By Zachary Pleat

Rush's order to GOP senators: “This [health care reform] bill must be killed”

Projecting, Rush began his show by accusing Al Gore of lying for pointing out (correctly) that the hacked Climatic Research Unit emails do not undermine the scientific consensus on global warming, reading a blog post to that effect from an Australian newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Rush insisted on returning to Gore's recent interview, highlighted in the blog post, later in his show, constantly accusing him of lying.

Next, Rush turned a reported Senate deal on health care reform into little more than a long, rambling plug for The Heritage Foundation, reading much of a Heritage Foundation blog post on the matter. Rush then said that the details of the deal are not being released to the public until the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has a chance to score it. Pre-emptively working the refs, Rush claimed the CBO is being “set up” to provide “false numbers.” He then returned to his old claim that if there's no public option, there's no reason to have any kind of health care reform. Later, Rush rambled about our health care system being destroyed to give President Obama a political victory and mentioned several news stories covering the reported deal to drop the public option in favor of a nonprofit insurance plan run by private companies and overseen by the federal government.

After a break, Rush continued his hypocritical outrage over Sen. Harry Reid's remarks comparing legislators who are slowing down health care reform legislation to those who defended slavery. He then complained that his comments that “the black frame of mind is terrible” and that “Tiger Woods' choice of females not helping 'em out” were “taken out of context,” criticizing the New York Daily News for running a story on them. Rush continued to defend himself, playing a long clip of himself and claiming that he was just describing two news stories and “threw in a little joke there about Tiger.”

After another break, Rush had fun reading an interview of one of Woods' alleged mistresses, and then returned to ranting about health care reform legislation. Stating, “We cannot outvote Harry Reid,” Rush slammed Republicans for voting on amendments to the legislation, saying it sends the signal that compromise on the bill is acceptable:

LIMBAUGH: We cannot outvote Harry Reid. We can't outvote Harry Reid, so voting on one amendment after another sends the message that compromise and a deal are fine. “If he just sticks to the deal, then we'll work with” -- no, no, no. It's got to be stopped. This bill needs to be killed. And you use whatever tactics you have to expose the entire game and the process that they're doing and the substance. You go down fighting, not amending.

Rush: “The EPA is blackmailing elected officials”

Back in his second hour, Rush turned to ranting about climate change and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate its most disastrous effects:

LIMBAUGH: Do you understand what's happening in this country? The EPA blackmailing elected officials. Representatives of the people. The EPA essentially saying, “If you don't pass cap and trade, we're going to unilaterally implement it, because the Supreme Court gave us the power to. So, if you don't do it, we will.” So we have a bureaucracy, a government agency led by an Obama-ite, Lisa Jackson, who's basically telling the elected representatives of the people, “If you don't do it, we're going to do it. Democracy be damned. Representative republic be damned. Democratic process be damned.”

All of this is happening right before our very eyes. And the -- once the United States takes the lead on declining its own progress, the rest of the world is going to take the hint. We're going to be the only advanced civilization to purposely harm ourselves. That's what this is leading to. We will be the only advanced civilization in the world to willingly roll back its progress for the express purpose of seeing to it that the wealth of this nation is extracted and then transferred to places around the world.

Rush then read a Sweetness & Light blog post about a Washington Post article on the accidental release of a Transportation Security Administration security manual. Rush then claimed that The Washington Post isn't interested in finding out who was responsible for this incident.

Rush then took a caller who was confused about the “need for $1 trillion” in the health care reform legislation if the public option will no longer be part of the bill. What was Rush's answer? “I can answer that. I can answer -- because they're leftists. Because they're Democrats. Liberals lie. That's all you need to know anytime they tell you anything.”

Rush then had a caller who hyped Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas' response to a fundraising letter from Obama. This set Rush off on a tirade that the Democrats have done the best possible job in destroying the private sector and that the Daily Kos “kooks” should be happy with the job done so far, especially on health care reform. Rush rounded off his second hour by promoting a conservative protest against health care reform on December 15 in Washington, D.C., and mentioned that he was asked to talk about it on his show today.

At the top of his final hour, Rush vaguely wondered if the media is “racist” for covering the Tiger Woods story, claiming that they had to be “dragged” to cover John Edwards' affair.

Next, Rush read a CNNMoney.com article about the Congressional Oversight Panel's “report card” for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Following up with another CNNMoney.com article about the decline of housing values, Rush declared that he finally learned the “trick” to this kind of reporting: They compare bad news to the previous year to make it seem better. Apparently, Rush doesn't think that home values declining by $3.1 trillion less in 2009 than they did in 2008 is a good thing.

Rush then read a Fox News article detailing how the “Obama administration is warning Congress” that the EPA “will take a 'command-and-control' role” to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Naturally, Rush used this to again accuse the EPA of blackmail, neglecting to point out that “the Supreme Court found that greenhouse gases are air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act,” according to the EPA's endangerment finding:

LIMBAUGH: And the United States Senate are being blackmailed by Barack Obama through Lisa Jackson at the EPA. “If you guys don't do it, we are. You don't pass cap and trade, it won't matter, because we're going to implement it anyway by fiat.” United States of America. Home of the free, land of the brave, but not for long.

Rush then joined the right-wing blog Gateway Pundit in falsely claiming that Department of Education official Kevin Jennings “taught fisting” to teenagers, smearing him as “a raging pervert.” Media Matters has extensively documented the right wing's ongoing smear campaign against Kevin Jennings. Of course, Rush has his own history of smearing Jennings.

He concluded his show today by sharing how he “instinctively know[s]” that climate science is “bogus”:

LIMBAUGH: So I know, I instinctively know -- it's like Shatner asked, “How do you know? How do you know?” Because I do. Just trust me. Don't doubt me. I know liberals. But when you run into scientists who also know this is a hoax, the ideology doesn't matter. Like, when I'm talking to Steve, and he's telling us what he found in the code. And the code does -- the code produced that hockey-stick graph that shows temperatures sky rocketing in the last 20 years, 50 years. It's all bogus, and these guys who understand code can go in there and see it. There's a piece at the American Thinker that explains it, how it's bogus and how they rigged it and so forth.

But the ideology of these so-called climate scientists does not interest these guys as much as disproving it scientifically. Which is great, it's wonderful. Don't misunderstand. I'm just thinking a lot of time and a lot of anguish and a lot of study could be prevented if you just know that liberals lie. If you just have a basic ideological understanding of who they are and what their aims are. And they're not good, and the intentions are not good. The consequences are not good. They're anti-freedom and anti-liberty. They are pro-command-and-control government authority. And they have these programs which are just ruses to get everybody supporting them. They have to lie in order to do it.

Yeah. The scientists go, "[unintelligible] a model [unintelligible] an egregious error" -- they're liars. They went to a lot of trouble to lie really well.

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

Highlights

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: The Senate Republican leadership strategy here was flawed, because it allowed the Democrats to take offensive -- the offensive, buy time to work out a deal. I don't know. I've never been in the Senate. I've never been elected. I'm not a parliamentary expert. But I know a disaster when I see it, and I know that it's got to be stopped. And whatever parliamentary steps are available to people who do know what they are should've been taken. Every blocking tactic they had at this. Push this past the end of the year. Make sure that nothing does happen before Christmas.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: We cannot outvote Harry Reid. We can't outvote Harry Reid, so voting on one amendment after another sends the message that compromise and a deal are fine. “If he just sticks to the deal, then we'll work with” -- no, no, no. It's got to be stopped. This bill needs to be killed. And you use whatever tactics you have to expose the entire game and the process that they're doing and the substance. You go down fighting, not amending.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Do you understand what's happening in this country? The EPA blackmailing elected officials. Representatives of the people. The EPA essentially saying, “If you don't pass cap and trade, we're going to unilaterally implement it, because the Supreme Court gave us the power to. So, if you don't do it, we will.” So we have a bureaucracy, a government agency led by an Obama-ite, Lisa Jackson, who's basically telling the elected representatives of the people, “If you don't do it, we're going to do it. Democracy be damned. Representative republic be damned. Democratic process be damned.”

All of this is happening right before our very eyes. And the -- once the United States takes the lead on declining its own progress, the rest of the world is going to take the hint. We're going to be the only advanced civilization to purposely harm ourselves. That's what this is leading to. We will be the only advanced civilization in the world to willingly roll back its progress for the express purpose of seeing to it that the wealth of this nation is extracted and then transferred to places around the world.

Because the Reverend Wright certainly believes this is an unjust, unfair, immoral country, and I do not believe Obama did not hear a word he said in 20 years in pew. We know that Obama's mentors, father, his educators are all from the blame-America-first crowd. That's what he's been taught. And they're going to make this happen come hell or high water. And Al Gore is going to profit financially like you can't believe if this stuff ever does go down officially.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: I can answer that. I can answer -- because they're leftists. Because they're Democrats. Liberals lie. That's all you need to know anytime they tell you anything.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Obama's salivating at the chance to get hands on this money to quote-unquote “create jobs.” This is going to be one of the biggest stashes of walking-around money that any politician has ever had to dispense.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: And the United States Senate are being blackmailed by Barack Obama through Lisa Jackson at the EPA. “If you guys don't do it, we are. You don't pass cap and trade, it won't matter, because we're going to implement it anyway by fiat.” United States of America. Home of the free, land of the brave, but not for long.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: So I know, I instinctively know -- it's like Shatner asked, “How do you know? How do you know?” Because I do. Just trust me. Don't doubt me. I know liberals. But when you run into scientists who also know this is a hoax, the ideology doesn't matter. Like, when I'm talking to Steve, and he's telling us what he found in the code. And the code does -- the code produced that hockey-stick graph that shows temperatures sky rocketing in the last 20 years, 50 years. It's all bogus, and these guys who understand code can go in there and see it. There's a piece at the American Thinker that explains it, how it's bogus and how they rigged it and so forth.

But the ideology of these so-called climate scientists does not interest these guys as much as disproving it scientifically. Which is great, it's wonderful. Don't misunderstand. I'm just thinking a lot of time and a lot of anguish and a lot of study could be prevented if you just know that liberals lie. If you just have a basic ideological understanding of who they are and what their aims are. And they're not good, and the intentions are not good. The consequences are not good. They're anti-freedom and anti-liberty. They are pro-command-and-control government authority. And they have these programs which are just ruses to get everybody supporting them. They have to lie in order to do it.

Yeah. The scientists go, "[unintelligible] a model [unintelligible] an egregious error" -- they're liars. They went to a lot of trouble to lie really well.