By Zachary Pleat

Rush: “We are going to help” Democrats commit “assisted suicide”

Rush began his show today by declaring that the news that Blue Dog Democrat Brian Baird has decided not to seek re-election has sent the Democratic Party into “a panic,” adding that the party is “practicing assisted suicide.”

Rush then read a series of polls, varying between Rasmussen, Quinnipiac, Gallup, and Public Policy Polling. He especially emphasized a recent PPP poll, saying that PPP “is a bunch of liberals.” Media Matters Senior Fellow Eric Boehlert pointed out this morning just how dumb this poll is.

Rush then took issue with media reports about Democrats lamenting the reported demise of the public option in the Senate's health care reform legislation:

LIMBAUGH: [Y]esterday, Reid, as you know, announced this great new plan where they had got rid of the public option. That's the only thing Lieberman objected to. Lieberman did not want the public option, but we're going to end up having a public option. But what Reid did was give Lieberman a fig leaf to hide behind. 'Cause the spin is, there's no public option. And all throughout the news media today, stories -- “Oh, no. The Democrats have had to give up the one thing that really mattered. They had to give up the public option.” And they haven't given it up. They're just calling it something else. They're just going to rearrange how we all get to the public option. It's all based on destroying the private-sector insurance industry and leaving no choice, no alternative but the government to then step in.

After inanely whining that President Obama said “I” 30 times during a major speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, Rush declared that Obama and the Nobel committee “deserve each other” because they're both “frauds.” He then played an exceedingly annoying audio montage of every mention of “I” in Obama's acceptance speech. After remarking on the “echo” of Obama's speech several times, Rush then played the race card while taking issue with Obama saying “that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy,” suggesting that the first African-American president of the United States hasn't learned the proper lesson from the Civil War:

LIMBAUGH: Not fighting just wars promises human tragedy, folks. And I would think an African-American would appreciate that more than anyone. This was the first country in the history of the world to go to war with itself to end slavery. That was a just war. It did not promise human tragedy, it sought to end human tragedy as a just war. And this is what he doesn't -- won't understand.

Rush continued his critique of Obama's speech throughout the first hour, again complaining about the echo, saying he “can't get past the reverb” and can't understand much of the speech. Later, Rush declared it was “a first” that Obama “acknowledged” America has done good in the world. Rush then suggested “whoever put that on the teleprompter” would be fired. Naturally, Rush then claimed Obama was “apologizing to the world” about Iraq and apologizing “for what was not torture at Gitmo.”

Rush: "[W]e're living in occupied territory"

Back for the second hour, Rush claimed that just about every poll showed major opposition to Democrats' plans for health care reform. After reading a RealClearPolitics article by Robert Tracinski, who helped advance the false right-wing narrative on the theft of emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, Rush went on to claim that the “individual mandate” in the health care reform legislation is unconstitutional -- a claim that Media Matters has previously rebutted.

After a break, Rush then seemed to compare our democratic tradition of peaceful transitions of power after elections to an occupation:

LIMBAUGH: You know, when I read that last piece on health care, when I first read it this morning during the intense period of show prep that I do each and every day, I began to think that -- think that -- feel, even, that we're living in occupied territory. That we've been taken over. Not militarily. But follow me on this.

We've been taken over financially, economically, politically, scientifically. Without firing a shot, the left has seized the press. They have taken control of the banks. They're about to take control of the insurance companies and wipe them out. Much of the auto industry. The left is now setting a salary scale for people. They've taken over our currency, and they're proposing -- preparing to seize health care. Now the occupiers -- we're being occupied by the left. This country -- we are now -- we need to be liberated. We, the people of this country, need to be liberated. We are oppressed now.

Later, Rush had a caller who pointed out that the Congressional Research Service showed that the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is about $1 trillion now, criticizing President Bush for cutting taxes during a time of war. Rush's response was that Bush didn't go to war, Al Qaeda went to war with us, and that “Saddam Hussein violated 14 U.N. resolutions,” apparently a perfectly fine rationale, to Rush, to go to war. As the discussion turned toward tax cuts and deficits, Rush falsely declared that there was never a budget surplus under President Clinton, repeating a false claim he made years ago that Media Matters debunked at the time.

Rush then read a Wall Street Journal column by Daniel Henninger, which Boehlert also picked apart. Rush then predictably tooted his own horn and read his own “bipartisan stimulus” plan. He then had a sudden fit of the -isms: “If we just sit idly by and let Obama get all this stuff done, we're cooked. Because this is not just standard, left-wing politics. This is radical, left-wing Marxist socialism -- fascism, whatever you want to call it. This is designed to forever remake the United States and to destroy the prosperity-generating capitalist system and private sector.”

Rush: "[A] lot of science has become ... a wild-ass guess"

For the top of his third hour, Rush took to complaining about “liberal callers” he claims are allowed through about 95 percent of the time. He then complained that the arguments that America doesn't cut taxes during war and that President Bush was the first to do so came from Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman. Incidentally, PolitiFact rated Krugman's claim "mostly true."

Rush then criticized Obama's praise of Reagan for “improv[ing] relations with the Soviet Union” during his acceptance speech and read a passage out of “Mikhail Gorbachev's own damn book.” (Quick, someone alert Glenn Beck!) Rush then spent some time reading a Daily Beast blog post by Tina Brown on Obama's Afghanistan speech. Rush finished this up by stating that Obama is “irritated” that he “has to finish” up Afghanistan.

After a while, Rush returned to defending himself for his comment that “the black frame of mind is terrible” and “Tiger Woods' choice of females [is] not helping 'em out” by saying that he was just reading an American Thinker article. Several times, Rush whined that “they were just waiting” for him to comment on it so they could rip him to shreds while reporting on it, too. If only he had abided by his oft-repeated declaration on Monday that “I'm not going to talk about it.” But then he'd have no convenient excuse to talk about himself.

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

Highlights

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: There is a genuine panic. You're -- you wouldn't know about it if all you do is pay attention to the state-controlled media. But there is a genuine panic out there in the Democrat Party. They know exactly what they're doing to themselves. It's assisted suicide. They are practicing assisted suicide, and we are going to help them pull it off.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: [Y]esterday, Reid, as you know, announced this great new plan where they had got rid of the public option. That's the only thing Lieberman objected to. Lieberman did not want the public option, but we're going to end up having a public option. But what Reid did was give Lieberman a fig leaf to hide behind. 'Cause the spin is, there's no public option. And all throughout the news media today, stories -- “Oh, no. The Democrats have had to give up the one thing that really mattered. They had to give up the public option.” And they haven't given it up. They're just calling it something else. They're just going to rearrange how we all get to the public option. It's all based on destroying the private-sector insurance industry and leaving no choice, no alternative but the government to then step in.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: I think it's poetic justice that in the middle of the -- one of the worst blizzards and snowstorms, pre-winter -- I mean, Snowstorm Al Gore, Global Warming Snowstorm Al Gore is continuing to wreak havoc during the week that Copenhagen forms to discuss global warming. And here comes Obama to receive the peace prize at the same time as this hoax and fraud named Climategate is going on. It's poetic justice.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: It's my job to know. It's what I do. I have studied these people inside out, forwards, reverse, it doesn't matter. It's my job to know. It is my mission to know, and then to pronounce what I know, so as to persuade others to agree with what I know. I don't fall in the PC trap that every opinion has validity. It doesn't. Opinions which are wrong are worthless. And just because you might be wrong with your opinion and you are human and you have feelings and shouldn't be insulted, if you're wrong, you're wrong. And I'm not afraid to tell anybody that they're wrong.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: You know, this is such a crock. All that means is that we are going to put a straitjacket on ourselves because we're the big, powerful, mean -- it's unfair how big we are, the United States. And so we are going to allow ourselves to be -- we're going to put ourselves at a disadvantage just to show, just to show how good a people we are. And of course, these numbskulls over there in the audience, “Yay!” [claps] That's the one applause line I've heard is when he basically says, “Yeah, we've got to hold to our deals. And even when the bad guys are worse than we are, when the bad guys are really bad, we still can't do whatever the bad guys do because that's [unintelligible] we'll lose who we are.” That's a crock. The aggressor always sets the rules in a world governed by the aggressive use of force. Not awards, peace prizes, conferences, global warming seminars, doctors, nurses, clean water, whatever the hell else.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: You know, when I read that last piece on health care, when I first read it this morning during the intense period of show prep that I do each and every day, I began to think that -- think that -- feel, even, that we're living in occupied territory. That we've been taken over. Not militarily. But follow me on this.

We've been taken over financially, economically, politically, scientifically. Without firing a shot, the left has seized the press. They have taken control of the banks. They're about to take control of the insurance companies and wipe them out. Much of the auto industry. The left is now setting a salary scale for people. They've taken over our currency, and they're proposing -- preparing to seize health care. Now the occupiers -- we're being occupied by the left. This country -- we are now -- we need to be liberated. We, the people of this country, need to be liberated. We are oppressed now.

You know, Snerdley told me just a moment ago he was watching A&E, and it was a series on -- what was the war? The Revolutionary War. And this is -- what he said to me -- he said the things that our Founding Fathers considered tyranny wouldn't rate a quarter page in a newspaper today. That the tyranny that we live under in this country already dwarfs the kind of tyranny that caused this country to be founded or inspired it to be founded in the first place.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: And that's what a lot of science has become: a WAG. That's the acronym for it: a wild-ass guess. And that's what these climate researchers are doing. Just guessing. They got these equations that look all brilliant and smart. And they plug phony numbers into them, 'cause there are no real numbers to plug in. Everything's made up.

“Socialism” watch

LIMBAUGH: If we just sit idly by and let Obama get all this stuff done, we're cooked. Because this is not just standard, left-wing politics. This is radical, left-wing Marxist socialism -- fascism, whatever you want to call it. This is designed to forever remake the United States and to destroy the prosperity-generating capitalist system and private sector.