Obvious, Finally


I come not to bury Rush Limbaugh, but to praise him.  He has now made clear what any objective observer (which, obviously, excludes most of his listeners) always knew about him.

Oh, we knew he is contemptuous of the American people- and not of a small portion, or only of liberals, but of most Americans.  On July 17, 2012 (as noted here two days later) Limbaugh stated

But how many people care about that?  I'm asking you a question.  How many people want to do what it takes to become prosperous?  They don't have to anymore.  How many people want to understand the role wealthy people play in a prosperous society?  How many people want to do what it takes to become one of those people, versus how many of them are content just to sit there and resent them and have the government take care of them to one agree or another?

He asks rhetorically "How many people want to do what it takes to become one of those people, versus how many of them are content just to sit there and resent them and have the government take care of them to one degree or another?"  Consumed with a sense of entitlement, those lazy Americans.

In September, 2007, Rush had characterized American service members who advocate withdrawal from Iraq as "phony soldiers."

Then there were the remarks last May made upon the announcement that Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin had renounced American citizenship, apparently in order to avoid paying $67-$100 million in post-IPO taxes.  (That 15% capital gains tax is a real killer.) Limbaugh compared that to his decision to move from one state (New York) to another (Florida) for a lower tax rate, a decision made yearly by millions of Americans who wouldn't think of moving out of the country, let alone renounce their citizenship.  But to Limbaugh, Saverin's decision was no different.

And now, confirmation of what Rush Limbaugh thinks of America.  Thursday, he minced no words when he stated

Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in my life, I am ashamed of my country. To be watching all of this, to be treated like this, to have our common sense and intelligence insulted the way it's being insulted? It just makes me ashamed. Seriously, man. Here we get worked up over $44 billion. That's the total amount of money that will not be spent that was scheduled to be spent this year.

In truth, we're gonna spend more this year than we spent last year. We're just not gonna spend as much as was projected. It's all baseline budgeting. There is no real cut below a baseline of zero. There just isn't. Yet here they come, sucking us in, roping us in. Panic here, fear there: Crisis, destruction, no meat inspection, no cops, no teachers, no firefighters, no air traffic control. 

Rush Limbaugh is ashamed of his country.  No liberal spin- he said so.  And he did not deny it even the following day when he maintained

Anyway, my point with all this is that for 25 years, folks, we've been dealing with the same premise: "Unless we spend another dime, the country is going to cease to exist." And for 25 years I have responded to each premise on what I call an intellectual, point-by-point basis refuting every claim. The purpose of this program has been to create as large a body of informed voting citizens as possible. While we've been largely and profoundly successful at that, the left has beaten us.

They have created far more low-information, unaware, uneducated people than we've been able to keep up with. We've had a profound impact in improving, increasing that universe of people -- citizens -- who are in the arena of ideas now, who are informed and educated. I've always had a Civics 101 view of the country: People get what they want, they vote what they want, and they get the way they vote.

And if a majority of people are educated and informed and know what's going on, liberalism -- and these powerful forces that have ill intent to the country -- can be defeated. Yet despite overwhelming success in creating more and more people who are informed and active and involved, the left has control of the education system -- control of the pop culture, movies, TVs, books, music. We've just been outnumbered.

One journalist/writer, who would put it no differently were he on Limbaugh's payroll, contended that on Friday "he began to clarify what he had meant, in order to fend off accusations that he’s 'ashamed' of himself. On the contrary, Limbaugh continued to insist that he’s 'ashamed' of the liberal direction in which the country has gone, despite his best efforts to “inform” the people."

Limbaugh (who claims he is right 99.5% of the time) would never be ashamed of himself, nor did he even say that he was ashamed of himself, instead explaining he is ashamed of his country.  On Thursday, he used the word ashamed twice:  "Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in my life, I am ashamed of my country. To be watching all of this, to be treated like this, to have our common sense and intelligence insulted the way it's being insulted? It just makes me ashamed."  For what it's worth, on his website  (which he does not personally maintain) the first segment was entitled "For the First Time in My Life, I Am Ashamed of My Country."  The following day's segment, which contained the near-explanation, was entitled "What Makes Me Ashamed of My Country."

Rush Limbaugh is ashamed of the United States of America.  Not only "ashamed" of its political leaders or of the direction of the nation, but ashamed of the country.  It won't stop him from routinely accusing Democrats, explicitly and implicitly, of being unpatriotic.  Nor is it likely to stop his dittoheads from listening to the guy, but it does provide a little useful context for evaluating his oft-bigoted, consistently hyperpartisan, rant.


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Loving The Troops, One Day A Year

No, it's not the Oxycontin. Drugs.com lists numerous physical side effects of the drug, as well as confusion and mental or mood changes- but not a thing about forgetfulness.

Nor is it likely attributable to dementia. Rush Limbaugh is only 60 years of age, so his faulty recollection of past statements must stem from some other cause. Nevertheless, today, Limbaugh took a moment off from racially-saturated attacks on the President of the United States to wax patriotic, stating

People in the United States military are a select, very small, unique bunch of people. They do things that 99% of the country wouldn't do -- in fact, more than 99% -- and they do it better than anybody else in the world does it. They are besmirched politically, sometimes they are a football that gets kicked around, but never here on this program. This is Veterans Day.

They are besmirched politically, sometimes they are a football that gets kicked around, but never here on this program. It was a little more than four years ago, on September 26, 2007 that Limbaugh was talking to a caller who identified himself as "military" and a Republican and wanted the U.S. to pull out of Iraq. Media Matters at the time had the full explanation, though this is the relevant portion from Rush's program:

RUSH: There's a lot more than that that they don't understand. The next guy that calls here I'm going to ask them, "What is the imperative of pulling out? What's in it for the United States to pull out?" I don't think they have an answer for that other than, "When's he going to bring the troops home? Keep the troops safe," whatever.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: It's not possible intellectually to follow these people.

CALLER: No, it's not. And what's really funny is they never talk to real soldiers. They pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and spout to the media.

RUSH: The phony soldiers.

Rush Limbaugh just loves the "people in the military"- as long as he believes they agree with him politically. The others, not so much.

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The Republican Media- No. 8

On CNN's "Reliable Sources" on October 7, 2007, Howie Kurtz discussed the Rush Limbaugh "phony soldiers" comment with three panelists- New York Times columnist Frank Rich, Callie Crossley of WGBH's "Beat the Press," and conservative radio talk show host Michael Medved. Kurtz began by saying "all right, let's play what Rush Limbaugh said on the air and then cut to his explanation after it became a controversy a day or two later." Then the video in its entirety:


UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's really funny is they never talk to real soldiers. They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue.

RUSH LIMBAUGH, EIB RADIO: The phony soldiers.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The phony soldiers. If you talk to a real soldier, they're proud to serve. They want to be over in Iraq. They understand their sacrifice and they're willing to sacrifice for the country.

LIMBAUGH: They joined to be in Iraq. Morning update on Wednesday of this program dealt with a soldier, a fake, phony soldier, by the name of Jesse MacBeth who never served in Iraq, was never an army ranger. They love phony soldiers and they prop them up.





Except that as MediaMatters.org explains here, this was not the original conversation or the original transcript but rather the amended transcript issued once the controversy arose. Note that after stating "they joined to be in Iraq,. They joined-" Limbaugh was interrupted by the caller, continued the conversation, and did not refer to Jesse MacBeth until one minute, fifty seconds after first mentioning "phony sodiers."


CALLER 2: No, it's not, and what's really funny is, they never talk to real soldiers. They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media.

LIMBAUGH: The phony soldiers.

CALLER 2: The phony soldiers. If you talk to a real soldier, they are proud to serve. They want to be over in Iraq. They understand their sacrifice, and they're willing to sacrifice for their country.

LIMBAUGH: They joined to be in Iraq. They joined --

CALLER 2: A lot of them -- the new kids, yeah.

LIMBAUGH: Well, you know where you're going these days, the last four years, if you signed up. The odds are you're going there or Afghanistan or somewhere.

CALLER 2: Exactly, sir.


So Kurtz/CNN played the amended transcript as if it were a true rendition of the discussion on the 0/26/07 broadcast. This enabled all three guests to criticize the Democratic response, as in:

Rich: "I don't know what the big fuss is."

Medved: "...when you have the U.S. Senate actually talking about a resolution condemning Rush Limbaugh for this expression of opinion, we've really gone too far."

Crossley: "Once the General "Betray Us" ad got as much attention as it got, then people were looking on the other side for something to jump on."


Of course, they were criticizing the Democratic response to remarks which here were ignored by CNN. And, typically, in the interests of moral equivalence and inaccurate "balance," we have Rich claiming "it's a game we play where someone on the left and someone on the right makes some outrageous statement..." and Crossley imagining "tit for tat." Of course, the General "Betray Us" ad was carefully sourced, its accuracy never questioned. Rush Limbaugh then asserted that anti-war soldiers are "phony." Now, without a vote posted by the party in control of Congress to condemn a comment made by a commonly bombastic talk show host, the National Republican Congressional Committee, with a link to their donations page, is using the Limbaugh controversy to raise money. That's right- Congressional Republicans are not condemning Limbaugh, they're embracing him. Greg Sargent of talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth here explains, and reprints, the e-mail sent by Deputy Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia:


NRCC Raising Money Off Rush's "Phony Soldiers" Remark
October 4, 2007 -- 6:01 PM EST // //
Here's an amusing postscript to the whole Rush Limbaugh flap: Far from conceding that there's anything wrong with Rush's remark that troops who don't agree with Bush are "phony soldiers," Republicans in D.C. are now raising money off of Rush's sliming of antiwar troops.

The National Republican Congressional Committee has just sent out a blast email to supporters asking them to sign a petition protesting the Dem persecution of Rush. At the top of the email is a link back to the NRCC's donations page where you can contribute money. The petition -- sent our way by a D.C. pal -- was written by GOP Rep. Eric Cantor, a leading Rush defender. It says, in part:

It is at moments like these when we need to band together as conservatives and fight back.

This issue is bigger than you or me, it is bigger than Rush Limbaugh. With the recent liberal effort to resurrect the "fairness doctrine," we have to recognize that free speech -- conservative free speech is under direct attack. These are issues that speak directly to the core of the modern conservative movement – are we going to allow ourselves to be pushed around by liberal extremists, or are we going to fight back?

I want to send Washington Democrats a message that their attempts to distract aren't working – I stand with Rush Limbaugh against liberal attacks.



This is not both parties sinking to a new level. Only one party.