Hour 1: Limbaugh On Cap And Trade: "This Is So Unnecessary. There Isn't Any Global Warming"

This hour of the Limbaugh Wire brought to you by frogs' legs (and global warming)
By Simon Maloy

Well, another "Open Line Friday!" is upon us, which means that maybe -- just maybe -- today's program will be a shift away from the past two days, which have been little more than three-hour harangues about the evils of national health care and the alleged perfidy of President Obama, who is now trying to kill the "spirit" of the American people and who, apparently, forced Gov. Mark Sanford to *ahem* "Hike the Appalachian Trail." Of course, that hope is predicated on the fact that "Open Line Friday!" remains true to its promise of unpredictable wackiness, and that promise has rarely, if ever, been realized. On the other hand, the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill is coming up for a vote in the House today, which could give Rush a whole new set of lies to shout at us, so hope springs eternal...

Well, turns out our hopes were well-founded, because Rush got the show rolling with a full-throated denunciation of cap and trade, saying: "This is so unnecessary. There isn't any global warming. This bill is not about climate change; it's not about improving the environment; it's not about anything but raising taxes and taking away people's freedom. It -- folks, we are made of carbon, and what this is, is a carbon tax. Anything -- we are -- theoretically, we could be taxed because of the carbon dioxide we exhale." This legislation, according to Rush, says that we, by virtue of our existence, are destructive polluters who need to be punished. Rush noted that there are Republicans who are "on the fence" over the bill, saying that nobody should be on the fence. This is a situation, said Rush, where the GOP should just say no -- no debate, no nothing. Sunspot activity is down, said Rush, there is no global warming, and this legislation is not going to lower temperatures.

Then Rush said that the Competitive Enterprise Institute released internal EPA emails that, according to the institute, "indicate that a significant internal critique of EPA's position on Endangerment was essentially put under wraps and concealed." This is all about raising taxes and destroying the economy, said Rush, explaining that "we can't imagine that we have elected somebody who really doesn't like the United States as it was founded. We just can't. But that's what's happened. This is exactly what we've done here." Rush then noted that he read an article in the American Thinker by a Nigerian woman calling Obama an "African Colonial." Rush said he read this piece, put it together with what Obama's trying to do with health care and the climate, and decided that it was quite valid.

Then Rush read extensively from Kimberley Strassel's Wall Street Journal op-ed this morning, in which she alleged that the "consensus" on climate change is "collapsing." Rush said this is not being reported widely in the United States, but it's happening in Australia, Japan, and Europe. It's not being reported here, said Rush, because our stars are Al Gore and the UN, and all critics have to be slapped down by the media. As alleged proof of how climate change science is bunk, Rush read from a BBC article on how "[s]cientists think they have resolved one of the most controversial environmental issues of the past decade: the curious case of the missing frogs' legs." Rush read: "Around the world, frogs are found with missing or misshaped limbs, a striking deformity that many researchers believe is caused by chemical pollution and global warming [sic]." If you're wondering why we sic-ed that italicized phrase, it's because it doesn't appear in the actual article. Rush inserted it in there to support his claim that climate change science has been debunked, even though the evidence he cited has nothing to do with climate change.

After the break, Rush noted that the test vote on the cap-and-trade bill the Democrats won this morning is designed to make you think the cap-and-trade debate is over. That's not true, said Rush, this thing is up for grabs. Rush had two lists of Republicans and Democrats who are on the fence, reiterating that there ought to be no Republicans on the fence. This has nothing to do with global warming or saving the planet, Rush said. The problems that this legislation claims to address do not exist, and we can debate the merits of the bill all day long, but the fact is that this is a no-brainer: It is unnecessary. It's a pure power and money grab, said Rush. He then read the names of the on-the-fence Republicans.

After the break, Rush read more from the CEI's analysis of the EPA internal emails, saying that the point of all this is that the consensus we've heard about all these years is falling apart. The science is irrelevant to the EPA, said Rush, and they don't want to analyze it. They're accepting a political conclusion, he said, and this has nothing to do with science. The political goal here, Rush claimed, is weakening the economy to create more power for Obama and his minions. Then Rush once again read the names of the on-the-fence crowd on Capitol Hill.

Before and after the break, Rush read extensively from the American Thinker piece alleging that Obama is an "African Colonial," interspersing throughout his own concurring thoughts on how Obama is engineering a Marxist power grab. Needless to say, the piece is a shoddy smear of Obama and his father, replete with broad, unsupported attacks on the president, such as: "Obama has been living on American soil for most of his adult life. Therefore, he has been able to masquerade as one who understands and believes in American democratic ideals. But he does not." Nonetheless, Rush said that the author had "really pegged Obama." This, ladies and gentlemen, is a fine example of how the echo chamber works -- a sloppily written smear of the president on a fringe conservative website that would normally have drawn little to no attention is instantly amplified by Rush Limbaugh's sizeable megaphone. After reading the piece, Rush concluded that "we've elected somebody who's more African in his roots than he is American."

Greg Lewis and Lauryn Bruck contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

Highlights from Hour 1

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: This is so unnecessary. There isn't any global warming. This bill is not about climate change; it's not about improving the environment; it's not about anything but raising taxes and taking away people's freedom. It -- folks, we are made of carbon, and what this is, is a carbon tax.

Anything -- we are -- theoretically, we could be taxed because of the carbon dioxide we exhale. If they want to figure out how much that is contributing to global warming, we can be taxed on that basis. There's no limit here once you start taxing carbon. We are made of carbon. We are a carbon-based life form.

What this legislation seeks to establish is that we, by virtue of our existence, are destructive polluters who have to be punished. We are polluters whether we want to be or not. It's just -- because we're carbon. It's just -- it is absurd.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Folks, I know it's hard to understand that we've elected somebody who is willingly, purposely setting out to deplete the capital in the private sector, to destroy the U.S. economy. I know it's hard to understand. Most of you don't have -- most of us, I'll put myself in this -- most of us do not have this concept of that kind of power of wanting it, wanting to use it for our own personal fun, frolic, frivolity, whatever.

We don't -- we can't imagine that we have elected somebody who really doesn't like the United States as it was founded. We just can't. But that's what's happened. This is exactly what we've done here.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: I share all this with you because it is -- she's nailed who the guy is. Americans look at Obama and they say, "Oh, the first black president," and they go, "Oh, we're shedding some of our guilt here. Look how enlightened we are, what a great country we are," when, in fact, we've elected somebody who's more African in his roots than he is American, loves his father, who was a Marxist, and is behaving like an African colonial despot.

And you can see it in his health care legislation, the stimulus bill, taking over automobile companies, the czars that he has that are not accountable to anybody but him, and now the climate bill. All of this is about nothing other than the acquisition of power and the ability to further regulate your privacy and behavior.

America's Truth Rejector

Inserted the words "global warming" into an article that had nothing to do with global warming:

LIMBAUGH: There's one other thing in here, though -- oh, the frogs. Remember all the horror stories that we have seen over the years about deformed frogs at birth, and we have been told this is due to global warming and their ecology all out of whack? We find out that that's not the case, and the BBC -- the left-wing BBC -- is none the less the source.

"Scientists think they have resolved one of the most controversial environmental issues of the past decade: the curious case of missing frogs' legs. Around the world, frogs are found with missing or misshaped limbs, a striking deformity that many researchers believe is caused by chemical pollution" and global warming. "However, tests on frogs and toads have revealed a more natural, benign cause. The deformed frogs are actually victims of the predatory habits of dragonfly nymphs, which eat the legs of tadpoles.

"In the late 1980s and early 1990s, researchers started getting reports of numerous wild frogs or toads being found with extra legs or arms, or with limbs that were partly formed or missing completely. The cause of the deformities became a hotly contested issue."

Had to be caused by global warming and this and that and that. People said that, "No, no, no. This is happening naturally," were debunked and called deniers, and so forth, but they have now proven that these deformed frogs are simply nature taking its course -- nothing to do with man; nothing to do with us, all right? And now the cap-and-trade bill will probably tax dragonflies once they learn about this.

Echo chamber

Read almost in its entirety a sloppy hit piece on Obama from the American Thinker, titled "Obama, the African Colonial."