This hour of the Limbaugh Wire brought to you by spontaneous canned pork
By Simon Maloy

Sometimes it's really just too easy. We fired up the Limbaugh crystal ball this morning -- meaning we took a quick look at The Drudge Report -- and we got a pretty clear impression of what El Rushbo is going to talk about this fine Monday afternoon. Specifically, the many Recovery.gov links Drudge has at the top of his page pointing to million-dollar contracts for silly-sounding things like "Ham, water added, cooked, frozen, sliced, 2-lb" and "canned pork." The intent is clear -- stoking outrage by suggesting that the government spent $2.5 million on a frozen ham, or $16 million on a can of pork. But, as ProPublica explains, there's less here than Drudge would have you believe. These are food projects that are "funded by a $150 million Agriculture Department program to deliver meat, fruit and other items to food banks, which have been struggling to meet the surging demand in the economic downturn." According to Lakeside Foods, which received the canned pork grant, the project employs 53 people. And in yet another woeful sign of how much influence this Internet gossip yields over the public discourse, the USDA put out a statement responding specifically to Drudge, pointing out that he's peddling nonsense.

Rush got things rolling with a quick question for us -- has President Obama instructed the attorney general to issue arrest warrants for the Taliban who have kidnapped this U.S. soldier? That's how they said they were going to fight them, said Rush, who wondered if we're prepared to read these Taliban their Miranda rights.

The headlines today are somewhat amazing, said Rush -- Obama sinking in the polls; Obama taking center stage on health care. Rush then noted that the stimulus money is showing up in great detail, and there's so much stimulus money spent on ham! What did we tell you... Anyway, Rush helpfully explained to us that "ham is pork."

Moving on to health care, Rush said the majority of the media coverage is not on the substance, but on the politics. It's not about the American people, in the media's eyes, but what is best for Obama. Obama is just in a full sprint hurry to get this done by August, said Rush, but the governors are worrying about it, Democrats are getting antsy about the budget, and so, Obama is going to take "center stage." To demonstrate the speed with which Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) are trying to ram this through the Congress, Rush aired some speeded-up sound bites of Obama speaking about health care, so that he sounds like one of the Chipmunks.

In the first clip, Obama said that Americans will be able to keep their insurance plan if they like it, and the government will not choose your doctor. Rush pronounced this all "lies," citing Betsy McCaughey's "devastating" critique of the health care bill. We should point out here that McCaughey's "devastating" critiques are known for containing stark lies, and her claim that individuals will be forced to sign up for government health coverage has been contradicted by the language of the bill itself. The second high-speed Obama sound bite was of the president saying that he's not proposing government-run health care, though we must have an insurance exchange and a public option. This is outrageous, said Rush. There are already 1,700 options you have available across the country. Bringing the government into it will not expand competition. This idea of a vast insurance marketplace is a canard. The health insurance industry is highly concentrated, meaning that, in many areas, the marketplace is completely dominated by just one or two companies, making the options available very few.

Rush then said he is not upset that he will never win a Pulitzer, though he might qualify for a Nobel, but he would shelve that Nobel if he "could be the guy history acknowledges as warning the American people that this health care plan is nothing more than the subprime mortgage debacle ready to happen all over again." Of course, in Rush's mind, the subprime crisis is all the fault of Democrats. It got started with Jimmy Carter and magically skipped over the Reagan and Bush presidencies. Anyway, Rush said this will be the subprime mess times 10, and with all the pressures that we're already facing, the minimum wage is going up on Friday. The minimum wage is going to add to unemployment, Rush said. This is worse than the gang that couldn't shoot straight -- this is the gang that's purposefully missing their target.

Then Rush aired a speeded-up clip of Pelosi "lying" about health care. They know what a debacle this is, said Rush, and they know that the more you learn about it the less you'll support it. They're lying through their teeth about this, but the drive-bys aren't dealing with the substance, they're focused on the politics.

After the break, Rush said it's an insult to everyone's intelligence when Pelosi and Obama act like we don't know who they are or what their records are. They passed this stimulus bill, the purpose of which was to destroy the economy, and "Pelosi runs around talking about savings and -- this is the bunch that has given us, if you run it out over 10 years, a minimum of $12 trillion in deficits." As we have explained so, so, so many times, George W. Bush can take credit for most of those deficits, largely because of the massive tax cuts he signed into law that wiped out the billions-large budget surplus at the beginning of the decade.

Another break and Rush was back, saying that we finally have a communist idea that's not coming out of Washington. Rush read from a Leader-Telegram article reporting that an Eau Claire, Wisconsin, housing complex voted to ban smoking within residences. Think of this, said Rush -- which is more likely to reach your neighbors and kill them, second-hand smoking inside your house, or outside your house? Not to mention the fact that if you succeed in destroying the tobacco industry, you're losing all that tax revenue that pays for children's health insurance.

Rush then noted that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack released a statement (noted above) responding to Drudge on the canned ham silliness. Vilsack thinks that he's being a real smart guy here, said Rush, but the point is that the stimulus plan was to put people back to work. It wasn't about buying processed cheese and ham. That's not what the stimulus was about. As we also noted above, the canned pork program alone employed 53 people. Does Rush think that these food products process and package themselves?

Anyway, Rush then noted that the AP is reporting that the "administration's annual midsummer budget update is sure to show higher deficits and unemployment and slower growth than projected in President Barack Obama's budget in February and update in May," and that the "release of the update -- usually scheduled for mid-July -- has been put off until the middle of next month, giving rise to speculation the White House is delaying the bad news at least until Congress leaves town Aug. 7 on its summer recess." The interesting thing, said Rush, is that if you go back to WhiteHouse.gov, they have a memo on transparency in government. And now they're hiding budget data. Rush concluded: "Everything about this man -- everything about this administration -- is a scam. Everything is a sham. Barack Obama is an illusion; practicing -- he's an illusionist -- practicing illusion day in and day out."

Rush then speculated that maybe Obama, in his next speech, will give us a telling statistic -- how many people leave this country for medical treatment versus the number of people who come to this country for medical treatment. Rush invited us to compare health reform to government-run schools, before getting sidetracked: "Obama is the National Education Association's best friends. He even shut down a charter school program in D.C., because he wants to kill any competition with government schools -- and this was a school for minorities. And the minorities in D.C. in this charter school were performing great. They loved it; their parents loved it. Obama shut it down, a school for minority kids." We debunked this waaaaaay back in May -- Obama actually shut down a school vouchers program because, in the words of The Washington Post, the "Department of Education recently issued a three-year analysis of student achievement under the program that showed limited gains in reading and no significant progress in math."

One more break and Rush was back reading a few headlines from stories on Obama's poll numbers and health care. In every one of these stories, said Rush, there is no discussion of the impact on real Americans. There's nothing in these stories about Obama destroying the economy or lying through his teeth about his agenda. This is what conservatives mean by "liberal media bias," folks -- they get upset that the media aren't parroting the ridiculous attacks they're making. Anyway, Rush asked us to think back to the Lewinksy hearings, when Clinton's approval ratings never went below 60 percent. With Obama, said Rush, it's already below 60 percent. This is so drastic and dramatic what they're doing. There are people within the Democratic Party who are realizing that this is not at all what they signed up for, said Rush. And there are stories here about how the Blue Dog Democrats could slow things down. Rush counseled us that there is no such thing as a Blue Dog Democrat, and these stories about the Blue Dogs standing up to Obama are a scam. This is going to be defeated the good old-fashioned way -- with the American people behind us. Don't fall for this Blue Dog stuff.

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

Highlights from Hour 1

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: Many people ask me, over the course of my sterling and starring broadcast career, if I'm ever upset that I can never win a Pulitzer. No. I would -- if I won a Pulitzer, I would be embarrassed. I might resign. "Well, Rush, don't you think you oughta get a Nobel?" Yeah, I'd -- you know, I think I do qualify for a Nobel Prize.

But I would shelve that if I could be the guy history acknowledges as warning the American people that this health care plan is nothing more than the subprime mortgage debacle ready to happen all over again. We got the government involved in giving people homes who couldn't afford them. The government mandated that the lenders lend money to people who couldn't qualify, much less pay it back.

It started under Jimmy Carter; it gained steam under Bill Clinton; it was propped up and aided by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. They tried to shut it down with regulators over the course of the Bush administration and it failed because the Democrats had their hands too deeply inside Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. And so you know what a debacle that was -- and the government was running a plan designed to be wonderful: "affordable housing," as Barney Frank calls it. It is just not fair that some people could have a house and some people couldn't, so we're going to find a way to make it all equal. Housing was a right. Health care is a right.

The same people that gave us the subprime debacle, which is at the root of today's economic malaise; the same people and the same thinking and the same philosophy are behind this push for government-run health care. It is socialized -- I don't care what the term that you come up with -- and it's getting to be nothing more than the subprime mortgage mess, times 10.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Everything about this man -- everything about this administration -- is a scam. Everything is a sham. Barack Obama is an illusion; practicing -- he's an illusionist -- practicing illusion day in and day out.

America's Truth Rejector

Falsely claimed Pelosi and the Democrats are responsible for the $12 trillion 10-year deficits:

LIMBAUGH: The stimulus bill -- the entire Obama economic plan is by design destroying the U.S. economy. They're not interested in finding savings and efficiencies. Pelosi runs around talking about savings and -- this is the bunch that has given us, if you run it out over 10 years, a minimum of $12 trillion in deficits.

Lied about why Obama shut down a D.C. school vouchers program:

LIMBAUGH: Government-run schools: Obama is the National Education Association's best friends. He even shut down a charter school program in D.C., because he wants to kill any competition with government schools -- and this was a school for minorities. And the minorities in D.C. in this charter school were performing great. They loved it; their parents loved it. Obama shut it down, a school for minority kids.

This hour of the Limbaugh Wire brought to you by Rush's Birther bona fides
By Greg Lewis

After a busy opening hour, Rush began Hour 2 complaining about the ABC radio news report that plays at the top of the hour during the program. Rush mocked the report for pinning Obama's drop in poll numbers on his "grappl[ing]" with the "tough issues." Rush asked: Did we ever hear analysis like that during the Bush administration?

Rush went on to describe the White House as being in "disarray" because Obama's personality "is not working anymore." There is no more "Bam magic." Then Rush returned to his Bill Clinton comparison from the previous hour. Clinton had high approvals during his impeachment hearings because the economy was roaring, but, Rush said, they "really didn't like the reprobate." Obama is liked, unlike Clinton, explained Rush, "but the economy is excrement."

Anyway, all this means that now we will see the "real Obama" because of the "disarray" and "frustration" that the "magic isn't working":

LIMBAUGH: We are now going to see the real Obama, starting today, with this speech -- how he seeks to smear and destroy people behind the scenes who disagree with him.

We're going to see the TV ads now. We're going to see ACORN and other groups become even more active. We will see efforts to mischaracterize Obama opponents. We will see and hear continual lies about their motives, people who oppose either cap and tax or the health care plans. So get ready, because we are going to soon see the real Obama. The magic has worn off.

Then -- as if we didn't have our fill of her in the first hour -- it was time for Rush to read more from Betsy McCaughey. Rush read straight from her recent New York Post op-ed. This isn't the first time Rush has provided an echo chamber for McCaughey, someone who has been notorious for coming up with falsehoods about health care reform.

Rush took a brief interlude while reading McCaughey's op-ed to once again complain about New York's "harassing audit" of him -- Rush said that he has to prove 14 different ways to New York tax authorities where he is everyday, but "Barack Obama has yet to have to prove he's a citizen. All he'd have to do is show a birth certificate." It's getting to be too much here, folks. Yes, Obama has produced a birth certificate. It's right here (along with all the other proof of Obama's citizenship), and it's not a forgery, regardless of how many anonymous Internet document experts Jerome Corsi cites in claiming otherwise. It's gotten to the point where we've had to divide up what we hear on the Limbaugh program every day into "legitimate nonsense" and "illegitimate nonsense." Legitimate nonsense encapsulates the rote repetition of health care falsehoods, cap-and-trade lies, etc. Those at least deal with real issues. But rest assured that Birther nonsense, which Rush has dabbled in before but never as directly as this, falls squarely in the "illegitimate nonsense" category. This is supposed to be the national voice for Republicans, the major outlet for conservative thought, and here the host is accepting and promoting the fevered, ridiculous, and offensive dream of the lunatic fringe that the president of the United States is not a citizen.

After the break, it was more polling. Rush cited a recent Public Policy Polling report finding Obama's favorability at 50 percent, and also cited the latest 2012 poll from Rasmussen, via Drudge (noticing a theme today?). This reminded Rush of his dinner last Thursday night -- long story short, Rush got into an argument with his lady friend's cousins over Sarah Palin. Rush admitted that he "blew up" and was ashamed of the incident. Nonetheless, he explained, like he has so many times before, why he thinks Sarah Palin is the bee's knees and blamed the media's unfair coverage of her.

Rush also repeated his sentiments regarding a third party. He's entirely against the idea of forming one, but suggested that Colin Powell and John McCain create their own third party, "and let us have the Republican Party back." On the other side of the break, Rush joked about what this new party's platform would be -- Rush suggested they wouldn't actually tell anybody.

Then it was more about health care reform, with Rush commenting on Obama's speech earlier in the hour. Rush declared that the speech was "breathtakingly misrepresentative" because Obama has no interest in savings or efficiencies in health care. Rush went on to argue that he refuses to listen to what Obama has to say about government health care until Obama sends his own children to public schools, lives in public housing, uses public transportation, and lives off the public pension program. If he doesn't do this, Rush declared, he has "zip, zero, nada credibility." So, by this same garbage logic, we assume that Rush's many exhortations of the Iraq war were not credible, since Rush himself never served in the military. And all that advice Rush offers to the GOP on how to win in 2010 and 2012 is also not credible because Rush himself has never run for office. And Rush's claim to be "America's Truth Detector" isn't credible because he so rarely tells the truth -- well, perhaps that's not the best example, but you get the idea.

Then it was time for Rush to go to the phones. He took a caller who had contacted various representatives and senators to ask if they would eliminate their health care in favor of the public option, as Rush had recently instructed his callers to do. The caller found no support for such a plan among those he called. Rush repeated his point that elitist leftists have no credibility on public programs, and that their plan is to have power over you, limiting your freedom.

The next caller told Rush that government involvement is the reason health insurance costs so much already. Rush repeated his point that it's the subprime health care program. Then Rush took another caller who declared that government already controls who will be born, and with health care reform, they'll control who will die. Rush agreed that this is what would happen, and cited 84 year-old former New York City Mayor Ed Koch's recent quadruple bypass. Rush guaranteed that your average 84 year-old would not get that sort of treatment under "ObamaCare."

One more break, and Rush was back to telling us that Obama was trying to ramp up the crisis mentality. Then he played some audio of Obama's speech today on health care. Rush brilliantly refuted Obama's argument by childishly playing a sound bite of the speech and peppering it with a series of "nope's." "None of it is true," he stated.

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

Highlights from Hour 2

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: We're going to see the real Obama now because of this disarray and because of this frustration that that magic isn't working. We are now going to see the real Obama, starting today, with this speech -- how he seeks to smear and destroy people behind the scenes who disagree with him.

We're going to see the TV ads now. We're going to see ACORN and other groups become even more active. We will see efforts to mischaracterize Obama opponents. We will see and hear continual lies about their motives, people who oppose either cap and tax or the health care plans. So get ready, because we are going to soon see the real Obama. The magic has worn off.

America's Truth Rejector

Rush claimed Obama "has yet to have to prove he's a citizen":

LIMBAUGH: Barack Obama has yet to have to prove he's a citizen. All he'd have to do is show a birth certificate. He has yet to have to prove he's -- I have to show them 14 different ways where the hell I am every day of the year for three years.

Do you like to yell nonsense about Obama's birth certificate? Then you, too, can be featured on The Rush Limbaugh Show!
By Greg Lewis

Rush got the third hour going by reading a Time magazine article about utility companies "scrambl[ing]" to meet the power needs of electric cars. The stupid environmentalist wackos, declared Rush, don't realize their electric cars do not come from clean energy. We guess it didn't matter to Rush that the article wasn't actually about what he thought it was -- it had nothing to do with energy sources, but rather energy infrastructure to meet the demands of an influx in plug-in electric vehicles in California. In other words, he simply jammed an irrelevant story into his "idiot" environmentalist narrative.

Then Rush pondered what would happen to abortion under "ObamaCare." Rush said the government won't be able to refuse to pay for abortions. Then Rush speculated about medical ethics, wondering what would happen if they could identify the genetic marker for homosexuality. Rush said if this happened, then the gay community would quickly "convert" from being pro-choice to pro-life.

Moving on, Rush followed through on his promise last week to contrast Vice President Joe Biden with former Sen. Bob Torricelli (D-NJ). We won't bore you with the particulars of this inside joke from Limbaugh Land, but what this consisted of was having his audio engineer pair snippets from Biden's speech last week touting the impact of the stimulus on the economy with sound bites of CNBC's Maria Bartiromo announcing dire economic news.

Then Rush went back to wading in the swamp of Birther nonsense. He played an audio clip from a town hall meeting with Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) featuring a woman yelling about Obama's lack of birth certificate and claiming that he was actually born in Kenya. Rush repeated the woman's claims and noted that "all kinds of stuff is bubbling up out there." That's true, there are "all sorts of stuff" out there, and it's crazy. What makes this bit of lunatic idiocy different from other similarly lunatic bits of idiocy is that this one was broadcast across the nation on The Rush Limbaugh Show without so much as a word in contradiction.

After the break, Rush took a call from a critical care physician who explained to Rush that at the hospital where he works, all patients, who have a wide range of insurance coverage, get what they need. Rush told the caller that we never hear the horror stories of people being denied the health care we need. The caller then announced that he is going to quit medicine if the Obama health care reform passes because it would force him to deny care to old people at the behest of some "high school dropout" bureaucrat in Washington. Rush, as you might have guessed, was quite pleased with the caller's outlook.

Rush took another break, and returned this time to discuss Obama's speech last week at the NAACP -- or the NAALCP as Rush calls the group (the "L" standing for "liberal") -- Centennial Convention. Rush felt as though the speech vindicated his sentiment that Obama was in fact making racism worse: "This guy is out there stoking more hatred among these people. He is not bringing us together. Where's the unity?"

Rush proceeded to critique bits of the speech, explaining that Obama was listing all of the "excuses" the left makes for African-American failure. "Bill Cosby got drummed out of the black race for saying this stuff, right?" When Obama described how he wanted kids to "aspire" to be a Supreme Court justice and president of the United States, Rush said that Obama meant, "unless you're Clarence Thomas," Condoleezza Rice, or Thomas Sowell. Then you can "forget aspirations" because people like Obama will chop you into liver.

Then Rush played another bit from the speech, audio of Obama saying that he "had some breaks" in life. What were the breaks? asked Rush. Meeting communist mentors? While we were contemplating just how much sense that retort made, Rush concluded that the speech "didn't inspire anybody" and "reinforced" the existing attitude that exists in the "race business today."

Rush returned to health care with a caller who asked about health savings accounts. Rush explained to the caller that HSAs would help bring the free market system back to health care, but Congress has killed it.

After one more break, Rush took a caller who stated that Walter Cronkite did more to cost U.S. lives in Vietnam than anyone else, because the will to win went south after Cronkite famously declared that it was clear that the war was lost. Rush said he had recently discussed Cronkite with fellow radio host Mark Levin, who suggested Cronkite was so adored because he looked like Walt Disney. What it came down to, though, was that Walter Cronkite -- the man who arguably did more to shape modern television journalism than any person before or since -- was eulogized on The Rush Limbaugh Show as just another insidious liberal who was responsible for the deaths of American soldiers.

And that brings us to the end of today's edition of the Limbaugh Wire. We hope you had as much of a thrill reading it as we did writing it -- particularly the Birther parts. Those are always fun. As always, we'll be back for another round tomorrow, adding more content to the ever-expanding Limbaugh Wire archives.

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

Highlights from Hour 3

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: Folks, this is the original litmus test. This is the original list of sins. This guy is out there stoking more hatred among these people. He is not bringing us together. Where's the unity?