Hour 1: Rush declares Murphy's narrow lead over Tedisco in NY-20 a "slam-dunk loss for the Democrats

By Simon Maloy

Well, it's April Fool's Day. We're not clever enough to redesign our website to look like another website, or make all our content appear upside-down, so we'll just offer a link to this website, which is widely viewed as a hilarious joke.

Today's Rush Limbaugh Show got started with Rush expressing disbelief that the "anti-capitalist" protesters were out in force in Britain for the G-20. Rush couldn't believe their anger, given that the "premier anti-capitalist" -- President Obama -- was leading the G-20. From there we took a sharp turn from marginally substantive analysis to an extended monologue on guitar picks, sea turtles, dishwasher detergent, red meat, and tea. Rush was aghast at news reports that residents of Spokane, Washington, are allegedly "smuggling" dishwasher detergent into the city to get around a ban on phosphate-free detergents, and equally aghast at a Fox News story headlined: "Sick Sea Turtle Checks Herself Into Animal Hospital."

Then Rush reprised his theory that the media are conspiring to report apocalyptic stories to cause fear and panic and impel readers to turn to the government for solutions. He had two new examples today -- the first being media reports on a National Cancer Institute study that found that "[e]ating red meat increases the chances of dying prematurely." Rush said this is all the doing of the vegetarians and the environmentalist whackos, because they're the ones who made red meat "controversial." By our reading it seems like the National Cancer Institute that's making it controversial. Next, Rush moved on to Sky News, which reported that "[r]esearchers found drinking tea with a temperature above 70C inc[r]eased the risk of oesophageal cancer eight-fold." Rush called this one "stupid" and "ridiculous."

After the break, Rush came back to the sea turtle story, then took another break, then came back to the sea turtle, but only briefly this time as his attention was quickly diverted to a matter of actual substantive importance -- the special election in NY-20. Rush declared Democrat Scott Murphy's narrow lead over Republican Jim Tedisco a "slam-dunk loss" for the Democrats, because it was the Democrats who invested heavily in the race and had Obama and Biden cutting ads (never mind that the GOP was also heavily invested in the race). More importantly, according to Rush, this was a failure of the Democratic strategy of bringing Limbaugh in, because, according to Limbaugh, the Democrats believed that invoking Limbaugh's name would bring them a landslide.

Satisfied with his analysis, Rush then turned to attacking the Politico for reporting that "a few things are clearer after Tuesday's contest, none of it welcome news to the Republican Party." Rush claimed the only reason the Democrats "pared down" Tedisco's double-digit lead in the polls was that they spent so much. Rush noted that the Politico reported that "even if Tedisco is ultimately declared the winner when all the votes are finally counted, the delayed result will have diminished any momentum that a clear-cut Election Night victory would have provided." According to Rush, this means that even if the Republican wins it doesn't count, and this is how the left does the scorecard. Remember that, moments earlier, Rush characterized as a "slam-dunk loss for the Democrats" a race in which the little-known Democrat erased a double-digit deficit to take a narrow lead in the initial vote count.

Then Rush started talking about the National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Center, and we found ourselves fervently wishing that he'd talk about the sea turtle again. Rush mocked the woman leading NOCIRC for describing an infant circumcision she had witnessed in which the child was allegedly "strapped spread-eagle to a plastic board... struggling against his restraints -- tugging, whimpering, and then crying helplessly." Rush was incredulous, saying he was sure that the infant remembered every second of this and called NOCIRC years later.

One more break and Rush offered yet another jab at Obama's teleprompters, saying that of the 500 staffers Obama reportedly took to the G-20 summit, twelve were teleprompters.

Unfortunately, due to a power surge caused by a sudden and cataclysmic sunstorm, our recording system went down and we are short on transcripts, so you'll have to trust in our note-taking abilities for now.