Attacking Obama, Rush Scorns Christianity

This past week, President Obama made his second off-handed remark about the character of the Las Vegas, Nevada business community, pointing out

You don't go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don't blow a bunch of cash in Vegas when you're trying to save for college.

That is undeniably true, as was his remark a year ago to fat-cat bankers "You can’t get corporate jets. You can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer’s dime." (Actually, they could, but that was the problem.)

Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday charged

He's gotta have something in for Las Vegas. Maybe he lost a bunch of money there. Maybe got rolled by a hooker there. I don't know what it is, something happened.

If he did, it must have occurred several years ago, for, in the run-up in January 2008 to the Nevada caucus/primary, the Los Angeles Times reported

Barack Obama has warned about the dangers of gambling -- that it carries a "moral and social cost" that could "devastate" poor communities. As a state senator in Illinois, he at times opposed plans to expand gambling, worrying that it could be especially harmful to low-income people.


So Barack Obama has been right about gambling at least three times. Probably Rush has been right about gambling at least once- say, when a Democratic politician has defended the practice- but given Limbaugh's preference for high-stakes gambling on Wall Street, his partiality to gambling generally is understandable.

But if his remark about prostitutes and the President of the United States is glaringly loathsome, Rush was more ironic when in the same riff he curiously remarked

By the way, I'm just saying, just a little side note here, but gambling is forbidden in the Koran. Just a little aside. Just saying.... And again the Koran prohibits -- gambling is forbidden in the Koran, I'm just saying.

Your first reaction might be- should be: Why doesn't he just come right out and claim that the President is a Muslim?

Fair enough (the reaction, not the charge). Rush may have no evidence- but that doesn't matter- it has never stopped him before. But what's stunning is the implication that Obama may be a Muslim (or at least Muslim-lite) on the basis that he's critical of gambling!

There is nothing un-Christian about gambling, you protest, and point out there is nothing in the Holy Bible about gambling. Admittedly, gambling is not mentioned (nor, for that matter, is abortion). But if not unmistakable that gambling runs counter to biblical principles, it is barely mistakable (as against the promotion of gambling, which is unmistakablly antithetical to Christian principles). The Old and New Testaments are the dominant expressions of Judeo-Christian principles, and Rush has no objection to individuals being Christian. Or Jewish. Just not Muslim.

This website notes that Scripture contains only disdain for the love of money, as in:

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs (1 Timothy 6:10, NIV).

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5, NIV).

Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless (Ecclesiastes 5:10, NIV). (For more on Ecclesiastes, see video below).

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5, NIV).

The get-rich-quit mentality comes in for its share of criticism:

Dishonest money dwindles away, but he who gathers money little by little makes it grow (Proverbs 13:11, NIV).

A faithful man will abound with blessings, but whoever hastens to be rich will not go unpunished (Proverbs 28:20, ESV).

And Paul kind of wraps it up in the 31st verse of the tenth chapter of the first book of Corinthians: "Whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God."

This doesn't mean that Rush Limbaugh is not a Christian. Or that gambling, even promiscuously, consigns one to Hell (it doesn't, and couldn't). Or even that Barack Obama is not a Muslim, although belonging to a Protestant Christian church seems a little incompatible with the Islamic faith. It just means that for Rush Limbaugh, Christianity, or abortion, gay rights, or guns, or wars and the military are just so much background noise. It's that a zeal for gambling in Las Vegas (though relatively inconsequential) is entirely harmonious with that other passion of the talk show host, the gambling that our corporate titans so avidly pursued until they brought the American economic system to the brink of collapse. And nothing else gives Rush such a rush.

I'm just saying.




next up: unknown, but at least it won't be Rush.

Gambling A Moral Virtue To Rush Limbaugh

Conservative syndicated columnist George F. Will, before he lost his mind, wrote on May 8, 1989 ("In the Grip of Gambling")

Aggressive government marketing of gambling gives a legitimizing imprimatur to the pursuit of wealth without work (which) repudiates an idea once important to this republic's sense of virtue. The idea is that citizens are distinguished more by the moral worth of the way they make money than by how much money they make.

No one can accuse President Obama of "aggressive government marketing of gambling." In February of last year, the President remarked

We’re going to do something to strengthen the banking system. You are not going to be able to give out these big bonuses until you pay taxpayers back. You can't get corporate jets. You can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers' dime. There's got to be some accountability and some responsibility.

The President returned to the subject a few days ago at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire, commenting

When times are tough, you tighten your belts...You don't blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you're trying to save for college.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, Representative Shelley Berkley, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid weren't amused. And barely had Obama finished prostrating himself for his comment, Rush Limbaugh chimed in:

And everybody says I shouldn't say it but I gotta tell you the way it is, this president is a real slow learner. There's politics in everything Obama does. He was off the teleprompter yesterday, at least for that comment, or maybe -- I don't know if he was. But could it be -- you tell me -- because I don't understand this. He's gotta have something in for Las Vegas. Maybe he lost a bunch of money there. Maybe got rolled by a hooker there. I don't know what it is, something happened.

Limbaugh, suggesting the President may have gotten "rolled by a hooker there," obviously is implying that Obama frequented (frequents?) prostitutes. But let's not get sidetracked. Rush added

Las Vegas is the seat, you know, like Hong Kong is big capitalism in China. Las Vegas is capitalism on steroids in the United States. That could be why he doesn't like it.

It's ironic, perhaps, that Limbaugh refers to Las Vegas approvingly as "capitalism on steroids in the United States" (insert Oxycontin joke here.) America's major financial institutions gamble with the money of their middle-class customers, and Rush pronounces his blessing. Las Vegas is ground-zero of America's gambling culture, and Rush praises it. And Limbaugh does both for the same reason: he believes, as Will would have described it, that citizens are distinguished more by how much money they make than by the moral worth of the way they make money.


next up: Rush says something curious about gambling and Obama.

Fondness For Las Vegas, Nevada

On February 9, promoting economic stimulus legislation at a town hall meeting in Indiana, President Obama had said

You can't get corporate jets, you can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer's dime...."

The President has an eye toward the economic health of the entire nation. A trip to Sin City cancelled may mean a trip made to another city in its place; Goldman Sachs Group, which has accepted $10 billion from American taxpayers, announced on February 9 that it had cancelled a three-day trip scheduled for Las Vegas and moved it to San Francisco. And if in response to public scrutiny of a corporation, a convention is cancelled, the funds not used for the gathering may instead be devoted to research, credit extended to a business or an individual, or some other productive enterprise. Hardly a disaster for the nation or its taxpayers.

Still, it's not surprising that the mayor of the affected city would jump up and attack the Mr. Obama's remark and an exorcised Mayor Oscar Goodman of Las Vegas whined "That's outrageous, and he owes us an apology. He owes us a retraction."

Not so the chairman of the Republican Party, which once (and to a lesser extent, still) posed as the protector of "family values," who complained

Earlier this year, the President told an audience in Elkhart, Indiana, 'You can't get corporate jets. You can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer's dime.'" Those days are over. "That quote was seen by many as an insult to Las Vegas," and, by the way, Vegas tourism is way down, and Vegas unemployment is way up.

On one side we have a President who could have told corporate executives, as presumably Limbaugh would have supported, "go right ahead. Take your corporate jets, take the taxpayers' money, and go fly anywhere you like." Or "go to Las Vegas-gamble and enjoy the women- but don't take that business trip to New York or Chicago." Or he might have said "go to Las Vegas. Just avoid that trip with the family to the Arch in St. Louis, Cape Kennedy in Florida, Williamsburg in Virginia, or Disneyland in California."

No, President Obama used Sin City- a nickname not attributed in jest or error- in his warning that the public interest is not to be neglected while heads of corporations surviving only through the largess of the American people pursue the perfect party on the taxpayers' dime. If only Mr. Limbaugh were half as interested in the nation, or even in his audience, as he is in the commercial interests of Las Vegas.

Sin can't be avoided altogether, and everyone likes to have fun. But it seems slightly incongrous for the representative of the "family values" party to show a marked preference for Las Vegas, Nevada over the values and economic betterment of the American people.