Hour 2: Rush suggests paying Somali pirates ransom with TARP funds
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
This hour of the Limbaugh Wire brought to you by Bill Clinton's pro-pirate presidency
By Simon Maloy
Kicking off the hour, Rush read from a Toronto Daily Mail article reporting that “TV presenter Claire Sweeney has revealed she was chatted up by Bill Clinton at a fancy dress party.” If we had a dollar for every time unsubstantiated allegations of sexual misconduct about Bill Clinton were uncritically repeated on The Rush Limbaugh Show, we wouldn't need to take second jobs secretly infiltrating conservative protests.
Rush spent a (surprisingly) short amount of time on that story, moving on to an update of the Somali pirate hostage situation, noting that the pirates are now demanding a $2 million ransom for their hostage. Rush was insulted, given that other pirates demanded larger ransoms for ships they'd hijacked from other countries. According to Rush, there's $2 million in TARP funds just sitting around they can have. All they have to do is contact Treasury Secretary Geithner and say they're a bunch of “community organizers” that need some infrastructure work done. Then Rush read extensively from a CNN.com story on residents of Hawaii's Kauai island who repaired a state park on their own -- a $4 million job -- for free. Rush loved this story because it means, in his words, “that we don't need government for much of anything!”
After the break, Rush crowed about New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg saying that “pension costs and health care costs for our employees are going to bankrupt this city.” Noting that the city budget office estimated that 7,000 job cuts would save $350 million, Rush said that there are going to be even more government job cuts once he “leaves New York” (wait, we thought it was wrong to say he was “leaving”) because that will mean less tax revenue for the state, which Gov. David Paterson is happy about. Rush, however, claimed to have “mixed emotions” over all this, because these are, after all, “people,” and he hates to see anyone laid off. But at the same time, says Rush, this is an elegant example of liberals admitting that being paid far more than you produce isn't sustainable. He also claimed that New York “won't dare” cut welfare benefits because that would result in “riots.” Rush isn't into “vengeance” though, he just feels for these workers because “they've been duped” into believing an economic theory that just isn't true.
This all goes back to the anti-free market unions, according to Rush. Membership is down, and that's why “card check” and illegal immigrants are so important to the Democrats -- more union members at lower wages.
After some more ranting about how liberalism is destroying itself, as evidenced by the fact that the cities with the highest poverty rates are all run by “liberals,” Rush took a call from a man hypothesizing that the pirate scourge off the east coast of Africa is the Clintons' fault. Rush absolutely loved this idea, explaining that the only reason we got into Somalia is “because The New York Times published a picture of a starving kid with flies buzzing all around his belly.” This, according to Rush, “convinced George Bush 41 we had to send in U.S. military personnel.” Wait, we thought it was the Clintons' fault. Anyway, this led to the Battle of Mogadishu and “Black Hawk down,” which Limbaugh noted was the reason Osama bin Laden concluded that the United States is a “paper tiger.” So now we can add “pirates” to the ever-growing list of things the Clintons and The New York Times are responsible for.
Then Rush went after Hillary Clinton some more for referring to the pirates as “criminals” again. They're not criminals, said Rush, they're terrorists! He continued in this line of thinking after the break, saying that the captain of the USS Cole, who appeared on CNN last night, was also wrong when he said that pirates are criminals, not terrorists. Rush said the captain is also wrong. So don't listen to the secretary of State, and for God's sake don't listen to the military. When it comes to pirates - sorry, “merchant marine organizers” -- it's Rush who knows the score.
Rush closed out the hour by taking a call from a young girl in California who was outraged at the adulation she saw at her school for President Obama, and asked Rush to explain why that adulation exists. Rush explained: “I'll tell you what's driving this among, not only the people that run your school and the students there, but elsewhere where this is the prevailing thought -- and that is a supreme sense of guilt. Slavery is considered to be our original sin. And so, it doesn't matter. The substance of things doesn't matter; the color of his skin is all that does matter.”
Highlights from Hour 2
Outrageous comments
LIMBAUGH: The Somali pirates are from where? Somalia. Does the name Mogadishu ring a bell? Mogadishu is the capitol city -- if you want to call it a city -- and it happens to be the site of one of the most embarrassing incidents, not because of the military, but because of the Clinton administration, in modern American military history: Black Hawk down.
We originally went into Somalia because The New York Times published a picture of a starving kid with flies buzzing all around his belly. That picture on the front page of The New York Times convinced George Bush 41 we had to send in U.S. military personnel to deliver meals on wheels.
[...]
LIMBAUGH: The historical aspect is over now. And presidents are not kings, and we don't idolize them, and we don't bow down to them. Apparently, our presidents bow down to Saudi kings.
But, this is a -- this is a -- I'll tell you what's driving this among, not only the people that run your school and the students there, but elsewhere where this is the prevailing thought -- and that is a supreme sense of guilt. Slavery is considered to be our original sin. And so, it doesn't matter. The substance of things doesn't matter; the color of his skin is all that does matter.