, which seems to be a common conservative argument as of late.

Limbaugh claimed that the mainstream science community "hijacked the peer review system and threw it all out" and that the IPCC has destroyed the scientific process.

Limbaugh read from a Hot Air post (that linked to a London Times article) that reported on CRU officials "throwing away" raw temperature data. Of course, Rush didn't exactly emphasize that the scientists still had the data that was "adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected."

Echoing George Will, Rush claimed that CRU scientists said that it was "devastating" that they couldn't disprove global cooling. Incidentally, the email in question referred not to global cooling, but the difficulty in explaining temporary "lack of warming at the moment."

Rush also read from a Guardian article to criticize IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri for stating that "even if an author or two has a particular bias it is completely unlikely that bias will find its way into the IPCC report."

Limbaugh really started to stretch things when he compared the CRU's handling of data to tobacco companies' hiding of studies that showed smoking causes cancer.

Rush contradicts himself on suppression of evidence of global warming in one breath

In what was without a doubt the highlight of a very tired and recycled first hour, a caller hilariously called out Rush for hypocritically ignoring the Bush administration's suppression of evidence of climate change, accusing Limbaugh of "simply lying" about the scientific consensus. Rush dived head first into an all-out attack on the caller, calling him a "menace" and claiming that while there is no data supporting global warming for the Bush administration to have suppressed, the Bush administration was doing us a favor by suppressing data that supported global warming:

LIMBAUGH: Now, wait. You're missing the point here. You're just being totally guided by your ideology, by your liberalism, by your partisanship. There is no man-made global warming. Do you understand that? There was nothing to suppress. Anybody that suppressed data that said there was man-made global warming was doing us a favor. They knew it was a hoax, and they were not spreading lies.

Returning to smearing advocates of climate change legislation, Rush mocked a U.K. climate scientist who predicted widespread devastation if climate change isn't addressed and was unmoved by a BBC article that reported that "[c]limate 'is a major cause' of conflict in Africa." Rush then accused the climate change community of employing "terror tactics" and of being a "cabal of thugs" who are "shaking down" oil companies.

Rush calls Paul Krugman a "genuine idiot"

Before playing Paul Krugman's comments on ABC's This Week in which the Nobel Prize-winning economist defended climate change theory, Rush called him a "genuine idiot." Wrapping up the hour, Rush bizarrely claimed that "there aren't any" green jobs and that photographs of polar bears stranded on ice floes are doctored. Oh, and Rush informed his listeners that polar bears love swimming, anyway.

Tying up a few loose ends in a very climate-heavy segment, Rush again ignored prominent conservatives' support and criticized the Obama's administration's decision to hold civilian trials for terror suspects.

Limbaugh claimed that Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) "suggests that people who don't believe in civilian trials for terrorists should just leave America and go someplace else." Conrad actually said that trying terror suspects in civilian courts has been done "very successfully" and that "if people don't believe in our system, they ought to go somewhere else."

Zachary Aronow and Kate Conway contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

Highlights

LIMBAUGH: Now, this stuff at the White House, these two intruders at the White House. I'm not so sure we're not being scammed here by the White House. I -- it turns out that these two people know Rashid Khali -- Khahil -- Khalil, who is the anti-- pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel adviser to Obama. He -- these two people, this guy was on a board -- his name's since been scrubbed -- but his name was -- he was on a board with Rashid Khalili -- I think that's his name. And apparently, these two people's faces were not unfamiliar to Obama. I'm still collecting data. I got something sent to me just before the program starts. I don't have time to digest it right now. But when it's the Obama White House, remember we're not dealing in the universe of reality.

Now, something clearly is going on up there. The Secret Service -- there were two checkpoints where these people's names were not on the list and yet they were passed on to the next checkpoint and ultimately admitted.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Senator Kent Conrad suggests that people who don't believe in civilian trials for terrorists should just leave America and go someplace else. This, from last Wednesday. Senator Kent Conrad told Cybercast News Service that civilian courts are well-suited to prosecute Al Qaeda terrorists, and if people don't believe in our system, maybe they ought to go somewhere else. So here you have a political hack -- and by the way a friend of Angelo at Countrywide -- who has never done anything in his life except hold public office, thinks we should all leave America if we don't understand how important it is to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in a civilian court in New York City. He obviously knows so much more about both radical Islam and American history than any of us. Doofus Democrat.

Rush wrapped up the show with another nod to his purported greatness, complete with a wink to the ditto cam.

Outrageous comments

CALLER: Hi. I have to say I'm kind of surprised at your outrage over the suppression of scientific data when it was something that the Bush administration was so dedicated to. There's dozens of examples of them suppressing and censoring any data that would support global warming. I didn't -- don't recall you making a peep about that.

LIMBAUGH: Because there isn't any data that supports global warming. That's the whole point.

CALLER: Then why would they choose to censor so much of it from government reports?

LIMBAUGH: They didn't censor anything; they refused to go along with the hoax. They were censoring data that did not prove what the global warming people wanted it to prove. And that's what the Oba --

CALLER: Well, you're just wrong. You're just -- you're simply lying about that. There's --

LIMBAUGH: No. I'm not --

CALLER: -- loads of evidence of them removing language from government reports that support, you know, scientific theories about global warming.

LIMBAUGH: There is -- now, wait --

CALLER: They did it dozens of times.

LIMBAUGH: Now, wait. You're missing the point here. You're just being totally guided by your ideology, by your liberalism, by your partisanship. There is no man-made global warming. Do you understand that? There was nothing to suppress. Anybody that suppressed data that said there was man-made global warming was doing us a favor. They knew it was a hoax, and they were not spreading lies.

It's that there is no man-made global warming. There is no need for Obama national health care reform. There is no need for tax, crap, and spend. There is no need for further stimulus. There is no need for Obama. There is no need for liberalism. There is no need for you. You are a menace.

You pose a threat to freedom and liberty of your fellow citizens because you are too blind to understand what the people you respect are doing. And you're going to be the first they come for. Because you're the easiest to get, because you're the most gullible and the most uninformed. People like you, John, will give up your freedom if it means putting Bush in jail.

God save our country from people like you. There is no -- how can you call here today and say global warming data was suppressed by the Bush administration? Snerdley ought to get a raise for finding you. Good God. We just got a call from the universe of lies.

America's Truth Rejecter

LIMBAUGH: Remember, in these emails, they -- one of them -- somebody wrote to somebody, "It's devastating, it is devastating that we can't explain the earth cooling." Meaning, it's -- they don't have a reason that they could give for the earth cooling that would also support the whole global warming thesis.

"Welcome to the universe of reality," Rush greeted us as he started off his program today, clearly indicating that he wasn't about to give us a break on the "climate change is a hoax" nonsense before the holiday.

But first Rush read a nonsensical post from The Corner claiming that "they are not happy in India" over the way Obama introduced their nation's prime minister at last night's state dinner. What was National Review's Kevin Williamson's evidence that Indians were upset about Obama's comments? Well, there was none.

Then Rush trumpeted the news that Obama would be attending the climate change conference in Copenhagen next month. Rush declared this good news, since every event Obama attends is an abysmal failure. Rush wondered who Obama would bow down to over there.

Finally, Rush got back to yesterday's big topic: that the reportedly hacked CRU emails show that man-made global warming is hoax. Never mind that they don't, but that didn't stop Rush from making that notion into the topic of the day for the second day in a row. Rush warned the climate scientists in the middle of this controversy that it won't blow over, even though some in the state-controlled media are trying to circle the wagons for them.

Rush added that doctors have been demonized by Democrats, while scientists are the "essence of purity." Rush then called CRU scientists Michael Mann and Phil Jones frauds, and NASA climate scientist James Hansen an "insane" fraud.

Rush went on to complain about Newsweek's "puff piece" on Hansen, and then claimed that the fraudulent "Yamal study" meant that climate change was all based on fiction. (Rush's claim about the Yamal study has been completely debunked.)

Then Rush launched into a rant claiming that liberalism "kills," basing this assertion on the banning of DDT "for the sake of our environment." Rush cried that this move resulted in millions of deaths because of malaria, and therefore, liberals have blood on their hands:

LIMBAUGH: [Liberals] are never held to account for the inhumanity they propose and promote. No one ever studies the human suffering and toll that results from the left's policies, and thus they can continue to make claims and create images of salvation without ever having to answer for the untold damage they've already committed.

Rush and conservatives can cry as much as they want, but it won't make DDT into a malaria-solving silver bullet.

Rush falsely portrays himself as inhabitant of the "universe of reality"

After the break, Rush reminisced about his comments earlier this week that Sen. Mary Landrieu "may be the most expensive prostitute in the history of prostitution" and played audio clips from MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan discussing them. Rush countered MSNBC's apparent disapproval with a clip from last night's Leno, who apparently "side[d]" with Rush.

Following another break, Rush joined numerous conservative bloggers in decrying the case of four Navy SEALS being charged with "roughing up" a detainee. Rush blamed political correctness for "literally" destroying the country. Rush claimed that "everyone" is outraged about this (HotAir's Allahpundit sounds skeptical, though). Rush also asserted that this stems from Abu Ghraib and the "supposed torture" at Guantánamo Bay. He warned that by doing this, we're telegraphing our "utter weakness and vulnerability."

Next up, Rush looked at a recent Washington Post poll finding that while fewer people believe global warming is happening, they still support carbon caps. Rush -- citing absolutely no evidence to support his claim -- called it a "rigged poll."

This got Rush started on another rant about the global warming "hoax" and how the CRU email scandal is the equivalent of the global warming "bubble" bursting. Rush said that Obama is a "crook speculator" perpetrating the global warming bubble and went on to discuss how the scandal might impact the "entire field of science," claiming that science has now been "corrupted." He also accused Obama of living in the "universe of lies and deceit," while bragging that he himself lives in the "universe of reality."

Rush closed out the first hour with a few audio clips from an appearance by actor Ed Begley Jr. on Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto yesterday afternoon. He mocked Begley as an "idiot" for his defense of climate change.

Rush: "Hopefully" Obama will be detained during his press conference next week at West Point

The second hour of today's show began with this comment from Rush:

LIMBAUGH: You see where President Obama, in announcing how he intends to lose the war in Iraq -- sorry, Afghanistan -- or both, actually -- is going to do it, the national address will occur from West Point on December 1st. My question is, will they detain him? Hopefully.

Then Limbaugh was back to railing about the CRU emails and the "hoax" of global warming, again bragging that he resides in the "universe of reality." Then the black helicopters swooped in:

LIMBAUGH: This is about advancing socialism, liberalism, Marxism, whatever you want to call it. It's about advancing an agenda that takes people -- freedom away from people, their individuality. It destroys capitalism, and seeks to establish everybody under the auspices of a giant world government somewhere in the United Nations. That's what this is about. And it has been exposed.

Rush went on to relive his 1992 appearance on Nightline, opposite Al Gore, in which they discussed climate change and environmental policies. There is something surreal about listening to Rush picking up his argument with Gore from 17 years ago. It also makes us wonder: When is the last time you've seen a Rush Limbaugh media appearance that has positioned Limbaugh opposite somebody he disagrees with?

Rush spent the remainder of the hour with a couple of callers with military backgrounds. The first caller was a self-described Navy intelligence officer who expressed concern about the Navy SEALs case Rush had discussed earlier. Rush agreed with the points the caller made.

The other caller was a military veteran who also had worked for Blackwater in Iraq. The caller described the situation with the SEALs as payback for the way the Somali pirate ordeal a few months back was handled. This led to a broader discussion with the caller about the "feminization" of the military and political correctness.

Rush defends his accusation that the U.S. military is a victim of "chickification"

The third hour began with Rush echoing Michelle Malkin in demanding an apology from the media for falling for the reportedly faked suicide of the Kentucky census worker. Rush said this was just like the Duke lacrosse case in the way it was portrayed by the media.

Then Rush read an email from a listener who criticized him for saying the military has been the victim of "chickification." Rush said that he understood the listener's sentiment, but argued that she didn't understand what he meant by "chickification," so he explained it:

LIMBAUGH: "Chickification" means precisely men stop being men. They've been neutered, and they just -- it results from a number of things. Nagging. In this case -- not nagging, but in this case it results from -- clearly these guys saw the way to the top is PC after Tailhook. That's the way to the top, PC. PC is destroying this country. It's destroying institutions left and right.

Next, Rush decided to politicize college football. Discussing the "border war" rivalry between the Missouri Tigers and Kansas Jayhawks, Rush called on his listeners in Kansas to support Mizzou in their matchup this weekend because University of Missouri system president Gary Forsee opposes cap-and-trade legislation. Rush called Forsee's stance a "gutsy" and "courageous" move.

Before the commercial break, Rush quickly noted that Obama's grandmother's trip to Mecca is reportedly being paid for by the Saudi royal family. Rush said it looks like Obama's bow to the Saudi king has "paid off."

Following the break, Rush took a few more callers who spoke effusively about the host. One wanted to know if Republicans who support climate change legislation would admit that they've been duped in light of the CRU emails. Rush said that question could be asked of several Republicans on a number of issues, but there is still a fear that criticizing Obama will result in being called a racist.

Rush partakes in his annual Thanksgiving revisionist history

Rush spent the remainder of his show reading from a chapter in one of his books about the "real" story of Thanksgiving. Save yourself some time: It's all an argument that the first Thanksgiving was a rejection of socialism. Here's one alternate take on Limbaugh's attempt at revisionist history.

Zachary Pleat and Kate Conway contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

Highlights

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: One thing that I want to pound home here today: Liberalism, Marxism, socialism, whatever it is, kills. DDT banned for the sake of our environment, for the sake of birds, DDT was weakening the shells of little baby bird eggs, they said, and this was causing malformed and depletions in bird populations. So we had to get rid of DDT thanks to an insaniac by the name of Rachel Carson, may she rest in peace. May peace be upon her, whatever.

And as a result, malaria is killing millions all over Africa and the world simply because we decided erroneously to protect something that wasn't being damaged. The Third World, the Third World is strewn with dead babies thanks to the banning of DDT. It was advocated by the environmental movement in this country.

They should take credit for all the dead who might have otherwise lived. Marxism, socialism, liberalism kills, no matter how they dress it up. Fifty million deaths since DDT was banned. Today, it's global warming. Climate change. They could care less about the science. They could care less about the facts. It's about communism, statism, destroying the individual, destroying capitalism, destroying society, destroying freedom and liberty. Global cooling, an ice age, in fact, they said was coming. 1979. Then global warming. Then they said the seas will rise and swallow the cities. Now, they call it climate change, meaning any foul weather or act of God will be attributed to the horrible capitalist system of progress and advancement in lifestyles which is being blamed for all of this.

They are never held to account for the inhumanity they propose and promote. No one ever studies the human suffering and toll that results from the left's policies, and thus they can continue to make claims and create images of salvation without ever having to answer for the untold damage they've already committed.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: You see where President Obama, in announcing how he intends to lose the war in Iraq -- sorry, Afghanistan -- or both, actually -- is going to do it, the national address will occur from West Point on December 1st. My question is, will they detain him? Hopefully.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: If it's science, and if it's the truth, and if you are so brilliant to have discovered it, let the world see it and earn your reputation and money that way. But that's not what this is about. This is about advancing socialism, liberalism, Marxism, whatever you want to call it. It's about advancing an agenda that takes people -- freedom away from people, their individuality. It destroys capitalism, and seeks to establish everybody under the auspices of a giant world government somewhere in the United Nations. That's what this is about. And it has been exposed.

Ladies' man

LIMBAUGH: Chickification is exactly what the SEAL tem member -- SEAL team member described with the Tailhook situation and so forth. But I -- nevertheless, I understand what she's talking about. But let me tell you something. "Chickification" means precisely men stop being men. They've been neutered, and they just -- it results from a number of things. Nagging. In this case -- not nagging, but in this case it results from -- clearly these guys saw the way to the top is PC after Tailhook. That's the way to the top, PC. PC is destroying this country. It's destroying institutions left and right.

As egotistical as usual, Rush kicked off his show by mentioning President Obama's press conference with India's prime minister, insinuating that Obama chose to begin the press conference at the exact time Rush's show begins in an attempt to draw people away from El Rushbo. Don't worry, though -- Rush assures us all he has "more drawing power."

Rush then related that third-quarter gross domestic product has been revised downward to 2.8 percent instead of 3.5 percent, and claimed he predicted this would happen. Rush then shared a CNNMoney.com article about consumer confidence increasing slightly. Rush then happily pointed out several figures in the article that contradicted the headline.

After claiming that nobody wrote a positive review about Obama's recent trip to Asia, Rush cheerfully related that the Drudge Report "unearthed another picture of Obama bowing," this time to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. Rush then falsely claimed that no other president has ever bowed to foreign leaders.

LIMBAUGH: Oh! And Drudge has unearthed another picture of Obama bowing, this time to the Chinese premier. So, he bowed to two -- he bowed to the Japanese emperor, and he bowed to the Chinese prime minister or pres-- I forget which one. Wen Jintao [sic]. Well, the Chinese understandably got -- no. It's never understandable. American presidents don't bow to anybody. Except this one. It's never happened. Except this one. This one's running around bowing to everybody.

Rush then complained that Fox News was the only television channel to report on "Climategate," claiming it exposed climate change as nothing more than a hijacking of our foreign policy. Yet again, Rush managed to avoid mentioning that these emails were reportedly stolen, and then later said he "doesn't care" how the information was obtained, either through a hacker or simply released. Back from a break, Rush explained again how liberals live in a universe of lying because of the questions at the Obama press conference about the upcoming Copenhagen climate talks. Rush again claimed the reportedly stolen emails hid information that shows climate change is false and declared that Copenhagen should simply be canceled as a result. As an aside, Media Matters did a little rebutting of false claims about these emails yesterday. Unsurprisingly, Rush then turned to money-losing right-wing rag The Washington Times to rant that scientists could lose credibility if these out-of-context and false allegations ever become mainstream.

Back from the first half-hour break, Rush launched into a rant about how everything in science, academia, and the media is corrupted and how it all serves a political agenda, just because Rush doesn't agree with the results. Rush continued his new favorite theme on the universe of lies that liberals live in, declaring that government, academia, the media, and science are corrupt to the core. Rush read what Obama said about science in his inaugural speech, and then demanded that if Obama really believed what he said, he would declare a national emergency, stop all programs to save the planet, and cancel all tax hikes -- because in Rush's worldview, taxes have everything to do with science. Rush then engaged in yet another diatribe about global warming being a fraud and a hoax -- a theme he returned to throughout his show -- and demanded that Obama "investigate this scam" and "name names" to put science back in its rightful place.

Rush shouts it to the mountaintops: "global warming, climate change -- how loudly do I have to shout it -- is a hoax!"

Rush continued his delusional ranting, apparently convinced he speaks for everybody who is not part of the Obama administration, by declaring that "we are the enemy" of the country now, lamenting that it was no longer Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. He then engaged in what seems like the most glaring example of projection ever:

LIMBAUGH: But if you live in the universe of lies, the last thing that you are governed by is the truth. The last thing you are governed by is reality. The only thing that matters to you is the advancement of your political agenda. And you tell yourself in the universe of lies that your agenda is so important the world will not survive without it and therefore you can lie, cheat, steal, destroy whoever you have to to get your agenda done because your opponents are evil, and in fighting evil, anything goes. There are no rules when you're in a fight with the devil.

After another break, Rush complained that The New York Times and The Washington Post are trying to track down "the whistleblower," as Rush called the person who reportedly stole these emails, instead of investigating the fraud that Rush insists is exposed in the emails. (He pointedly mentioned at least twice that the emails were "confirmed authentic.")

Back for his second hour, the Doctor of Demagoguery demanded that the media "track down" Al Gore and interview him about the "fixed science" he still delusionally believes is exposed in the emails. Rush then turned to a blog post at the U.K. Telegraph and an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal to share yet more dubious claims that these emails are revelatory about climate change. Later during his show, Rush read a Nature News article and was in disbelief that many scientists contacted for the article "doubt that the leak will have a lasting impact."

Next, apparently forgetting about the existence of Frank Luntz, El Rushbo wondered why anybody would need a "wordsmith" to help shape messaging. After playing comments by Obama about the Copenhagen conference, Rush returned to his incredulous, vehement, repeated, and tiring declarations that global warming is a fraud and a hoax that never existed. Here at the Limbaugh Wire, we cannot emphasize enough how many times he denied that climate change existed throughout today's show. Finally, Rush slightly changed topics:

LIMBAUGH: Nothing is real about health care. Nothing is real in the cap-and-trade legislation. Nothing is real about the stimulus package. Nothing is real about the TARP bailout. All of it is fraudulent. It's all a hoax. Perpetrated by the left knowing full well it's a hoax dressed up as something compassionate and emergency-required to save something, either jobs or the entire financial system of the world or whatever other threat will wipe us all out tomorrow if we don't act tonight. It's all a hoax. Everything the Democrat Party is behind today is a fraud and a lie aimed at separating you from two things: your freedom, your property, and your money.

Rush: Obama "is a small man, folks. This is a small and petty, spoiled little man"

Rush then played a question and answer concerning Obama's upcoming decision on whether to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan and called him "a small and petty, spoiled little man." Naturally, Rush then turned to former Vice President Dick Cheney to attack Obama.

Back from another break, Rush professed to believe that Obama was hijacking Thanksgiving by having an official state dinner during Thanksgiving week. In his third hour, in response to a caller, Rush nearly screamed about "a tent" being raised for the state dinner tonight. Rush then read a McClatchy story that apparently reveals that Obama will commit an additional 34,000 troops to Afghanistan. Rush then had a caller who compared supposed whistleblowing on these climate science emails, Afghanistan, and the health care bills to the revelation that the Earth is not flat. Quite unsurprisingly, Rush liked this comparison. Later on, Rush complained about Rep. David Obey's proposed surcharge tax to fund the war in Afghanistan, because it includes middle-class taxpayers. Rush declared his hope that the idea that Democrats will tax people making as little as $30,000 a year be "tied like Velcro" to the Democratic Party.

Coming back for another episode of fanatical denial of reality, Rush read an American Spectator post by the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Chris Horner, detailing his intent to sue NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies for their supposed refusal to release documents from a Freedom of Information Act request. Rush then read yet another British newspaper article to bash "quote, 'scientist,' unquote" Michael Mann. Rush was so incensed by Mann that he whined about him at the top of the third hour.

Rush declares that "this hacker" is "a gift from God"

For the beginning of his final hour of the day, Rush apologized for "being a one-trick pony today" and continued to rant about climate change being fake. Rush declared that people don't have to give up their SUVs, old washing machines, or incandescent light bulbs, which are surely near and dear to everyone's hearts. Seemingly unable to escape using Alex Jones' language for the past few days, Rush then claimed, "This issue, global warming, has been one of the foundational building blocks for a future world global government. It has been a way for displaced communists to get their hands on the inner workings of the freedom of the United States of America." It seemed no aspect of environmentalism was safe from Rush's unrighteous anger today, as later in his show, he ranted against recycling and Dumpster-diving.

Soon after, Rush again cited the Alex Jones article he linked to on his website. Later on, Rush treated us to an explanation of how his belief in God armored him against any possible effects of industrialization and massive consumption of natural resources, and then launched into his most offensive rant of the day:

LIMBAUGH: If you don't believe in God, then you probably are a global warmist or a liberal. You don't believe in the God of Christianity or the God of Judaism or any other God, but you have to make some God, there has to be something bigger than you, and so it's the global warming movement now, or it's health care, or it's Obama, or it's some earthly object that you apply godlike status to. Even atheists believe in something beyond themselves. But the point is, they have used and targeted children, scaring them to death with lies. Ted Turner's been doing it with Captain Planet cartoons, getting kids to hate big business. The left, my friends, is a truly evil bunch.

For the final half-hour of his Tuesday show, Rush joined Andrew Breitbart on the ACORN-bashing bandwagon, treating the "document dump" as a bounty of evidence. Rush, apparently as ignorant as Breitbart of what blackmail is, mentioned that Breitbart is "challenging" Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate ACORN, mocking any allegations of blackmail. Next, Rush played the race card to attack the stimulus and Obama's economic policies.

Seemingly a bit frustrated, Rush again harangued Obey for wanting a war surtax for his final segment of the day. After saying that our various past wars did nothing to end social programs, Rush abruptly reversed course and decided that it was fine if we stopped our current social spending, as long as we dumped it all into Afghanistan. Later, Rush decided to flip-flop again, claiming that Great Society spending was not stopped by the Vietnam War -- complaining that as an "entitlement" -- because it continues to this day. In his final act of projection of the day, Rush labeled Obey a "locoweed" for his views on spending priorities.

Zachary Aronow and Kate Conway contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

Highlights

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: The Asian tour should have delighted Obamaites as the proper expression of Obama's philosophy. Two equal nations, neither one more exceptional than the other, or any other, their systems merely different, not better or worse, simply chatting about mutual concerns. And he pretty much I think nails that. Obama is doing what he said he was going to do. He's -- it's -- and it's all, folks, about cutting this country down to size, because he has a huge problem with this country and has for this entire life.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: But I don't even know how you can write the story -- I don't know how you can write the story and ignore the proof that global warming, climate change -- how loudly do I have to shout it -- is a hoax! What take -- what does it take for people to understand it is a hoax? But if you live in the universe of lies, the last thing that you are governed by is the truth. The last thing you are governed by is reality. The only thing that matters to you is the advancement of your political agenda. And you tell yourself in the universe of lies that your agenda is so important the world will not survive without it and therefore you can lie, cheat, steal, destroy whoever you have to to get your agenda done because your opponents are evil, and in fighting evil, anything goes. There are no rules when you're in a fight with the devil.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: The people behind this health care bill know that everything they're saying about it is not true. It will not lower costs. It will not improve access. It will not improve quality. It will raise taxes. It will force you to give up freedom and put you in jail if you resist. Nothing is real about health care. Nothing is real in the cap-and-trade legislation. Nothing is real about the stimulus package. Nothing is real about the TARP bailout. All of it is fraudulent. It's all a hoax. Perpetrated by the left knowing full well it's a hoax dressed up as something compassionate and emergency-required to save something, either jobs or the entire financial system of the world or whatever other threat will wipe us all out tomorrow if we don't act tonight. It's all a hoax. Everything the Democrat Party is behind today is a fraud and a lie aimed at separating you from two things: your freedom, your property, and your money.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: This man is really small. Really tiny. Once again, "after eight years, some of those years in which we did not have, I think, either the resources or the strategy to get the job done, it is my intention to finish the job." This is a small man, folks. This is a small and petty, spoiled little man.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: This issue, global warming, has been one of the foundational building blocks for a future world global government. It has been a way for displaced communists to get their hands on the inner workings of the freedom of the United States of America.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Obama said he wants to restore science to its rightful whatever, then he ought to be leading the way to find out who these people are, what they've done, who they've infected, who went along with them, calling them out by name, making sure that every scientist at every university in this country who's been involved in this is named and fired, drawn and quartered, or whatever it is, because this is a worldwide hoax. And its primary target was you, the people of the United States of America.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: If you don't believe in God, then you probably are a global warmist or a liberal. You don't believe in the God of Christianity or the God of Judaism or any other God, but you have to make some God, there has to be something bigger than you, and so it's the global warming movement now, or it's health care, or it's Obama, or it's some earthly object that you apply godlike status to. Even atheists believe in something beyond themselves. But the point is, they have used and targeted children, scaring them to death with lies. Ted Turner's been doing it with Captain Planet cartoons, getting kids to hate big business. The left, my friends, is a truly evil bunch.

America's Truth Rejecter

LIMBAUGH: Oh! And Drudge has unearthed another picture of Obama bowing, this time to the Chinese premier. So, he bowed to two -- he bowed to the Japanese emperor, and he bowed to the Chinese prime minister or pres-- I forget which one. Wen Jintao [sic]. Well, the Chinese understandably got -- no. It's never understandable. American presidents don't bow to anybody. Except this one. It's never happened. Except this one. This one's running around bowing to everybody.

By Zachary Pleat

Wasting no time as usual, Rush joined Glenn Beck in calling Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) "the most expensive prostitute in the history of prostitution." Rush then claimed that the hacked emails that were reportedly stolen from the University of East Anglia "are the real deal" and baselessly claimed that they were "leaked" by a "whistleblower." As classy as ever, Rush used these possibly illegally obtained emails to continue his long-running claim that global warming is a hoax:

LIMBAUGH: These emails that we told you about last week from that group in Great Britain that formed the basis for the UN's climate change panel and their recommendations, those emails apparently now are the real deal and they may not have been leaked -- well, leaked -- they may be from a whistleblower inside the organization who is just unhappy with what's going on. Now, the bottom line is, the whole global warming -- manmade global warming movement is a fraud. It is a hoax. It's made-up lies.

Next, Rush explained how "[l]iberalism is a lie from top to bottom," then took the opportunity to bash President Obama for having run a campaign on, as he put it, nothing but hope, change, and empty platitudes. During this typically deranged rant, Rush channeled Alex Jones yet again, saying that Democrats "believe in a one-world government." Rush's theme of liberalism being a lie continued throughout the rest of the show.

Our kindly radio host then explained that the congressional members, scientists, and others who are working to combat climate change are "whoring themselves out for money." Still never mentioning that these emails were hacked into and possibly stolen, Rush then compared them to the Pentagon Papers.

Back from a break, Rush was quite pleased to announce that Saturday Night Live is at last making fun of Obama's policies and played the audio later in his show, claiming they were showing Obama as "a doofus." Rush later wondered if CNN would fact-check this one, and if they did, they'd find it was spot on. Next, Rush read part of a blog post from his old, dear friend Andrew Revkin. Rush then claimed these allegedly stolen emails show that climate change skeptics are not such a small group.

Rush then turned his wonderful mind to analyzing the health care bills, complaining that "it takes 2,000 pages" to insure everyone. Incidentally, as Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK) said, "This bill if you put in regular type style is about the same size as Sarah Palin's book," which Rush said was "one of the most substantive policy books I've read." Undeterred, Rush used his world-renowned mathematical skills to claim that the legislation is really 4,000 pages of legislation once you add the total number of pages in the House and Senate bills. Rush finished off his first hour by reading a rebuttal email he wrote to a 24-year-old U.S. soldier who made, in Rush's eyes, the unforgiveable mistake of pointing out that many states require people to purchase car insurance to drive, so why not health insurance?

Rush: Obama "is one of" America's "internal perils"

Continuing with his manmade global warming is a hoax theme, Rush declared that a speech Obama gave to engineering students was nothing but "bilk." Instead of carbon emissions being a danger, Rush declared that our "internal perils" include Obama. Unsurprisingly, Rush then brought up Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Frank Marshall David, and Obama's father, claiming that they don't want America to be the engine of the world, and thus Obama doesn't want this either.

Back from another break, Rush read from an AP article reporting that the Guantánamo detainees that will be put on trial for their role in the 9-11 attacks plan to plead not guilty, and used this to repeat his claim that they will put the U.S. on trial. Rush must have been in a jolly mood, as he then played his most recent parody song, this time parodying Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

Later, Rush took a caller who was angry about the Saturday vote on the Senate health care bill, complaining that it was "a trick." Rush attempted to calm her down, explaining that it was always going to pass the vote to begin debate. The caller then got slightly hysterical when she started mentioning Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. Rush assured her that she's "doing the right thing" by reading the book, which he called "great."

Rush then endorsed the use of the possibly illegally obtained emails: "I am for anything that exposes truth."

Back from a half-hour break, a caller lectured Rush on the ethical problems that would come from using illegally obtained emails to attack climate change. Rush responded that "we don't know" they were stolen, repeating his claim that it was a whistleblower who released the emails.

After playing the clips from Saturday Night Live parodying Obama's policies, which Rush emphasized were highly significant, Rush took a call from a woman who mentioned the concern in poor island nations that climate change is causing more malaria outbreaks. Rush said this was the fault of Rachel Carson, who he said "we got scammed by." He then launched into an explanation of how leaders don't care about people, and that island nations are worried about rising sea levels "when they aren't" rising.

Next, Rush happily announced that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is the GOP's best shot to keep Arizona's governorship, according to a Rasmussen report. Rush rounded off the second hour by mentioning the Afghan war surtax introduced by Democratic lawmakers, but brushed it off, stating that taxpayers already pay for wars.

Rush, the model college dropout, tells his story

Rush started off his final hour of the day complaining that a listener sent him an email wishing him "happy holidays." Here at the Limbaugh Wire we will be sure not to offend Rush by wishing him well this holiday season. Rush then read an article about a woman claiming her long-term sick leave benefits were revoked after Facebook photos were purportedly used to undermine her medical leave. He then explained his real problem with this: imagine if the government could do this. After all, Rush said, the woman could just get another insurance policy. Rush then read much of a Spiegel Online article that just happened to agree with Rush on his views of Obama's actions overseas. Apparently adopting Spiegel Online as his favorite new news source, Rush also mentioned an article detailing possible problems with Germany cooperating in the trials of 9-11 detainees, because Germany prohibits capital punishment. Naturally, Rush used this as an opportunity to play his new KSM parody again.

After another break, Rush had on a caller who wanted to educate the nation about inflammatory breast cancer, saying that most doctors don't recognize it, and mammograms rarely detect it. Of course, the caller claimed that if we had "a rationed health care system," many people would die from this, something he repeated at least twice. Rush was incredulous by the cost of the treatment for this cancer, and used this as an opportunity to rail against health care reform again, claiming it was not about health care, but about money.

Back for the final half hour of Monday's show, Rush read an article about Lincoln University mandating students pass a fitness course to graduate. Rush, who spent much of this year drawing attention to his weight loss program, wondered "how we know" that the country is in an obesity epidemic.

After Rush briefly mentioned out of nowhere that Tamiflu no longer works on the swine flu, Rush treated us to his sad sob story about how and why he dropped out of college. We leave you with his words:

LIMBAUGH: When I was in college, like, my full first year and only year, what finally drove me out of it were two things: flunking speech, which was my business, and being forced to take ballroom dance, taught by a drill sergeant in the WACs [Women's Army Corps] as a phys ed course. I said, wait a minute. They told me when I got here, and they told me in high school that when I got here I'm on my own. Now, we're not going to be babied up here, and they're not -- they don't call the roll; they don't do any of that. It's up to you to show up. Hell, they call the roll in college more than they do -- more than they did in high school.

And that ballroom -- I just didn't go. I just couldn't bring myself to go. I went to the radio station instead. And, of course, the college sent a letter home to my parents. This is back in the -- you -- that can't happen now. You know -- Dawn, do you know that you're not allowed to see your daughter's grades? She has to be the one to tell you. You can't see them. So, you -- yeah, but that's only cause she gave it to you. If she didn't give you the password, you wouldn't -- you wouldn't even know -- she could flunk out a semester and not tell you and still have you support her up there. You would never know it unless she told you, because the school can't write you.

But back then, a university wrote my mom and dad a letter saying that I had not shown up to ballroom dance. And, of course, this outraged and embarrassed my parents. I was the first member of my family and the probably only member of my family not to graduate from college. You know, I do interviews with people, "Yeah, man, I'm happy to be here and this is my -- I'm the first member of my family to ever go to school."

I'm the only member of my family that didn't, and that bothered them and embarrassed them and so forth. So my mother took away the car I bought, and drove me to college class -- ballroom dance after I had missed it for a month.

Zachary Aronow and Kate Conway contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

Highlights

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: Now when you hear a Democrat go on television and solemnly pronounce, as Senator Ben Nelson did, "No health care if no change in public option and abortion funding," or Mary Landrieu, "I will not vote for this as it is written," they are not espousing core beliefs. They are simply opening bids. They are simply making opening bids to Harry Reid.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: You know, liberals are liberals wherever you find them, in the global warming movement, in the health care movement, in the U.S. Congress, in the White House -- wherever they are. Liberalism is a lie from top to bottom.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: If the Democrats on Capitol Hill and Obama were honest about what the real purpose of their health care bill is -- to raise taxes, to totally control every aspect of human life in this country --they would never, ever even got this far with it. If the global warming people had said, "We are aligned with our liberal socialist brothers all over the world. We believe in a one-world government and we believe that the United States has too much of the world's wealth, so we are going to create a crisis that is designed to make Americans think that they are destroying the planet so that they will then feel guilty and that they will feel guilty over polar bears being killed and so forth; we'll get their kids all in line, and then we're going to go for world government and world tax increases to fleece the United States so that we can join our leftist brothers in the United States to control that population and as much of the world as we can."

If they had said that, they would have never convinced one person to sell an SUV. If they had said that, they had never have convinced one person to buy a Prius. My point is, they cannot be honest about their intentions; they cannot be honest about their agenda; they cannot be honest about who they are.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Years ago, folks, years ago on this program, I explained that communists, leftist ideologues flocked to the environmental movement after the end of the Cold War. Collectivists found cover for their new agenda, and the collectivists attracted leftist pseudo-scientists who were milking the scam for grants from corporation, universities, and government entities. There are so many whores in our midst -- from members of Congress, members of the U.S. Senate, and members of the scientific community -- who are whoring themselves out for money, abandoning science, the pursuit of truth, in exchange for advancing a leftist political agenda.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: So these emails have been published. The lie is now there for all to see. The Bernie Madoffs of global warming were caught. And, hopefully, this is the final nail in the coffin for cap and trade.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: We are in a war. We are in a war to save the United States of America from being remade into something that you and I would not recognize it -- or recognize. And people are very much alarmed about this. I am for anything that exposes truth. Truth has become too big a casualty in our culture, in our society, in our media, and in our politics. Everything, it seems, is a lie to one degree or another. And the people who do not go along with the lie, who do not believe the lie, are called extremists.

Somebody in this organization, if it's a whistleblower, one of two things: either somebody's got their nose out of joint over the way they're being treated by somebody in that organization or they've got a guilty conscience, and they can no longer sit by and be part of this while they watch an absolute fraud and hoax take place. So I myself am never alarmed when the truth happens, when the truth is made, when the truth is revealed. I am not bothered.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: They're suffering from malaria in a lot of parts of the world because we got scammed by a woman named Rachel Carson, who led to the banning of DDT. If we just put DDT back in, we'd cut malaria dramatically.

Enemies list

LIMBAUGH: We do live in a world of unprecedented perils and now they include internal perils and he is one of them.

Fascism watch

LIMBAUGH: Now, my friends, health care, the entire Obama agenda -- stimulus, porkulus, whatever -- the entire Obama agenda -- the auto bailout, the cash for clunkers, the home tax credit thing -- every one of those items is the same kind of fraud as is the manmade global warming hoax. It is being advanced by the same kind of people for the same kind of reasons because they are all liberals-slash-socialists-slash-communists-slash fascists.

America's Truth Rejecter

LIMBAUGH: These emails that we told you about last week from that group in Great Britain that formed the basis for the UN's climate change panel and their recommendations, those emails apparently now are the real deal and they may not have been leaked -- well, leaked -- they may be from a whistleblower inside the organization who is just unhappy with what's going on. Now, the bottom line is, the whole global warming -- manmade global warming movement is a fraud. It is a hoax. It's made-up lies.

Echo chamber

LIMBAUGH: That may be, folks -- that may be the most expensive prostitute in the history of prostitution. And she's bragging about it -- Mary Landrieu, bragging about $300 million payoff from Dingy Harry to get her vote on this health care scam on Saturday night.

Vox populi

LIMBAUGH: When I was in college, like, my full first year and only year, what finally drove me out of it were two things: flunking speech, which was my business, and being forced to take ballroom dance, taught by a drill sergeant in the WACs [Women's Army Corps] as a phys ed course. I said, wait a minute. They told me when I got here, and they told me in high school that when I got here I'm on my own. Now, we're not going to be babied up here, and they're not -- they don't call the roll; they don't do any of that. It's up to you to show up. Hell, they call the roll in college more than they do -- more than they did in high school.

And that ballroom -- I just didn't go. I just couldn't bring myself to go. I went to the radio station instead. And, of course, the college sent a letter home to my parents. This is back in the -- you -- that can't happen now. You know -- Dawn, do you know that you're not allowed to see your daughter's grades? She has to be the one to tell you. You can't see them. So, you -- yeah, but that's only cause she gave it to you. If she didn't give you the password, you wouldn't -- you wouldn't even know -- she could flunk out a semester and not tell you and still have you support her up there. You would never know it unless she told you, because the school can't write you.

But back then, a university wrote my mom and dad a letter saying that I had not shown up to ballroom dance. And, of course, this outraged and embarrassed my parents. I was the first member of my family and the probably only member of my family not to graduate from college. You know, I do interviews with people, "Yeah, man, I'm happy to be here and this is my -- I'm the first member of my family to ever go to school."

I'm the only member of my family that didn't, and that bothered them and embarrassed them and so forth. So my mother took away the car I bought, and drove me to college class -- ballroom dance after I had missed it for a month.

By Tom Allison

Rush seemed genuinely happy to have the week done with, saying he was tired of dealing with all the "garbage" of the week, and again characterized his efforts as "going to war":

LIMBAUGH: I'm telling you what -- this week has seemed like a week to me. I mean, every day seems like a day -- well, I mean, dealing with this garbage? Getting up every day and going to war, you know. And I'm asking for more troops, too. And I can't call any of them up on my own.

Echoing a lot of conservative media today, including Glenn Beck fill-in Pat Gray and Michael Savage, Rush claimed that Senate Democrats "bought" Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and other Democrats, "the same thing Nancy Pelosi did in the House." Rush concluded that the Democrats have become the "Kamikaze party" and the "equivalent of political suicide bombers" because they plan on voting on a bill that, to Rush at least, is unpopular with American voters and will bankrupt the country.

Rush justified his outrageous comparison of Democrats to suicide bombers with numerous falsehoods. Perhaps he was inspired by having Sarah Palin on his show on Tuesday because he again claimed that there are death panels in the legislation that will decide who, among the elderly, will live and die. Second, Rush falsely claimed that Americans "can be put in jail for failing to buy health insurance." And finally (and predictably among the Limbaugh Wire crew), Rush jumped on the "government is taking away your mammograms"^TM bandwagon.

Wrapping up a very busy first segment, Limbaugh read from reports that Gallup will put Obama's approval rating below 50 percent and criticized Obama's trip to Asia.

Back from the break, Rush mocked MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell as "brave" when she "grilled" Palin supporters in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He went on: "It takes guts to grill a 14-year-old." Too bad Palin commented that the supporter herself claims she's 17. Rush went back to correct himself, naturally blaming his staff for misinforming him.

Rush: "That mammogram stuff ... it's in the bill"

Rush's first caller kicked off some fearmongering about the government task force's non-binding recommendations:

LIMBAUGH: Who was it? Democrats? Somebody's out there saying -- maybe it's Health and Human Services -- "No, no, no. That mammogram stuff, that's not -- that -- we're not -- that's not going to be part of the bill. We're not going to accept that recommendation." But it's in the bill. It's in Senator Reid's bill; it's over in the House bill -- the delay of mammograms until the age 50. The whole thing here, Natalie, is very basic. Why in the world should you have to be told by a government when and when you can not get your breasts looked at?

Rush promoted this James Taranto op-ed in The Wall Street Journal criticizing Obama as incompetent and a climate change skeptic website, climatedepot.com. He also hyped an American Thinker blog post that reported on allegedly hacked emails from Britain's Hadley Centre that show climate scientists covering up data that undermine claims that the planet is warming.

Rush's second caller hoped for a Palin presidential run in 2012 because Obama would be re-elected in a landslide. Rush defended Palin, claiming Going Rogue is "full of policy" and commented that she is more patriotic than Obama and loves America more.

Inexplicably, Rush concluded the first hour commenting that anyone who supported John Edwards for president or vice president has no credibility in criticizing Sarah Palin.

Rush then segued into a criticism of the left for using children in environmental protection and healthcare reform ads:

LIMBAUGH: Ah, my friends, this is just -- this is -- isn't this wonderful? Exploiting kids like this, lying to kids, and then making the kids go out and lie, scaring the kids. This is from the president's website. This, essentially, has his endorsement. This is just sick.

Rush then played one of his lovely parody advertisements featuring children of the EIB...

Rush spent a lot of time reminiscing about his 25 years as host of The Rush Limbaugh Show, informing his sure-to-be-disappointed listeners that he does not plan on launching his own 24-hour cable channel like Oprah Winfrey.

Once again echoing a tired conservative falsehood, Rush suggested that Sen. Harry Reid is somehow being disingenuous over the Senate's health care reform bill because taxes are front-ended and benefits start a few years later, despite CBO's estimate that the bill will continue to reduce the deficit:

LIMBAUGH: Then we heard -- and we know it's true -- that when they send these bills down to the Congressional Budget Office to get scored, they have to score them in 10-year increments. I guess that's policy. And the way they come in with these low numbers like Reid got for $848 billion is that the health care aspect doesn't start -- the benefits, the spending doesn't start until year three or four, but the tax increases and everything else start immediately.

Rush also postulated that the Democrats will be in trouble in 2012 because voters will be feeling the new taxes but not feeling the benefits, ignoring the benefits that would begin right away.

Rush read from this Real Clear Politics post on how the proposed cuts to Medicare, designed to reduce fraud and waste, would be the Democrats' downfall.

Moving on, Rush read from a Politico article on Obama "receiving friendly fire" on the economy and suggested that the likes of Rep. Maxine Waters are upset only because the Congressional Black Caucus are getting "shut out of the slush fund."

Later, Rush told a caller that it was "an interesting statistic" that last winter in Fairbanks, Alaska, was colder than the winter that Al Gore was born, as if picking temperatures from the same day 50 years apart has anything to do with long-term trending climate change.

Back from the break, Rush reminded his listeners that Obama's half-brother in Kenya doesn't have running water, and claimed that that's how the environmentalists would have all of us live: "with a hole in the backyard."

Claiming that "there's nothing Democratic about the Democratic Party," Rush ranted about the Democrats wanting dictatorial powers over the country:

LIMBAUGH: I think people do not understand who these people are. I don't think people have an understanding of just how radically left, anti-capitalist, anti-liberty these people are. I don't think people understand how devoted these people are to the government being the single citadel in this country for everybody.

I don't think people understand their radical thirst for total power. People do not understand that people like Pelosi and Reid and Barney Frank and Barack Obama and the Congressional Black Caucus, practically 80 percent of the Democrats in the House and Senate, have been yearning for this for their entire lives, many of them since the '60s. This is their utopia. They don't care; they've got it. It's within their grasp.

Rush then returned to his "Democrats as political suicide bombers" analogy, expanding his vision of health care as a suicide terrorist attack:

LIMBAUGH: I wish I could come up with an analogy that would properly convey the excitement, the passion, the single-mindedness they have about gaining, finally, after 200 years, dictatorial control over the U.S. government. That's what's going on. But, see, people don't want to look at it that way. You say that and "Oh, Rush. Come on. This is just standard Democrat/Republican party politics."

No, it's not. It has gone way beyond that. These people, they're going to get -- here's the analogy: If they get this -- remember, I call them political suicide bombers. They're strapping the bombs on. The bombs are these health care bills -- they're going to get, with this bill, if it's signed into law, they're going to get their 72 virgins. They're going to get a lifetime supply of Viagra or Cialis -- their choice -- and they're not going to die.

They're going to get the 72 virgins in their offices or in the Capitol wading pool, or wherever they want them. And the Cialis and the Viagra, whatever it is, part of the health care plan that they will sign up for.

Right. Like Rush has any place in making jokes about Viagra...

Zachary Aronow and Kate Conway contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

Highlights

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: I'm telling you what -- this week has seemed like a week to me. I mean, every day seems like a day -- well, I mean, dealing with this garbage? Getting up every day and going to war, you know. And I'm asking for more troops, too. And I can't call any of them up on my own.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: I can't read the tea leaves on this, and the reason I can't is Reid's buying votes. He bought Mary Landrieu with a $100-million provision in the health care bill -- Medicare exceptions for the state of Louisiana -- and it's a page-and-a-half long this little attachment to the bill -- well, it's not attached to it, it's part of it -- and it allows states who have suffered a major natural disaster within the last four years, three days, and 10 hours -- I mean, it zeroes in on Hurricane Katrina -- then you are eligible for $100 million additional in Medicare for the old folks and blah blah blah.

Landrieu is in trouble -- re-election down there -- and she needs to buy votes herself. Reid needs to buy votes. This is what Pelosi was doing over in the House. She was buying votes by giving individual members whatever they wanted.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Democrats are the equivalent of political suicide bombers. They have strapped political bombs to themselves. They are hell-bent on taking out as many Americans as they can with them. This is how this must be looked at. There is nothing remotely good about any of this. There's nothing compassionate about any of this. Just before they detonate their political bombs, which is what their votes against the wishes of the people they serve are, they may as well shout "Death to freedom! Death to freedom!" as they cast their vote.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Who was it? Democrats? Somebody's out there saying -- maybe it's Health and Human Services -- "No, no, no. That mammogram stuff, that's not -- that -- we're not -- that's not going to be part of the bill. We're not going to accept that recommendation." But it's in the bill. It's in Senator Reid's bill; it's over in the House bill -- the delay of mammograms until the age 50. The whole thing here, Natalie, is very basic. Why in the world should you have to be told by a government when and when you can not get your breasts looked at?

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Ah, my friends, this is just -- this is -- isn't this wonderful? Exploiting kids like this, lying to kids, and then making the kids go out and lie, scaring the kids. This is from the president's website. This, essentially, has his endorsement. This is just sick.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Then we heard -- and we know it's true -- that when they send these bills down to the Congressional Budget Office to get scored, they have to score them in 10-year increments. I guess that's policy. And the way they come in with these low numbers like Reid got for $848 billion is that the health care aspect doesn't start -- the benefits, the spending doesn't start until year three or four, but the tax increases and everything else start immediately.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: I think people do not understand who these people are. I don't think people have an understanding of just how radically left, anti-capitalist, anti-liberty these people are. I don't think people understand how devoted these people are to the government being the single citadel in this country for everybody.

I don't think people understand their radical thirst for total power. People do not understand that people like Pelosi and Reid and Barney Frank and Barack Obama and the Congressional Black Caucus, practically 80 percent of the Democrats in the House and Senate, have been yearning for this for their entire lives, many of them since the '60s. This is their utopia. They don't care; they've got it. It's within their grasp.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: I wish I could come up with an analogy that would properly convey the excitement, the passion, the single-mindedness they have about gaining, finally, after 200 years, dictatorial control over the U.S. government. That's what's going on. But, see, people don't want to look at it that way. You say that and "Oh, Rush. Come on. This is just standard Democrat/Republican party politics."

No, it's not. It has gone way beyond that. These people, they're going to get -- here's the analogy: If they get this -- remember, I call them political suicide bombers. They're strapping the bombs on. The bombs are these health care bills -- they're going to get, with this bill, if it's signed into law, they're going to get their 72 virgins. They're going to get a lifetime supply of Viagra or Cialis -- their choice -- and they're not going to die.

They're going to get the 72 virgins in their offices or in the Capitol wading pool, or wherever they want them. And the Cialis and the Viagra, whatever it is, part of the health care plan that they will sign up for.

Rush wonders about Rev. Jesse Jackson: "[C]an you throw so many parties for yourself as this guy does and still call yourself a black man?"

America's Truth Rejecter started off this Thursday wondering where his call screener Bo Snerdley was, suspecting him of taking a nap on El Rushbo's time. Rush, with his $400 million, eight-year contract, then professed his mocking concern over new unemployment numbers. Rush then used a reportedly said, "You can't vote against health care and call yourself a black man." Rush then complained about the amount of parties thrown for Jackson, and made a quite unfunny quip about this before heading to a commercial break:

LIMBAUGH: The reception celebrating the 25th anniversary of Jackson's run for president, though, is not to be confused with Mr. Jackson's birthday celebration, which was Friday, November 13, 2009, which was held in Beverly Hills at the Beverly Hilton hotel. So less than a week ago, there was a birthday party for the Reverend Jackson, and then there was a reception six days later -- five days later for the 25th anniversary of his run for president. For some people, life, I guess, just one big party. I wonder, can you throw so many parties for yourself as this guy does and still call yourself a black man?

Back from the break, Rush quickly blamed the announcement by AOL to cut a third of its employees on "the policies of Jesse Jackson."

Rush then used the infamous conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' website to engage in some Al Gore bashing, gleefully pointing out the Photoshopped changes in a picture of the Earth taken by NASA for his newest book, to highlight the dangers of climate change. Rush loved this article so much that he linked to it at the top of his website. Later in his show, Rush read part of a Spiegel Online article that reported on problems with temperatures in climate models.

Back from another break, Rush complained Kathleen Sebelius was blaming Bush appointees for the new mammogram examination recommendations. Rush then embraced former Attorney General John Ashcroft's claim that "Holder lacks authority to make a decision on moving terror detainees to civilian courts for trial." Rush says this shows that it was really President Obama's decision, and everyone in Washington is lying about it. Rush spent some time discussing the supposed lack of legal precedent for trying "enemy combatants" from "the battlefield" in federal court, declaring that "this is insidious" and that this was purely political, later correcting himself to say it was ideology driving this. Rush would continue complaining about this later on in his show.

Rush: "[T]he original goal of the ACLU was to totally break down the US justice system"

Rush then continued his tired attacks against Obama, this time roping in Eric Holder:

Obama's view of the United States is no different than that of a third-world Marxist dictator. That's how he views this country. Immoral, unjust, evil, unequal, discriminatory, all of those things. With every passing day, ladies and gentlemen, the core beliefs of Obama, Eric Holder, everybody in this administration are revealed -- damn the public, damn national security, full steam ahead. We're going to fix what we find wrong about this country.

Rush then took a call from an unemployed newspaper reporter who took him to task for his past attacks on any kind of government assistance:

CALLER: I heard you say something before that just really annoyed me. You said something about unemployment and about all these extensions for unemployment, that all these extensions are discouraging people from looking for work. You have got to be kidding. You've got to be kidding. What, do you think people are sitting back and, like, you know, like, enjoying all this time off, when nobody has any idea of they're going to be able to get a job?

After being thoroughly stung by the caller from the first hour, Rush used much of the top half of his second hour by defending himself from her accusations. Naturally, he used this to bash government assistance to the poor for a while. Rush then could not help himself from attacking the caller -- who was no longer on the line -- suggesting that the reason she is unemployed is because "she's obnoxious." Rush continued to spew his usual tired rhetoric about individualism for a while, eventually getting around to his new conspiracy theory that Obama is turning Americans into "dependent, compliant servants" in order to "perpetuate power in perpetuity." Say that fives times fast.

Rounding out the first half of the hour, Rush took a caller who congratulated him for his response to the previous caller and wanted to talk about the Senate health care bill. Rush used this as an opportunity to falsely claim that nothing in the bill except taxes kick in until 2013. Later on, several other callers came to Rush's rescue.

Back from another break, Rush claimed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was lying about everything he said about the Senate health care bill, especially that it would be deficit neutral, a concept Rush just can't bring himself to understand. Next, Rush treated us to a blog post by House Republican Leader John Boehner concerning abortion coverage in the Senate health care bill as nothing but the unvarnished truth, reading much of it verbatim. Rush then read a National Review Online blog post to complain about the bill being a "pretty expensive policy." Later on, Rush put aside his disdain for the liberal elite from Ivy League universities to hype a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece by the dean of Harvard Medical School, who criticized the debate on health care reform.

Back for the final hour of the day, Rush decided to air some progressive criticism of the health care bills for a change, but unsurprisingly claimed Obama was just lying to everybody, and would really deliver the single-payer health care that Rep. John Conyers wants.

Rush again uses Ted Kennedy to wax non-poetically on "the will to live"

Weighing in on the mammogram recommendations issue again, Rush decided to compare mammograms to door locks and home security systems, and expanded on this. As is his wont, he framed it as a fight between the government and individual liberty:

LIMBAUGH: To limit our options regarding medical care is an assault. It is an attack. And people are going to defend themselves against this. Anybody who wants to interfere with the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness can screw off as far as I'm concerned. They have a fight on their hands. This is a matter of self-defense. We're all playing defense now, against our own government, against our own president.

Back from yet another break, Rush read a story about a shortage of Eggo waffles due to flooding, which Peabody-winning fake conservative news show host Stephen Colbert covered on his show last night. Rush, who constantly stigmatizes people requiring government assistance, then ranted about poor students who were missing out on free breakfast at their schools, mocking the possibility that the children feel stigmatized for needing help.

Rush then had his new favorite dittohead, the woman who arranged for Rush's parody of children singing about President Obama, on the phone for a while. Over the course of the call, the caller claimed that birth control led to cancer, and Rush chimed in that abortions may increase breast cancer risks, a claim refuted by the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society.

After that egregious falsehood, Rush told a story that, for a change, made him more like everybody else; he forgot to pay his American Express bill, and seemed a bit turned off by the way he was treated. So it turns out that despite his fortune and "talent on loan from God", Rush, too, is occasionally helplessly disgruntled with the voice at the other end of the phone.

Zachary Aronow and Kate Conway contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

Highlights

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: The reception celebrating the 25th anniversary of Jackson's run for president, though, is not to be confused with Mr. Jackson's birthday celebration, which was Friday, November 13, 2009, which was held in Beverly Hills at the Beverly Hilton hotel. So less than a week ago, there was a birthday party for the Reverend Jackson, and then there was a reception six days later -- five days later for the 25th anniversary of his run for president. For some people, life, I guess, just one big party. I wonder, can you throw so many parties for yourself as this guy does and still call yourself a black man?

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Believe me when I tell you Barack Obama and Eric Holder have the mentality of the ACLU. Remember, the original goal of the ACLU was to totally break down the U.S. justice system. That was the original objective. That's why they were -- that why they formed. Obama and Eric Holder are the highest officials in a society they do not like and they do not trust. They wish to change it whether the public likes it or not. Obama -- I think it's Victor Davis Hanson who said it -- Obama's view of the United States is no different than that of a third-world Marxist dictator. That's how he views this country. Immoral, unjust, evil, unequal, discriminatory, all of those things. With every passing day, ladies and gentlemen, the core beliefs of Obama, Eric Holder, everybody in this administration are revealed -- damn the public, damn national security, full steam ahead. We're going to fix what we find wrong about this country.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: I also understand what Obama and the left are doing. They are not only trying to transform our society, my friends, they are trying to transform the people from earnest, positive, innovative people to dependent, compliant servants. They want you believing that you're only hope is the government. They want you turning to the government for more and more. It is their desire to perpetuate their power in perpetuity, forever. Because the more people that depend on Obama personally or the government for the basics of life, the more people that will continue to vote for those people out of fear those basics will not be provided by different people, a different party.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: To limit our options regarding medical care is an assault. It is an attack. And people are going to defend themselves against this. Anybody who wants to interfere with the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness can screw off as far as I'm concerned. They have a fight on their hands. This is a matter of self-defense. We're all playing defense now, against our own government, against our own president.

"Socialism" watch

LIMBAUGH: This is the Obama administration, which runs around the world apologizing for this country. He sees this country the same way a Third World socialist dictator does. That's the lens through which he sees the United States of America. And he wants this country to be on trial, so he sends his attorney general out there, claiming the attorney general made the decision after a long, agonizing moment, after eight years of delay, and the Bush adminstration, yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda. And can't even cite one example where it has been done before.

America's Truth Rejecter

CALLER: You did a story awhile back on women that take the birth control pill. I don't because of the high risk of breast cancer in my family. Now they want to take away my mammogram, but I want you to know what kind of woman I am. I like a manly man. I've never taken the pill in my life. Do you remember that story?

LIMBAUGH: From the last time you called?

CALLER: No no no. The -- the birth control --

LIMBAUGH: Oh, you mean the news story. Oh yeah yeah yeah, the birth -- not only birth control, but there are studies that say abortions increase the chances of breast cancer as well.

War on the poor

CALLER: I heard you say something before that just really annoyed me. You said something about unemployment and about all these extensions for unemployment, that all these extensions are discouraging people from looking for work. You have got to be kidding. You've got to be kidding. What, do you think people are sitting back and, like, you know, like, enjoying all this time off, when nobody has any idea of they're going to be able to get a job? I mean, granted --

LIMBAUGH: Uh --

CALLER: -- wait, wait, let me finish, OK? Granted, my particular industry is dead -- OK, it committed suicide. I understand that. But my brother just got laid off two weeks ago, OK, and he -- and his -- in the building he was in, Comcast laid off their entire work force in that -- in that floor.

LIMBAUGH: Yeah, and they're buying NBC.

CALLER: I don't give a damn. I mean, all I care about is, like, where -- how am I going to get a job? How is he going to get a job? How are we going to work, and I still have a mortgage to pay?

LIMBAUGH: Uh --

CALLER: I mean, come on, Rush, it hasn't been that long since you got fi --

LIMBAUGH: Wait, can -- can I --

CALLER: Wait, wait, wait, wait, it hasn't been that long since you got fired. Would you stop snickering? It's really -- it's really pathetic.

LIMBAUGH: I'm -- no -- I'm -- 'cause I feel like your husband; I'm trying to get a word in edgewise, and you won't --

CALLER: My husband --

LIMBAUGH: You won't --

CALLER: My husband died.

LIMBAUGH: You won't let me speak.

CALLER: Look, I didn't-- you know, you have --

LIMBAUGH: I'm sorry about that, I'm sorry --

CALLER: Look, you've got -- you've got more money than God, OK? Are you starting a newspaper? No, of course not, ok, it's like everybody --

LIMBAUGH: Why would I invest in a dying industry?

Rush opened today's show Drudge-style, giving us his own Rush Report of headlines that prove how bad the economy is, and that "cannot be spun." Not to worry though, he did make time for a quick sexist joke at Sen. McCaskill's expense.

The first headline was the Wall Street Journal story claiming that the climate bill is going to be delayed until spring, and took the opportunity to turn McCaskill's take on the difficulties of passing cap-and-trade legislation into a sophomoric attempt at a joke:

LIMBAUGH: And a quick look at some headlines here. "Senate to put off climate bill until spring." Claire McCaskill, Democrat senator, Missouri: "It's really big, really, really hard. And it's gonna make a lot of people mad." That's what I'm wondering. Is she talking about the climate bill there or what -- "It's really big, really, really hard, and it's gonna make a lot of people mad."

Then he moved on to the news that Obama said that creating jobs isn't the goal of the jobs summit, but instead finding ways to encourage businesses to hire. Rush claimed that this is actually a reason to hammer businesses and for Obama to save face, and to make up jobs. Rush was incensed the house would propose another stimulus, and that Obama would propose a tax credit for every new job created. Rush, whose thoughts on government jobs are well documented, now apparently wants Obama to cover the cost of hiring new workers.

Always one to worry about the less fortunate, Rush decided to have his own jobs summit on December 3, which will counter Obama's jobs summit that "isn't about creating jobs." During his summit, Rush wants to hear from people who want jobs and those who don't -- because Rush informed us that the pool of unemployed includes both.

The next story on the Rush Report read, "Dems alarmed as independents bolt." Rush's interest in this story was self evident. Similarly Rush directed us to a Chris Cillizza item about how a majority of independents approve of the job Obama is doing on only one issue area.

The final stories in the Rush Report included Obama warning of the possibility of a double dip recession (which Rush used to talk about the "Chicoms laying into Obama" again), Rep. David Obey criticizing the administration over the errors in the Recovery.gov jobs data (which was so interesting Rush went back to it twice), the news that Geitner overpaid to bail out AIG, an article claiming that "if the recession is over, you can't tell from the trucking industry," and one of Rush's favorites from yesterday, the news that guidelines for regular mammograms are changing. Today, Rush not only referred to this as "rationing" but also said "you might even say we got death panels going on here."

Then Rush read from a story about Vice President Joe Biden wanting to play golf at a members-only golf club. Rush, who's very concerned about golf etiquette, was upset that "Plugs Biden" did this and it was not covered more thoroughly.

And the last story before moving on -- gas prices are going up again. Rush has only one comment about this: "It's called drill baby drill."

After the break, El Rushbo, a self-proclaimed "a man who everybody would like to be" uses this story about the home building slump to argue that Obama wants people on welfare:

LIMBAUGH: But this is the documentation of Barack Obama's failure -- failure for the United States. To him, it's a success story; this is what is maddening and infuriating. All of these items are a success story. He wants this chaos. He wants people on welfare. He wants people dependent on government.

Next Rush took a call from a radiologist who complained about insurance companies rationing (something we already knew about) and somehow blamed health care reform proposals. Rush agreed.

Rush is always right, and the Obama administration is always wrong

Hour two began with Rush telling us how right he is about everything:

LIMBAUGH: The views expressed on this program, documented to be almost always right, 99.3 percent of the time. I don't think anybody in media ever has had such an astronomically, unbelievably high percentage of opinion accuracy, as my most recent accuracy audit from the Sullivan Group in California.

He devoted the entire rest of the hour to the "comedy of errors," of Holder's decision to try KSM his co-conspirators in New York City. Rush kicked it off by claiming that Obama "poisoned the case" by saying he thinks KSM will be found guilty.

Rush then aired a clip of Holder suggesting that a civilian trial will help restore our image in the world. Rush was so insensed by this comment that he was forced to stop the tape. "We do not have a rotten image in the world!" Rush spit out. Apparently that was manufactured by the left and pushed by Obama.

Then he read from Andrew McCarthy's column arguing that trial lawyers caused the delay in justice.

Moving on to the success of a civilian trial, Rush fear mongered about the possibility of the detainees being let off. What rules are they going to use in this courtroom, Rush asked. He asserted that if they're going to use "Miranda and all the rest" of the justice system, then the case has to be thrown out.

Rush then informed us that there are several judges who would love release the detainees, like David Hamilton (Rush is actually a little late to the Hamilton-bashing party):

LIMBAUGH: There is a bit of conventional wisdom evolving out there, and it is this; "Rush, Rush, Rush, don't worry about this. There's no judge in the world that's gonna let these guys go. There's no judge in the world that are gonna let these guys get off. And if that happens, there's no appellate judge that's gonna let these guys get off." Oh, really? Now, that seems to be conventional wisdom, 'cause no judge wants to become that kind of a target. But, folks, they just confirmed one of the most radical leftist judges in the history of this country yesterday, guy named Hamilton. You don't think there's some ACLU types that are judges who would love to let these guys go, who think the Untied States is the guilty party here? I'm not at all convinced that some judge -- the left is so perverted, they got plenty of judges who would probably consider themselves heroes to find the United States guilty here, as opposed to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

In fact, Rush added, he knows how much the left has peoples who "despise this country and would love to acquit these guys and have it all blamed" on the United States.

Next, Rush mocked Senator Durbin -- calling him "Senator Turban" -- for claiming that no one complained about trying Moussaui in Virgina. In fact, Rush claimed, it was the Moussaui trial in that let Al Qaeda know who was on our radar.

In case weren't already convinced that this trial is a bad idea, Rush informed us that Holder should have actually recused himself from this decision because the law firm he previously worked for has defended people who were held at Guantanamo Bay, the same prison where KSM and the other co-conspirators are held. Rush is shocked that no one is reporting this.

However, Holder's errors aren't limited to trying KSM in a civilian court, we learned. In fact, Holder had the audacity to call the shooting at Fort Hood a tragedy, which is incorrect, according to Rush.

Rush then took a minute to complain that Senator "Lindsey Grahamnesty," voted to confirm Holder.

After the break, Rush took a different tack. Despite his claim that the ACLU "originally" wanted to take down the legal system, Rush is also deeply concerned about the affect this case will have on our civil liberties about our civil liberties so much. You see, if KSM can be convicted without having been given Miranda rights, then Americans could be convicted without having been Mirandized.

LIMBAUGH: Let me go to an extreme. If the president of the United States can tell the world that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was tortured, was -- and then did not get Mirandized and was convicted, does that mean that the rest of us can then be waterboarded? If we're gonna convict anybody, despite being waterboarded, and they got their confession after that waterboarding, then is torture -- as they define it -- now permitted by officials? Even though these are military people that did it, this is why this doesn't belong anywhere near a U.S. civilian court. Ladies and gentlemen, habeas corpus rights, the same thing. Can't they then be denied to us under the future under the precedent that's gonna be set here?

Rush was also very concerned that, since Obama has said that KSM will be convicted, the trial will be seen as being rigged. Rush was really just worried about our standing in the world, because unlike Obama, Rush knows that our standing is currently fine, but could be adversely affected by this trial.

He then moved on to President Clinton. According to Rush, Clinton never paid a dime's worth of interest in terrorism because he never took on tough issues. He never did anything about the 1993 World Trade Center attacks, or any other international terrorism. I'm sure Richard Clarke and the members of the Bush administration who reportedly felt that Clinton was "obsessed with terrorism" were just mistaken.

Rush is just really, really, really concerned that women get their mammograms

At the top of the third hour, Rush takes a call from an unemployed dittohead who is very worried about his job prospects. Fortunately, Rush is sending him a massager to elevate his stress about his job situation. With those common sense solutions, we at the Wire cannot wait until his job summit.

Speaking of common sense solutions, Rush reported that Palin's appearance on Oprah had the highest ratings for that show in two years. And, Rush added, no one even cried.

Moving on, Rush reported that Obama will not make the January deadline he imposed for closing "Club Gitmo," and that according to CNN, six in ten Americans do not favor providing federal funds for abortions. Rush announced that this was a problem for Democrats, because the Senate can't pass health care reform with the Stupak amendment or without it. Apparently the Senate is going to use reconciliation to "Chicago" their way out of the problem.

Rush then read an article that detailed the history of populist outrage against "fat cats." Rush selflessly cautioned against continuing that trend, asking if our lives will better if a "fat cat" gets his salary cut. Rush didn't think this was a good idea, because it didn't work in the 1930s when Rush claimed the New Deal was destroying everything. If Rush needs a history lesson, we're happy to oblige.

Done with the economy and terrorism, Rush most of the the rest of the show talking about his new cause, mammograms. He took a call from a woman who suggested that the new mammogram guidelines are a form of discrimination against women. Rush wholeheartedly agreed, and repeated the now-familiar charge that it's a form of rationing.

Rush then reminded us that he actually spoke out in favor of mammograms in October (subscription required) and Snerdly thought that the government changed the guidelines because Rush got 'millions' of women to get mammograms. Rush agreed an humbly noted that he saved millions of women's lives. All in a day's work for El Rushbo.

Rush's next caller suggested that the government moved the recommended age for regular mammograms back in an effort to totally deny mammogram screenings to older woman. This made rush furious that an American woman who is "not a nutcase" would doubt her government so much. We can't imagine why a regular listener would feel that way.

Rush then took a break from mammagrams in order remind his listeners that everyone should be taking Zicam.

In addition to wanting us to buy Zicam, Rush suggested that we all subscribe to the Heritage Foundation, because they have those "common sense conservative solutions" we've been hearing so much about. Rush mentioned that the money we pay Heritage would be cheaper than college.

Rush finished the show talking about -- you guessed it -- mammograms.

Zachary Aronow and Zachary Pleat contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

Highlights

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: He's exactly right, and we've all predicted this. There's no question that this is what's gonna happen, and this is a little leading indicator. And you might even say we got death panels going on here.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: But this is the documentation of Barack Obama's failure -- failure for the United States. To him, it's a success story; this is what is maddening and infuriating. All of these items are a success story. He wants this chaos. He wants people on welfare. He wants people dependent on government.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: The district judge in the Moussaoui trial actually tried to dismiss the indictment. People may have forgotten that, but I haven't, and that's why I'm not convinced at all that the judge in this trial is going to bend over backwards to make sure these guys don't get off. I know the left. I know how much they have people who despise this country and would love to acquit these guys and have it all blamed on the corrupt, unjust, immoral systems of intelligence gathering, torturous punishment and so forth, that has become the United States of America.

Ego on loan from Narcissus

LIMBAUGH: Yeah, I'm going to get to the Holder stuff in just a second. I'm still compiling things on it because his testimony's ongoing. They're in a break now, and I'm -- even while executive broadcast excellence flawlessly, still continuing to do show prep because I, El Rushbo, a man who everybody would like to be, can multitask.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: The views expressed on this program, documented to be almost always right, 99.3 percent of the time. I don't think anybody in media ever has had such an astronomically, unbelievably high percentage of opinion accuracy, as my most recent accuracy audit from the Sullivan Group in California.

By Chrissy Schwen

Rush kicked off today's show grinning from ear to ear because Der Spiegel community members.

After the break, Rush briefly called Vice President Joe Biden a nitwit, then turned to the issue of mammograms. Rush decided that the new guidelines suggesting women wait until 50 to get yearly mammograms means "this is the beginning of rationed care," one of his favorite topics. Rush did not mention -- as the article did -- that for women 40-49, the damage from a false-positive mammogram can outweigh the benefit of early discovery.

Rush then heard from a caller who's astounded that the media fact-checked Palin's book but not the story about Recovery.gov citing jobs created in fake districts. Rush replied this is because much of the news is made up.

This interview brought to you by "common sense conservative principles"

Hour two began with his interview of Sarah Palin, in which Palin offered "dittos from Alaska":

LIMBAUGH: We are going to open this hour with a rare personal interview, a rare guest -- doesn't happen much on this program -- but we are happy to have with us former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, whose book, Going Rogue, hits the shelves today, and it's already headed for, I think, a record in sales.

Governor Palin, thanks for making time; it's great to talk to you. We spoke last Thursday in an interview for the Limbaugh Letter, but it's great to have you here on the radio.

PALIN: Hey, thank you so much, and dittos from an Alaskan.

With the pleasantries out of the way, Rush and Palin embarked on a discussion of the economy, with Palin decrying its current state. She added that the "common-sense conservative principles" (which seemed to be the secret phrase of the day) of cutting taxes, creating jobs, and cutting the deficit "aren't even being discussed." Instead, she suggested we all act more like Reagan did in the '80s, who she falsely claimed faced a worse recession, with "common-sense conservative principles."

Moving on to the special election in New York-23, Palin stated that she was excited and encouraged by Doug Hoffman's performance, because it showed that "common-sense conservative principles" can truly make a difference in an election like this. Palin clarified that she doesn't believe Hoffman's "success" means that America is ready for a third party, but that independents will naturally gravitate toward the Republican Party's platform of "common-sense conservative principles" and its "common-sense conservative solutions." Noticing a theme yet? After all, Palin added, "who wouldn't want" to join the Republican Party?

After a quick break, Rush and Palin got into her book. Surprising no one, Palin informed Rush that she was not trying to reach the "media elite" with her book, but instead common-sense Americans (who presumably have common-sense conservative principles). She added that she hopes those people will learn something from her book. Hopefully, they won't learn any Rogue facts.

Then Palin declared that she thinks climate change involves a lot of "snake oil science," and she doesn't attribute it to any manmade activities. On a related topic, she also didn't understand why we don't tap into our domestic oil reserves.

On health care reform, Palin announced that the reform proposal in Congress amounts to a "government takeover of health care," and decided that instead we need "common-sense conservative solutions."

Palin then gave her common-sense conservative solutions to America's foreign policy problems as an ode to Ms. Teen South Carolina:

PALIN: Well, I think, domestically, a threat that we're facing right now is the dithering and hesitation in sending a message to the terrorists that we're gonna claim what Ronald Reagan claimed -- "Our motto's gonna be, we win, you lose." The way that we do that is allow McChrystal to have the reinforcements that he's asking for in Afghanistan. That sends that message to the terrorists over there that, now, we're going to end this thing with our victory.

We need to start facing Iran with tougher and tougher sanctions that need to be considered. We need to work with our allies and with the Iranian issues like Britain and France and not allow access to favorable international monetary bills. That's a great threat that I think would kind of shake up Ahmadinejad and get him to listen.

We need to look at halting Iran's imports of refined petroleum products -- they're quite reliant on imported gasoline. And we need to use that hammer to wake up the leadership there, too.

Those are two big challenges that we have right now. Domestically, and in naming those two countries, Afghanistan and Iran -- two big challenges there, too.

After the break, Rush summarized the interview, saying: "I think we know what her rallying cry's going to be." Indeed. He added that he likes Palin because:

LIMBAUGH: You know, one thing, I've read her book -- she's not a navel gazer. I think that's one of the reasons I said yesterday that the intellectuals don't understand her, don't like her. She doesn't analyze herself. She doesn't analyze her thoughts; she just has them and expresses them.

Rush and a caller then agreed that Palin is great, that Obama is on an apology tour in China, and that he's a national embarrassment. The two next callers also said they believed that Palin should be president.

Rush's last caller before the break said he liked Palin, but thought that men are better leaders. Rush disagreed, but blamed feminism -- apparently, those feminists should have known their actions for equal rights would have caused a backlash like this. This brought Rush back to the "wimpification of men."

The third hour of the show began with a segment of meta radio, in which Rush played a clip of MSNBC playing a clip of Rush's show. Rush was disappointed with MSNBC's conclusion that Palin does not favor an inclusive Republican Party. He stated that the Republican Party is more diverse, and that in the Democratic Party, you can't be pro-life or for tax cuts. I'm sure Congressman Stupak and President Obama would disagree.

Rush also disapproved of the media's criticism of Palin's book. Rush informed us that Palin's book is not all about the campaign, and that she was only setting the record straight:

LIMBAUGH: All I can say is read the book. It's about 10 to 12 pages on the campaign, and after you finish it, you will not think that she's selling anyone out; she is setting the record straight.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: The truth of the matter is that many people in the McCain campaign set her up and they would not let her be who she is. And she writes about it, and it's just a -- it's, I don't know, you can read it for yourself. It's a set-the-record-straight sort of memoir, if you will.

However, he did downgrade the book from "one of the most substantive policy books" he's read to a book with "some substantive policy stuff."

After a quick break, Rush discussed a poll that found that Americans are concerned about the costs of health care reform, and that while the poll found broad support for reform, opinions shifted when people were asked about tradeoffs. Rush speculated that this is why people must vote for Democratic candidates, because they're ignorant of the specifics of the issues.

Rush then took a call from a "former feminazi" who informed Rush she wanted to "steal away" with him. It is as uncomfortable as it sounds. Rush's famous ego then appeared:

LIMBAUGH: Now, I have to know because our resident sexist here, Bo Snerdley, wants me to know what it was that switched you from becoming a feminazi to being who you are today.

CALLER: OK. Well, that's a really -- that's a real long story. But, first, I'd have to say God --

LIMBAUGH: Well, just remember this --

CALLER: It is -- it's God.

LIMBAUGH: -- just remember: brevity.

CALLER: It was God, but it was a lot of people in my life, and, you know, I just want to -- I want to say that it was a friend of mine, a radiologist whose name is Terry Kobeck, and he would walk around listening to you in the office. I worked for --

LIMBAUGH: So it was me. That's what we're getting at. It was me.

CALLER: It was.

LIMBAUGH: It was me and God.

Then Rush and his "feminazi" went on to ask where all the cowboys have gone (back to the "chickification of men"). After the call, Rush -- clearly needing to update his Netflix queue -- added that the only cowboy Democrats are "brokeback cowboys."

Rush wrapped up the show asking why more women don't want cowboys, and why women love Don Draper, even though he treats them badly. No one tell him that Draper isn't real; it'll just make him cry.

Zachary Aronow, Zachary Pleat, and Tom Allison contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

Highlights

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: But the point is, as long as the pollsters report that Obama is personally liked, that intimidates members of Congress into opposing his agenda. Because Obama is universally liked -- oh, they really enjoy him; he's personal; he's smart; he speaks well. And even though people hate his issues and his agenda, they like him personally.

Well, my theory on that is that these approval numbers are skewed high, perhaps not artificially by the pollsters twisting things -- although they do do that with samples -- but I think the old, ugly, racist head has -- raises itself here. I think when a pollster calls somebody and says, "What do you think about President Obama?" I think people are afraid to say anything negative, because he's our first black president, and especially if the poll is done in person.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: So we've got imaginary districts. Can you imagine how ACORN's gonna have an orgasm over this? Good God, when you can go in and make up an entire congressional district and then ballot stuff from a district that doesn't exist, except that it does on an Obama website? Whoa.

Ego on loan from Narcissus

LIMBAUGH: Now, I have to know because our resident sexist here, Bo Snerdley, wants me to know what it was that switched you from becoming a feminazi to being who you are today.

CALLER: OK. Well, that's a really -- that's a real long story. But, first, I'd have to say God --

LIMBAUGH: Well, just remember this --

CALLER: It is -- it's God.

LIMBAUGH: -- just remember: brevity.

CALLER: It was God, but it was a lot of people in my life, and, you know, I just want to -- I want to say that it was a friend of mine, a radiologist whose name is Terry Kobeck, and he would walk around listening to you in the office. I worked for --

LIMBAUGH: So it was me. That's what we're getting at. It was me.

CALLER: It was.

LIMBAUGH: It was me and God.

Ladies' man

LIMBAUGH: What's happening in this country, Mr. President, is that the men of this country are becoming chickified. The huffing and puffington post has a new section on that website where they explore why women are unhappy. It is a daily thing -- daily posts -- trying to explain why women are unhappy.

[...]

CALLER: Oh my gosh, Rush Limbaugh -- former feminazi dittos.

LIMBAUGH: Former feminazi?

CALLER: Former feminazi dittos. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, I just want to say, there's -- if I could steal away with you, Rush Limbaugh, there's so many things I wish I could talk to you about. But I just wanna say that I agree with you that I believe possibly that the left does hate Sarah Palin maybe more than you.

LIMBAUGH: Let me ask you a question out there, Laurie.

CALLER: Yes.

LIMBAUGH: Just to -- in my narcissistic mode here, a little question: If you did steal away with me --

CALLER: Yes.

LIMBAUGH: -- would I get a word in? Would you -- is your desire to just tell me what you think?

CALLER: No. No. It would take hours and hours and hours. No.

LIMBAUGH: OK. I just -- 'cause you said there's so many things you wanted to talk to me about, and I just envision myself sitting there listening.

CALLER: Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes.

Rush kicked off today's show with a little fearmongering, claiming that there was a serious possibility that Guantánamo Bay detainees would be acquitted in their criminal cases. Rush played some audio from Attorney General Eric Holder, where he commented that he informed President Obama of the decision to bring the detainees to criminal trial. Then Limbaugh claimed that Holder was "a stranger to the truth" and was very skeptical that Obama wasn't fully behind the decision to bring the five detainees to New York. Claiming that the decision could be Obama's most recent Waterloo, Rush claimed that Obama was degrading our national security and was endangering his chances at re-election:

LIMBAUGH: Folks, this could very well be Waterloo for Obama. He has stepped in it with this Khalid Shaikh Mohammed matter. All the frenzied writing and protests -- I mean, that's just the beginning. But what's happening here -- this is an in-our-face weakening of our security, which means that if a civilian target is hit again, particularly New York City, Obama is toast. He's done. The American people will tolerate a lot, but not a grotesque mishandling of security based on a contempt for your own country.

Rush also played Liz Cheney's comments from Fox News Sunday criticizing the decision to bring detainees to New York. Rush again said he didn't buy Holder's claim that he only consulted with Obama, asserting that Obama is "in charge" of the Justice Department.

After the break, Rush turned to AP's fact check of Sarah Palin's memoir Going Rogue. Rush read basically word for word from this Powerline blog post that critiques the AP fact check. Limbaugh couldn't believe that the AP would dedicate 11 "crackerjack" reporters to the article. Smelling a double standard, Rush asked, "do any other authors get fact checked like this? Not that I can recall." Rush later dared the AP to fact-check Al Gore's most recent publications.

Rush: David Brooks "sounds angry" and "jealous" of Palin

Echoing the rest of the conservative echo chamber, Rush criticized Obama for purportedly bowing to the emperor of Japan. Once again following Glenn Beck's lead, Limbaugh cited a 1994 New York Times article that analyzed President Clinton's alleged bow. Limbaugh also joked that Obama bows because he's envious of monarchies and would like to be bowed to someday.

As more evidence that Limbaugh will take any story and use it to criticize the Obama administration or progressives in general, Rush read from a Washington Post story on hunger, unhappy with the article's reporting on Obama's plans to combat food scarcity.

Rush then played a montage of media reporting on Limbaugh's comment that Going Rogue was the most substantive policy book he's ever read, as first documented here at Media Matters. Rush explained that Palin "doesn't think about her own thinking," unlike a lot of liberal scholars, and therein lies her genius.

After playing David Brooks' comments over the weekend that the country has a lot of serious problems and the idea that Palin is setting up a presidential run with this book is a "joke," Rush inexplicably claimed that Brooks has Rush on his brain, and added a few personal insults to Brooks as well:

LIMBAUGH: This guy has got thin skin. He can't take it. He literally can't take it. He's taking everything she's saying personally, and he is amplifying her meaning and taking it as a personal insult.

Rush calls cap and trade "a vehicle for world government"

Rush then promoted a Rassmussen poll that found that 59 percent of GOP voters say Palin shares their values but did not mention that "[l]ast month, Rasmussen Reports found Palin in third place among possible contenders for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination."

Limbaugh read from an Associated Press article headlined "Obama retreats on climate change," which proved to be the perfect jumping-off point to criticize progressives for purportedly fearmongering over climate change. Rush claimed that the seas weren't rising and falsely claimed that the "Earth is actually cooling."

Limbaugh then shifted into high gear, claiming that health care reform and climate change legislation is merely a "vehicle for world government."

A caller told Rush that she thought Obama was a coward for delaying the decision to send troops to Afghanistan. Rush replied that that might be the case, but thought that the term "deceitful" was more accurate. Responding to the caller's concern about the future of the country, Rush said, "You get up every day and you feel like you go to war with this administration."

Rush called it "very clever" that Going Rogue doesn't have an index because it would enrage the Washington, D.C., crowd, presumably because it would make it more difficult to criticize.

After a caller expressed her concern that Palin would be victimized by the media if she were the Republicans' only chance in 2012, Rush claimed that "we beat the media all the time."

Clearly reserving his most incendiary comments for discussions with callers, Rush told a caller that the country is "under attack internally":

LIMBAUGH: So, the second option, I could've said, "Jason -- or Jordan, we're in trouble. I don't know if we can save the country. I have never seen it under attack internally this way. I have never seen this in my life. I have never -- I never dreamed in my lifetime we would have a president who dislikes this country as much as he does and holds as much of it in contempt as much as he does. I would have never dreamed that we would have had a president who is doing everything he can to destroy the very engine that creates prosperity and freedom in this country, the American private sector and capitalism."

"I'm a talk show host. Am I not running the party?"

Rush returned to David Brooks' comments on ABC's This Week and complained about the media's reactions to and analysis of his dismissal of Palin. After pointing out that Palin doesn't actually have a talk show, Rush suggested the media were contradicting themselves by calling him (a talk show host) a political figure but degrading Palin by calling her a talk show host.

Again echoing Glenn Beck, Rush brought up a proposal in Britain, in its most nascent stages, for a carbon allowance program. Beck talked about this on Friday, suggesting to his audience that they read "the last part of the Bible" to answer where we're going as a country.

Wrapping up the program, Rush repeated the theory that has saturated conservative spheres as of late, that the Guantánamo criminal court cases was just an excuse to prosecute former Bush administration officials.

Zachary Aronow and Zachary Pleat contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

Highlights

LIMBAUGH: Folks, this could very well be Waterloo for Obama. He has stepped in it with this Khalid Shaikh Mohammed matter. All the frenzied writing and protests -- I mean, that's just the beginning. But what's happening here -- this is an in-our-face weakening of our security, which means that if a civilian target is hit again, particularly New York City, Obama is toast. He's done. The American people will tolerate a lot, but not a grotesque mishandling of security based on a contempt for your own country.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: David Brooks, "Looks like it's a fair amount of score-settling." It -- they're -- folks, I told her this in the interview last week, and I mentioned this to you on Friday when I told you what I told her, that people are gonna focus on the score-settling. And the score-settling is not score-settling per se, it's setting the record straight. And it's by no where anywhere near the majority of the book. It's a few short pages compared to the 415.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: This guy has got thin skin. He can't take it. He literally can't take it. He's taking everything she's saying personally, and he is amplifying her meaning and taking it as a personal insult.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: So, the second option, I could've said, "Jason -- or Jordan, we're in trouble. I don't know if we can save the country. I have never seen it under attack internally this way. I have never seen this in my life. I have never -- I never dreamed in my lifetime we would have a president who dislikes this country as much as he does and holds as much of it in contempt as much as he does. I would have never dreamed that we would have had a president who is doing everything he can to destroy the very engine that creates prosperity and freedom in this country, the American private sector and capitalism."

Rush: Putting terrorists on trial is "a disgusting travesty"

"Chickenhawk" Rush wasted no time savaging the decision to bring Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to America for trial, saying, "This is more insidious than you can possibly imagine. I'm talking about bringing these terrorists up from Gitmo and trying them in New York City." Rush went on, calling the idea of putting terrorists on trial a "disgusting travesty" and then complaining that Obama is always out of the country when bad news hits and that he is pushing the responsibility for this off to Attorney General Eric Holder, a claim he repeated later in his show. Later on, Rush claimed that federal judges from "the American left" would be only too happy to let terrorists go free. Rush's obsession with a possible acquittal became a running theme throughout his show.

Next, Rush surprised us with quite a treat: He will have former Alaska governor and former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin live on his show next Tuesday, to coincide with her book release, which Rush proclaimed to be "one of the most substantive policy books" he has read. He also announced that his interview with Palin will be the cover story of his new Limbaugh Letter. During this segment, Rush repeated the party line that Sarah Palin was kept bottled up by the McCain campaign. Rush also took the opportunity to defend her disastrous interview with Katie Couric. Later in his show, Rush ranted about journalists in Washington being disconnected from real people for not recognizing the crowds that Sarah Palin and other conservatives draw on their book tours and rallies, and launched into his typical revisionism about the 2008 election, creating a straw man to stand in for Obama and lamenting that the GOP "had the wrong candidate."

Once he finished teasing us with the promise of listening to both him and Palin at the same time next week, Rush read in full a NRO Corner blog post by Andrew McCarthy, praising him as the "best source" for this kind of legal and national security analysis.

Rush: Terrorist trials will "destroy the CIA"

Rush then took it upon himself to defend the Central Intelligence Agency, decrying any investigations into the CIA as "banana republic-type stuff" and "Marxist-type stuff." Finishing up the NRO article, Rush declared that America will be put on trial, and that it will be a soapbox for Al Qaeda. Rush finished this off by declaring that this trial would destroy the CIA, a charge he repeated several times throughout his show.

Later on, Rush amazingly claimed that putting the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 led to the 9-11 attacks, a remark he repeated later on:

LIMBAUGH: Try this. There have been all kinds of people on television today being asked, "Bringing them into New York, doesn't that make New York a bigger terrorist target?" Hey. And they all say, "Well, no, no. New York's always a terrorist target. Look at '93. We tried those guys in 1993, and nothing happened." What do you mean, "Nothing happened"? You ever heard of 9-11? We tried these guys and convicted the blind sheikh in 1993 and nothing happened except 9-11.

Never one to be afraid of attacking just about anyone, Rush blamed the FBI investigation of alleged Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan for treating him as a potential criminal instead of a potential terrorist. Incidentally, the FBI plays a major role in terrorist investigations. Rush then attacked congressman and retired admiral Joe Sestak as "a dangerous, left-wing, radical ideologue" for his views on putting terrorists on trial.

Rush: "[T]his poor guy McChrystal ... has to sit there and listen to a community organizer"

Rush started off his second hour by continuing his incredulousness over putting Gitmo detainees on trial in federal court, claiming that the Zacarias Moussaoui trial was a circus because "supposed 9-11 families" asked for leniency for him.

Next, Rush played a clip of Obama answering a question about his decision on Afghanistan and summed it up as "a bunch of psychobabble." Seemingly unaware that our system of constitutional government places the military under civilian control, Rush lamented:

LIMBAUGH: Can you imagine this poor guy [Gen. Stanley] McChrystal? Here's this four-star general, and he has to sit there and listen to this community organizer, who wouldn't know the butt end of an AK-47 if he saw it, tell him how to run a war. And then he's got to sit there and put up with a really strategically timed statement from our ambassador, appointed by Obama, in Kabul.

Next, Rush repeated an earlier complaint that Obama didn't declare that dropping atomic bombs on Japan was the right thing to do, accusing him of ducking the question. Rush then claimed Obama wouldn't answer because he couldn't say what he wanted to say: "my country was wrong." Rush later expanded on this, declaring that Rev. Jeremiah Wright was obsessed with the atomic bombing of Japan, and as Rush said today and says nearly every week, "Jeremiah Wright is Obama."

After saying that Obama's visit to Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska was nothing but a campaign Q&A session and a chance to bash former President Bush, Rush took a caller who pleaded with him to continue his support for the troops. Rush used this opportunity to yet again accuse Obama of dithering on Afghanistan. Rush then talked about how he feels empathy for military families and again accused Obama of not caring about victory.

Next, Rush read a Politico story highlighting a decision Obama will announce in next year's State of the Union speech to tackle deficits, and asked "what moron will believe" that Obama would "turn into a deficit hawk." Rush treated us to his wonderful political analysis after finishing the article, saying Obama is speaking like this because he's losing the independents. Later on, Rush warned people not to believe anyone saying that Obama will turn into a deficit hawk.

Rush: "[A] jury of peers of these terrorists" includes "Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann."

Coming back from another break, Rush wondered if anyone "realize[s] Barack Obama is tougher on insurance companies than he is on the 9-11 mastermind?" This, of course, reminded Rush of his anger over the upcoming transfer of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. So he treated us to his delusional make-up of the alleged 9-11 mastermind's true jury of peers:

LIMBAUGH: As long as we're throwing the rules out, here, we're conferring constitutional rights on noncitizens, why the hell do the jurors have to come from New York? Let's put Bill Ayers on the jury. Let's put his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, on the jury. Let's put Jeremiah Wright on the jury. Let's go get Saul Alinksy's son -- I think he lives in Boston -- put him on the jury. Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann. Who else could be -- we're talking about a jury of peers of these terrorists, who hated this country so much they wanted to blow up the World Trade Center and did. And Cindy Sheehan is the judge.

Oh! Put Harry Reid on the jury. "This war is lost. This war" -- and get Senator Durbin! Senator Durbin sides with these guys! Get Sestak. Durbin says that our interrogators were nothing than, like Pol Pots, renegades and the Nazis and the Soviet gulags and so forth. So, yeah, we get Dick Durbin. John Kerry, who served in Vietnam. John Kerry. Oh, oh. Look at the jury we could impanel here.

Rush then rounded out his second hour by joining Glenn Beck in attacking Andy Stern by reading a Heritage Foundation blog post. Rush used this as a chance to plug the Heritage Foundation.

Rush to open a chain of "Fat-Moms-R-Us" maternity clinics

Coming back for the third hour, Rush treated us to a distinctly uninteresting story about how his buddy Vince Flynn's book is being turned into a movie.

Next, claiming that he had an advance copy of a New York Times story on immigration overhaul efforts as "a powerful, influential member of the media," Rush read the story, available online during his show, and asserted that Obama will give 12 million illegal aliens amnesty next year.

Rush then joined far-right-wing blogger Pam Geller in talking about Hasan's business card and joked that he thought the abbreviation "SWT" stood for "super wacky terrorist."

Rush finished off this segment by reading a U.K. Telegraph article on overweight pregnant women being turned away from a single hospital in the U.K. because they are "not equipped to handle complicated births." Rush used this story to propose a wonderful new business opportunity in Great Britain, a chain of maternity clinics named "Fat-Moms-R-Us." Later on, Rush wondered if these hospitals in the U.K. would turn away overweight women seeking abortions.

Rush: "[W]e are all Costa Ricans now"

Back from another break, Rush again treated us to his new parody of the video of World Wildlife Fund staffers' children asking President Obama to attend the Copenhagen summit for a new global treaty to combat climate change.

Next, Rush took a caller who compared the public option to any problems with public schools and public housing. Rush said all you need to think when you hear "public option" is lines, lines, and more lines.

Rush then took a caller who mentioned the absentee ballots yet to be counted in the 23rd Congressional District election in New York, and Rush read an AP story on how the race has tightened and went on to gloat over the GOP gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia, suggesting that independents were voting for Republicans in large numbers.

Rush then came back from another break by having his favorite insurance company representative on the phone to talk about hospitals being set up in Costa Rica, treating it like an ad on his show. After a short break, Rush read some of the "thousands" of emails coming in from this call and declared that "we are all Costa Ricans now."

Rush's last caller of the day, and the week, complained about the bureaucratic hassle that imperiled his dream of inventing the perfect monthly toothbrush, eventually getting around to claiming that toothbrushes are being classified as medical devices and will be taxed under the House health care bill. Rush said tampons are also going to be taxed and imagined a rally of women waving tampons around in the air protesting the taxes, declaring it "a shame" that Ted Kennedy wouldn't be alive to see it.

Zachary Aronow and Kate Conway contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

Highlights

LIMBAUGH: This, my friends, is even more insidious than you know. This is more insidious than you can possibly imagine. I'm talking about bringing these terrorists up from Gitmo and trying them in New York City in a civil -- well, a civil -- criminal trial. It's just --

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Before I get into this disgusting travesty perpetrated here by Barack Obama, who -- you notice how this guy's always out of the country when bad news hits? Unemployment 9.4, flies off somewhere. Nine point seven, flies off somewhere. Ten point two, flies off somewhere. Sends Holder out there today to announce they're bringing the Gitmo detainees up here for trial. He's over there in Japan, and he pulled -- they asked him about it over there, and he pulled a Bill Clinton/Janet Reno.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Thus, the administration cooperates with the Obama left-wing base, giving it the reckoning it demands. But Obama gets to deny responsibility for any actual prosecutions. Now, we mentioned this to you last summer, that this was the objective of this. They don't want their fingerprints on it. But they want -- I mean, this is -- this -- again, this is banana republic-type stuff. This is Marxist-type stuff. You go after your predecessors and you put them in jail or you do what you can to embarrass them, discredit them, and ruin their lives.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: So, we're now going to have a trial that never had to happen for defendants who have no defense. That is key to understand what's happening here, folks. They have no defense. They have asked to be executed. They have admitted doing this. They're -- they take great pride in having blown up the World Trade Center. And as I said, when defendants have no defense for their actions, there's only one thing for their lawyers to do, and that's put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury and the media spun up over government errors, government abuses, government incompetence. That's what's going to happen at this trial. It'll be a soapbox. Folks, it's going to be soapbox for Al Qaeda's case against America, and if you don't think that they can't find some pro bono ACLU lawyers to go in there and make the case that the United States of America is guilty, you have another thing coming.

And since that'll be their defense, quote-unquote, that the government of the United States is corrupt, unfair, unjust, and guilty, the defendants and their lawyers will demand every bit of information they can get about the interrogations, the renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims in mosques, and depending on what judge catches the case, they're likely to be given a lot of it.

Because fairness is the -- has become the new foundation of the new America. Fairness as defined by a bunch of radical leftists. The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets. There won't be any fingerprints on Holder. There won't be any fingerprints of Obama's attached to this this. It's all going to fall on the judge. The judge is going to take the heat, and depending on who the judge is, he might enjoy it. I mean, there's a bunch of radical leftists on our federal bench as we sit here today.

And this circus is going to be played out for all to see. Holder's -- "Oh yeah, we're going to have TV cameras in there, we're" -- all of this. In the middle of a war, we are going to televise to the world exactly how a bunch of leftist lawyers and terrorists think this country sucks. And before it's all over, their lawyers are going to end up making the case that these guys had cause for hijacking airplanes and bringing down the twin towers.

At some point, that's where this goes. We're going to have so much sympathy for the discrimination against people from the religion of peace, that they were driven to this by our association with Israel. And before it's all said and done you're going to find some whacked nut jobs in the Upper West Side of Manhattan that are going to be on this jury who are going to end up thinking, "You know what? We did deserve it. Now we know why they don't like 'em, but maybe we can set the record straight here and go forward in peace if we just admit this was our fault." Endless fodder for the transnational left to press its case that actions taken in America's defense are violations of international law. And this is going to destroy the CIA. It will destroy the CIA, exposing virtually everything they've done, people who did it. It's not good, folks.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: And by the way, this decision was made by Obama. Not Holder. Holder is carrying out Obama's policies. Holder is Obama. Jeremiah Wright is Obama. Bill Ayers is Obama. Valerie Jarrett is Obama. Van Jones is Obama. And again, whether he's being naive and just doesn't understand it, hasn't properly educated, or whether it's diabolical and on purpose doesn't matter. The end result is the same.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Can you imagine this poor guy McChrystal? Here's this four-star general, and he has to sit there and listen to this community organizer, who wouldn't know the butt end of an AK-47 if he saw it, tell him how to run a war. And then he's got to sit there and put up with a really strategically timed statement from our ambassador, appointed by Obama, in Kabul.

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: Try this. There have been all kinds of people on television today being asked, "Bringing them into New York, doesn't that make New York a bigger terrorist target?" Hey. And they all say, "Well, no, no. New York's always a terrorist target. Look at '93. We tried those guys in 1993, and nothing happened." What do you mean, "Nothing happened"? You ever heard of 9-11? We tried these guys and convicted the blind sheikh in 1993 and nothing happened except 9-11.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: It's really hard to say this to you, but you don't have a president who looks at life or war or the United States in any way, shape, manner, or form the way you do. You have a traditional view of this country based on your service to it and your commitment to it. We don't have a president who shares your commitment to the country, who shares your commitment to victory. We have a president and an administration who believes this country's guilty of things. And he's going to have trouble pulling the trigger on more troops over there, and even if he does pull the trigger on more troops, I think the constraints on their procedures over there, the rules of engagement, are going to be such that I -- it's going to be useless.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Folks, I'm sorry, I can't get off this decision to bring these terrorists to New York and conduct a trial. I just -- I -- this is such an insidious plot, it is such a disas-- do you realize Barack Obama is tougher on insurance companies than he is on the 9-11 mastermind?

[...]

LIMBAUGH: As long as we're throwing the rules out, here, we're conferring constitutional rights on noncitizens, why the hell do the jurors have to come from New York? Let's put Bill Ayers on the jury. Let's put his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, on the jury. Let's put Jeremiah Wright on the jury. Let's go get Saul Alinksy's son -- I think he lives in Boston -- put him on the jury. Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann. Who else could be -- we're talking about a jury of peers of these terrorists, who hated this country so much they wanted to blow up the World Trade Center and did. And Cindy Sheehan is the judge.

Oh! Put Harry Reid on the jury. "This war is lost. This war" -- and get Senator Durbin! Senator Durbin sides with these guys! Get Sestak. Durbin says that our interrogators were nothing than, like Pol Pots, renegades and the Nazis and the Soviet gulags and so forth. So, yeah, we get Dick Durbin. John Kerry, who served in Vietnam. John Kerry. Oh, oh. Look at the jury we could impanel here.

By Tom Allison

Rush kicked off today's show promoting a RedState article that falsely claimed the Obama administration, through the Office of Personnel Management, "intends to purge all Republicans from the federal bureaucracy." Rush commented that this is an attempt to "purify" the government. Not surprisingly, out came the comparisons to totalitarian regimes, Marxism, and Hugo Chavez.

Rush claimed that former President Bush left a lot of democratically appointed employees from the Clinton administration. Rush said he saw similarities between the Office of Personnel Management memo and "the unconstitutionality of the czars."

Rush then talked about an address he gave to the Boy Scouts of America function, where he said he delivered a "profound heartfelt tribute" to Roger Ailes for creating the "miracle" that is Fox News. Rush added that "Fox is winning," and also reported that there were "a lot of Fox people there" and he was honored to be a part of it.

Rush: Obama is "a destructive ideologue"

Rush dove head first into an all-out assault on President Obama's economic policies, claiming that the "man-child" president doesn't really want to create jobs but instead wants to "wipe out the rich." Discussing Obama's purported communist tendencies with a caller, Rush also commented that Obama doesn't know better because that's how he was "raised." Limbaugh then floored it on the anti-Obama rhetoric:

LIMBAUGH: Here's the truth, folks. I gotta say it. I have to say it again. Obama is open to learning and understanding. He is on a mission. And when his mission -- he's not open -- when his mission succeeds, the rest of the nation's actions, people, the whole country fails. That's his mission. His success is the failure of capitalism or the destruction of capitalism.

What we are witnessing is a failed presidency. It's evidenced each and every day. We are in the midst of a failed presidency. We are being led by a destructive ideologue, who is on a mission -- and he's told us -- to remake this country.

Rush also couldn't figure out why using unspent TARP money to pay down the budget deficit made sense, arguing that it's like borrowing money to pay back a debt. Rush also didn't believe that U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry is genuinely cautious about authorizing more troops for Afghanistan, suggesting that it's all too politically convenient.

Reading from an Associated Press article, Rush revived the comparison of Japan's "lost decade" to the American recovery, something Media Matters for America has repeatedly analyzed and corrected.

Rush couldn't resist smearing Anita Dunn, commenting that Obama might drop her off in China during his upcoming trip to Asia.

Rush claimed that "there was no private sector growth" in the third quarter of this fiscal year, suggesting that someone should FedEx his Wall Street Journal op-ed to the White House because there were some "good ideas in there." Several economists disagree.

Rush compared Pelosi to Hitler and health care reform to Dachau

Rush continued ranting about the state of the economy, gleefully blaming Obama for the unemployment rate and labeling the stimulus package "a slush fund" for congressional campaigns and saying it's a way for Congress to buy support from the AMA and AARP.

Rush also theorized that people in Washington actually think Republicans aren't getting jobs on purpose just to make Obama look bad. And finally, in an attempt to pack in as many tired falsehoods and smears in an hour of radio as possible, Rush repeated the false claim that failure to buy health insurance under the House health care bill would result in jail time.

But why stop at mischaracterizing provisions of the House bill. Why not compare Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Hitler and government's involvement in health care to the Dachau concentration camp?

LIMBAUGH: And by the way, the media tweak of the day: Hitler put people in jail to lower the unemployment numbers. Another media tweak, that's how Dachau started. We have 35 seconds if you think we should bleep or edit this out. I frankly think we should not. I didn't say anything about Obama there; I'm just giving a little historical truth.

Is this is all about Pelosi? This is all -- how many seconds we got before we bleep it? Twenty? I'm not going to bleep it out, Snerdley. Look, this is Pelosi. She called us Nazis, swastikas during the tea parties. Now they call us teabaggers. She said it's OK to put people in jail for not buying health insurance. Well? Historical -- OK, well, we can't bleep it now, Snerdley. The delay went by.

Rush later announced an on-air "unemployment summit" to coincide with Obama's job summit, where, for three hours, Rush will take calls from Americans looking for work, something Limbaugh claimed Obama should be doing.

Rush: "[W]e don't have the guts to keep [Muslims] out of our institutions"

Rush read from a New York Times piece on the emotional and psychological impact the recession has had on families with unemployed parents. Always playing the victim, Rush interpreted the article as "anti-male" and "anti-father" because it framed familial problems around the father being home.

Back from the break, Rush again mocked the World Wildlife Fund ad featuring children warning against climate change. Rush then talked about a Hill newspaper article on the White House hinting that budget reconciliation could still be used to pass health care in the Senate, claiming that "they're breaking their own rules."

Rush also opined on whether the CDC was inflating the risk of swine flu for counting the number of deaths "caused by complications related to swine flu" and called the government response another Obama and government failure.

Rush promoted a Hot Air post on reports that alleged Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan might have been wiring money to Afghanistan. Rush then ranted about other possible Islamic extremists in the military, suggesting that we hold a summit on what to do about them. Later on, Rush exaggerated Hasan's role on the George Washington University task force, agreeing with a caller that "a terrorist" helped shape foreign and domestic policy. Rush concluded that the Democrats' strategy of treating terrorism as a criminal matter will not stop future attacks. After all, Rush said, "[W]e don't have the guts to keep [Muslims] out of our institutions."

Zachary Aronow, Kate Conway, and Zachary Pleat contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

Highlights

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: Now last night, flew into New York -- actually, I was in Westchester County. The Westchester-Putnam County Council of the Boy Scouts of America awarded my good friend Roger Ailes the 2000 night -- the 2009 Good Scout Award. As you know, he's the CEO of Fox News Channel. And I was -- I just randomly opening my mail one day and I got an invitation to go to this thing, and I moved the schedule around to be able to go up there and do it because I wanted to -- you know, I asked for seven or eight minutes to speak and they gave it to me.

And I did a profound, heartfelt tribute to Roger and what he means to the country, what he means -- has meant to me, the miracle that he has created, the culture that he's -- one man -- they got 1,700 people that work at Fox. Roger's never been on camera. Roger is not actively in the director's chair every day for all these shows, and yet he's created this culture where everybody there is on the same page and proud, and they're winning. Four times the audience of all the other three combined. And it's just incredible.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: All of this has been a scam. Folks, the bottom line is TARP, stimulus -- it's the Chicago way. All this is, is getting money that you could have never voted through Congress to pay off your political buddies and buy votes like with the AARP and the AMA and whoever else you're gonna need. It's a slush fund. You wonder why they haven't spent but 14 percent of the stimulus? Because they never intended to.

It's a slush fund. It's gonna be used for Democrat re-election campaigns next year. It is used to pay off members of Congress and whoever for their votes on needed Obama legislation. I mean, this is classic, right out of the way Marxists and socialists and Stalinists do things. It's just -- imagine a slush fund of over a trillion bucks, almost 2 trillion, and that's what we're looking at here.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Here's the truth, folks. I gotta say it. I have to say it again. Obama is open to learning and understanding. He is on a mission. And when his mission -- he's not open -- when his mission succeeds, the rest of the nation's actions, people, the whole country fails. That's his mission. His success is the failure of capitalism or the destruction of capitalism.

What we are witnessing is a failed presidency. It's evidenced each and every day. We are in the midst of a failed presidency. We are being led by a destructive ideologue, who is on a mission -- and he's told us -- to remake this country.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Being charitable -- as charitable as I can -- this may not be Obama's fault. He is who he is. He was raised by communists. He was mentored -- well, it was Frank -- Frank Davis was an avowed communist. His father, Barack Obama Senior, was one as well. Now, we know that he's been educated in the Ivy League, which teaches the unfairness -- inherent unfairness in this country that capitalism's unfair, that it leads to unequal results, discrimination, poverty for some, wealth for others. I mean, he's been taught that this country's unjust and immoral, which is why I suggested, you know, a couple of night classes on capitalism.

"Now, Rush, don't you think that he's actually been exposed to it?" Oh, I think he's been exposed to it, but from a standpoint of how unfair, how mean-spirited, and how unjust it is. Well, you -- look it. You know what your kids are faced with in school every day, what they're being taught about American history, and what they're being taught about the evils this nation perpetrated after it was founded, even before it was founded, when our ancestors arrived here. You can imagine what this guy's been taught, and we know that he thinks it. He said it in his books, all over the place, various interviews. So, he is who he is.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: And by the way, the media tweak of the day: Hitler put people in jail to lower the unemployment numbers. Another media tweak, that's how Dachau started. We have 35 seconds if you think we should bleep or edit this out. I frankly think we should not. I didn't say anything about Obama there; I'm just giving a little historical truth.

Is this is all about Pelosi? This is all -- how many seconds we got before we bleep it? Twenty? I'm not going to bleep it out, Snerdley. Look, this is Pelosi. She called us Nazis, swastikas during the tea parties. Now they call us teabaggers. She said it's OK to put people in jail for not buying health insurance. Well? Historical -- OK, well, we can't bleep it now, Snerdley. The delay went by.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: I guess we're just on the verge of internment camps. I know a little bit about those internment camps. The Japanese in this country -- Japanese soldiers were permitted to fight, you know, the Japanese descent, but not in the Pacific theater, they were sent to Europe. They were not, you know -- we did things differently back then. We were threatening -- the Japanese bombed us; we said, OK, we're not taking any chances, and it was a liberal Democrat that did it.

And now, we've got Obama in the White House and they're talking about an internment of Muslims out there on left-wing talk shows? Don't have the guts -- I mean, we don't have the guts to keep them out of our institutions, much less in -- I'm not suggesting -- I think it's just paranoia these people are constantly living in, and they're paranoid of us. They think we're going to demand it and Obama's going to do it, which is simply laughable.

America's Truth Rejector

LIMBAUGH: This is what Marxists do. This is a purge. This is typical of Marxist regimes, totalitarian regimes. And I -- I'll tell ya what: I hope the next Republican administration learns this lesson, because there are going to be thousands of Maoists, sleazing their way into the bureaucracy after whatever number of years Obama is in the White House. The bureaucracy is being polluted with these people and -- just as the Democrats and Obama are gonna purge all Republicans from the civil service.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: And the interpretation of this is clear. That's why I keep an eye on Venezuela, I keep an eye on totalitarian regimes, because this is a purge, to purify the federal government.

Rush: The press is "twisting itself into pretzels" to "deny the reality" of the Fort Hood shootings

Without wasting any time, Rush started off his show today by talking about Bill Clinton, specifically his meeting yesterday with Senate Democrats over lunch. Rush characterized Clinton's comments by saying that he was telling Senate Democrats to just pass whatever they can and amend it year after year.

Next, Rush seemed to be happy that the Associated Press used the word "malaise" in an article on the economy, although he complained that the AP is "still hanging in there" for President Obama and that it's blaming American citizens for their negative feelings about the economy.

Rush then talked about Obama's speech at Fort Hood yesterday, calling it the most "empty" and "meaningless" speech ever. He said that if you didn't know what happened at Fort Hood, you wouldn't know what Obama was talking about. After playing a montage of media figures saying that Obama's speech reminded them of Bill Clinton after Oklahoma City, Rush claimed that the media think tragedies are good for presidents and again said Clinton blamed him for Oklahoma City.

While reading a National Review Online post that postulated that militant opposition to U.S. military operations is mainstream among Muslims, Rush wondered if Obama is just naïve, because he's got to know what jihad is. Rush then delved back into his analysis of Obama's Fort Hood speech, saying it was yet another apology by Obama. Rush returned to the NRO post and repeated his statement from yesterday that shooting suspect Nidal Hasan wasn't under the radar, he was in fact "on stage."

Next, Rush played a clip of Fox News strategic analyst Ralph Peters demanding that Obama admit that the Fort Hood shooting was an act of terror. Rush said that Obama can't admit it was terrorism because it occurred on his watch.

After playing a clip of "Obama's patron," Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, talking about the Fort Hood shootings, Rush claimed that Daley is blaming the massacre on America's love of guns. Rush suggested that if they were armed, there may have been less carnage.

Fresh from the first break of his show, Rush said that the press "is twisting itself into pretzels," doing all it can to "deny the reality" of what happened at Fort Hood.

Rush then mocked the media's concern about the tea-party movement "ginning up violence" against Obama and attacked CNN for airing comments from a Muslim cleric calling Obama a "murderer," among other things. He then touted himself as a media expert who could explain why CNN had "zero" ratings, but managed to avoid this explanation by going to another "obscene profit break."

Back from the break, Rush took a caller from Tampa, who urged Rush to suspend his rhetoric for today, Veterans Day, to honor America's veterans. Rush responded by calling him possibly the most ignorant caller ever and launching into a list of his efforts to visit and assist wounded veterans. Rush eventually called him a "doofus" and an "idiot," and then used the opportunity to again accuse Obama of dithering on Afghanistan and denying the reality of what happened at Fort Hood.

Next, Rush decided to anoint Obama "the Iceman" to introduce a 4-day-old U.K. Telegraph article about how Obama was making Americans "wistful" for George W .Bush. After confessing his ignorance about why Bush was ever called a hothead, Rush claimed that "we wanted hot headedness" after 9-11. Rush again said Obama is "uncomfortable with the concept of victory." After reading this article, Rush claimed that "you do not understand the ego of this man, the narcissistic ego of this man."

Rush then explained that speeches won't un-nuke Iran, stop Kim Jong-il, or stop whatever Rush thinks Huge Chavez is planning for Venezuela. Rush shared a New York Times article about the possible waning influence of Obama's speeches and helpfully explained why this was happening:

LIMBAUGH: Cause they are the same thing. The same thing regurgitated over and over and again. We live in an era of divisiveness, we live in an age of cynicism, we live in an age of selfishness. My country sucks. And now that I'm here it's going to get better. And we're going to work hard and we're going to find jobs. These speeches do not inspire anymore.

Coming back from another break, Rush mentioned what he called interesting polling data from Gallup and Rasmussen showing that Republicans are several points ahead in generic congressional ballots. Rush called this unprecedented, because according to him, Republicans never lead in generic polls, and claimed that the whole Obama agenda and the bad economy are moving independents to support Republicans. Rush then returned to Clinton's meeting with Senate Democrats, characterizing it as his instructing them on "how to fly their Zeros straight into our aircraft carriers."

Rush: "So the It's-Our-Fault Administration continues"

Rush started off the second hour by reading a Pakistani news article on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to Pakistan, concluding the article on Clinton's comments by saying, "So there's -- that's who we are, that's who we have, that's who we have running our country. They're all Alinskyites."

Next, Rush talked about the possible deployment of additional troops to Afghanistan and complained for a while that Obama has never explained why we are in Afghanistan. Rush used this to repeat his accusation that Obama doesn't care about Afghanistan.

Rush then launched into a long-winded explanation of how Obama has "failed to connect the dots" between problems as various as Iran, missile defense in Europe, jihad and terrorism, and several other subjects that Rush felt like complaining about today. Rush concluded this explanation by claiming that the Obama administration is just sitting around and "hoping for the best."

Back from another break, Rush mentioned a FoxNews.com story about previous investigations into Hasan to complain that the government failed, yet again. Rush complained that people are worried the right wing will be set off by this, claiming that "we are the enemy," not Hasan, to the Obama administration.

Rush then joined many other conservative media figures in complaining about Gen. George Casey's comments about diversity in the military and worries about a possible backlash against Muslims in America, declaring, "There aren't any hate crimes. There is no backlash against Muslims in America. Zip, zero, nada."

Rush then launched into a fairly nonsensical rant, complaining that competition and keeping score are being removed from the military, but that American soldiers are keeping score like this: Islamic terrorists, 13, Fort Hood, 0. Rush emphasized that soldiers everywhere "know it." Rush then said Obama's comments were "drivel" and complained that Obama went down to Fort Hood and still didn't get it.

Next, Rush again complained that conservatives were being blamed for everything, from 9-11 to Hurricane Katrina to Dr. George Tiller's murder, and that he personally was blamed for Donovan McNabb having a lousy season. Rush then claimed that conservatives are "the Satan" in the liberal "religion" and that conservatives need protection, not Muslims.

Rush then took a caller who compared Hasan to Bill Ayers. Rush joked that they don't yet know if Hasan was a friend of Obama's, and they both jokingly agreed that if he plays his cards right, Hasan too can chair a department at a prestigious university.

Next, Rush had a caller who mentioned her aunt's role in the Manhattan Project and who closed her call by advocating for more nuclear energy. Rush followed this up by reading a New York Times article explaining that some energy in America is being produced from retired Soviet nuclear weapons.

Rush then asserted that a story about blackouts in Venezuela is a "teachable moment" for America. He explained that he focuses on Venezuela because he's afraid America is destined to become Venezuela if "we aren't vigilant."

Rush then used the mention of an interview David Plouffe had with Chris Matthews, due to his new book, to brag about the New York Times best-seller spots held by conservative books. Rush interrupted the interview with his own laughter, mocking the idea that he had anything to do with Republican congressional candidate Dede Scozzafava dropping out of the race in New York's 23rd District. Unfortunately for Rush, his protestations of innocence in that race are completely undermined by his own words.

Rush finished his second hour by comparing Plouffe's claim that Rush was instrumental in purging Scozzafava from the congressional race to Obama's campaign appearances in New Jersey for incumbent Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine, asking, "Who spent more time campaigning: Barack Obama in New Jersey or me in New York-23? I didn't go there a single day." Of course, Rush's nationally syndicated program is available six days of the week in that area.

Rush: "If anybody's close to being a teabagger, it's President Clinton"

Back for the third hour, Rush continued his new obsession with Plouffe claiming that Rush was partially responsible for purging Scozzafava and said that Plouffe was really worried that he would purge the Blue Dogs.

Rush then took on Bill Clinton for reportedly referring to tea-party activists as teabaggers:

LIMBAUGH: Folks, we have reached a tipping point in vulgarity. Perhaps. President Clinton has once again demeaned himself by using a phrase describing a perverse sexual act, teabagging, as an attack and slur on Americans he used to lead. We're talking about Americans who do not engage in vulgar sexual acts. As President Clinton has engaged in. If anybody's close to being a teabagger, it's President Clinton.

Rush then referred to Clinton as a "sexual predator" and doubled down on his previous reference to Clinton making the Democrats pilot airplanes into aircraft carriers to say he turned the Democratic Party into the "Kamikaze Party." Rush then wondered: If Bill Clinton thinks health care reform is such a winner, why pass it now? Why not wait until closer to the next election? Rush then spent some time comparing the current effort to reform America's health care system to what happened under Clinton in the 1990s.

Rush finished this segment by lamenting that Hillary Clinton didn't mention President Reagan in her remarks at the 20th anniversary of the dismantling of the Berlin Wall.

Coming back from the break, Rush proudly hyped an op-ed on the shortage of swine flu vaccinations in his hometown newspaper, ranting that this was proof of government rationing. After a short break, Rush continued to complain about the situation faced by the senior citizen from his hometown, stating that the situation is a "rationed care death panel" under the oversight of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

Rush then spent some time explaining his appearance on Sacramento radio station KFPK, and then treated us to some excerpts from his guest appearance. Rush then teased us by promising he'll provide more excerpts tomorrow, and instead plugged the Heritage Foundation.

Feeling pressed for time in his final segment, Rush just rattled off the headlines of several news stories, and hilariously hyped a story reporting that the melting of Antarctica's ice helps offset global warming while simultaneously claiming that there isn't any melting going on. As good a note as any to end the not-quite 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of the year's The Rush Limbaugh Show.

Zachary Aronow and Kate Conway contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

Highlights

LIMBAUGH: The rhetoric of this program is in defense of military personnel killed at Fort Hood and we are talking about a president who either doesn't or refuses to recognize a genuine threat that this country faces, who is dithering in Afghanistan. While three months ago the commander on the ground requested 40,000 more troops the president of the United States made a political calculation, he needed the House to pass his health care bill first before he could send the troops because he didn't want to lose his left-wing base, which is anti-military.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Barack Obama once said to Harry Reid, "Harry, I've got a gift." Obama thinks it's his speeches. Obam-- folks, you do not understand the ego of this man, the narcissistic ego of this man. The hardest thing for him to do every day is to turn away from the mirror after he gets dressed.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: In fact -- I've got to find this during the break. There's a story I missed from over the weekend in The New York Times by Peter Baker in which this whole point was made. Mr. President, these speeches are starting to sound tired and the same and -- yeah, yeah, here it is. I just happened to find it. The President whose words once soared. November 8th. Peter Baker. "As the most gifted orator of his generation, President O" -- he's not an orator, he's a teleprompter-reader.

"As the most gifted orator of his generation President Obama finds speech-making perhaps his most potent political tool. It propelled him to national promise in 2004 and the White House in 2008. And whenever he needs to calm economic fears or revive stalled health care legislation he takes to the lectern." He isn't calming anybody, this is the point. "But the limits of rhetoric were on display last week when the president could not rescue two foundering candidates in governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia. Has Mr. Obama lost his oratorical touch? Is the magic finally beginning to fade? Does the White House rely too heavily on his skills on the stump to advance his priorities? It may be too soon to reach such conclusions. The Democrats who lost last week, after all, had fatal flaws all their own. But the results do suggest that Obama's addresses these days may not resonate quite the way they did. Speeches that once set pulses racing now feel more familiar."

Cause they are the same thing. The same thing regurgitated over and over and again. We live in an era of divisiveness, we live in an age of cynicism, we live in an age of selfishness. My country sucks. And now that I'm here it's going to get better. And we're going to work hard and we're going to find jobs. These speeches do not inspire anymore.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has pledged continued pressure on militants along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and noted that the United States bears some responsibility for helping to create terrorists that threaten America and its allies." So the It's-Our-Fault Administration continues. "Clinton also said in an interview that she's convinced of Pakistan's strong commitment to get rid of terrorists as she recognized that the South Asian nation is responding forcefully to the Taliban threat in areas bordering Afghanistan. The chief U.S. diplomat told popular Charlie Rose TV show that she listened to Pakistani concerns during her recent visit, and in her meetings with the civil society representatives also aired U.S. concerns on some issues including the whereabouts of Al Qaeda leaders. 'Well I did raise that question because I was very willing to hear all the questions and the concerns from the people in the government of Pakistan. There are reasons for their concerns, I mean, we haven't always been the most consistent or understanding partner and ally over the course of our relationship and we do bear some of the responsibility, frankly, for helping to create the very terrorists that we are now all threatened by.' " Our secretary of State. In Pakistan. Making that statement. So there's -- that's who we are, that's who we have, that's who we have running our country. They're all Alinskyites.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: And General Casey is now the Chief of Staff of the Army and he talked about the diversity in the Army, and oh, how this incident is so -- he said something to the effect that it'd be so bad, it'd be even worse if this incident caused us to lose our diversity in the military. And he went out there and said we're going to do everything we can to make sure there's not a backlash against the Muslim soldiers in our military. Janet Napolitano of the United Arab Emirates says we're gonna do everything we can to make sure there's not a backlash against Muslim-Americans in the United States, and there are statistics and numbers out there. Hate crimes against Muslims are at an all-time low; since 2001, they have plummeted. There aren't any hate crimes. There is no backlash against Muslims in America. Zip, zero, nada.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: I got a quick question here for David Plouffe. He says I'm out there with Sarah Palin purging moderate members from the Republican Party. David Plouffe, a question from me, El Rushbo, the leader of the GOP. Who spent more time campaigning: Barack Obama in New Jersey or me in New York-23? I didn't go there a single day. Obama went to New Jersey three or four times, right? So who's purging what, Mr. Plouffe.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Folks, we have reached a tipping point in vulgarity. Perhaps. President Clinton has once again demeaned himself by using a phrase describing a perverse sexual act, teabagging, as an attack and slur on Americans he used to lead. We're talking about Americans who do not engage in vulgar sexual acts. As President Clinton has engaged in. If anybody's close to being a teabagger, it's President Clinton.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Statists sat in there and revised history books to take out all the stuff that the statists didn't want in there. This is exactly what Clinton's doing now. And by the way, ditto Hillary Clinton over there at the Brandenburg Gate. I don't care what your politics, how you can not mention Ronald Reagan, a former president of the United States, who was instrumental in the fall of Soviet Communism, how you can not mention him and still say that you are for a unified America is beyond me. How you can go over there and you can praise the current president who was barely reaching puberty when all that happened and probably regrets that it did. You mention him, you don't mention Thatcher. She's right there just, you know, a couple countries away in Europe. You don't mention Pope John Paul II, who was a huge role in it. You don't do -- these people, folks. They are 1984, they are Saul Alinsky, they're Abbie Hoffman, they are -- they're a 60s radical bunch and they have finally got their arms around this country. And they're going to run it into the ground.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Now that last column, letter to the editor I read was from the Southeast Missourian today by a senior citizen who lives in my hometown, Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and he's been advised by his doctor to get the swine flu vaccine, and he went in there and the doctor had three vaccines, and the doctor said you've got to call the county health department. Folks, this is a death panel.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: So melting ice caps, which are not melting, but if they do, it's now a good thing. These people are turning themselves into pretzels.

By Zachary Pleat

Rush began his show today by asking his audience to stop emailing him, he knows that "Anita Hun -- ahem -- Anita Dunn" is leaving the administration, and he says he reported this a week ago. Rush, of course, has previously smeared Anita Dunn for having cited Mao.

Segueing into his analysis of our current economic situation, Rush then decided to highlight the unemployment rate:

LIMBAUGH: That 10.2 percent rate is not accurate. It is always calculated low. I have talked to many economists who claim that the -- to calculate the actual U.S. unemployment rate, you multiply whatever the government says by one and a half. During a recession, you multiply it by two. So 10 and a half unemployment reported by government would equal 21 percent out in the real world. And there are all kinds of factors of people that are not working, have given up trying to work, and there are people who are still working who are being overworked by people who refuse to hire anybody new but they're making them work longer hours. There are also people in jobs that they hate but they can't leave because there's nowhere else to go.

This led Rush to repeat his belief that this was all being done on purpose, and then complain about the media and the Obama administration measuring created or saved jobs, even though the Bush administration did the same thing repeatedly.

Moving on, Rush continued his meme that the purpose of health-care reform is just to make people more dependent on government.

After calling health care reform the Democrat Incumbency Forever Act, Rush then said that the Democratic leadership was so desperate to pass health care reform that "they're willing to even lose their majority to get this."

Rush: "Imagine if the Fort Hood Shooter ... was shouting Jesus Christ"

Coming back from the first break, Rush brought up the tragic Fort Hood shootings, jumping on the "political correctness" bandwagon. Rush also criticized Obama's initial comments about the Fort Hood shootings as "out of touch" and "insensitive."

 After another break, Rush wondered if anyone would have jumped to conclusions if the alleged Fort Hood shooter "was shouting Jesus Christ," or if a Planned Parenthood clinic was shot up. Rush then complained that Obama said we shouldn't jump to conclusions about the shooter, and contrasted it with Obama's first comments about the arrest of Professor Gates, which Rush did yesterday as well.

Rush then ended the first hour by again claiming that the Fort Hood shooter and his "radical imam" are "just like Obama" and Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Rush: "Terrorists are getting a pass."

Rush started off the second hour by wondering if the FBI and the Justice Department should be "turned upside down and shaken up" for their alleged failure to stop suspected Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan. Rush said Hasan was "on stage", and that he was in "full imam garb" hours before he allegedly shot up Fort Hood.

Rush then played a parody of a public service announcement on "Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder" -- only three years after The Onion beat him to it.

Next, Rush read a Sweetness & Light article entitled "Obama's Empathy For 9-11 Terrorists" and claimed that under Obama, "terrorists are getting a pass," which served to prove that "there are some sick people running the show in this country."

Returning from another break, Rush mentioned the impending execution of the convicted D.C. sniper, John Allen Muhammad.

Rush then played an interview in which ABC's Jake Tapper asked President Obama about the decision to send more troops to Afghanistan. Rush got angry at Obama's response because he mentioned the costs of sending troops into the theater, ranting about how "only now" does Obama care about costs, "50 measly billion dollars to win a war after $750 billion in TARP money?"

Next, Rush moved onto the issue of federal funding for abortions in the health-care reform bill, assuring his listeners that abortion funding will indeed be in the final bill, or else the Democrats would not pass it.

Rush then repeated his astonishment that failure to obey the law could result in jail time, echoing the Drudge Report's fear mongering of jail time for failure to buy health insurance.

Rush rounded out the second hour by announcing that he would be doing an hour of radio on Sacramento's KFBK, where Rush said he started his radio career in 1984.

Rush: "[M]any children of the Middle East are having explosives strapped on them by their parents and sent onto buses"

Rush started off the final hour of his show today by mentioning Bill Clinton's visit to several Democratic senators, and repeated his earlier claim that the Democrats are willing to lose congressional seats to pass health care reform.

After then complaining about a Public Policy Polling post concerning how the health care reform issue affects Republicans, calling the authors "clowns," Rush touted a Gallup poll to flawed claim that 40 percent of Americans self-identify as conservatives.

Rush finished off the segment by again accusing the administration of wanting health care reform only to make people more dependent on government, and suggested that some Americans will be sent to "some re-education camp if you don't lose weight."

Back from another break, Rush decided to share a story about the long decomposition time of golf balls, eventually getting to a strange suggestion that the Loch Ness Monster died from eating golf balls.

Rush then talked to a caller who claimed that no terrorist attacks occurred under seven years of President Bush, and that Obama is trying to cover up Fort Hood because he failed. Rush claimed that the caller was "absolutely right", and said that it's "no wonder it's not being called a terrorist attack," because "there wasn't one during Bush's years."

After a brief promotion of Zicam, Rush took another caller who mentioned Obama talking about the expense of deploying troops to Afghanistan with Tapper, with Rush claiming it's a poor excuse for Obama to dither on Afghanistan.

Rush came back from a break wondering what happened to the H1N1 emergency and read an MSNBC.com opinion piece on the administration's response to the disease. Rush summed it up by saying, "All we need to know is government is behind it".

Rush then had a caller who asked if President Bush's "war effort to liberate Afghanistan and Iraq" provided hope to children in the Middle East. In his reply, Rush stated that "many children of the Middle East are having explosives strapped onto them by their parents."

Rush then complained because children of World Wildlife Fund employees are in a video to call on Obama to go to Copenhagen for negotiations on plans to address climate change, ranting about these children being brainwashed "over a hoax". He interrupted the video to read a story about a 17-year-old who shot a polar bear in self-defense. Coming back from another break, Rush said that he's surprised there are enough children of WWF staffers for the video, given how they feel about abortion and people causing pollution.

Rush then spent some time lamenting that he didn't get a caller's information to send him a Sleep Number bed, and used this opportunity to advertise for them.

The final caller into Rush's show brought up the issue of the constitutionality of congressional health-care reform. Rush responded that the Supreme Court can't address the constitutionality of it until it's passed into law, but he would consult his "legal eagles" about it. As Media Matters has noted, legal experts have debunked some claims in the conservative media about the unconstitutionality of health care reform legislation.

Tom Allison, Zachary Aronow, and Kate Conway contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

Highlights

LIMBAUGH: You can stop sending me emails that Adita -- Anita Hunn -- ahem -- Anita Dunn is leaving the Obama administration. We reported that last week on this program when we also reported that her husband is joining the administration. He's a lawyer in some capacity. I'm expecting Obama will drop off Anita Dunn somewhere in Asia on his next trip there so that she can fully immerse herself in her Maoism.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: That 10.2 percent rate is not accurate. It is always calculated low. I have talked to many economists who claim that the -- to calculate the actual U.S. unemployment rate, you multiply whatever the government says by one and a half. During a recession, you multiply it by two. So 10 and a half unemployment reported by government would equal 21 percent out in the real world. And there are all kinds of factors of people that are not working, have given up trying to work, and there are people who are still working who are being overworked by people who refuse to hire anybody new but they're making them work longer hours. There are also people in jobs that they hate but they can't leave because there's nowhere else to go.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: In fact, there's a story today confirming -- confirming -- what I have said. A little editorial in The Wall Street Journal. Some big, ranking Democrat went somewhere and let the cat out of the bag of the purpose of health care: redistribution. The purpose of health care is not to get people insured, not to get -- this is the Democrat Incumbency Forever Act. It is to create so much transference of wealth, it is to create so much dependence in the middle class on government that Democrats will never lose power. That's the objective here. To make so many of you dependent on your very existence for government subsidies, handouts, and checks that you think only the Democrat Party will provide those for you, that everybody knows the Republicans, if they ever get in power, are gonna cut that back. So, this is the long-term goal. It's also a way for Obama to get even with the achievers in this country, who he really is not happy -- let me find that story. I've got it here.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: They don't care -- folks, this is so important to get this health care bill, because this guy's right. Once it's there, it can't be undone. It won't be rescinded. What government program ever is, may I ax you. So, they're willing to even lose their majority to get this. They are willing to lose their majority to get this. That's how big health care is. And that is why the leaders, I'm talking about, the leaders and Obama on down are happy to get this if it means -- even if it means losing their majority for awhile. Because once they get this, I mean, they're going to -- they figure they're going to get their majority back lickety-split. So the lesson here is, you can be as opposed to this as you want -- and everybody is. There's not one poll that shows support for this in a majority. The majority is opposed to it. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. They are going to even sacrifice their majorities to get this.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Now, I'm also hearing that Obama is going to personalize this and pay tribute to each of the fallen personally, and if he does that, that means he's stinging from the criticism of his speech with -- you know, to the tribal leaders, where he gave a shout-out to this incident while praising the tribal leaders at that scheduled conference. It was terrible, it was horrible. It was as out of touch, disconnected from reality -- it was insensitive. It was all the things that people thought Obama was not when they elected him.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: So, the press here is getting more creative and finding anything other than Islam's injunction to jihad to blame here. The New York Times is claiming this is just one in a strong -- string of violent incidents at Fort Hood. That's -- this is what the left likes to call "blaming the victim." And it has a double virtue in the Times' eyes of slandering soldiers as violent louts. And, boy, you ought to see this New York Times story. It's all about how there are divorces, there are wife beatings, there are incidents of violence that we never hear about at Fort Hood. This guy was no different than anybody else. Da da da da. They're going out of their way to make sure that the U.S. military is maligned for this. A respected, veneered institution of freedom and liberty under assault because of political ideology and political correctness.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: From the Los Angeles Times: "Nidal Malik Hasan's contacts with a radical Islamic cleric linked to some of the 9-11 hijackers were investigated but found to be mostly innocuous, officials say." Really? What about all this talk post-9-11 that we had to start connecting the dots that we didn't properly connect prior to 9-11? You know the headline here, "Fort Hood suspect was on U.S. radar" -- really? "Radar"? Well, you know that's the screen with those little dots on it, the little green dots that appear, and government's supposed to connect those dots on the radar? And get this, Page 2 of this story: "DOJ, Department of Justice guidelines did not warrant further investigation." What are we doing to ourselves here? Nine-eleven never happened, or we're going to reframe why it happened and who did it and for what reason? And somehow it's our fault?

[...]

LIMBAUGH: It's hard for people to accept this, but there are people in this country who hate it. There are people in this country who believe that the reason for all war, the reason for all angst, the reason for all confrontation is us. And our size. And our power. That we have been colonial, that we have been imperialistic, that we have conquered and stolen all of the world's resources, and we have enriched ourselves and left the rest of the world in abject poverty. And so we are a bad nation and we are evil and that's why people hate us. And they work at the highest levels of government. After 9-11, the State Department convened a seminar: What did we do to make them mad? What is it about us they don't like? So, as difficult as it may be to believe, there are people -- and Obama's one of them -- there are people in this country who believe we are at fault and therefore, the mission has to be to show these people that we mean them no harm, and that's -- and we'll even apologize for our transgressions in the past as a means of showing you how sincere we are.

We know the country prior to my becoming president, it was a bad place. But now that I'm here, you can check our record for the last nine months. We haven't attacked anybody, we haven't insulted anybody, we haven't offended anybody. I'm running around the world apologizing for our country, for my country, to show you that we don't mean you any harm. And we understand your grievance against us, but we want to have a family of nations throughout this world where there really aren't even any countries. I want to run it, he says, but we don't even want any countries. We just want a unified world. Peaceful, loving and so forth, and I get 10 percent of everything we generate from the taxes of all citizens of the world.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Yet, they're going to great pains to say this is not a war against Islam. Real Muslims are strongly opposed to violence. I tell you, these people running this country must have so much guilt and so much animosity toward this country -- the only thing that can explain this. Well, stupidity, I guess you'd throw in there, too.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: See, what you have to understand -- in Obama's mind, we, the United States, are to blame for the poverty of the world, because we've stolen all the rich resources. The ignorance of people in the world, the helplessness because of our superpower status, and therefore their despair -- it's all our fault. "We will have to make sure, despite our rage, that any U.S. military action takes into account the lives of innocent civilians abroad. We will have to be unwavering in opposing bigotry or discrimination directed against neighbors and friends of Middle Eastern descent. Finally, we will have to devote far more attention to the monumental task of raising the hopes and prospects of embittered children across the globe, children not just in the Middle East but also in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and within our own shores." Raising the hopes and the prospects.

[...]

Well, how's the hope and change in this country that he's behind working out for ya? The terrorists -- the terrorists are getting a pass, Snerdly. Snerdly asked me, "What are the terrorists supposed to do?" They're getting a pass. That's the whole point of this. The terrorists get a pass. We've got to understand them. It's our fault. There's poverty, there's destitution, desolution, there's despair and helplessness, and we've got to understand why. And to understand why, we've got to understand why they hate us. We've got to figure out what it is that wants to make them do this to us. And, of course, the central answer to that question is, "We're doing it. We're behind it." That explains all of this. There are some sick people running the show in this country.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Suddenly, Obama is worried about money? He's worried about 50 measly billion dollars to win a war after $750 billion in TARP money? After a $1 trillion stimulus bill that's bombing out? On top of 1.2 to $2 trillion for his health care plan? And he says it's expensive to send more troops over there? It's a billion dollars for every thousand troops, and that's expensive? All of a sudden, this guy's worried about the expense of something?

[...]

CALLER: I think that the main point behind the Fort Hood terrorist attack is political correctness, but I also think that Obama, the White House, and the media are not going to let the facts come out that it was, in fact, a terrorist attack, because if it was a terrorist attack, that means Obama failed. Bush gave us seven years with no terrorist attacks, and a little over a year after Obama's been in office, there' s a terrorist attack while he's trying to soften our defense and our intelligence? That means Obama failed. Once again, the all-knowing, all-seeing Maja-Rushie is right. Obama failed.

LIMBAUGH: Need to ask you one question.

CALLER: Yeah.

LIMBAUGH: Because I'm not -- we want to be accurate on this. Did the Fort Dix attack occur during the Bush administration? Or have all these attacks occurred since Obama took office? I think Fort Dix was not this year. Now, Arkansas was this year. The Arkansas recruit-- Fort Dix was stopped? Oh yeah, Fort Dix was stopped. Yeah, and that was during the Bush admini-- yeah, 2007. And that's right, the Bush administration stopped it.

CALLER: Yeah.

LIMBAUGH: That's right, that's right. So you are absolutely right. I was just trying to be extra cautionary -- or cautious. You're absolutely right. That's -- no wonder it's not going to be called a terrorist attack. There wasn't one during Bush's years, and, of course, there haven't been any since Obama swept in there and took office.

Outrageous comments

CALLER: You cited a 2001 quote from the Messiah, and my teleprompter has a question. The Messiah said that a key lesson learned from 9-11 is that it's incumbent upon us, the U.S., to provide hope for the children of the Middle East. So what's your opinion as to whether President Bush's war effort to liberate Afghanistan and Iraq from their oppressive, hate-generating regimes -- doesn't that provide that kind of hope?

LIMBAUGH: I always thought it did, and I think ultimately the people of Afghanistan and Iraq thought so. They eventually joined with us. Remember now, remember -- here's -- this is -- you know, nobody dare say what I'm going to say. But Obama talking about "incumbent upon the U.S. to provide hope for the children of the Middle East" -- many children of the Middle East are having explosives strapped on them by their parents and sent onto buses. It is not the United States that is killing them or destroying their hope. It is their own culture. But we dare not say that. So don't tell anybody out there, Frank, that I said that.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: That's children of the World Wildlife Fund staffers in a video on the World Wildlife Fund website. I mean, this is -- these people using their own kids, brainwashing their own kids for the advancement of a hoax. Using and brainwashing their own kids. About a lie. All for the purpose of advancing a policy that's going to result in restricted freedom for these kids. No chance at prosperity because of high energy taxes.

By Tom Allison

Rush kicked off the show predicting that "political correctness will be our downfall," not believing how often over the weekend he heard people ask why alleged Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan would murder soldiers at Fort Hood. A theme for the show, Rush repeatedly compared Hasan to the 9-11 hijackers, commenting that they worshipped at the same mosque, visited strip clubs and bars before their attacks, and espoused similar views.

Despite the fact that a Republican-controlled Congress passed the prescription drug expansion of Medicare late on a weekend, Rush accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of pulling a fast one by holding the health care reform vote on a Saturday night when "no one was paying attention"; he called it the "Saturday night massacre."

Rush wasn't placated by the Stupak Amendment that would effectively ban abortion coverage for some who have it now, incredulous that conservatives would be expected to support the bill. Rush declared that the legislation is not only anti-fetus (as the Stupak Amendment won't be in the final bill) but also "the most profoundly anti-life, at-all-ages, piece of legislation that has ever passed the U.S. House of Representatives."

Echoing the Drudge Report and The Washington Times, Limbaugh falsely claimed that Rep. Bill Owens (D-NY), in his first day in office, broke four campaign promises at once by voting for the House health care bill, misrepresenting both Owens' campaign positions and provisions of the House health care bill.

Wrapping up a busy first segment, Rush echoed a lot of conservative blogs today and complained about Obama's absence from the 20-year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Rush on Fort Hood: "[W]e could almost say that this is Obama's fault"

Limbaugh used the "if it acts like a duck and sounds like a duck" analogy to argue that Hasan was a full-blown Islamic terrorist. Limbaugh read from a UK Daily Telegraph article that Hasan "had told US military colleagues that infidels should have their throats cut."

Rush also asked when President Obama would get blamed for the Fort Hood massacre, because of reports that Hasan thought Obama would withdraw all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and lashed out after Obama didn't. Limbaugh also mockingly hoped that FBI interrogators weren't waterboarding Hasan.

Rush also accused the media of politicizing the massacre:

LIMBAUGH: Now the drive-by folks are bending over backwards searching for the rationale, any rationale for the murders at Fort Hood, but, actually, they're not looking for a rationale; they're using the tragedy to justify their own personal claptrap: "Is America to blame?" They love this. This just gives them another bit of ammo to shoot at this country: "Is America to blame?" "Is the war to blame?" "Is Bush to blame?" "Is Cheney to blame for this?"

Rush then played an excerpt from Sen. Lindsey Graham's (R-SC) appearance on CBS' Face the Nation -- where Graham and host Bob Schieffer agreed that Muslims don't have a "corner" on extremist violence -- in order to criticize the media for not acknowledging the significance of evidence of Hasan's extremist views.

Rush argued that Hasan was promoted to major because of political correctness, then doubled back, claiming that "approved minorities, approved victims are not held to the same standards"

Rush called Obama's reaction to the Fort Hood attack "striking" and called it "Obama's My Pet Goat moment." Rush also didn't seem happy that Hasan's interrogators would honor his right of an attorney.

Rush: "[T]his whole bill is about death"

Kicking off the second hour, Rush repeated his claim from his appearance on Fox News Sunday that he feels like he's in a war fighting liberals who are trying to curb liberty and freedom.

Rush couldn't believe that House Democrats were cheering passage of health care reform on Saturday night, arguing that Democrats "just voted themselves out of office." Rush then transitioned into another rant about the purported "freedom-killing" and "life-threatening" House health care bill:

LIMBAUGH: The thing that really frosts me about this is that this whole bill is about death. This whole bill is about rationing who gets coverage and who doesn't and under what circumstances. It is the single greatest tool a government will have to regulate every aspect of behavior. This is a freedom-killing -- and it is going to end up being a life-threatening bill.

Human beings will die earlier than normal, than necessary, because of this bill. There will be bureaucratic institutions, bureaucracies, which will make decisions on who gets treated and what kind of treatment they get and who doesn't get treated. But because they thought the bill had been improved -- to say that no money would be used to fund abortions -- that it was OK to support the bill.

Rush on Rep. Joseph Cao: "Cash Cao is his new nickname"

Back from the break, Limbaugh called the Stupak Amendment a "trick" to get pro-life congressional members to vote for the bill. Limbaugh of course smeared the sole Republican to vote yes, Rep. Joseph Cao from Louisiana. Rush claimed that "Cash Cao" was bought off with promises of Medicaid funding by Obama.

Later on, a caller said Limbaugh was "walking on thin ice" for calling Hasan a terrorist, warning that Obama would send his Marxist propaganda machine after him. In response, Rush again argued that Hasan is an "Islamic terrorist" and then read the majority of Fox News contributor Ret. Col. Ralph Peters' New York Post op-ed. Limbaugh promised to link to the op-ed on his website.

Echoing other conservative media, Rush played Sen. Joe Lieberman's promise to filibuster health care reform that includes a public option for the dubious reason that it will have a negative impact on the deficit.

Back from the break, Rush read from serial health care reform misinformer Betsy McCaughey's November 7 Wall Street Journal op-ed, which Media Matters has thoroughly debunked. Rush also read from this BigGovernment.com blog post that shockingly confirmed that failure to adhere to the law might result in jail time.

Later, Rush was all too happy to promote former GE CEO Jack Welch's Boston Herald op-ed, which criticized Obama's economic policies. Limbaugh complained about the unemployment rate and read from this Associated Press article arguing that this recession is tougher than previous ones.

Rush also agreed with a Jay Nordlinger blog post, incredulous that people would call for gun control in the wake of Fort Hood.

Limbaugh wrapped up today's show with a striking prediction of dire consequences for the nation if the GOP doesn't win big in 2010.

Zachary Aronow, Kate Conway, and Zachary Pleat contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

Highlights

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: Last Saturday, House Democrats had the unmitigated gall to show up on a Saturday night when nobody was paying attention, after the unemployment number at 10.2 percent and commit a Saturday night massacre on this country. That's nothing other than a Saturday night massacre.

After securing the vote to destroy the best health care delivery system in the world and replace it with a massive, big government, trillion-plus dollar, job-killing monstrosity -- and I gotta tell you something here, folks, on this. That Stupak amendment -- I don't want to ever hear -- I don't want to ever hear anybody tell me again that Nancy Pelosi's stupid. She pulled a giant trick on pro-life Republicans and Democrats. Single-issue politics came roaring to the top here.

And when she put in the Stupak Amendment that convinced pro-lifers, hey, hey, abortion's not going to be funded; we gotta vote for it -- it was silly. I guess now we should all get behind this bill because of this -- that's -- well, that's what they're telling us. I mean, for crying out loud. I mean, this is -- one of my concerns, ladies and gentlemen, always was, you put abortion in it and forces will rally, then you pretend to take it out, and those people suddenly think they have to be for a bill -- that this is where this abortion stuff -- I just scratch my head.

OK, so we've been fooled, and the House has been fooled into thinking that abortions are not going to be federally funded under health care but for crying out loud when you look at the rest of the bill, it's about nothing but death. It's about the death of the living. This is the most profoundly anti-life, at-all-ages, piece of legislation that has ever passed the U.S. House of Representatives.

I mean, it's anti-life, depending on your age, depending on the severity of your illness, depending on your party affiliation probably, depending on a whole lot of things. It is anti-freedom, and, without that, you're not going to have a pro-life movement at all.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: I'm sure they're not going to call this a hate crime. I'm sure this man's inner feelings are going to be probed regarding the Bush/Cheney war. You wait. But let's not forget this man had no problem with killing people, zilch, 'cause he wasn't -- this guy's not a pacifist. This guy is not a conscientious objector. He didn't like Americans in Afghanistan or Iraq.

And by the way, I mean, playing the game the way the media and the Democrats do, we could almost say that this is Obama's fault, because this guy said that he believed Obama was going to get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama hasn't done it and that's one of the reasons why the guy cracked.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Now the drive-by folks are bending over backwards searching for the rationale, any rationale for the murders at Fort Hood, but, actually, they're not looking for a rationale; they're using the tragedy to justify their own personal claptrap: "Is America to blame?" They love this. This just gives them another bit of ammo to shoot at this country: "Is America to blame?" "Is the war to blame?" "Is Bush to blame?" "Is Cheney to blame for this?"

[...]

LIMBAUGH: The thing that really frosts me about this is that this whole bill is about death. This whole bill is about rationing who gets coverage and who doesn't and under what circumstances. It is the single greatest tool a government will have to regulate every aspect of behavior. This is a freedom-killing -- and it is going to end up being a life-threatening bill.

Human beings will die earlier than normal, than necessary, because of this bill. There will be bureaucratic institutions, bureaucracies, which will make decisions on who gets treated and what kind of treatment they get and who doesn't get treated. But because they thought the bill had been improved -- to say that no money would be used to fund abortions -- that it was OK to support the bill.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: If we cede 2010, you can kiss the country goodbye as you know it. You can kiss it goodbye. There won't be an uprising. And if there is an uprising, even if Obama's defeated in 2012, I mean, it's -- look it, I remember during the Reagan years, one of the big things conservatives said they were gonna do is dismantle the Department of Education. Has that happened?

And people say, "Well we'll get up there and we'll reverse all this." It doesn't happen much, folks. Entitlements, new bills don't just get canceled. They don't just get reversed or rescinded. You've got to stop them before they happen. And if we cede the 2010 election, it's disastrous. No way.