Here at Media Matters, we've long documented Rush Limbaugh's proclivity for disputing inconvenient facts by simply concocting his own reality in which those facts are no longer true. In recent weeks, Limbaugh seems to have declared an all out war on statistics as well, since he has blanketly shown no regard for what many people would consider facts. But that's how things go when it comes to Rush Limbaugh's never-ending war on reality.

Here at Media Matters, we've long documented Rush Limbaugh's proclivity for disputing inconvenient facts by simply concocting his own reality in which those facts are no longer true. Like when he strung together an interview between Charlie Rose and Tom Brokaw to completely change the meaning of their comments, or when he claimed that the text of the stimulus bill that was posted on the Internet wasn't searchable, even though it was. And don't forget that time he invented a “racial component” to the 2006 Senate Democratic primary in Ohio by claiming -- falsely! -- that candidate Sherrod Brown was black.

In recent weeks, Limbaugh seems to have declared an all out war on statistics as well, since he has shown no regard for what many people would consider facts. For example, when confronted with yesterday's third quarter GDP growth, Rush the economist took it upon himself to both redefine the calculation of GDP and embrace the falsehood that consumption and business investment had not gone up.

Declaring the GDP numbers “phony,” “fake,” and “fraudulent” on his show on Thursday, Rush explained how he, personally, calculates gross domestic product, breaking it down to three categories: “consumption by consumers, investment by business, and spending by government, CIG.”

While that definition isn't completely off from the truth, Rush was later confronted by a caller who pointed out that there was “another element in that equation, and that is net exports.” But Rush made clear that trade didn't play a role in his method for calculating GDP:

LIMBAUGH: You know, exports, there's no question exports are a function, but I'd rather focus on exports when talking about the trade deficit. My formula for explaining this fraudulent, fake growth number, 3.5 percent today, I'm not going to tamper with it 'cause it was brilliant. It's the most sensible, easy to understand explanation of what GDP is. GDP equals C-I-G: consumption, investment, government. Government spending is also part of GDP.

Excuse us as we “tamper” with Rush's “brilliance” for just a moment. The fact is that the Bureau of Economic Analysis does include net exports in their calculation of the gross domestic product.

Anyway, Rush used this three-pronged formula to baselessly assert the following:

LIMBAUGH: So they say the total GDP went up 3.5 percent. But was there any new consumption by consumers? No. Was there any new investment by business? No. Was there spending by government? Yes. That's the G. The increase is in G, spending by government.

But the breakdown of the GDP released by the BEA said otherwise:

The increase in real GDP in the third quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from personal consumption expenditures (PCE), exports, private inventory investment, federal government spending, and residential fixed investment. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.

It's one thing to say that the third quarter GDP growth isn't enough to overcome the unemployment hole that we're in -- a position liberal and conservative economists alike have taken. But to say that the numbers are “phony” and to essentially spit on the field of economics -- which Rush has no formal training in -- by contriving your own definition of GDP is, as we find ourselves saying a lot here at The Friday Rush, pretty ridiculous.

Another thing we've documented pretty thoroughly here at The Friday Rush is Limbaugh's tendency to make up everything he says when it comes to health care. This week was no different.

On Thursday's show, Rush took a stab at getting through the just-released House health care reform bill's “convoluted language” to complain about a tax break that small businesses would supposedly lose. “Right now, small business gets a tax break for providing health coverage. It's gonna be -- it looks like it's gonna be phased out in two years,” explained Rush.

There was just one problem with his interpretation: the bill actually said the opposite of that. What Rush had read on the air, Section 521 of Division A of the bill, actually added a tax break that small businesses could take for a maximum of two years.

Another pesky fact for Rush came when he was confronted with the reality of the public option. Describing an exchange he saw on MSNBC about a “backlash” when Americans find out that 90 percent of them wouldn't be able to get the public option, Rush was in denial:

LIMBAUGH: Well, I know they've -- I know they've watered down some of the language here, but it's all for show. I mean the whole thing is a public -- what is MSNBC talking about, 90 percent of the people will not be able to access the public option? BS. Nobody's gonna have any choice but the public option before these people are finished. There's no reason to do health care if it's not a public option.

But the reality of the public option -- overhyped on the right and the left for different reasons -- is that as it has been proposed in the House and the Senate, about 90 percent of the population wouldn't have access to it. The public option would only be available on the health insurance exchange that is set up by the reform package, but the exchange, at least at first, would only be open to individuals, small businesses, and the self-employed. Rush has often fearmongered that if a public option passed, then big corporations would switch their entire workforce over to it. But as the House bill summary explains, this won't be the case, at least at first:

People are eligible to enter the Exchange and purchase health insurance on their own as long as they are not enrolled in employer sponsored insurance, Medicare or Medicaid. The Exchange is also open to businesses, starting with small firms and growing over time. Firms with twenty-five or fewer employees are permitted to buy in the Exchange in 2013, firms with fifty or fewer employees in 2014, and firms with at least one hundred employees in 2015 with discretion to the Commissioner to open the Exchange to larger businesses in that year and the future.

The falsehoods continued on Friday's show. Rush had claimed that in 2013, under the bill, the sale of private individual insurance policies “will be prohibited.” He referred to Page 94 of the “Pelosi plan,” but what Limbaugh referred to was actually a provision that said that private individual policies could still be sold, but only on the insurance exchange created by the bill.

Friday's show also saw the “return” of Limbaugh's death panel obsession, which has been well documented in past months. Rush joined the conservative media choir resurrecting the death panel myth. Touting an AP article about end-of-life provisions in the latest health care bill, Rush proclaimed that death panels were “back.”

It's almost depressing to have to make this point over and over again, but death panels are not and never have been in any of the Democratic health care bills out there. Rush likes to pretend that they are, but reality begs to differ. But that's how things go when it comes to Rush Limbaugh's never-ending war on reality.