By Tom Allison

Rush on poll as most influential conservative: “This is news?”

Naturally, Limbaugh couldn't resist starting today's show promoting recent polling that put him as the nation's most influential conservative, although he was miffed that he earned only 26 percent of the vote.

Rush cited numerous examples of how America is being “scammed” by the Obama administration, including alleged state dinner crashers Tareq and Michaele Salahi's connections to one of the right's lamest bogeymen, Rashid Khalidi:

LIMBAUGH: Now, this stuff at the White House, these two intruders at the White House. I'm not so sure we're not being scammed here by the White House. I -- it turns out that these two people know Rashid Khali -- Khahil -- Khalil, who is the anti-- pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel adviser to Obama. He -- these two people, this guy was on a board -- his name's since been scrubbed -- but his name was -- he was on a board with Rashid Khalili -- I think that's his name. And apparently, these two people's faces were not unfamiliar to Obama. I'm still collecting data. I got something sent to me just before the program starts. I don't have time to digest it right now. But when it's the Obama White House, remember we're not dealing in the universe of reality.

Now, something clearly is going on up there. The Secret Service -- there were two checkpoints where these people's names were not on the list and yet they were passed on to the next checkpoint and ultimately admitted.

Rush compares climate scientists to tobacco companies

Back from the break, Rush discussed the “scam” of global warming and didn't really stop until the end of the show. He read from an American Thinker blog post asserting that emails from Britain's Climate Research Unit (CRU) weren't hacked, but rather were leaked, which seems to be a common conservative argument as of late.

Limbaugh claimed that the mainstream science community “hijacked the peer review system and threw it all out” and that the IPCC has destroyed the scientific process.

Limbaugh read from a Hot Air post (that linked to a London Times article) that reported on CRU officials “throwing away” raw temperature data. Of course, Rush didn't exactly emphasize that the scientists still had the data that was “adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected.”

Echoing George Will, Rush claimed that CRU scientists said that it was “devastating” that they couldn't disprove global cooling. Incidentally, the email in question referred not to global cooling, but the difficulty in explaining temporary “lack of warming at the moment.”

Rush also read from a Guardian article to criticize IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri for stating that “even if an author or two has a particular bias it is completely unlikely that bias will find its way into the IPCC report.”

Limbaugh really started to stretch things when he compared the CRU's handling of data to tobacco companies' hiding of studies that showed smoking causes cancer.

Rush contradicts himself on suppression of evidence of global warming in one breath

In what was without a doubt the highlight of a very tired and recycled first hour, a caller hilariously called out Rush for hypocritically ignoring the Bush administration's suppression of evidence of climate change, accusing Limbaugh of “simply lying” about the scientific consensus. Rush dived head first into an all-out attack on the caller, calling him a “menace” and claiming that while there is no data supporting global warming for the Bush administration to have suppressed, the Bush administration was doing us a favor by suppressing data that supported global warming:

LIMBAUGH: Now, wait. You're missing the point here. You're just being totally guided by your ideology, by your liberalism, by your partisanship. There is no man-made global warming. Do you understand that? There was nothing to suppress. Anybody that suppressed data that said there was man-made global warming was doing us a favor. They knew it was a hoax, and they were not spreading lies.

Returning to smearing advocates of climate change legislation, Rush mocked a U.K. climate scientist who predicted widespread devastation if climate change isn't addressed and was unmoved by a BBC article that reported that "[c]limate 'is a major cause' of conflict in Africa." Rush then accused the climate change community of employing “terror tactics” and of being a “cabal of thugs” who are “shaking down” oil companies.

Rush calls Paul Krugman a “genuine idiot”

Before playing Paul Krugman's comments on ABC's This Week in which the Nobel Prize-winning economist defended climate change theory, Rush called him a “genuine idiot.” Wrapping up the hour, Rush bizarrely claimed that “there aren't any” green jobs and that photographs of polar bears stranded on ice floes are doctored. Oh, and Rush informed his listeners that polar bears love swimming, anyway.

Tying up a few loose ends in a very climate-heavy segment, Rush again ignored prominent conservatives' support and criticized the Obama's administration's decision to hold civilian trials for terror suspects.

Limbaugh claimed that Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) “suggests that people who don't believe in civilian trials for terrorists should just leave America and go someplace else.” Conrad actually said that trying terror suspects in civilian courts has been done “very successfully” and that “if people don't believe in our system, they ought to go somewhere else.”

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

Highlights

LIMBAUGH: Now, this stuff at the White House, these two intruders at the White House. I'm not so sure we're not being scammed here by the White House. I -- it turns out that these two people know Rashid Khali -- Khahil -- Khalil, who is the anti-- pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel adviser to Obama. He -- these two people, this guy was on a board -- his name's since been scrubbed -- but his name was -- he was on a board with Rashid Khalili -- I think that's his name. And apparently, these two people's faces were not unfamiliar to Obama. I'm still collecting data. I got something sent to me just before the program starts. I don't have time to digest it right now. But when it's the Obama White House, remember we're not dealing in the universe of reality.

Now, something clearly is going on up there. The Secret Service -- there were two checkpoints where these people's names were not on the list and yet they were passed on to the next checkpoint and ultimately admitted.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Senator Kent Conrad suggests that people who don't believe in civilian trials for terrorists should just leave America and go someplace else. This, from last Wednesday. Senator Kent Conrad told Cybercast News Service that civilian courts are well-suited to prosecute Al Qaeda terrorists, and if people don't believe in our system, maybe they ought to go somewhere else. So here you have a political hack -- and by the way a friend of Angelo at Countrywide -- who has never done anything in his life except hold public office, thinks we should all leave America if we don't understand how important it is to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in a civilian court in New York City. He obviously knows so much more about both radical Islam and American history than any of us. Doofus Democrat.

Rush wrapped up the show with another nod to his purported greatness, complete with a wink to the ditto cam.

Outrageous comments

CALLER: Hi. I have to say I'm kind of surprised at your outrage over the suppression of scientific data when it was something that the Bush administration was so dedicated to. There's dozens of examples of them suppressing and censoring any data that would support global warming. I didn't -- don't recall you making a peep about that.

LIMBAUGH: Because there isn't any data that supports global warming. That's the whole point.

CALLER: Then why would they choose to censor so much of it from government reports?

LIMBAUGH: They didn't censor anything; they refused to go along with the hoax. They were censoring data that did not prove what the global warming people wanted it to prove. And that's what the Oba --

CALLER: Well, you're just wrong. You're just -- you're simply lying about that. There's --

LIMBAUGH: No. I'm not --

CALLER: -- loads of evidence of them removing language from government reports that support, you know, scientific theories about global warming.

LIMBAUGH: There is -- now, wait --

CALLER: They did it dozens of times.

LIMBAUGH: Now, wait. You're missing the point here. You're just being totally guided by your ideology, by your liberalism, by your partisanship. There is no man-made global warming. Do you understand that? There was nothing to suppress. Anybody that suppressed data that said there was man-made global warming was doing us a favor. They knew it was a hoax, and they were not spreading lies.

It's that there is no man-made global warming. There is no need for Obama national health care reform. There is no need for tax, crap, and spend. There is no need for further stimulus. There is no need for Obama. There is no need for liberalism. There is no need for you. You are a menace.

You pose a threat to freedom and liberty of your fellow citizens because you are too blind to understand what the people you respect are doing. And you're going to be the first they come for. Because you're the easiest to get, because you're the most gullible and the most uninformed. People like you, John, will give up your freedom if it means putting Bush in jail.

God save our country from people like you. There is no -- how can you call here today and say global warming data was suppressed by the Bush administration? Snerdley ought to get a raise for finding you. Good God. We just got a call from the universe of lies.

America's Truth Rejecter

LIMBAUGH: Remember, in these emails, they -- one of them -- somebody wrote to somebody, “It's devastating, it is devastating that we can't explain the earth cooling.” Meaning, it's -- they don't have a reason that they could give for the earth cooling that would also support the whole global warming thesis.