This hour of the Limbaugh Wire was the first of "Uighur Wednesday"
By Simon Maloy

Well, we made it through two days of Mark "The Milwaukee Machiavelli" Belling (relatively) unscathed, and now we're faced with two days of Mark "Raw Tomatoes" Steyn... But before we get to into that, we want to revisit something Belling screamed at us yesterday. When he wasn't carrying on about how liberals are the physical manifestation of pure evil and the conservatives' only fault is that they don't point this out enough, he attacked cap and trade and climate change, saying that proponents of Waxman-Markey "are rushing us into the destruction of the American economy to fight a problem that they can't even prove exists anymore." Well, courtesy of the Washington Monthly, we have yet more evidence of climate change and its devastating effects on the Amazonian rainforest.

Simply put, a rise in sea temperatures linked to climate change caused a massive drought in the Brazilian rainforest in 2005, resulting in a dieback, which released an additional 2 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere that year. Normally, the Amazonian rainforest absorbs more than 3 billion tons of carbon in a given year. This situation gets you into quite the positive feedback loop -- additional carbon in the atmosphere raises sea temperatures further, which causes more droughts, which kills more rainforest, which results in more carbon in the atmosphere, etc. And just in case you're not convinced of the importance of rainforests to our global climate, they contain 45 percent of all terrestrial carbon, despite covering just 7 percent of the Earth's dry surfaces.

Anyway, Steyn got things started with Uighurs... again... It's "Uighur Wednesday," proclaimed Steyn, who read from a Washington Post article reporting that Chinese President Hu Jintao "canceled plans to attend a major summit in Italy and flew home early Wednesday after reports that chaos and panic had spread throughout the capital of China's far western region of Xinjiang." From there, Steyn transitioned seamlessly to two do-it-yourself dentistry stories, one of a soldier removing 13 of his own teeth with pliers, and another of a man supergluing his crowns back on. Remarkably, Steyn managed to tie all these stories together, saying that he didn't want to imply that all Uighurs are "rampaging," as the ones President Obama relocated to Bermuda are dancing and fishing, they're not going to knock out your superglued teeth.

But what Steyn really wanted to talk about was the economic summit in Italy. Steyn said Obama is trying to get the world's economic superpowers to go along with cap and trade, even though global warming "stopped at the end of the last century." Seems like all of Rush's guest hosts are going to read off this same sheet of global warming denial talking points, so we'll point out again that they're wrong, that global warming did not "stop" in the last century. Steyn continued, saying that the rest of the developing world is moving away from this nonsense, but just at the very point when the rest of the world is sobering up, Obama comes along and says you have to get with the program. And the Chinese aren't going to go for emissions control and neither are the Indians, said Steyn, because they would like to have material prosperity, but they will be denied that if they opt for Obama-style cap and trade. So if the Chinese and the Indians aren't interested, said Steyn, and we go through with it, we'll be checking out of the global economy.

After the break, Steyn said it was very interesting seeing Obama with former Russian President Vladimir Putin and current President Dmitry Medvedev over in Moscow. Steyn thinks this was a PR coup for the Russians because this meeting with Obama made them look like a superpower again, even though they're the sick man of Europe. They're running out of manpower. Two-thirds of Russian babies are aborted. Russia is a dying society, and yet Obama gave this country, whose steep decline poses challenges to the U.S., an upgrade to full superpower status with this summit. Steyn didn't think this was in America's interests, so it fit in with Obama's pattern. Just so we're clear: Steyn said it's not in America's interest to meet with Russia, even though that country's decline has dire consequences for us. Also, we're pretty sure Steyn didn't think the same of Bush's meetings with Putin.

Anyway, Steyn went on to say that Obama "apologized again." Specifically, he apologized for the Cold War when he said during his speech at the New Economic School: "And then, within a few short years, the world as it was ceased to be. Now, make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia andEastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful." If you didn't see an apology in there, you're not alone. But being a conservative pundit demands that whatever Obama says overseas be described as an "apology." Steyn said he doesn't mind if Obama wants to go around and apologize, but we all know that the last time we had a president like this in the White House, the Soviets almost won the Cold War by default because Carter was so determined to lose it. Look at what happened when the Soviets set their sights on Grenada and Afghanistan, said Steyn. It took an amazing amount of will from Reagan to say we're going to win the Cold War. But what was Obama doing at the time? The New York Times reported that Obama, in 1983, wrote that he wanted an end to military culture entirely. He is the last person who should be going to Moscow and apologizing for the Cold War, said Steyn.

After another break, Steyn returned to the Times piece on Obama's 1983 college magazine article, saying that Obama was telling the kooky no-nukes crowds that they weren't going far enough. This is a useful guide to Obama's thinking now, said Steyn. What he's doing with all these cap-and-trade and health programs is that he's making it impossible for the United States to have a military that can project power all over the world. Businesses fund the military, said Steyn, and if you tax them beyond the breaking point, something is going to have to give, and that's going to be the military.

Steyn's first caller of the program said that Obama needs"major oxygen," and he gets it from crowds, but he's not getting it from Russia or Italy, and that's a good thing. Steyn said the caller is right, Obama does get an adrenaline rush from the love. Who wouldn't? But if you're a star like Obama thinks he is, said Steyn, and they don't treat him as one, then it depresses him, and he starts giving these low-key performances. The caller said he thinks that's great because we're going to have all these battles with Democrats, and no one else is going to be able to draw a crowd like Obama can. That is a serious point, said Steyn. If you're running on charisma, and it's no longer there, then you're going to start having problems, and Obama's going to have to start demonstrating competence in governing.

Steyn's next caller said he's been listening to this Obama tour as he makes deals with Russia to lower our atomic stockpile, and asked why Obama doesn't give Australia, South Korea, and Japan nukes to protect them from North Korea. Steyn said what Obama is proposing in real terms is not to modernize America's military, and the Russians like that because their stuff is all old and rusted. Obama's doing this at a time when nuclearization is a fact of life, said Steyn, and while "basket-case states" are developing nukes, the president is saying that the civilized world is getting out of the nuclear game.

Another break and Steyn came back with a Tea Partier on the line, who said that the U.S. is settling into a checkmate in Russia, because if Russia gives us a route to move supplies into Afghanistan, then they can make a move into Georgia, and we'll risk losing our military bases if we object. Steyn responded by rambling about 9-11 for a bit and how the Russians finally started taking us seriously on September 12, 2001. The point, we guess, was that by securing a supply route through Russia into Afghanistan, we're giving Russia license to do whatever it wants in Georgia and everywhere else.

After one more break, Steyn took one last caller for the hour, this one saying what he thinks of Ronald Reagan and the audacious vision he had to say, "tear down this wall." The caller added that what Obama did in Russia was the equivalent of going out after the battle and "shooting the wounded." Steyn said he's right, Obama's not showing any courage like Reagan did. Reagan showed courage, not just against America's enemies, said Steyn, but also against accomodationists and appeasers here at home.

Greg Lewis and Zachary Pleat contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

America's Guest-Truth Rejector

Steyn repeated the false claim that global warming "stopped" 10 years ago:

STEYN: Now he's gone on to the G-7, and he's going to try and get them to go along with his ideas on cap and trade and solving this great problem of the alleged global warming, which hasn't been going on this century. Global warming stopped at the end of the last century.

This hour of the Limbaugh Wire brought to you by the patriotism of arson and insurance fraud
By Simon Maloy

Steyn got the second hour rolling with a discussion of the rumored second stimulus package. Steyn said once you shovel all that money down the hole and blow it on nothing, it becomes easier to do it a second time. And this is on top of government health care, which they want to do in the next five weeks. By the way, said Steyn, Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) says his version of the health care plan is the one they should use because it costs less than $1 trillion. That's become the selling point now, and they're treating it as chump change, so we're supposed to applaud Max Baucus for holding his plan down under $1 trillion, like that's great news. But the bad news is this second stimulus, said Steyn. What you need to do to get the economy going again is to have people spend money, and for people to spend money you have to have an environment in which doing business is profitable. But the Democrats are taking that environment away.

The first stimulus failed because we've only spent 10 percent of the money, said Steyn, which means they're not spending it fast enough. The reason for that isn't hard to work out, he said -- for the money to do any good, people would have to be assured that the money would be a permanent part of life. But the Democrats don't want you just spending your money, they want to spend it in the right way. And that, said Steyn, is the statist viewpoint. And the trouble with that is it does nothing to stimulate anything other than government control and bureaucracy. The stimulus, he said, is not stimulating anything.

Steyn then said that he saw a newspaper in Vermont a couple of months ago that had a quarter-page ad from this community organizing group, which was seeking applications for several positions funded wholly or in part by the stimulus. So the money is funding these community organizing groups, said Steyn, and that is why the stimulus failed. The jobs funded by the stimulus are focused on the stimulus. It's not doing anything out in the real world where real people live, said Steyn. So you hear that, Vermont? You're not even part of the "real world," let alone "real America." Anyway, Steyn also noticed that Tim Horton's coffee and doughnut chain is reorganizing as a Canadian company to take advantage of Canadian tax rates. That's a phrase that probably never passed any American executive's lips until Obama became president, said Steyn, but these executives can see that, under Obama, they'll soon be paying a lot more in taxes. And now with cap and trade, they're making it more expensive to operate a business in the United States, and more difficult to even live in the U.S.

Steyn said what he has always loved about America is that you can insulate yourselves from the baser aspects of society. This is the cheapest country in the Western world to buy a nice lot and house and live in peace, said Steyn, but cap and trade is going to make it so the government can intrude and regulate every aspect of your life.

After the break, Steyn took a call from an Ohio woman who said she was 30 years old when the Carter administration handed the Reagan administration something not as bad as what "the liberals claim Bush handed Obama," and now GM is leaving Ohio. This caller offered an amusing glimpse into the cognitively dissonant conservative mind -- Jimmy Carter completely ruined the economy for Reagan, but there is no way that Bush passed this economic crisis on to Obama. Anyway, Steyn said there are things that all levels of government should do, but they're very limited in number, and when governments try to do more things than they should, they're not able to handle those core responsibilities well. Then Steyn set his sights on Vice President Biden, saying that Biden said the administration misread how bad the economy was, but Obama had been going around saying that the economy was in the worst crisis we've seen since the Great Depression, so how could they not know how bad the economy was?

Steyn returned from the break with Biden still on the brain, saying that the vice president said the stimulus was a bust because we didn't know how bad the economy was. That's actually not what Biden said, and economists think the stimulus bill didn't go far enough. Anyway, Steyn moved on to say that Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) is saying that Republicans who don't support the administration's positions are rooting for America to fail. So if you're opposed to imposing a "national regime of economic sclerosis," you're against America. Congressman Waxman has it exactly backwards, said Steyn -- what we're seeing is a sustained war against everything the United States was founded on. But Steyn did say this of the left -- when they take power, they don't waste any time. Obama knows that if you just keep throwing this stuff at the wall, a lot of it is eventually going to slip through unscrutinized. Look at the cap-and-trade bill, said Steyn -- it didn't even exist when it was voted upon! Actually, it did.

Steyn said this is the opposite of a republic of citizen legislators, and it is not un-American to stand up and oppose it. This is a serious crisis for the American ideal -- Waxman is presenting us with the choice of whether or not we want to go down the same route the Europeans went down a generation ago. Waxman is attempting to demonize the opposition, said Steyn, and it won't work.

After the break, Steyn took a call from a gentleman who said "these people" think they're going to make him upgrade his house before he sells it. Instead, said the caller, he'll just burn the house, collect insurance money, sell the lot, and buy a new house. Rather than dissuade the caller from committing arson and insurance fraud in the name of liberty, Steyn said that's the easiest way to do it -- just burn it and sell the property as an empty lot. That's what people start doing when living under oppressive regimes, said Steyn.

Steyn rounded out the hour with one last caller, a woman who wanted to comment on this idea that they didn't even write the cap-and-trade bill before voting on it. The caller, who said she's a nurse, said all the forms have to be filled out before doctors can perform surgery. Steyn said the definition of tyranny is passing a bill with a bunch of holes and saying we'll fill in the blanks later. Steyn also said he would ban 1,200-page bills, because that means it's too complicated to be any good, and it shuts out the citizenry.

Greg Lewis and Zachary Pleat contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

This hour of the Limbaugh Wire was, thankfully, the last hour of "Uighur Wednesday"
By Simon Maloy

Steyn got the last hour going with a few more observations on cap and trade. One of the more "ridiculous" aspects of cap and trade, he said, is that it marks a new low in this whole climate change thing. And speaking of "new lows," Steyn then offered his explanation of what carbon credits are: "You know these carbon credits that you trade back and forth and supposedly enable you to carry on polluting, and, in return, a terrorist mastermind living at the back of a smelly cave in Waziristan, he agrees not to use his cell phone 'cause every time he does do it, the Pentagon will launch a missile at his cave. So he agrees to downgrade his carbon footprint, and, in return, you get to go and pollute a bit more." No idea what he was talking about on that one... Regardless, Steyn said that cap and trade will not do anything to save the planet, but it's going to do an awful lot to destroy the U.S. economy.

Then Steyn took a call from a gentleman who, after explaining how Rush turned him from the path of liberalism, offered his synopsis of what's going on with the economy and the government today. There's one side in this debate, he said, that is saying that if you give them the power, they'll fix everything, while the other side is saying that we should get out of the way and it will fix itself, but what's more palatable to the public is the "We will fix your pain" message. So, said the caller, one party is telling the truth, but the American people don't want to hear it. Steyn says he's exactly right, and that argument has power for as long as it stands up. Health care is the game-changer though, said Steyn, and once you accept government health care, it empowers the government to annex large portions of your life. The state is essentially annexing your body, said Steyn, and once you accept the principle that the government has authority over your health, it's much easier to accept government control of other aspects of your life. This is the nationalization of your body.

And, Steyn continued, they want to do this in five weeks. There is no way you can do this in five weeks and not have disastrous consequences, particularly to individual liberty. This will do nothing to affect life expectancies, said Steyn, but it will redefine the relationship between the citizen and the state in ways that are incompatible with the concept of liberty. And, he added, we're arguing about a problem that, for the most part, does not exist. Life expectancy is high all across the developed world. There is no difference to the outcomes -- every country that has child mortality under control will have higher life expectancy. Besides the fact that many Americans undoubtedly consider it a fairly big deal that the American life expectancy rate is several years below that of many other advanced industrial democracies -- including our northern brother Canada, with its dreaded single-payer system --  it never seemed to occur to Steyn that national health care is not simply about life expectancy, but also access to health care and quality of life.

Speaking of Canada, after the break, Steyn turned our attention to a Globe and Mail article about the leader of a Toronto paramedics union who was accused of stealing an ambulance after "issu[ing] a threat to withdraw the services of CUPE's paramedics during Gay Pride festivities on the last weekend of June." This, as you might have guessed, was hilarious to Steyn: "[Y]ou know, and that's a serious issue. If you're in -- if you fall off the float at the gay pride parade -- you know, and if you've seen the gay pride parade, you'll know that a lot of those outfits you don't want to have an accident in. I mean, if you're like one of those fellas wearing ... the thong in the size too -- size is too small, you fall off the float and you grace yourself with -- I mean, if you're like wearing a plaid coat, you won't feel a thing. But if you fall off the float and you're just wearing a thong, that could really hurt."

Steyn then took a call from a woman who worked for a managed care organization, and she said that every dollar is accounted for, so she wanted to know how they're going to deliver care to people under national health care. Steyn says if you're diagnosed with cancer in Quebec, you wait for treatment, and just as your cancer metastasizes, they send you to a hospital in the U.S.

After another break, Steyn came back with a little treat for us -- he sang Michael Jackson songs, inserting the word "Uighur" into them... Thankfully, Greg stopped us just as we were about to bury the ice pick into our ear drums, so we were still able to hear Steyn's next caller, who said that in the health care debate, no one is talking about how to personally empower individuals in their own health. Steyn said health care would be simpler if you just pay as you go, but nobody knows what health care costs at this point because they've put so many other parties in between the doctor and the patient. There's no point trying to insure against things that are going to happen anyway, said Steyn, like routine visits to the doctor. You're only adding to the cost of the transaction by inserting the third party between the doctor and the patient.

Steyn's next caller said that his father in England has been sick lately and has gone through the system, and it hasn't been quite as bad as Steyn makes it out to be. Steyn wasn't having any of that, saying that his father has been sick in England, too, and he picked up three bacterial infections in three different hospitals. So there. Anyway, the caller then said that his bigger point is that there is no focus on prevention, and it's not about socialized medicine versus private health care, because both have failed miserably, just look at how many people are uninsured. Steyn also objected to this, saying that 10 million of the uninsured are illegal aliens, 9 million of them are entitled to coverage under Medicare but haven't signed up; the dominant group among the uninsured are young people who don't want insurance, and the fastest growing group are the ones who can afford to pay as they go. As our friends at the Wonk Room point out, though, it's something of a myth to say that the uninsured are comprised of illegal immigrants and those who don't want insurance. What it comes down to, said Steyn, is that an unjust and unfair private system is still better than an unjust and unfair government system.

After one more break, Steyn came back for one more caller, this one a paramedic from Oregon who said that her state has socialized medicine, and no one talks about the abuses that patients put on the system when their health care is free, like a woman who called 911 because she had a yeast infection. Steyn said that's a great point, that's what happens when you have a government system. People use the emergency room as a substitute when they don't want to wait around in the doctor's office, and if you think it's bad now, wait until nationalized health care kicks in.

And that's it for day one of Mark Steyn. We might be back for day two tomorrow, then again we might just go ahead and slam our head in the car door and take a sick day. I'd say we're about 50-50 at this point. As you anxiously wait to see whether we'll commit grievous bodily harm on ourselves, we encourage all of you to relive Rush and co.'s greatest hits via our ever-growing and all-knowing Limbaugh Wire archives.

Greg Lewis and Zachary Pleat contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

Highlights from Hour 3

Outrageous comments

STEYN: You know these carbon credits that you trade back and forth and supposedly enable you to carry on polluting, and, in return, a terrorist mastermind living at the back of a smelly cave in Waziristan, he agrees not to use his cell phone 'cause every time he does do it, the Pentagon will launch a missile at his cave. So he agrees to downgrade his carbon footprint, and, in return, you get to go and pollute a bit more.

[...]

STEYN: This is what you're in for under socialized health care. You won't be able to get an ambulance during gay pride week, you know, and that's a serious issue. If you're in -- if you fall off the float at the gay pride parade -- you know, and if you've seen the gay pride parade, you'll know that a lot of those outfits you don't want to have an accident in.

I mean, if you're like one of those fellas wearing the, you know, the -- just like in the -- the slightly -- the thong in the size too -- size is too small, you fall off the float and you grace yourself with -- I mean, if you're like wearing a plaid coat, you won't feel a thing. But if you fall off the float and you're just wearing a thong, that could really hurt.

You know, on the other hand, if you -- I guess if you do ever call 911, you know the first thing the paramedics do is they loosen all your clothing. So, I guess if you're wearing a thong, you're already there. Or in the -- or you're wearing like the tight leather shorts with the cutaway buttocks, they don't have to cut anything away, do you?