This hour of the Limbaugh Wire brought to you by ACORN in Iran
By Simon Maloy

Rush got Hour 2 rolling by saying that Obama “broke the law” by firing the AmeriCorps inspector general, reading from a letter Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) sent to the White House encouraging the administration “to follow the letter and spirit of the law, which the President co-sponsored as legislation as a U.S. senator in 2007, regarding the dismissal of the Inspector General for the AmeriCorps program.” That's just the “icing” on all this, said Rush.

Then he moved on to a message he received from a doctor in Texas last night, who wrote that the Medicare fee schedule is haphazard, is not based on anything, and is creating an internecine war between doctors and surgeons, which plays into the hands of the socialized medicine proponents. Rush said it's worse than he thought, and they're just going to ram more and more people into Medicare, which is just going to get worse once it's nationalized.

Rush then returned to the op-ed from the Safeway CEO, saying that Burd has “blown a hole” in the “template” the left and Obama have been working on for 30 years -- that CEOs are mean, evil people who screw their employees. Rush then explained what will happen to Burd as a consequence: "[T]here's going to be an investigation into how much money he makes. There'll probably be an investigation into his political contributions. If his credibility can be undermined, it will be. Forget the results of his brilliant approach to keep health care costs down; this guy has just made Obama look bad. He's just made the Democrats look bad. All the stories about harmful food products will be Safeway-centric. Safeway customers will be the only ones interviewed in stories about unhealthy foods, and those people will be asked if they hold Safeway responsible for selling unhealthy foods." If his piece gets any traction at all, said Rush, then the operating procedure of the left will be to destroy Burd and Safeway through the media.

After the break, Rush had one more story for us on health care -- a Hill article reporting that “Senate Democrats are bracing for what they expect will be a huge price tag connected with revamping the nation's healthcare system.” The article noted that a coming Congressional Budget Office “estimate on Democratic healthcare reform proposals is expected to be so expensive that lawmakers are talking about changing the chamber's normal accounting procedures.” Rush said that's more like the Democrats we know -- don't like the result? Change the procedure. Rush said the idea that the CBO is nonpartisan is “crap” -- Democrats run the House, and the CBO runs their numbers. Rush was then amused that the article quoted Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) citing Burd's Wall Street Journal op-ed, saying that she's a “dumkopf” because she's undermining her own side's plan. Safeway is not telling its employees how they have to live every second of their lives, said Rush, they're offering the choice. The government, on the other hand, isn't going to offer that choice. They're going to use the control of authoritarianism and statism to force everyone to live healthily, and it's still not going to control costs.

Then it was time for a caller, a self-identified Muslim who said he was offended by Obama's Cairo speech. He said that the president should have apologized for Carter and Clinton ignoring terrorism until people were killed, instead of apologizing for what America has done to defend itself. Rush said Obama is the first president to make it an objective to run around the world and blame the U.S. for its ills. Rush added: “And now, this Mirandizing of terrorist suspects on the battlefield in Afghanistan -- and that's going to proceed. I mean, where does this stop? They're going to get a public lawyer if they can't afford one? What if -- where are we gonna get -- you're on the battlefield; you got a soldier; you capture a guy. How do you read him Miranda rights if you don't speak his language?” We said it yesterday and we'll say it again: No one is saying that soldiers are administering Miranda rights “on the battlefield.” It's the FBI, and they're doing it pursuant to a policy initiated during the Bush administration.

Rush's next caller wanted to know why conservatives won't be able to roll back national health care once they're back in power. Rush said he talked to Liz Cheney yesterday, and back in the '90s, she was part of a team that went to the old Soviet Union trying to instruct them on how to create a free market economy. Rush said he joked with her that she's going to have to do the same thing here once the Republicans come back to power. But as to the caller's question, Rush said the reason a rollback of health care will be impossible is that it will permeate virtually every aspect of our society. It's so massive and has so many tentacles that rolling all that back would be very hard.

After the break, Rush mocked the idea that “democracy” was flowering in Iran, noting that Reuters reported that voting hours had been extended several times to accommodate the high turnout. Rush quipped: “I mean, they don't even have ACORN. Can you imagine -- this is utter chaos at the polls. And they don't even -- well, we don't think they have ACORN. Maybe Obama sent them over there.” Anyway, Rush wanted to listen to Obama's Rose Garden comment on the Iranian election one more time, explaining that he can't stand Obama's type of personality and recounting how he once heroically sacrificed his job by standing up to someone like that. After airing the bite again, Rush said that the Iranians would love for Obama and the rest of the world to think that they are moderating, that “this little man-child” can change the country with a speech.

Rush then moved on to his next caller, who wanted to draw parallels between Obama and FDR -- during World War II, eight saboteurs landed on Long Island and were caught, and FDR wanted to try them in civilian courts but his attorney general convinced him to use military tribunals, where they were swiftly convicted and executed. The caller said that if you put the Gitmo guys in civilians courts, their lawyers are going to want to see evidence, and that's going to endanger American lives. Rush said this is an excellent point, adding that if you're going to Mirandize someone, you have to be able to speak their language, which means we're going to have translators with every American soldier. This might have been a decent point expect for the fact, noted above, that soldiers aren't Mirandizing anyone.

Rush's next caller wanted to comment on CBS' hypocrisy in its treatment of Don Imus and David Letterman, regarding Letterman's comments about Sarah Palin. Rush said there's a big difference between Imus and Letterman -- Imus bent over backwards to apologize. Another difference, said Rush, is that Letterman's comments were planned and written in advance. Rush also wanted to know what ever happened to the notion that family was off-limits. We didn't realize he was so wedded to that notion, given that he once called 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton the “White House dog.” Anyway, Rush aired audio of Palin's appearance on the Today show this morning in which she alleged a double standard in the media treatment of hers and Obama's families. Rush said she's right; there is a double standard, but it's more than that. There's a viciousness toward Palin, just like there is toward Miss CA, because they're attractive and they stand up for what they believe, and the left has to slap that down.

After one more break, Rush took one more caller, this one claiming that the American Cancer Society is being “hypocritical” in telling people that health care reform is needed now, because we hear all these stories out of England about people not having access to cancer treatment under “socialized medicine.” Rush said this was a good point, and then moved on to an audio bite of Obama saying on the campaign trail that people's children are off-limits, that they have no relevance in politics, and urging the media to back off these kinds of stories. Rush said Obama made this statement, but his acolytes don't follow him. Then as everyone continued to beat up on Palin and her kids, Obama stood silent, even though he could have stopped it. We were wondering how, exactly, Obama or any politician could stop the media from reporting anything, but then we remembered Obama's magical ability to telepathically control what the liberal media reports.

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

Highlights from Hour 2

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: Now what's going to happen -- see, this guy, Steven Burd, in his op-ed today, has just blown a hole through the template that the left and people like Obama have been working on for the last 30 years, and that is that corporate CEOs are mean, evil, rotten people. They exploit and use their employees. They don't care about the welfare of their employees; they only care about their own payments. They rape their companies. They fly around on corporate jets. They go to parties. They don't care whether the company makes money or not, they get paid anyway. And we're gonna stop this [unintelligible].

Now what's going to happen to this Steven Burd guy, if he's not careful, there's going to be an investigation into how much money he makes. There'll probably be an investigation into his political contributions. If his credibility can be undermined, it will be. Forget the results of his brilliant approach to keep health care costs down; this guy has just made Obama look bad. He's just made the Democrats look bad.

All the stories about harmful food products will be Safeway-centric. Safeway customers will be the only ones interviewed in stories about unhealthy foods, and those people will be asked if they hold Safeway responsible for selling unhealthy foods: “Did Safeway market these products in a seductive manner? Did you feel they took advantage of you?”

Television will do these exact same stories outside of Safeway stores; we'll see the Safeway sign in the background. This guy -- if they take note of this piece, if this piece gets any traction at all, standard operating procedure on the American left is to go out and find a way to destroy this guy using their buds at state-controlled media.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: I mean, they don't even have ACORN. Can you imagine -- this is utter chaos at the polls. And they don't even -- well, we don't think they have ACORN. Maybe Obama sent them over there.

America's Truth Rejector

LIMBAUGH: And now, this Mirandizing of terrorist suspects on the battlefield in Afghanistan -- and that's going to proceed. I mean, where does this stop? They're going to get a public lawyer if they can't afford one? What if -- where are we gonna get -- you're on the battlefield; you got a soldier; you capture a guy. How do you read him Miranda rights if you don't speak his language? And if you read him his Miranda rights in English, he comes back in court and says to you, “Well, I didn't understand.”

Then he gets a U.S. lawyer, gets into the court system. It's -- this whole thing is just -- we've been down this road. See, this is another thing. Everything Obama's trying, somewhere it's been tried in the world, oftentimes, many times, and it's failed every time. Trying to deal with terrorism as a legal matter is an abject failure and all you need to do is look at the Clinton administration for evidence of it.