By Greg Lewis

“Open Line Friday” began with Rush criticizing Obama for going to New York for Walter Cronkite's memorial earlier this week, but not to memorialize 9-11 today -- he sent Biden to Ground Zero instead, Rush noted (Obama was at the Pentagon). Then Rush got to his own remembrance of 9-11, talking about the heroic actions of Todd Beamer on Flight 93. Rush lauded Beamer and others on the flight for not waiting for government officials to tell them what to do.

Rush then moved back to politics. He said the manner in which Obama chose to remember 9-11 today “is an outrage” and an “insult” to the memory of the Americans who died eight years ago, and an insult to the passengers on Flight 93. Rush was appalled by the way Obama was commemorating 9-11: “This could be the most outrageous moment yet of the Obama presidency,” said Rush. “Twisting 9-11 into a nationalist day of service to the state.”

Let's just pause right there. Rush is referring to a statute passed earlier this year -- a statute a majority of Republican Senators voted in favor of -- establishing a “September 11th National Day of Service and Remembrance.” It's also curious that Rush didn't have a similar problem with President Bush, who routinely called on Americans to volunteer on 9-11 during his tenure. The spirit of Obama's message today is nothing new, and in our minds, nothing controversial. But Rush didn't agree.

After a few sound bites from Obama's speech, Rush called it an outrage. It is “insulting,” “insensitive,” “beyond the pale,” and typical of Obama, said Rush. Continuing to be outraged by Obama's call for a “national day of service,” Rush talked about how 9-11 made him think about the Gettysburg Address and went on to read more about Beamer's story. He then accused Democrats of ruining the nation's unity two weeks after 9-11, and said Democrats did everything they could to demoralize the mission in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rush bemoans: “We're so multicultured and fractured here”

After the break, Rush continued to reject the bipartisan ideal of community service. He aired audio of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's remarks today, echoing Obama's call for rekindling the spirit of service that helped keep America strong. Rush was outraged: What is the spirit of service? Rush asked. Pick up the trash? Replant a flower? Why not rebuild the World Trade Center?

(Because those goals are mutually exclusive? Also, service can mean a lot of things. Right now on our TV, we see a Fox News report on volunteers putting together care packages for the USO. We wonder if Rush objects to this kind of service.)

Rush declared that 9-11 wasn't about service; it was an act of war. Then Rush decried our country's multiculturalism:

LIMBAUGH: There's a disconnect in this country like I haven't seen my whole life. This is -- it may not even be just two countries anymore; it may be two or three different countries. Finding a common American culture today is a difficult thing to do. We are so multicultured and fractured here.

Obama suggested we were attacked on 9/11 because we weren't serving our community enough and also said that community service is needed to prevent future attacks, said Rush. After mentioning the latest controversial ACORN videos being released, Rush requested somebody to call in to explain to him how our fractured sense of community service led to crimes committed against us.

Back from another break, Rush complained that Obama wanted the day of service to return us to the unity after 9/11, but that unity lasted only two weeks before Democrats “turned it into a political event.” Then Rush pivoted back to Rep. Joe Wilson and Obama's big health care speech. What was Wilson to do if he was being lied to every step of the way, asked Rush. He also highlighted Dana Milbank's assertion that there were Democrats giving Obama a “fascist” fist salute during the speech.

Rush pushes Air Force One mishap conspiracy

Rush also read a “silly” Politico story about the Republican civility problem, and a response by the Cato Institute's Roger Pilon criticizing it. Then Rush spent some time going over CNN's alarmist reporting this morning about a Coast Guard training exercise near the Pentagon. Rush took great pleasure in lambasting CNN's sensationalistic reporting, and tied their lack of knowledge about the training exercise to the incident from a few months ago when Air Force One made an unexpected flyover of lower Manhattan for the purpose of a photo-op.

Rush, the non-military veteran, reached into his vast knowledge bank of military protocol to assert that Obama had to know where Air Force One was when that happened. Rush also said he “heard” the passengers on the plane included campaign donors. He also related CNN's reporting on the Coast Guard training to comments made by Tom Brokaw and Thomas Freidman on Meet the Press about the “sewer” of information that is the internet. Rush wondered what they would say about CNN reporting on something that “wasn't true.”

After another break, Rush took a call from a 9-11 truther who made it past the call screener. Rush excoriated the caller, which we have no problem with. But we did have a slight problem with Rush immediately bringing up actor Charlie Sheen asking Obama about 9-11 conspiracies. Rush said you know you're on the kook fringe cause “if you can't get the leader of your kooks to go along with what you kooks believe.” Rush briefly returned to the Coast Guard mishap. He said if it had happened when George W. Bush was president, the drive bys and conspiracy kooks would think that Bush staged the incident to scare everybody.

Rush asks: “President Obama lied to the people of this country for almost an hour on Wednesday night. Will he be forced to apologize?”

The second hour of today's program began with Rush noting that Democratic leaders were planning to censure Wilson if he didn't apologize on the House floor. Rush explained how Sen. Harry Reid called Bush a liar and other names at various points (of course, Reid didn't make his remarks during one of Bush's speeches to Congress. Rush also said that Joseph “Plame” Wilson made his career on calling Bush a liar.

Rush went on with his defense of Rep. Wilson. Rush claimed the state-controlled media is now being forced to say Obama was being dishonest, because a Congressional Research Service report said the bills would cover illegal immigrants. Well, Rush can read the CRS report however he wants to, but the fact remains that the reform bills in question, according to the CRS, ban subsidies for illegal immigrants to purchase insurance.

The real issue, said Rush, is not that Wilson called Obama a liar, the big issue is Obama was a liar. (But not really...)

Next, Rush read a Rasmussen poll on political labels, which found dropping approval ratings for “liberal,” “progressive,” and “conservative” tags on politicians. Rush attributed the high negatives for the “liberal” label to how liberals can never be honest about what they want to do -- Obama's speech to school kids was a Reagan conservative speech which outraged Rush because “nobody believes he means it.”

Then Rush went back to the latest ACORN developments, and criticized news outlets that weren't Fox News for not running the story, and then read and critiqued a CNN write-up on it.

After the break, Rush returned to ponder: “I wonder if President Obama will be forced to apologize on the House floor. President Obama lied to the country. President Obama lied to the people of this country for almost an hour on Wednesday night. Will he be forced to apologize?”

Perpetual misinformer Rush Limbaugh was really upset about this, apparently. Anyway, the next caller was an airline pilot who thanked Rush, and talked about participating in tomorrow's 9/12 rallies. Rush said the rallies were going to be huge, and was proud of the caller for going to a rally out of genuine passion.

Rush: “Obama's administration is co-opting [Sept. 11] and turning it into a way to further their political agenda by having people do community service for the state”

After the next break, Rush read a Politico article on a Department of Health and Human Services email urging people to remember 9-11 by forwarding an email about swine flu prevention. Rush said if this weren't so incompetent, it would be hilarious. The next caller on the show said Rush was slightly off the mark for his attitude on making 9-11 a national day of service. The caller explained his experience in Manhattan in the aftermath of the attacks, and described the tremendous outpouring of volunteers.

Rush said the caller's response was “disturbing” to him because “we used to do this all the time through churches, and charities and so forth.” But, said Rush, now it's being turned into something that has nothing to do with the event that happened. It's being used to politicize the agenda of a leftist radical president, who doesn't have the slightest bit of comprehension of what the caller just described.

The caller agreed with Rush to some extent, and Rush continued his rant against turning 9-11 into a day of national service:

LIMBAUGH: What bothers me about this is that ... Obama's administration is co-opting this day and turning it into a way to further their political agenda by having people do community service for the state.

[...]

When you hear community service, you've got to think ACORN. You have to think leftist radical agitators trying to tear down the American system. That's what community service, that's what community agitation is all about. Think Saul Alinsky. He's trying to get people to stop thinking about themselves, to stop thinking about their communities, to stop thinking about traditional institutions of America and instead is trying to get them to serve him and his agenda.

[...]

And what? Now we're getting community service and volunteerism and go out there and rake the leaves and pick up the trash. Turn in the bottles for your 5-cent recycle donation or whatever the hell community service means.

One more break for the hour, and Rush returned by reading an email saying the previous caller was correct, but a national day of service still has nothing to do with 9-11. Rush reiterated the point he made to the caller, and again accused Democrats of politicizing 9-11 “just two weeks” after the attacks.

After a quick audio clip from one of the ACORN videos, Rush took another caller who said Wilson didn't need to apologize, and Pelosi wasn't his boss. Rush was eager to see Wilson's fundraising numbers. He also went on to bemoan -- again -- how various Democrats called Bush a “liar” during his time in office, and rejected the notion that Wilson should apologize. The final caller of the hour requested that Rush stop saying “pig flu” because it hurt the pork industry. Rush said he would try his best to do this.

Rush rants: “Community service is one of the baby steps toward fascism”

The week's final hour of Limbaugh programming began with a doozy of a rant against community service. You know, community service -- when people act out of their own good will to help their community, which happens to be a major tenet of groups like Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and just about every major religion? Long story short, Rush thinks community service is “BS.” Rush's words pretty much speak for themselves:

LIMBAUGH: The problem here, folks -- 9-11, eight years ago today, we're not remembering it for what it should be remembered for. Obama's hijacking this to push his agenda. He's hijacking this event that he knows is getting full-fledged media coverage all day long. He's hijacking this for what sounds like a wonderful thing -- community service, we all got to get together -- you gotta understand, community service is nothing more than community organizing. It is a tactic. Community service is one of the baby steps toward fascism. So many things that Obama does appear to be isolated, but they are interconnected toward organizing the private sector to serve the state. And that's not the way this country was founded.

You have to remember this about Barack Obama. He does not like this country as constituted. He does not like the U.S. Constitution.

[...]

Now I said yesterday, Barack Obama has a chip on his shoulder about this country, and everybody in his administration does. This Van Jones guy would not have been in this administration if he didn't believe everything that Obama believes. Van Jones is Obama. Mark Lloyd at the FCC is Obama.

We have a genuine radical who has been raised by people who hated this country. He has been taught by people who hate this country. He attended church for 20 years and listened to sermons preached by a pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who hates this country. One of his good friends blew up the Pentagon, Bill Ayers.

This is not insignificant, and it is not unimportant. It is crucially important. You have to understand, the man does not like this country and intends to change it. He's out apologizing for this country in every foreign trip that he makes. Barack Obama believes this country has been immoral and unjust since its founding. A bunch of slave owners founded this country in his view, and he didn't get a vote on that Constitution. He would have never voted for it, and so until he became president, this country was in sin.

[...]

Only because of Obama's urging will we now become a just and moral and fair country. We will give up our profits. We will give up our prosperity. We will return ourselves to poverty so as to be equal with the rest of the world. Everything is government top-down with him. Free enterprise cannot work. Basic human kindness cannot happen without his prompting it. Basic human kindness cannot occur without Barack Obama happening.

[...]

This is abhorrent. So this call for community service -- this is how these people work.

Rush calls for Obama's resignation

After his rant about community service, Rush explicitly called for Obama to resign:

LIMBAUGH: This is why I'm just angry at hell people say Joe Wilson ought to apologize -- president of the United States needs to apologize. He actually needs to resign. He needs to apologize for lying and defrauding the American people for 35 minutes to an hour Wednesday night on the floor of the House of Representatives in a speech to a joint session of Congress.

After the break, Rush talked about ACORN video mastermind James O'Keefe refusing to go on CNN until they report better on the story. Next, he took a caller who said community service was great, and was glad Obama was pushing it, but didn't like the idea of turning 9-11 into a day of service. Rush agreed -- he pivoted from the path on which he just journeyed, and declared that he wasn't against community service, just Obama's “version” of community service:

LIMBAUGH: The term “community service” offends the hell out of me. The kind of community service I'm -- let prisoners do it, let prisoners pick up the trash. Let prisoners mow some highway grass. This -- this community service, folks, it's insidious. It is nothing more than a well-sounding compassionate label. But it means something entirely different. It means turning you into a robot. It means turning the focus of your life into how can you serve Obama by serving his agenda.

Rush attacks Michael Pollan for trying to reform our food system

Rush returned from the next commercial break by reading a New York Times op-ed by author, professor, and food activist Michael Pollan. The op-ed was a response to Obama's big speech on Wednesday, and made the argument that reforming the nation's food industry was directly related to the health care crisis. Rush reacted in his usual kneejerk fashion:

LIMBAUGH: And so here come these clowns -- this is Michael Pollan, by the way, writing this pi -- basically, his piece is we gotta control the food industry, we gotta get Washington to control the food industry. Yeah, community service. Picket big food. Picket big retail food, picket grocery stores, picket slaughterhouses, picket manufacturers.

Unbeknownst to Rush, Michael Pollan -- based on his writing -- doesn't actually want to “control the food industry” and picket slaughterhouses. Pollan has actually made the case that our existing agriculture policies have led to so many of our societal ills. After unleashing his vitriol at Pollan, Rush read a "companion story" in Newsweek about how the real cause of obesity was genetic.

Coming back from the next break, Rush walked back some of his harsh words he directed at Pollan after a friend had emailed him about the author. Rush read the email, which explained to Rush that Pollan's book makes a strong case that the reason the food system is so bad is because of government involvement. (Well, sort of -- Pollan's argument is how government policy has allowed big agriculture companies to deluge us with cheap, unhealthy calories, and proposes specific government policies to adjust this. We recommend you just take a look at some of his writing yourself.)

Rush concluded the program with a spoken advertisement for The Heritage Foundation, reading a blog post titled, “Don't let 9/11 become just another Earth Day.

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

Highlights

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: There's a disconnect in this country like I haven't seen my whole life. This is -- it may not even be just two countries anymore; it may be two or three different countries. Finding a common American culture today is a difficult thing to do. We are so multicultured and fractured here.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Say, I wonder if President Obama will be forced to apologize on the House floor. President Obama lied to the country. President Obama lied to the people of this country for almost an hour on Wednesday night. Will he be forced to apologize?

[...]

LIMBAUGH: This is disturbing to me. And this is why I think we're losing the country in a lot of segments of it. What you're describing is traditional American exceptionalism. We used to do this all the time through churches and charities and so forth. World War II, we came together like this. Pearl Harbor day, we came together like this, and we have days where we commemorate all this. And today, now it's being turned into something that has nothing to do with the event that happened. It's being used to politicize the agenda of a leftist radical president who doesn't have the slightest bit of comprehension of why all that you just described -- the volunteerism -- happened. He's ignoring it.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: What bothers me about this is that Obama is co-opting -- Kathleen Sebelius -- Obama's administration is co-opting this day and turning it into a way to further their political agenda by having people do community service for the state. There's no outpouring of natural community service going on for the remembrance on 9-11, that's not -- the people -- I've watched pictures from the Pentagon and from Ground Zero, which remains a shovel-ready pit, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and I don't see any people picking up trash. I don't see any community service. I see a remembrance of what happened at these places.

Obama's trying to take this and transform these events to advance his own political leftist radical agenda, and the key words here are community service. When you hear community service, you've got to think ACORN. You have to think leftist radical agitators trying to tear down the American system. That's what community service, that's what community agitation is all about. Think Saul Alinsky. He's trying to get people to stop thinking about themselves, to stop thinking about their communities, to stop thinking about traditional institutions of America and instead is trying to get them to serve him and his agenda.

And this is just a few short days after he lied through his teeth to the American people repeatedly and often on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. To me, this is potentially the lowest point of his presidency. This is a sacred day. We lost more people eight years ago on this day than at any single one-day period, an act of war in our history. An attack by a foreign enemy on our soil. I know the Civil War had battles where more were lost; I'm talking about a foreign enemy.

And what? Now we're getting community service and volunteerism and go out there and rake the leaves and pick up the trash. Turn in the bottles for your 5-cent recycle donation or whatever the hell community service means.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: The problem here, folks -- 9-11, eight years ago today, we're not remembering it for what it should be remembered for. Obama's hijacking this to push his agenda. He's hijacking this event that he knows is getting full-fledged media coverage all day long. He's hijacking this for what sounds like a wonderful thing -- community service, we all got to get together -- you gotta understand, community service is nothing more than community organizing. It is a tactic. Community service is one of the baby steps toward fascism. So many things that Obama does appear to be isolated, but they are interconnected toward organizing the private sector to serve the state. And that's not the way this country was founded.

You have to remember this about Barack Obama. He does not like this country as constituted. He does not like the U.S. Constitution. He just had somebody else appointed as a czar, Cass Sunstein -- or maybe not a czar, he's appointed somewhere, I forget to what. Cass Sunstein is one of these people -- he's a legal professor, law professor somewhere, he's a lawyer -- he's one of these people that believes that the Bill of Rights equals negative rights. Now, the United States Constitution tells the government what it cannot do to its people. It cannot impinge upon our freedom in these ways. People like Cass Sunstein and Barack Obama look at that as negative. The Constitution is an obstacle to them. The concept of negative rights means that the Bill of Rights does not tell leaders of the government what they can do to us -- they say ”for us," but what they mean is “to us.” They feel constrained by it.

Now I said yesterday, Barack Obama has a chip on his shoulder about this country, and everybody in his administration does. This Van Jones guy would not have been in this administration if he didn't believe everything that Obama believes. Van Jones is Obama. Mark Lloyd at the FCC is Obama. We have a genuine radical who has been raised by people who hated this country. He has been taught by people who hate this country. He attended church for 20 years and listened to sermons preached by a pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who hates this country. One of his good friends blew up the Pentagon, Bill Ayers.

This is not insignificant, and it is not unimportant. It is crucially important. You have to understand, the man does not like this country and intends to change it. He's out apologizing for this country in every foreign trip that he makes. Barack Obama believes this country has been immoral and unjust since its founding. A bunch of slave owners founded this country, in his view, and he didn't get a vote on that Constitution. He would have never voted for it, and so until he became president, this country was in sin.

But now that he's president, this country is becoming just and moral, and it's at that point that we arrive at my trying to convince you here that this call for community service and all this rotgut today ought to offend you to no end. It would be no different than taking Pearl Harbor day and turning it into a day of community service. What is happening -- Barack Obama believes there is no basic goodness in the American spirit without his prompting it.

I know it's hard to believe that we've elected somebody like this, but it is what it is, and we have to deal with it. And up until his emaculation, this country -- not the way you look at it. But now that he's there, now that he's president, basic goodness finally has come to America and its spirit. But only because of his presence. Only because of Obama's urging will we now become a just and moral and fair country. We will give up our profits. We will give up our prosperity. We will return ourselves to poverty so as to be equal with the rest of the world. Everything is government top-down with him. Free enterprise cannot work. Basic human kindness cannot happen without his prompting it. Basic human kindness cannot occur without Barack Obama happening. You do not know how to save yourself from the H1N1 flu without the Health and Human Services sending out a memo on 9-11, claiming that we're honoring national service. And one of the things we're gonna do is send you a little email on how not to get the swine flu. This is abhorrent. So this call for community service -- this is how these people work.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: This is why I'm just angry at hell people say Joe Wilson ought to apologize -- president of the United States needs to apologize. He actually needs to resign. He needs to apologize for lying and defrauding the American people for 35 minutes to an hour Wednesday night on the floor of the House of Representatives in a speech to a joint session of Congress.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: The term “community service” offends the hell out of me. The kind of community service I'm -- let prisoners do it, let prisoners pick up the trash. Let prisoners mow some highway grass. This -- this community service, folks, it's insidious. It is nothing more than a well-sounding compassionate label. But it means something entirely different. It means turning you into a robot. It means turning the focus of your life into how can you serve Obama by serving his agenda.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: And so here come these clowns -- this is Michael Pollan, by the way, writing this pi -- basically, his piece is we gotta control the food industry, we gotta get Washington to control the food industry. Yeah, community service. Picket big food. Picket big retail food, picket grocery stores, picket slaughterhouses, picket manufacturers.