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This hour of the Limbaugh Wire brought to you by conservative rent-a-mobs
By Greg Lewis
Rush got the second hour of his program started by asking his audience, "who the hell do you think you are" to think that they deserve the same health care as their members of Congress. "If you think you deserve the same health care as Barney Frank," Rush stated, "your health care problem is mental illness." Rush explained that he was illustrating a point here -- the media always laments after low turnout elections that more people need to get involved in politics. But when you get involved, Time magazine does stories asking if there is too much democracy -- as Rush states they did back in the 90s. Rush referred back to the Kathleen Sebelius-Arlen Specter town hall -- you're supposed to be quiet, respectful, and believe everything they say, but they're getting hell from "average Americans." Rush said the crowd was shouting that they were lying -- they know they're lying, but they don't think that you know they're full of it. Rush went on to play another town hall-gone-to-chaos, this one of Rep. Tim Bishop (D-NY) from back in June.
We want to point out that while Rush repeatedly describes these town hall events as being taken over by regular Americans who know that their representatives are "full of it," the truth is that those voicing their discontent are activists of the teabagger sort who show up specifically to heckle their members of Congress "in an effort to sway the debate and drown out reform supporters."
After the break, Rush took a caller who made essentially the same point we just did in the previous paragraph. She said she heard from Richard Wolffe on MSNBC saying that the "hoopla" is coming from right-wing organizations in cahoots with insurance companies, and individuals are being bused into the meetings and told to be disruptive. Rush was skeptical this story was true, saying that he doesn't trust Richard Wolffe or NBC as sources, but said that even if it was, it was about time conservatives had something to counter ACORN and union rent-a-mobs that liberals have used for years. Rush can complain about the media all he wants and malign them as a source, but this isn't sourced to Richard Wolffe or Politico -- it's sourced to a memo from tea party organizers themselves on how to best "rock the town halls." As we just explained, this is all about political activists who believe Obama is a socialist making waves and creating a false sense of turmoil.
Then Rush read from an Associated Press article reporting that tax revenues have posted the biggest drop since the Great Depression. Rush says we have gone beyond the "malaise of Jimmy Carter." Rush went on to brag about Ronald Reagan's tax cuts, noting how he drastically cut the top marginal tax rate in 1981, and by 1989, the government's revenue from taxes had greatly increased. However, Rush was a little vague about the 1981 recession -- Reagan's initial tax cuts were followed by 16 months of rising unemployment. We've made this point before: "Using Rush's own standards for success, we can only come to two conclusions -- Obama is an economic genius in the mold of Reagan, or Reagan was an authoritarian statist in the mold of Obama."
Rush went on to say that he doesn't think Obama, Summers, Geithner, or Emanuel care about revenue -- they only care about reducing the deficit to so that the "ChiComs" continue to buy our debt.
After another break, Rush addressed the burning question of "how do we fight these people?" Rush said that you have to look at Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals to realize that they are using that strategy of never speaking outside the knowledge of your audience. In this case, said Rush, it means when Obama talks about his single payer health care plan (which it isn't), he uses free market words to describe it -- "comfort words," as Rush called them. This makes it difficult to argue with the people on facts because that's not how they're selling it.
Rush continued, citing an unnamed poll finding that 48 percent of people "love" their insurance, versus 19% who don't, so that means there's no political or common sense reasons to do this, just like the stimulus had nothing to do with jobs. It's about creating chaos, ranted El Rushbo. It's about expanding government, taking care of unions and ACORN, etc. The result of Obamanomics has been the single biggest drop in revenue since the Depression, and we're sitting here arguing if we should put another $2 billion into cash for clunkers.
And since we've heard this rant dozens of times before, it's not surprise it went on into the territory of Obama purposefully making the economy worse:
LIMBAUGH: "But Rush, why would somebody want to harm America?" Because he doesn't like it. He thinks it's unjust and immoral and unfair. The people that have wealth in this country have come by it ways that he thinks they haven't deserved and been honest about. He wants to take the nation's wealth and return it to the people he thinks deserve it. He wants to redistribute money so people losing their jobs and the high-income people getting their taxes raised -- it's by design, and it's not to raise money for the treasury. It is not to raise money for the government. It's to remake the country in its very foundations.
Then it was on to another Drudge special of the day -- a deceptively edited video of Obama revealing how he plans to eliminate private insurance. Rush went on to state that Obama explained in the clips that he played how his plan would eliminate private insurance through your employer. The dilemma is this: which Obama do you believe? The one who says he wants to get rid of employee health care? Or the one who says he doesn't? The answer: believe Rush, because he's not lying to you.
Also, in the middle of that rant and deceptive editing, Rush threw in a sound bite from Obama's speech this morning:
OBAMA: We have lived through an age when many people and institutions have acted irresponsibly -- when service often took a backseat to short-term profits; when hard choices were put aside for somebody else, for some other time. It's a time when easy distractions became the norm, and the trivial has been taken too seriously. The men and women who have served since 9-11 tell us a different story. While so many were reaching for the quick buck, they were heading out on patrol.
To Rush, this meant Obama was criticizing his own country again. Of course, Rush pretty much interprets everything Obama says as criticism of the U.S.
Rush returned from another break reading instructions from the cash for clunkers website about how dealerships should disable "clunker" cars that were exchanged in the program. Rush said that it was all about disabling a perfectly fine car to make it qualify. Actually, it's all about disabling a car that has already qualified.
Then Rush went on to the White House press briefing today, with Gibbs apparently throwing Geithner and Summers "under the bus" for their comments regarding a middle-class tax increase on the Sunday shows. Rush guaranteed us that Geithner and Summers didn't go off script -- their audience on Sunday was the Chinese, and today, Gibbs' audience was you, and he was relying on your trust of Obama. Rush rounded out the hour with a caller who asked if the public option in health care reform would have an appeals process, as private insurers and Medicare and Medicaid currently have. Rush guessed there probably would be an appeals process for the "purpose of appearance" but doubted it would be efficient.
Simon Maloy and Zachary Pleat contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.
Highlights from Hour 2
Outrageous comments
LIMBAUGH: Oh, oh, forgot one big important thing: They're going to raise taxes, on everybody. It's gonna just make it worse. It's just gonna make it worse. They start raising taxes in an economic environment like this, and more jobs are gonna be lost. And I maintain to you that that's the purpose. When you look -- I know people don't want to believe this, and I know it's a tough sell. But folks, we're not idiots here. We've been at this for six months and we see it's not working, and all they're talking about it doubling down and doing the same kind of stuff, only with more money. And now adding tax increases into the mix.
"But Rush, why would somebody want to harm America?" Because he doesn't like it. He thinks it's unjust and immoral and unfair. The people that have wealth in this country have come by it ways that he thinks they haven't deserved and been honest about. He wants to take the nation's wealth and return it to the people he thinks deserve it. He wants to redistribute money so people losing their jobs and the high-income people getting their taxes raised -- it's by design, and it's not to raise money for the treasury. It is not to raise money for the government. It's to remake the country in its very foundations.
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