By Greg Lewis

Guest-hosting for Limbaugh today was National Review's Mark Steyn, who began the show noting that there were three big news stories today. First was the news that unemployment has reached 10.2 percent. Steyn said double-digit unemployment has been a feature of life in Germany and France for the past two decades.

The other big news was about “government health care.” Steyn said that on Wednesday morning, Obama and his pals had a choice: they could have moved towards Clinton-style triangulation or, if they were willing to take a hit, they could shove health care down the throats of the American people. Steyn claimed the long-term payoff of the latter strategy would be realignment of voters to the left by turning people into “junkies” and the government into the “pusher.”

Then Steyn moved on to the tragic shooting at the Fort Hood military base. Although Steyn wanted to make it clear that he didn't think it was a “tragedy” because it actually exposed a flaw in America's war on terror. Steyn said that the shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan, believed and supported everything our enemy does. Steyn made various claims about Hasan, including that he was “fast-tracked” to the rank of Major, even though people knew what his beliefs were. Steyn went on to rant about multiculturalism helping to set up this kind of situation.

Steyn also ranted about the media coverage of this shooting and past shootings. He also complained about media figures talking about post traumatic stress disorder in regards to Hasan, even though Hasan never served in combat. Steyn read a Newsweek blog post doing just that, and said it was a sign of mass insanity that the media was determined not to address what Hasan really believes.

After the break, Steyn said that we owe it to the victims of the shooting to address the motivations and impulses that underpinned the attack. He noted that the FBI said the shooting wasn't terrorism, but disagreed with that assessment because even though Hasan might not have been a member of al Qaeda, Steyn said that he was driven by the same type of anger. Steyn also ranted about how our broad culture of political correctness is designed to lower red flags Hasan put up.

Following another break, Steyn continued to rant about the media coverage of the shooting and their reluctance to come to certain conclusions. Steyn claimed that the media would be quick to jumping to a conclusion about a theoretical shooter if there had been a shooting at the NAACP on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, or if Steyn himself were to shoot up a gay bath house on Judy Garland's birthday.

Then Steyn took a call from a military veteran who thought the shooting should be considered domestic terrorism. Steyn agreed, saying that this was the very definition of terrorism. Steyn continued to rant about our culture of political correctness, bringing up the “flying Imams” in Minneapolis as an example. Steyn said we've been conditioned to ignore certain red flags -- like on 9-11 -- because people don't want to spend six months in “sensitivity-training hell.” Steyn predicted more incidents like the one yesterday because “an obvious wacko” was able to get this far into a U.S. military base.

Steyn concluded the hour with another caller who was also irritated with the media's discussion of PTSD, since Hasan didn't spend a minute in combat, and said it was clear Hasan was a “jihadist.” Steyn said that the media portrays the jihadist as the victim.

In the second hour, Steyn continued to talk about “jihad” and radicalism and rambled a bit on some “peripheral stories,” cracking “jokes” along the way. Steyn eventually got to the unemployment rate. He said that the “real” unemployment number was the U6 figure, which was now up to 17 percent. Then Steyn read about Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) casting doubt on some of the Democratic initiatives like climate change legislation. On this note, Steyn said that the Copenhagen climate change conference would end up creating a global climate change regime that would make unemployment and the economy worse. Steyn added that it would decrease the likelihood that we would have a buoyant, vibrant economy ever again.

After a break, Steyn talked about Pelosi trying to get enough Democrats in the House to vote for health care reform. He said that 69 Democrats were “not on board” with Pelosi's bill, and Pelosi needed at least 29 of them to pass the bill. Steyn said that in the end, health care is about control and about providing Democrats with a permanent left-of-center political majority (if this conspiracy were true, wouldn't Pelosi be having an easier time getting votes?).

Then Steyn talked about Tuesday's elections. Steyn said conservatives should be pleased by the outcome because moderates abandoned the Democratic brand. You would have to be extremely rich to be able to afford the Obama presidency, he added, because Obama would be making things more expensive and worse. He also claimed that there would be longer waiting times for surgery. Steyn went on to blame unemployment on reluctant employers who won't start hiring because they don't know what kind of costs Democrats will impose on them.

Following another commercial time-out, Steyn took a caller who thought it was dangerous to ignore “horrible” Islamic ideology. Steyn wondered if the Orlando shooter, which was currently unfolding, would be protected by the media like Hasan. The caller claimed that the Obama administration wanted poverty and unemployment in order to create an entitlement society. Steyn said that Obama was “taking” money from us when he spends money and continued to rant about health care reform and climate change legislation being about government control of your life.

Steyn comes up with a “hope index” to measure how Obama and Democrats are “destroying hope”

Steyn took another caller on the other side of the next commercial break. The caller praised Steyn's “cosmopolitan and urbane sense of humor” and talked about a George Will article from earlier this year comparing Obama to FDR and Bush to Hoover and the importance of exposing the myths of the New Deal and Great Society. Steyn complained about when Republicans go along with liberals, suggesting that Hoover and Nixon weren't true capitalists. The caller also brought up how Ronald Reagan campaigned against Jimmy Carter by touting the “misery index.” Steyn said somebody should start a “hope index” to show how Obama and Democrats are destroying hope. Steyn added that they were destroying the possibility for future generations to live the American dream and were establishing intergenerational poverty.

The third and final hour began with Steyn opining that the media was probably relieved about covering the Orlando shooting because it was a “general lone wacko” without the “complicating factors” that came with covering Hasan. Then Steyn read an AP article about the shooting and complained that the article didn't mention Hasan was a Muslim until the 11th paragraph. He accused the AP of “tiptoeing” around the fact that Hasan was a “radical Islamic.”

The next caller on the show fulfilled Steyn's request to talk about the Uighurs. The caller claimed that he had met the four former Uighur detainees who had been released from Guantánamo Bay to Bermuda on a recent vacation there. He caller had nothing but nice things to say about the Uighurs, but added that Bermudans were annoyed about the way the Obama administration made the deal to move them there. Steyn agreed that the Obama administration handled it poorly.

After the break, Steyn talked about Obama's “initial reaction” to the Fort Hood shootings. Steyn invoked Bush's “My Pet Goat” moment, and said that Obama didn't seem to have a sense of the moment when he spoke about the shooting. Then Steyn talked some more about Obama choosing to take the extreme leftist route as opposed to the Clinton triangulation path. Steyn claimed that 70 percent of the country was opposed to Obama's radical agenda.

Steyn falsely claims Bush “didn't” appoint “all kinds of czars”

Following another break, Steyn took a caller who talked about how Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) tried to make Obama's “czars” accountable but was stopped by Congress and the White House. The caller said that Obama had more czars than imperial Russia during its entire history and that they were completely unaccountable to Congress. This got Steyn talking about Bush's czars -- or supposed lack thereof:

STEYN: Bush could've appointed all kinds of czars, but on the whole, he didn't. And if he had done, The Washing ton Post and The New York Times would have been screaming at him about how he was turning this country into a fascist police state. They did that anyway. They did that over -- just over the so-called library books thing, that Bush had Cheney were looking at what library books you were reading. There's no evidence they ever did that.

But as The Washington Post reported, by one count, Bush had 36 czar positions during his eight years as president.

Anyway, Steyn got to talking about Hillary Clinton being put aside as Secretary of State. Steyn claimed he felt sorry for Clinton because a year it wasn't long ago that she thought she would be president right now. Instead, “this poor woman” is in Chad meeting with a deputy trade minister instead of going to the A-list banquets.

The next caller on the show was worried about the money a cap and trade program would cost and worried that money would end up going to third world countries. This prompted Steyn to rant some more about how Democrats want to pass climate change legislation for the sake of controlling every aspect of your life. He also refuted the notion of man made global warming by claiming we're in a "cooling trend."

The final caller on the program cited a Pat Buchanan book which discussed how Marxists gave up trying to beat us with bullets, so they took a “slow trek” through our institutions. Steyn said Bill Ayers was an example of this -- Ayers realized there was no point in trying to blow up our buildings, and that it was better to get inside the buildings and hollow them out from within. Steyn concluded with a warning that if socialist health care reform passed, it would be all but impossible to roll back.

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

Highlights

America's Substitute Truth Rejector

STEYN: Bush could've appointed all kinds of czars, but on the whole, he didn't. And if he had done, The Washing ton Post and The New York Times would have been screaming at him about how he was turning this country into a fascist police state. They did that anyway. They did that over -- just over the so-called library books thing, that Bush had Cheney were looking at what library books you were reading. There's no evidence they ever did that. If they had looked at what Major Hasan -- what he was reading while he was at Walter Reed, it might have been actually been hugely beneficial. But in fact, this whole thing, “Oh, Bush and Cheney, they're watching what library books you read.” The whole thing was that Bush was running a -- had destroyed, shredded the Constitution, run a police state.

Now we have a guy governing by czars, governing by czars, and the media are entirely relaxed about it, because these are nice czars. They're not like those Russian czars; these are good czars, these are compassionate -- we've got compassionate czarism. Yeah, H.R. makes a good point, They're our czars. They're czars on the side of the angels.