This hour of the Limbaugh Wire brought to you by the Magical Wingnut Jargon Generator^TM
By Simon Maloy

Well, we're back for day two of the Mark Steyn Experience despite our suggestion yesterday that slamming a car door on our head might be a preferable alternative. Now, make no mistake -- we're not here out of any desire to actually listen to more Mark Steyn, or because we think a self-inflicted grievous injury might have been the wrong choice. We just don't have a car...

Steyn got things rolling by reminding us that yesterday was "Uighur Wednesday," so he didn't want any calls today about Uighurs -- save them for "Open Uighur Friday!" tomorrow, he counseled. Steyn then observed that not a lot has been going on at the G8 because none of the leaders from Europe or India are on board with his cap-and-trade agenda. Steyn said he last went to a G8 in 2002 in Canada, and the anti-globalization people showed up like they always do. Steyn said the thing he doesn't understand about the anti-globalization movement is that it's a globalized movement. It's the same people protesting at all these summits all over the world. Anyway, the moral Steyn imparted to us from his story of the 2002 G8 was "don't urinate in the same place twice." We're not going to bother with the back story he offered -- that's pretty much all you need to know.

From there, Steyn segued to the Daily Mail, which reported that an "anti-ageing pill was created from a chemical found in the soil of Easter Island -- one of the most remote and mysterious places on the planet." This means, said Steyn, that under the new socialized health care system, you won't have to wait three years for your hip replacement; you'll wait two decades.

The other good news of the day, Steyn said, is that we have final confirmation that men are entirely redundant. Pointing to reports that "Researchers at Newcastle University in England report they have coaxed the first human sperm cells from embryonic stem cells," Steyn said we no longer are hunter gatherers (because the government takes care of that), we no longer hold the door at the restaurant, and now we're no longer needed for reproduction. So they can manufacture human sperm industrially, said Steyn -- will celebrities have their own sperm line? It's easy to get worried about cap and trade and the stimulus, but this has far greater implications.

And you wonder why we wanted to bludgeon ourselves with a car door...

After the break, Steyn said that Obama's personal ratings are beginning to reflect the unpopularity of his policies. Rasmussen's tracking poll is showing that more people strongly disapprove of Obama than strongly approve, and if you break it down into the battleground states, 48 percent of respondents in Ohio disapprove of Obama's handling of the economy. His numbers are down below 50 percent, said Steyn (no, they aren't), but the media are ignoring it and still treating him as a god, even though he's very much an ordinary politician with serious problems. We have to say it's very amusing to us to see conservatives, who dismissed George W. Bush's abysmal poll numbers as irrelevant, gleefully pronounce Obama's still-strong approval ratings a "problem."

What people are realizing, said Steyn, is that Obama isn't the moderate that he sold himself as. Temperamentally, he's a moderate, and for a while that worked -- there was opposition to his policies, but it didn't show up in his approval ratings. But now they are showing up. He's not going to be able to get away with fudging this for much longer, Steyn said, because he has his 60 votes in the Senate. This is an all-Democrat government. When a president is promoting unpopular policies, Steyn said, he becomes unpopular, too. Obama is not governing as a centrist, said Steyn, and those people who told us that Obama was a moderate centrist -- like Christopher Buckley and David Brooks -- got "suckered." At least the people who voted for him because they thought he would be a transformative figure got it right.

After another break, Steyn took his first caller of the day, a gentleman who works in construction in Chicago, who said that the market is a disaster and central planning is not the answer. Steyn said we're going to get more central planning with cap and trade, because it's going to mandate California housing standards for the entire nation. Steyn said what the government doesn't get is that, in the end, it's the small businesses that get things done, and when you try to artificially preserve the value of houses, you're continuing the problems with the market, which would otherwise correct itself. They just want increased regulation and control, said Steyn. The caller said we can't forget that Obama is from Chicago, and he's schooled in corruption. Steyn said you also have in Chicago an alliance between the government class and the dependent class, and in the middle of that there's a dynamic, productive middle class that is being squeezed from both sides. That's the statist model all over the world.

Steyn's next caller was a liberal from Virginia who voted for Obama and agreed with Bill Maher that Obama is being too moderate, and not liberal enough. Steyn wanted to know in what areas Obama's being too moderate, and the caller said Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell, the bailouts, raising troop levels in Afghanistan, not closing Gitmo immediately, and single-payer health care. Steyn said the caller mentioned mainly foreign policy issues, and "the reason that is of no interest to him is because it doesn't offer the opportunity for control, for government control at home." The caller said that on health care, Obama's not proposing single-payer, and that's really important. Steyn said Obama can't use the words "single-payer," but he can take steps that will destroy the private health insurers, leaving us with de facto single-payer government health care. He's going to get you there, Steyn told the caller, he just knows there are certain trigger words he can't use. Caller said he thinks Steyn is better than Rush, and he hopes Rush stays on vacation forever. Steyn said he loves these liberal callers, and he wants to hear from liberals who are still happy with Obama, and from the ones who wanted a cool, black guy as president, but didn't want their 401Ks wiped out.

Another break and Steyn came back with his Magical Wingnut Jargon Generator^TM, which creates -- seemingly out of thin air -- intelligent-sounding words that conservatives can employ to seem informed when regurgitating their attacks on Obama and the Democrats. We've bolded these words, in order to assist you in identifying them. There's a point, said Steyn, when you get to double-digit unemployment that you've essentially "European-ized" the American workforce. Ten percent unemployment in France is normal, said Steyn, and it's the same with Germany. It's not surprising -- one reason they have that is when you over-regulate business, you depress incentives for people to hire new workers. The level of unemployment we have now will be permanent, said Steyn, if Obama's policies are made permanent. Cap and trade, national health care, and more stimulus will make 10 percent unemployment normal. The way to make 10 percent unemployment go away, said Steyn, is to make the "overgovernmentalization" of the economy go away.

Speaking of wingnut jargon, Steyn rounded out the hour with a call from a woman who was at one of the July 4 tea parties, and she said she believed that none of what's going on now with the economy is accidental, but she couldn't really figure out what the motivation was. But then she was turned on to the Cloward-Piven Strategy, which seeks to overturn capitalism by overloading the system. Steyn said this is the right idea -- you make people more dependent on government. This is right out of Saul Alinsky.

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

Highlights from Hour 1

Outrageous comments

STEYN: No, but let's go through the stuff you don't like, because, essentially, all that is foreign policy and war on terror stuff. And the reason that is of no interest to him is because it doesn't offer the opportunity for control, for government control at home. In the end, he doesn't care whether he backpedals on his policy regarding detainees in Gitmo, because that's peripheral to the overall scheme of things. He doesn't care about troop levels in Afghanistan or Iraq -- that's peripheral to the scheme of things.

He doesn't care about foreign policy much at all. His whole approach to the rest of the world is he doesn't want it getting in the way while he's busy transforming America. The last thing you need if you're like -- if you want to transform American into a statist, socialist basket case, the last thing you want is a bunch of terrorists blowing up Cleveland, or whatever, in the middle of it, before -- you don't want Cleveland blown up before you've turned it into a socialist basket case. That's basically the extent of his interest in these things.

This hour of the Limbaugh Wire brought to you by the Canadian border's inability to contain "bad ideas" ... and Mark Steyn 
By Greg Lewis

The second hour of today's Mark-stravaganza kicked off with Mark Steyn noting that Rev. Al Sharpton has called for the Postal Service to issue a commemorative Michael Jackson stamp, and has also called for a national day of mourning in Jackson's honor. Steyn quipped that we've already had 12 days of national mourning for him -- why not just stick Jackson on Mount Rushmore moonwalking on Teddy Roosevelt's head? Steyn then proceeded to discuss Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), who spoke at Jackson's memorial, and who has called for a congressional resolution honoring him.

Steyn then spent some time with a caller who happened to be a Ron Paul supporter. The caller told Steyn that Obama was governing exactly the same as former President Bush had -- the stimulus was just a continuation of TARP. Steyn agreed with this point to a degree -- he explained that the difference between the two administrations was that they are like two cars heading in the same direction, but the Obama administration has put its foot on the accelerator.

The caller then changed gears (to stick with the car theme...) to foreign policy. He felt that our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were about our advancement of empire and territory. Steyn, a self-described "product" of empire, didn't agree, and asserted that the U.S. was actually the "least imperial people on the planet." He then lamented the ineffectiveness of our borders:

STEYN: Fifty percent of the population of Mexico is now living in your state of California, and 100 percent of every bad Canadian idea has seeped south of the 49th Parallel, so that, now, in America, it seems entirely normal to be talking about confiscatory taxation and socialized health care.

On the subject of the "seepage" of "every bad Canadian idea" across the border, we'd like to remind you that Steyn is from Canada. Just sayin'.

Steyn continued lecturing the Ron Paul-supporting caller on how he should properly view the world order. The idea of "Fortress America," he explained, is no longer a valid concept because there are plenty of places in the world where nobody cares what happens. "Nickel-and-dime dictators" are able to get away with killing and torturing millions of their own people without attracting any attention from the rest of the world.

After the break, Steyn took a caller who defended Bush against his own TARP policy -- which he said conservatives think was dumb and stupid -- by claiming that Bush "had to be convinced against his better judgment" to support the policy by Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke. While Steyn emphasized that he did not support that policy at the time, and that Bush was "shanghaied" by Paulson, it was nevertheless his administration and he has to take responsibility for it. Steyn then went on to explain his overall "suspicion" with bipartisan legislation. If you want a functioning two-party system, said Steyn, you have to stop this "socialized health care thing" because it's a "permanent game changer." If it passes, it will be a "game changer" that would make a functioning conservative government "impossible."

Steyn returned after another break to ramble something about Alec Baldwin possibly running for the Senate and a movie Baldwin was in with Anne Heche. Incoherent rambling must have been the theme of the hour, because Steyn's next caller joined in on the fun. The caller identified himself as an Obama voter and said he voted this way because he felt Sen. John McCain was another Bush. When Steyn pressed the caller to cite a positive reason he voted for Obama, the caller said it was because of Obama's position to prevent American manufacturing from going overseas. Steyn told the caller that if he was concerned with American industry, nothing Obama is doing is going to help. Why do you think unemployment is up? Steyn asked. He proceeded to ramble on about the boutique business industry in Vermont.

After another break, Steyn brought us another caller who said she regretted voting for Obama. The caller explained how she was "blinded" by the notion of voting for a "non-Caucasian" president. Steyn pressed her on who she would vote for in 2012, but the caller said she wasn't sure. Then Steyn went off on his point that you can "afford to indulge yourself" in voting based on superficial issues when everything is great, but, right now, times are not good. He finished off the hour with this assessment of the Obama presidency:

STEYN: So there is no limit to the damage that a president with determined statist policies can inflict on you. I mean, this is like Jimmy Carter on steroids. He can clobber your home; he can clobber your savings and your pensions; he can clobber your job, and he can devalue -- he can basically end the dollar as a world currency; he can clobber your health care. I mean, basically, he can get you on every front.

Simon Maloy, Zachary Pleat, and Ariana Probinsky contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

Highlights from Hour 2

Outrageous comments

STEYN: So there is no limit to the damage that a president with determined statist policies can inflict on you. I mean, this is like Jimmy Carter on steroids. He can clobber your home; he can clobber your savings and your pensions; he can clobber your job, and he can devalue -- he can basically end the dollar as a world currency; he can clobber your health care. I mean, basically, he can get you on every front.

On America's borders

STEYN: Where I part company with Ron Paul -- Ron Paul talks, you know, a lot of sense on fiscal issues and things, but the idea that you can have an -- in the modern world, you can have an isolationist superpower that can hold the entire planet at bay, that can retreat within "Fortress America" -- what fortress? This is a country that cannot even hold two relatively benign neighbors at bay.

Fifty percent of the population of Mexico is now living in your state of California, and 100 percent of every bad Canadian idea has seeped south of the 49th Parallel, so that, now, in America, it seems entirely normal to be talking about confiscatory taxation and socialized health care. You -- the "Fortress America" delusion, the "Fortress America" delusion, the isolationist republic far from the cares of the world, which was a valid concept in the early 19th century, does not work now.

This hour of the Limbaugh Wire brought to you by nudity at the G8
By Simon Maloy

Steyn got this final hour going by revisiting the G8, saying that it's interesting to see the differences between what Obama and the rest of the developed world are doing. One thing Obama has managed to do, said Steyn, is make these anti-globalization protesters go away. At the 2002 G8, there was an anti-globalization nude protest, Steyn said, and normally it's difficult to put a strip club visit on the company expense account, but the anti-globalization protesters were just stripping right there in the street. They were denouncing Bush, he said, and then they had the big final pants drop, and across the row of highly variable bottoms -- OK, that's it, we can't take it anymore. Do we really still have to listen to this dreck?

We do? For the love of...

Fine. We'll keep going. Steyn said what's interesting when you get inside these G8 meetings is that there are differences that emerge between Obama's way of doing things and the rest of the world. The other nations of the world are reeling back on their environmental commitments because they realize those commitments have no impact on the planet, but a profound and immediate impact on the economy. Europeans are realizing that environmentalism is a luxury, said Steyn, and when times are tough, environmentalism has to go. Steyn then read from a New York Times article reporting that "negotiators for 17 leading polluters abandoned targets in a draft agreement for the meetings here. But negotiators embraced a goal of preventing temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit." This is a worthless number, said Steyn, like Obama's "saved jobs" stat. What's happened, said Steyn, is that Obama is far more out of step with the rest of the world than the cowboy Bush ever was. The Chinese and Indians are not agreeing to any emissions standards because they want to enjoy material prosperity as their economies develop.

What's even more interesting, said Steyn, is the way the Western nations have looked at environmentalism and realized that they can't make it work. Environmentalism is an indulgence, said Steyn. He returned to his thoughts on American imperialism from earlier, saying that America is the least imperialist nation out there right now. Steyn continued, saying that it's precisely because America is not that kind of threat that the left concocted this idea that Americans eating and going to the beach and having big cars is enough to destroy the planet. And that whole crazy theory, said Steyn, is a reflection of how non-threatening America really is. The idea that lifestyle is a threat to the planet is patent nonsense, he said, but if you're a self-indulgent, morally superior liberal, it's an attractive theory.

After the break, Steyn took a call from a gentleman who said that cap and trade should be called "cap-and-hoard," because if you have a business that you want to expand, you need to get carbon credits from someone else, but they're not going to want to get rid of them. And what's going to happen is that businesses that do sell their credits will sell them to the highest bidder, which means that huge corporations are going to outbid small businesses. Steyn said the caller is right, and he doesn't know that there's any way around that fact, unless you're Al Gore, who buys his carbon credits from himself. According to Steyn, this is a "growth-crusher" on the businesses that everyone claims to like, the small businesses. This is a concoction that could only be designed by an administration with limited, if any, experience in starting and growing businesses. It's what happens, said Steyn, when you put a community organizer in charge of the economy, and it will "kill American capitalism" if it isn't stopped.

Another break and Steyn was back with another caller, who said that he supports cap and trade because it gets us off foreign oil, which means we're not funding dictatorships and terrorist sponsors. Steyn responded by talking about electric cars, saying that if you want an electric car, it's likely going to be powered by a coal-fired power plant, so you're just exchanging one fossil fuel for another. Steyn also said the caller was right about dictators -- we're funding both sides in the war on terror, as well as Hugo Chavez, so why not support more oil production at home? The caller didn't disagree with some offshore drilling, but said we need nuclear and alternative energy and more energy efficiency, and if you reduce air pollution, you'll lower health care costs. Steyn said the places with the worst pollution in the world are poor places. Dynamic, wealthy societies clean up their air because they don't want to live in smog. Steyn said cap and trade takes the decision-making process away from businesses and replaces it with government standards. You're better off living in a polluting industrial nation than in some bucolic, Third World pre-industrial society, Steyn said. We're not rich enough anymore to indulge ourselves with a government bureaucracy that will regulate how every home in the country is built.

After yet another break, Steyn came back ready for more hostile calls, saying that he likes them. They keep him "sharp." Anyway, the next caller said he likes Steyn, but he thinks that the U.S. is indeed an imperialist nation. They don't make the colonization mistake that the British made, said the caller, but instead pay money to dictators to control things behind the scenes. Steyn said he'll grant the caller that the U.S. has tried to do foreign policy on the cheap, just look at the Middle East and the fetish with "stability." The U.S. gave Mubarak billions of dollars, said Steyn, and, in return, Mohamed Atta flew a plane into the World Trade Center. Steyn said his general point is that America is the most benign superpower in history. Institutes like the World Bank were set up by the United States after WWII, thereby dampening America's own voice and magnifying the voices of lesser countries. That is not conventional imperial behavior. It's difficult to export your power and impose your will on the world, said Steyn, but it pays off in the long run. Showering dictators like Mubarak or the Saudi kings with money is not in our interests.

And that's it. We're done. No more Mark Steyn. In an ideal world, that small fact should not make us this happy, but we're going to enjoy it for all it's worth. We'll be back tomorrow for Mark Davis, and we hope you will, too. Until then, as always, Media Matters' Limbaugh archives eagerly await your patronage.

Ariana Probinsky and Zachary Pleat contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.