STEYN: “Barack Obama gets to complete his degree at the Muammar Gaddafi Institute of Public Speaking and Effective Communication Strategy”

By Tom Allison

In for Rush today, Mark Steyn kicked off the show by associating the Obama administration with Muammar Gaddafi:

STEYN: It's always an honor to be here. I'm from the foreign exchange student wing of the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies. It's a terrific exchange program. Guys like me get to come and study at the Limbaugh Institute and, in return, Barack Obama gets to complete his degree at the Muammar Gaddafi Institute of Public Speaking and Effective Communication Strategy in Tripoli.

[...]

STEYN: I believe, by the way, that Joe Biden has actually hired Colonel Gaddafi's speechwriters. By the way, Colonel Gaddafi will be doing all five Sunday morning shows this Sunday, so they should wrap up around Thursday. And then he'll be doing Dancing with the Stars, warming up with a 90-minute routine to “Disco Inferno,” followed by a four-hour “Macarena” and rounding things out with a three-day version of “Mambo Number 9.”

Steyn actually disapproved of authorities in New York trying to stop Gaddafi from pitching his tent in Donald Trump's yard, saying that he'd take the side of a dictator over a housing authority any day.

Steyn also poked fun at Burkina Faso, commenting that the country changed its name from Upper Volta to move up alphabetically so the nation would receive money quicker from the UN. Steyn also showed his maturity by referring to Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaoré as a cocktail.

Neverending Apology Tour

After the break, Steyn parroted... well, every conservative in the past year, claiming that Obama's address before the UN General Assembly was “an apology for America.” Steyn continued:

STEYN: I think that's the most -- I mean, aside from its revolting narcissism, I think that is the most pathetic -- pathetic, and self-centered, and absurd apology for America I've ever heard.

Steyn went on to promote a New York Post editorial that also called the speech a “pathetic performance.”

Steyn spent most of the next segment complaining about Obama's call for a world without nuclear weapons, calling the vision “a hangover form the Cold War” and saying that Obama is chasing “fluffy bunny delusions.”

Then he took his first caller, who showed some backbone to the conservative machine, decrying Rush for calling Obama “every name he can get away with” but failing to offer any alternatives to Obama's policies. The caller also cited the Iraq war as one of the problems Obama is trying to rectify. Steyn couldn't let this go and claimed that Nigerian and British intelligence had confirmed that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy yellow cake uranium. Undeterred, the caller called the intelligence faulty, to which Steyn had no substantive response.

Steyn: "[E]nvironmentalism is in large part an assault on the American way of life"

Probably still shaken from his first caller taking him to task, Steyn began the second hour by claiming that he works as an underage prostitute for ACORN.

Moving on, Steyn talked about a Washington Post article on environmentalists criticizing the environmental impact of multi-ply toilet paper, especially on older trees. Steyn spent most of the segment droning on about this, finally concluding:

STEYN: I think -- I do believe that environmentalism is in large part an assault on the American way of life. Now, the American way of life is obviously a consumerist thing. This is the great thing about this country. If you're a peasant in Poland in the year 1500, you were likely to be a peasant in the year 1900, and to be a peasant in the year 2300.

So, instead, people come here and they move out of the hovel, and they get the bigger house in the suburbs, and they get the bigger car, and they start using the double-quilted toilet paper. And the left say, no, no, no; that is all wrong. We need to regulate you back essentially to serf level, to say we're going to set a limit on the size of house you can have, and the size of car you can have, and how many plies you can have in your toilet paper on the grounds of saving the environment.

Then Steyn accused Prince Charles and Al Gore of not practicing what they preach in terms of energy efficiency and speculated that environmentalists are cranky because of the discomfort of using single-ply toilet paper.

Steyn's second caller focused on the radical, left-wing media's influence on national affairs. Then it was on to more UN bashing. Later in the program Steyn transitioned to rehabilitating former President Bush's statement that he “liberated” 20 million Muslims in Iraq.

Media Matters shout-out?

Steyn opened the third hour by claiming that George Soros “pays people to listen to the show ... in the hopes of catching Rush in that one career-detonating sound bite”:

STEYN: One reason I admire Rush, by the way, is that he's been doing this three hours a day for 20 years, 21 years now. And he amazingly, in all that time, has never given a career-detonating sound bite, and there are people, whenever he's on the air, there are people who are paid -- George Soros pays people to listen to the show and write down everything he says in the hopes of catching Rush in that one career-detonating sound bite. And Rush has never given them it.

Steyn then criticized The New York Times for distorting a comment he had made to claim that he had compared Obama's cult of personality to Saddam and Kim Jong Il. To prove his point that no one reads The New York Times except for other media people and to purportedly demonstrate newspapers' pervasiveness but capacity for error, Steyn pointed to this Associated Press correction.

Steyn then took a rather bizarre call from the man who told Rush that he should have 20 Rush babies, but who also referred to Obama as a transformative leader. The conversation wandered from the United States' wasteful prison problem to Britain's crime rate, to Steyn unbelievably claiming that the U.S. has one of the most progressive tax systems in the world and that Obama isn't going to offer any middle class tax relief.

Moving on to health care, Steyn called the American doctor “a middle class position” and claimed that after reform, the practice of medicine will become a factory production line.

“Go Freepers!”

You can't have an edition of The Rush Limbaugh Show without a little bit of conspiratorial fearmongering and Steyn did not disappoint, invoking a new global currency and the world's scary view of Obama:

STEYN: By the way, at this G-20 summit today, keep an eye on whether the Chinese push this idea for moving off the dollar as the global reserve currency and creating some new kind of reserve currency. Because if that advances, then you'll know that all this talk, which you hear a lot in Israel, in India, in other countries now, that we're moving into the post-American world is serious, that they've taken Obama at face value and figured that America is in fact abdicating from global leadership.

Steyn's final caller told him that the Free Republic had his support, to which Steyn responded: “Go Freepers!”

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

Highlights

Outrageous comments

STEYN: It's always an honor to be here. I'm from the foreign exchange student wing of the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies. It's a terrific exchange program. Guys like me get to come and study at the Limbaugh Institute and, in return, Barack Obama gets to complete his degree at the Muammar Gaddafi Institute of Public Speaking and Effective Communication Strategy in Tripoli.

[...]

STEYN: I believe, by the way, that Joe Biden has actually hired Colonel Gaddafi's speechwriters. By the way, Colonel Gaddafi will be doing all five Sunday morning shows this Sunday, so they should wrap up around Thursday. And then he'll be doing Dancing with the Stars, warming up with a 90-minute routine to “Disco Inferno,” followed by a four-hour “Macarena” and rounding things out with a three-day version of “Mambo Number 9.”

[...]

STEYN: And who else is on there that -- at this meeting that Obama's gonna be chairing? Burkina Faso -- Burkina Faso, the West African nation formerly known as Upper Volta. They changed -- I think they changed their name from Upper Volta to Burkina Faso so that when Western nations were handing out aid, they'd come higher up in the alphabetical listings. But Burkina Faso, he's going to be -- Obama's going to be chairing this meeting with the president of -- you've got me now. I knew the president of Latvia; I don't know the name of the president of Burkina Faso. I should be more on top of it.

Oh, here we are -- Blaise Compaoré. Blaise Compaoré. I think I had one of those at Miami Beach. You have two of those -- you have three of those and you wake up with a hell of a hangover. Blaise Compaoré: It's the drink that spells sophistication.

[...]

STEYN: I think that's the most -- I mean, aside from its revolting narcissism, I think that is the most pathetic -- pathetic, and self-centered, and absurd apology for America I've ever heard.

[...]

STEYN: I think -- I do believe that environmentalism is in large part an assault on the American way of life. Now, the American way of life is obviously a consumerist thing. This is the great thing about this country. If you're a peasant in Poland in the year 1500, you were likely to be a peasant in the year 1900, and to be a peasant in the year 2300.

So, instead, people come here and they move out of the hovel, and they get the bigger house in the suburbs, and they get the bigger car, and they start using the double-quilted toilet paper. And the left say, no, no, no; that is all wrong. We need to regulate you back essentially to serf level, to say we're going to set a limit on the size of house you can have, and the size of car you can have, and how many plies you can have in your toilet paper on the grounds of saving the environment.

[...]

STEYN: There's just too much of him. Nobody is that interesting. Real celebrities -- he's -- we often hear that he's the celebrity president. Real celebrities do not expose themselves in that way round the clock, all day, every day.

[...]

STEYN: One reason I admire Rush, by the way, is that he's been doing this three hours a day for 20 years, 21 years now. And he amazingly, in all that time, has never given a career-detonating sound bite, and there are people, whenever he's on the air, there are people who are paid -- George Soros pays people to listen to the show and write down everything he says in the hopes of catching Rush in that one career-detonating sound bite. And Rush has never given them it.

[...]

STEYN: By the way, at this G-20 summit today, keep an eye on whether the Chinese push this idea for moving off the dollar as the global reserve currency and creating some new kind of reserve currency. Because if that advances, then you'll know that all this talk, which you hear a lot in Israel, in India, in other countries now, that we're moving into the post-American world is serious, that they've taken Obama at face value and figured that America is in fact abdicating from global leadership.