This hour of the Limbaugh Wire was the first of “Uighur Wednesday”
By Simon Maloy

Well, we made it through two days of Mark “The Milwaukee Machiavelli” Belling (relatively) unscathed, and now we're faced with two days of Mark "Raw Tomatoes" Steyn... But before we get to into that, we want to revisit something Belling screamed at us yesterday. When he wasn't carrying on about how liberals are the physical manifestation of pure evil and the conservatives' only fault is that they don't point this out enough, he attacked cap and trade and climate change, saying that proponents of Waxman-Markey “are rushing us into the destruction of the American economy to fight a problem that they can't even prove exists anymore.” Well, courtesy of the Washington Monthly, we have yet more evidence of climate change and its devastating effects on the Amazonian rainforest.

Simply put, a rise in sea temperatures linked to climate change caused a massive drought in the Brazilian rainforest in 2005, resulting in a dieback, which released an additional 2 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere that year. Normally, the Amazonian rainforest absorbs more than 3 billion tons of carbon in a given year. This situation gets you into quite the positive feedback loop -- additional carbon in the atmosphere raises sea temperatures further, which causes more droughts, which kills more rainforest, which results in more carbon in the atmosphere, etc. And just in case you're not convinced of the importance of rainforests to our global climate, they contain 45 percent of all terrestrial carbon, despite covering just 7 percent of the Earth's dry surfaces.

Anyway, Steyn got things started with Uighurs... again... It's “Uighur Wednesday,” proclaimed Steyn, who read from a Washington Post article reporting that Chinese President Hu Jintao “canceled plans to attend a major summit in Italy and flew home early Wednesday after reports that chaos and panic had spread throughout the capital of China's far western region of Xinjiang.” From there, Steyn transitioned seamlessly to two do-it-yourself dentistry stories, one of a soldier removing 13 of his own teeth with pliers, and another of a man supergluing his crowns back on. Remarkably, Steyn managed to tie all these stories together, saying that he didn't want to imply that all Uighurs are “rampaging,” as the ones President Obama relocated to Bermuda are dancing and fishing, they're not going to knock out your superglued teeth.

But what Steyn really wanted to talk about was the economic summit in Italy. Steyn said Obama is trying to get the world's economic superpowers to go along with cap and trade, even though global warming “stopped at the end of the last century.” Seems like all of Rush's guest hosts are going to read off this same sheet of global warming denial talking points, so we'll point out again that they're wrong, that global warming did not “stop” in the last century. Steyn continued, saying that the rest of the developing world is moving away from this nonsense, but just at the very point when the rest of the world is sobering up, Obama comes along and says you have to get with the program. And the Chinese aren't going to go for emissions control and neither are the Indians, said Steyn, because they would like to have material prosperity, but they will be denied that if they opt for Obama-style cap and trade. So if the Chinese and the Indians aren't interested, said Steyn, and we go through with it, we'll be checking out of the global economy.

After the break, Steyn said it was very interesting seeing Obama with former Russian President Vladimir Putin and current President Dmitry Medvedev over in Moscow. Steyn thinks this was a PR coup for the Russians because this meeting with Obama made them look like a superpower again, even though they're the sick man of Europe. They're running out of manpower. Two-thirds of Russian babies are aborted. Russia is a dying society, and yet Obama gave this country, whose steep decline poses challenges to the U.S., an upgrade to full superpower status with this summit. Steyn didn't think this was in America's interests, so it fit in with Obama's pattern. Just so we're clear: Steyn said it's not in America's interest to meet with Russia, even though that country's decline has dire consequences for us. Also, we're pretty sure Steyn didn't think the same of Bush's meetings with Putin.

Anyway, Steyn went on to say that Obama “apologized again.” Specifically, he apologized for the Cold War when he said during his speech at the New Economic School: “And then, within a few short years, the world as it was ceased to be. Now, make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia andEastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful.” If you didn't see an apology in there, you're not alone. But being a conservative pundit demands that whatever Obama says overseas be described as an “apology.” Steyn said he doesn't mind if Obama wants to go around and apologize, but we all know that the last time we had a president like this in the White House, the Soviets almost won the Cold War by default because Carter was so determined to lose it. Look at what happened when the Soviets set their sights on Grenada and Afghanistan, said Steyn. It took an amazing amount of will from Reagan to say we're going to win the Cold War. But what was Obama doing at the time? The New York Times reported that Obama, in 1983, wrote that he wanted an end to military culture entirely. He is the last person who should be going to Moscow and apologizing for the Cold War, said Steyn.

After another break, Steyn returned to the Times piece on Obama's 1983 college magazine article, saying that Obama was telling the kooky no-nukes crowds that they weren't going far enough. This is a useful guide to Obama's thinking now, said Steyn. What he's doing with all these cap-and-trade and health programs is that he's making it impossible for the United States to have a military that can project power all over the world. Businesses fund the military, said Steyn, and if you tax them beyond the breaking point, something is going to have to give, and that's going to be the military.

Steyn's first caller of the program said that Obama needs“major oxygen,” and he gets it from crowds, but he's not getting it from Russia or Italy, and that's a good thing. Steyn said the caller is right, Obama does get an adrenaline rush from the love. Who wouldn't? But if you're a star like Obama thinks he is, said Steyn, and they don't treat him as one, then it depresses him, and he starts giving these low-key performances. The caller said he thinks that's great because we're going to have all these battles with Democrats, and no one else is going to be able to draw a crowd like Obama can. That is a serious point, said Steyn. If you're running on charisma, and it's no longer there, then you're going to start having problems, and Obama's going to have to start demonstrating competence in governing.

Steyn's next caller said he's been listening to this Obama tour as he makes deals with Russia to lower our atomic stockpile, and asked why Obama doesn't give Australia, South Korea, and Japan nukes to protect them from North Korea. Steyn said what Obama is proposing in real terms is not to modernize America's military, and the Russians like that because their stuff is all old and rusted. Obama's doing this at a time when nuclearization is a fact of life, said Steyn, and while “basket-case states” are developing nukes, the president is saying that the civilized world is getting out of the nuclear game.

Another break and Steyn came back with a Tea Partier on the line, who said that the U.S. is settling into a checkmate in Russia, because if Russia gives us a route to move supplies into Afghanistan, then they can make a move into Georgia, and we'll risk losing our military bases if we object. Steyn responded by rambling about 9-11 for a bit and how the Russians finally started taking us seriously on September 12, 2001. The point, we guess, was that by securing a supply route through Russia into Afghanistan, we're giving Russia license to do whatever it wants in Georgia and everywhere else.

After one more break, Steyn took one last caller for the hour, this one saying what he thinks of Ronald Reagan and the audacious vision he had to say, “tear down this wall.” The caller added that what Obama did in Russia was the equivalent of going out after the battle and “shooting the wounded.” Steyn said he's right, Obama's not showing any courage like Reagan did. Reagan showed courage, not just against America's enemies, said Steyn, but also against accomodationists and appeasers here at home.

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

America's Guest-Truth Rejector

Steyn repeated the false claim that global warming “stopped” 10 years ago:

STEYN: Now he's gone on to the G-7, and he's going to try and get them to go along with his ideas on cap and trade and solving this great problem of the alleged global warming, which hasn't been going on this century. Global warming stopped at the end of the last century.