By Zach Pleat

Steyn says Obama's reaction to Scott Brown victory was “obvious stupidity”

With Limbaugh off today and tomorrow judging the Miss America pageant, regular fill-in Mark Steyn began by expounding on how the New London, New Hampshire, radio station he was broadcasting from was one of Rush's very first affiliates. He then started talking about Scott Brown's election in Massachusetts and suggesting that if President Obama attended jury duty, his poll numbers would be higher.

Next, Steyn read an article by David Michael Green, a political science professor at Hosftra University, promoting Green as a “big lefty.” Steyn then read an article from a woman who apologized for voting for Obama in 2008. He also spent some ranting about how President Obama's career amounted to no more than being “wafted up” into jobs and responsibilities he couldn't handle:

STEYN: Do you remember Sarah Palin's great line in her convention speech when she talked about being mayor of Wasilla? She said it's like being a community organizer, but, you know, with actual responsibilities. She was right about that. She understood that Barack Obama was a man who had done nothing in his life except be wafted up on what you call his charisma. Wafted by his sheer charisma up to the next job before he could leave any trace of accomplishment in the other jobs. What did he do as a community organizer? It's a meaningless term anyway, completely meaningless term. Then he became a -- wafted up to state representative, wafted up to state senator, wafted up to United States senator, and after being in the United States Senate for 27 minutes, he decides to run for president of the United States. And the trouble now is, he's got to do something, because he can't be wafted up any further. There's nowhere to go. Until they invent the post-president of the entire planet -- and don't bet that he wouldn't be pushing for that and wouldn't quite like the sound of that -- this is where he's stuck. He can't go any further. And he -- for the first time in his life, he's stuck in a job long enough for us to have to measure his performance, and that's his problem. And the answer isn't going to be, instead of giving 411 speeches, let's give 822. That's not going to be the answer to his problems.

After the first break, Steyn spent some time comparing reported trouble in Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's relationship to “Obama and the electorate.” Steyn called Obama's initial reaction to Scott Brown's victory in the Massachusetts special election -- that the same thing that swept Obama into office also swept Brown into office -- “obvious stupidity.” Steyn also repeated the ongoing narrative that bashing President Bush is not going to work for Democrats anymore.

After the half hour break, Steyn read a piece by James Carville in the Financial Times (Subscription Required) and falsely claimed that President Obama completely shut Republicans out of the health care debate, a talking point he repeated later in his show. Steyn then took a couple of callers and eventually got around to complaining that President Obama doesn't wear ties to public appearances. Rounding out the hour, Steyn and a caller spent an entire segment complaining about Obama's comments over Scott Brown's truck. Steyn stated that since community organizers don't do any actual work, Obama never had the need to drive a pickup truck.

Steyn falsely states that Obama used a teleprompter to talk to school children

Back for the second hour, Steyn started complaining about traffic “roundabouts”, stating that he correlated the amount of “roundabouts” with “the decline of a civilization.” He then spent some time offering his political analysis of Scott Brown's victory, coming to the conclusion that it was more important than the GOP's gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey. Steyn offered no such analysis of last fall's NY-23 special election. Eventually, Mark got around to reading an article about speech critics assessing Obama's speeches. Steyn finished the segment hyping the cost of coverage that would be required under the health care reform bill's individual mandate, without noting that individual insurance plans would be subsidized to the point that premium costs would be "roughly 65 percent to 59 percent lower" than under current law:

STEYN: People have got the message. And this is where the Obama populist racket, the wheels completely fall off it. Because the idea that he's fighting for you is completely the opposite of what's happened this last year.

He got all the special interests on board for his stupid health care thing. He invited in the health care lobbyists, he invited in the pharmaceutical companies, he invited in the insurance companies, he invited in the American Medical Association, and he got all the special interests on board to one degree or another by promising this, that, and the other.

Because the one people he -- the one element he didn't get on board was you, the people. You were the ones he frosted out of those discussion. And instead, he and the other special interests cooked up a racket that suited them. I mean, what's populist? What is populist about making it a crime for you not to buy an expensive health insurance program? What is populist about saying that if you don't make the health care arrangements that meet with the approval of the federal government thousands of miles of away, you will be guilty of a criminal offense and the IRS can freeze your bank accounts?

Whats populist about that? This populism is a complete fraud. He got the special interests in the package, and then he frosted out you, the dumb schmucks who aren't smart enough to understand his sophisticated, nuanced message.

Steyn then spent some time having fun with a story that President Obama needed a teleprompter during his talk with young children in a school, suggesting that it was worse than President Bush's My Pet Goat moment:

STEYN: The funniest picture I've ever seen, by the way -- if you're one of these people who still thinks Obama is the smartest president we've ever had. A couple of days ago, he visited the Graham Road Elementary School in Falls Church, Virginia. OK. Elementary school, grade-schoolers. So he's talking to, like, third- and fourth-, fifth-graders. And there's this hilarious picture of him in a classroom.

You know the way classrooms -- they don't look like they did when it was the good old days of the New Hampshire one-room schoolhouse, where there would be a blackboard and a stern schoolmarm, and then you'd have your arithmetic and your history and your Latin and whatever up on the blackboard. Now, they're all full of day-glow, pretty pictures and nice little artsy projects and all the rest of it. So they all look like kindergartens these days.

So he's standing in this kindergarten, and he's talking to these grade-schoolers and he's got his teleprompter. He's got his teleprompter on both sides. The president of the United States. And these kids are, like, all sitting at knee height, right? These kids are at knee height, and he's not looking them in eye, because they're staring at his kneecaps and he's staring at the teleprompter, looking -- doing that head-swivel thing where he goes from the left teleprompter to the right teleprompter to the left teleprompter to the -- you can set your watch by him. It's like a man who's managed to get Centre Court tickets for Wimbledon, and he's watching the world's slowest tennis rally.

That's Obama with the teleprompter. He's sitting there left, right, head, head, head, head, head not making eye contact with the 6-year-olds and 7-year-olds in his audience. The man is giving a talk to grade-schoolers, and he's using a teleprompter. And there's no one around him to say, “Mr. President, maybe we should ditch the teleprompter when you're talking to the school kids. Because it won't matter if you don't manage to pull up the relevant statistic about GDP per capita or whatever it is in Sudan. You're just talking to a bunch of school kids. Maybe you could just, like, interact with them, rekindle your relationship, as we say, and just interact with them one on one.”

Unfortunately for Steyn, Obama didn't use teleprompters when talking to the children, but instead used the teleprompters when speaking to the press in a different room, as the editor of Sphere.com demonstrates.

After a break and a long discussion with a caller, Steyn joined Glenn Beck and his crew in demonstrating his inability to understand what a marginal tax rate is, suggesting several times that “Cadillac” health insurance plans will be taxed in full at 40 percent. Steyn then decided that he doesn't think it's a good idea for everyone in America to go to college, and repeated Rush's claim that Obama is nationalizing the country's student loan services.

Steyn defends Limbaugh against the Anti-Defamation League

For the third hour, Steyn chose to treat Rush's audience to another segment on his distaste for “roundabouts”, taking issue with a listener who emailed him about it. After a while, Steyn launched into his defense of Rush Limbaugh over Anti-Defamation League President Abraham Foxman's statement criticizing Rush's controversial comments. Steyn declared Limbaugh to be “one of the best friends in the United States of the Jewish people and of the state of Israel.”

Later, Steyn seemed to complain that there was a task force on the issues faced by the middle class at the White House, decrying the “patrician grandees” that he decided must make up the panel. After another break, Steyn spent a lot of time taking issue with Thomas Friedman's latest op-ed in the New York Times.

Michael Burns and Michael Timberlake contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

Highlights

STEYN: What is ridiculous about this column by this woman Jill Dorson -- she was offended by Sarah Palin. She was worried that John McCain would drop dead and that she would find herself with Sarah Palin as president. But you know something, Jill? You -- what you're saying in this column is exactly what Sarah Palin was saying about Barack Obama a year and half ago. So, if you're so smart and she's so stupid and too stupid to be president and you know she's too stupid to be president and you're smart enough to vote for the other guy instead, why, then, are you catching up with her 18 months later?

Do you remember Sarah Palin's great line in her convention speech when she talked about being mayor of Wasilla? She said it's like being a community organizer, but, you know, with actual responsibilities. She was right about that. She understood that Barack Obama was a man who had done nothing in his life except be wafted up on what you call his charisma. Wafted by his sheer charisma up to the next job before he could leave any trace of accomplishment in the other jobs. What did he do as a community organizer? It's a meaningless term anyway, completely meaningless term. Then he became a -- wafted up to state representative, wafted up to state senator, wafted up to United States senator, and after being in the United States Senate for 27 minutes, he decides to run for president of the United States. And the trouble now is, he's got to do something, because he can't be wafted up any further. There's nowhere to go. Until they invent the post-president of the entire planet -- and don't bet that he wouldn't be pushing for that and wouldn't quite like the sound of that -- this is where he's stuck. He can't go any further. And he -- for the first time in his life, he's stuck in a job long enough for us to have to measure his performance, and that's his problem. And the answer isn't going to be, instead of giving 411 speeches, let's give 822. That's not going to be the answer to his problems.

[...]

STEYN: People have got the message. And this is where the Obama populist racket, the wheels completely fall off it. Because the idea that he's fighting for you is completely the opposite of what's happened this last year.

He got all the special interests on board for his stupid health care thing. He invited in the health care lobbyists, he invited in the pharmaceutical companies, he invited in the insurance companies, he invited in the American Medical Association, and he got all the special interests on board to one degree or another by promising this, that, and the other.

Because the one people he -- the one element he didn't get on board was you, the people. You were the ones he frosted out of those discussion. And instead, he and the other special interests cooked up a racket that suited them. I mean, what's populist? What is populist about making it a crime for you not to buy an expensive health insurance program? What is populist about saying that if you don't make the health care arrangements that meet with the approval of the federal government thousands of miles of away, you will be guilty of a criminal offense and the IRS can freeze your bank accounts?

Whats populist about that? This populism is a complete fraud. He got the special interests in the package, and then he frosted out you, the dumb schmucks who aren't smart enough to understand his sophisticated, nuanced message.

Outrageous comments

STEYN: I did want to say something, by the way, about this ridiculous business of Abe Foxman of the -- what is it called? The Anti-Defamation League. Abe Foxman attacked Rush last week for his anti-Semitism. I have never heard anything more stupid and more contemptible from a Jewish organization than doing this stupid assault on one of the best friends in the United States of the Jewish people and of the state of Israel.

Abe Foxman is a leftist, and clearly, Rush is not to his taste politically. But he ought to be able to recognize that on certain issues, Rush is the best defender that this country has. And Abe Foxman is a lot like what my friend Ezra Levant up in Canada calls “the official Jews.” He calls them “official Jews.” They're people who belong to liberal Jew-- official liberal Jewish organizations who are never there on any of the key issues and want to obsess with peripheral, irrelevant issues of no consequence for the Jewish people. And that is exactly what Abe Foxman did. And it would be funny if we hadn't seen, across the Western world, the biggest resurgence in anti-Semitism since the second World War. What does Abe Foxman have to say about that? What does Abe Foxman have to say about the demonstration in Fort Lauderdale last year where people are doing -- where demonstrators are doing oven jokes? What does Abe Foxman have to say about the American who was visiting the East End of London on Holocaust Day last year and touring parts of the old Jewish East End and had concrete thrown at them and were told, “If you go any further, you're gonna die,” and had to be taken to hospital. What does Abe Foxman have to say when a soccer match between Sweden and Israel is scheduled for the stadium in Malmo, and they have to play it behind closed doors to an empty -- a tennis match, I beg your pardon, tennis. They have to play it in an empty stadium, because if they open the doors to people in Malmo, Sweden, they'd want to kill the Israeli tennis players. What do they -- what does Abe Foxman have to say when people are marching through the streets of Calgary, Alberta, shouting, “Death to the Jews”? A timeless slogan, a timeless slogan, admittedly, but not one hitherto associated with the Rocky Mountains.

We are witnessing across the planet the biggest resurgence in anti-Semitism since the second World War, and this boob, this pathetic, contemptible, cowardly man thinks it's his job as spokesperson for a major Jewish organization to attack Rush. This is beyond pathetic. It is actually self-destructive. It is going to the soft target because he doesn't have the guts, he doesn't have the guts to actually confront the real sources of anti-Semitism in the world today, which is an alliance between psychotic Islamists and the college left, the polytechnic left, the educated left in the United States and in the broader Western world. And it goes along with other pathetic spectacles of his, such as when he attacked -- what was that? Mel -- not, uh -- Mel Gibson movie from a couple of years ago, when he attacked Mel's movie, which is no threat to the Jewish people. When he attacks evangelical Christians, who are the best friends of Israel on the planet today. Unlike the secular, post-Christian European university-educated types, evangelical Christians are the best friends of Israel on the planet today. And this idiot Foxman attacks them, and then he goes and attacks Rush, too.

You know, one of the most fascinating things I heard in all the years of The Rush Limbaugh Show's been going on was listening to Rush -- I was on a long car journey, driving along listening to Rush reminiscing about when he'd visited Israel, and he'd been up -- I think he'd -- correct me if I'm wrong, H.R. -- but I think he'd been up at Ariel Sharon's house. And Sharon had been actually showing him around, showing him the Golan Heights and showing him overlooking the West Bank and Gaza and all the rest of it. Yeah. And Rush made the point that at some places, the state of Israel is narrower than a New Hampshire township. Rush understands Israel very well, and he understands this -- the preposterousness of a -- the entire Muslim world stretching from Morocco -- at the very northwestern corner of Africa to Lahore in Pakistan. This entire Muslim world stretching like a bloc blames all its problems on a tiny little strip of land narrower than a New Hampshire township. And Rush was never more persuasive and never more moving than when he was talking about what he understood about Israel and the situation that Israelis find themselves in than when he was talking about his visit with Ariel Sharon. And there -- I have never heard -- I mean, Rush is a big guy. He doesn't need me coming to his aid. I didn't really say anything when he had his little problem in Hawaii and all these idiot websites were saying, “Go on, die. Burn in hell, Rush.” He's a big guy. He can take that. But what is at issue here is the stupidity of Abe Foxman and the failure of the official Jews to identify the real threats to Jews in the world today, and instead pick on soft targets like evangelical Christians, Mel Gibson's movie, and Rush Limbaugh. And in the case of Rush, you're talking about one of the best friends the Jewish people ever had.

[...]

STEYN: It's not difficult at the moment, because there's plenty of real anti-Semitism out there in the world today. Absolutely disgusting. Do you know synagogues -- Jewish social events in the United Kingdom, in Belgium, in Scandinavia, in France, in Germany have to take place under armed guard? They had -- I believe this was in either -- one of the Scandinavian countries - Sweden, Norway, or Denmark, can't remember which one -- had a Molotov cocktail thrown through a synagogue.

These are physically dangerous times for Jews in almost every other part of the Western world. And this disgusting, craven little twerp thinks that the font of anti-Semitism is Rush Limbaugh. This guy's a buffoon. The ADL should be ashamed of themselves, should be embarrassed at having this guy speaking for him and should say to him, “Look, whatever you did in the past, it's gone now, and we'd just as soon appreciate it if you took early retirement.” These are terrible times. We are witnessing the expansion of a horrible cancer at the heart of particularly intellectual life in the Western world, in which anti-Semitism is becoming not just routine, but acceptable and approved.

America's Truth Rejecter

STEYN: The funniest picture I've ever seen, by the way -- if you're one of these people who still thinks Obama is the smartest president we've ever had. A couple of days ago, he visited the Graham Road Elementary School in Falls Church, Virginia. OK. Elementary school, grade-schoolers. So he's talking to, like, third- and fourth-, fifth-graders. And there's this hilarious picture of him in a classroom.

You know the way classrooms -- they don't look like they did when it was the good old days of the New Hampshire one-room schoolhouse, where there would be a blackboard and a stern schoolmarm, and then you'd have your arithmetic and your history and your Latin and whatever up on the blackboard. Now, they're all full of day-glow, pretty pictures and nice little artsy projects and all the rest of it. So they all look like kindergartens these days.

So he's standing in this kindergarten, and he's talking to these grade-schoolers and he's got his teleprompter. He's got his teleprompter on both sides. The president of the United States. And these kids are, like, all sitting at knee height, right? These kids are at knee height, and he's not looking them in eye, because they're staring at his kneecaps and he's staring at the teleprompter, looking -- doing that head-swivel thing where he goes from the left teleprompter to the right teleprompter to the left teleprompter to the -- you can set your watch by him. It's like a man who's managed to get Centre Court tickets for Wimbledon, and he's watching the world's slowest tennis rally.

That's Obama with the teleprompter. He's sitting there left, right, head, head, head, head, head not making eye contact with the 6-year-olds and 7-year-olds in his audience. The man is giving a talk to grade-schoolers, and he's using a teleprompter. And there's no one around him to say, “Mr. President, maybe we should ditch the teleprompter when you're talking to the school kids. Because it won't matter if you don't manage to pull up the relevant statistic about GDP per capita or whatever it is in Sudan. You're just talking to a bunch of school kids. Maybe you could just, like, interact with them, rekindle your relationship, as we say, and just interact with them one on one.”

[...]

STEYN: You're saying that if you happen to belong to such-and-such a union, you'll keep your Cadillac tax plan -- tax -- health plan tax free, but if you have the misfortune to work for a company like, I don't know, Mark Steyn Enterprises, to pick a particularly dismal example, your Cadillac health plan will be taxed at 40 percent, which, as you say, is actually a real diminution.

That's real money. And it's not just real money, but as you say, a real diminution in the health care that you will be entitled to. Because one thing you can say for certain is that you don't tax something at 40 percent and expect people to buy the same quantity of it. So, people who have these so-called Cadillac health care plans will be downsizing to other kinds of health care plans. And that's an important point, Terry. Because as you say, it's an explicit reward for the president's political supporters.

And that's why, as I always say, government health care in the United States is going to be way worse than government health care in Canada or in Europe, because whatever you say about it in Canada, there is an equality of lousiness. They at least they subscribe to the principle of equality of lousiness. Here, it's all going to be special deals for this or that preferred opt-out and exemption, and it's going to be a horrible thing that, as you say, at the bottom line is real people will be getting worse health care for it. And, as you say, in effect, political rationing.