Limbaugh Wire: 3/17/2009 Part I
Please
note -- all Limbaugh Wire transcripts are, by nature, Rush transcripts
By Simon Maloy
Happy St. Patrick's Day from the Limbaugh Wire. We've set ourselves up for this afternoon's Rush Limbaugh Show with some nice corned beef and enough whisky to take down a draft horse. So no different from other days, except for the corned beef.
Rush kicked off the show blaming reported death threats against AIG executives on the tone of "civility" Obama and his teleprompter brought to Washington. El Rushbo went on to announce that he was one of the few brave Americans to stand athwart the "lynch mob" mentality regarding AIG and the bonuses.
From there, it was a smooth segue into bestiality. Rush said -- wait, what? Yeah, bestiality... Specifically this St. Petersburg Times blog post on legislation to make bestiality illegal in Florida, and confusion from a state senator regarding the bill's exemption for animal husbandry. Mercifully, it was time for a break.
Coming back, Rush promised to explain to everyone out there what a "retention bonus" is, but first he had to take some unexplained shots at Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA). He aired audio of Frank in January 2007, refusing to allow a Republican representative to amend a bill to prevent, in Limbaugh's words, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's "sweetheart StarKist giveaway." This, of course, was followed by Limbaugh's Abba-Barney Frank parody, "Banking Queen." Since Limbaugh offered no explanation as to why this is relevant to... anything, we'll explain why it's a bunch of bull. Pelosi was not acting in the interest of the tuna company -- she was upholding policies she supported before the tuna company had any connection to her district. There was no "sweetheart StarKist giveaway," but some lies are just too fun to let die.
Back from the break, Limbaugh accused the Obama administration of "ginning up" death threats against AIG executives, and then claimed that all this AIG outrage is a White House-created "diversion" to draw attention away from President Obama's "plummeting poll numbers." As we noted yesterday, Limbaugh has an odd concept of what constitutes bad poll numbers.
After another break, Limbaugh was back, continuing to accuse the White House and the media of faking outrage, and attacking Republicans -- Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) specifically -- for not attacking Democrats over the bonuses. Rush explained that he really didn't have any expectation that Republicans would act properly, though, so he wasn't that surprised. Rush then took a caller who noted that the bonuses are just a tiny percentage of the stimulus AIG received. Rush enthusiastically agreed, saying it's like earmarks, and claiming that Democrats defended earmarks by pointing out how small a percentage of the omnibus bill they comprised. As we noted yesterday, Rush himself was quick to note the tiny percentages that the bonuses comprise, but was unconcerned with such percentages when voicing outrage over the "earmark-ulus" bill.
Rush then wrapped up the hour by again asserting his individuality, wondering aloud what it would be like to be part of a mob, to lose his individuality.
Well, the corned beef is gone, and we're already running low on whisky...
Highlights from Hour 1
Outrageous comments
LIMBAUGH: A lynch mob is expanding: the peasants with their pitchforks surrounding the corporate headquarters of AIG, demanding heads. Death threats are pouring in. All of this being ginned up by the Obama administration.
America's Truth Rejector
LIMBAUGH: I want to go back to a Barney Frank greatest hit: January 11th, 2007, on the House floor. This is right after the Democrats had retaken the House for the first time since 1994 -- this is after the 2006 elections. Barney Frank is acting as speaker. The speaker never goes to the speaker's chair. She's always stays back in her office and twists arms and does things. They have rotating members who go up there and act as the president of the House that day. The Senate does the same thing.
And this is during a time when it was been discovered that Nancy Pelosi had an exemption to some piece of bill for the StarKist tuna people, exempting them from some latest piece of legislation that was going to hamper other businesses. A Republican member of the House stood up, tried to make a point about Pelosi's StarKist giveaway by attempting to insert an exemption for Samoa into the stem cell bill, and Barney Frank did not want any part of it.
[...]
LIMBAUGH: Barney Frank again -- January 11th, 2007, refusing to let a Republican make a point about Nancy Pelosi's sweetheart StarKist giveaway, wanting the same thing for American Samoa.
Echo chamber
Cited March 17 Wall Street Journal editorial on AIG.
So, Rush is claiming that the anger from Americans at AIG was created by the Obama Administration to divert from President Obama's poll numbers dropping, and Rush explained that Rep. Grassley should be "attacking" the Democrats over AIG's bonuses but the Republicans overall don't know how to. Huh? What is wrong with Rush? Okay, my head hurts now....hmmm.
The point is that although the bonuses are so small as to be negligible, they still strike a chord with an angry public. So if these bonuses are such a big deal, then they could be used to make some very good points against the democrats rather then letting democrats use the opportunity, but republicans aren't doing that.
What about his claim that the Obama administration knew about the AIG bonuses since fall and that there was some sort of exemption for restrictions on bonuses in the stimulus bill? I tried googling this but I didn't come up with much info. I was hoping there would be something here...
MMFA - Just my opinion here, but this "Limbaugh Wire" stuff is not only lame reading, but it undermines the argument that I've made many times on your behalf that "What MMFA does is take specific items, alwasy with a complete trascript and/or link to actual video, and then demonstrate, using cited references, why that item is demonstablry false, or so one-sidedly misleading as to be, for all intents and purposes, false."
But these "Limbaugh Wire" posts are little more than poorly-supported whine-fests. They're exactly the kind of thing that [a ditto-head] would call a "smear." While And while he'd certainly be exaggerating, it would be hard to prove that he was WRONG. They're all OPINION, with few (or no) supporting FACTS. (Which is really unlike you!)
We all know that Rush is a kook - that's why we're here. But these posts read like a liberal mirror of his show: Pick out a few isolated quotes and then just make fun of them. I sincerely hope that you will go back to debunking these things one at a time, with the thought, research and supporting references that your readers have come to expect and which have made you a legitimate force for the liberal voice and one of the stongest media critics on the web.
I read this just about sight every day, and am a regular commenter. It is one of my favorite places on the web and the columns/county fair are every bit as well-written, well-supported, thought-provoking and informative as your regular media pieces are, often more so. But compared to the rest of your work, these "Limbaugh Wire" pieces are just purile invective.
(Now every liberal poster can feel free to flame me, while every conservative says "What else is new?") :)