This hour of the Limbaugh Wire brought to you by campaign falsehoods -- horribly stale, but no less wrong
By Simon Maloy

Rush came back for the second hour shocked that the White House is disputing allegations that Obama “bowed” to the King of Saudi Arabia. There's no question, according to Rush. It was a “submissive” and “disgraceful” bow. But Rush was outraged that the White House was even responding. This is something you ignore, according to Rush, so people can keep on talking about it without ever really coming to a resolution. No, really, that's what he said. Anyway, Rush suspected that the reason the White House responded to this was to distract the media from reporting on the “disaster” of Obama's European tour. This didn't make a whole lot of sense to us, seeing as Rush has been going on for the past week about how the U.S. media will not report on the alleged failures of Obama's tour because they're “too invested” in Obama's success. If they won't report on it anyway, why do they need to be distracted?

Then Rush transmogrified into the ghost of campaign past, returning to Obama's praise of wounded veterans today, and contrasting that with Obama's 2007 comment on Afghanistan: “We've got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians.” Absent from Rush's analysis was the fact that Obama was right, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates apologized to the Afghanis: “I offer all Afghans my sincere condolences and personal regrets for the recent loss of innocent life as a result of coalition airstrikes. While no military has ever done more to prevent civilian casualties, it is clear that we have to work even harder.”

Anyway, we weren't quite done with the campaign ghosts quite yet, as Rush returned to Obama's 2008 Berlin speech, airing audio of then-candidate Obama saying :“As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.” This was offensive to Limbaugh because Obama's half-brother “lives in a nine-foot square hut” in Kenya. We're not sure what that has to do with anything, but we're duty-bound to report it.

After the break, Rush played another clip from the Berlin speech, with Obama saying: “I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we've struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We've made our share of mistakes. And there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.” According to Rush: “So there you have it. And this is the essence of Barack Obama: to go around the world, apologize for America, admit what he thinks are the imperfections; to disown and ignore the entire concept of American exceptionalism.” Now, taken in isolation, that clip of Obama Rush played certainly could lend itself to that interpretation -- that Obama eschews “American exceptionalism.” But let's take a look at what Obama said immediately after the clip Rush played -- you know, the context. So said Obama:

OBAMA: But I also know how much I love America. I know that for more than two centuries, we have strived -- at great cost and great sacrifice -- to form a more perfect union; to seek, with other nations, a more hopeful world. Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom -- indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares. What has always united us -- what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America's shores -- is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please.

Wow, certainly looks like Obama was saying that America is pretty ... what's the word we're looking for? Oh, right. Exceptional.

Leading into the commercial break, Rush took a call from a woman who wondered why Obama declined to comment on the pirate issue in the clip Rush had played, given his vaunted multitasking skills. It's because there was no teleprompter, Rush said. At this point, we found ourselves glad that Rush left the tired and well-worn ground of campaign falsehoods and returned to making ultra-fresh teleprompter jokes.

On the other side of the commercial break, Rush took a call from a man saying the Obama administration and the Clintons don't want to embrace the legal principle that would classify pirates and terrorists “enemies of the human race,” because the left sympathizes with the motives of terrorists. Rush completely agreed and reprised his theory that "[p]iracy is rebounding precisely because of the American left and the European left's lack of intestinal fortitude -- gonads, if you will -- to categorize these people as they really are and to pursue them on that basis." According to Rush, “enemies of America are friends of the Democrat Party.”

After another break, Rush came back quite exasperated over an email he received from a distraught listener who was upset over a bit from the first hour in which Limbaugh admitted he “lied” about meeting with Obama back in January. We didn't include it in the first hour because it took way too long to set up and dealt with something that happened three months ago. But anyway, Rush had to go through it again and explain what he said and why it was so funny and how he can't do “brilliant” bits like this anymore because no one will understand them and the media will misconstrue them, etc. Anyway, this served to reinforce for us a precept that we've held for quite some time -- if you have to explain a joke, it ain't that funny.

Rounding out the hour, Rush took a call from a man suspecting that Obama would re-adopt the term “war on terror” so he could take credit for winning it and be a “wartime superhero.” We thought this sort of conspiratorial thinking would be right in Rush's wheelhouse, but he disagreed, saying that Obama “intends” to fall flat on national security, because, in Obama's thinking, “U.S. national security is going to be improved by making us weaker.”

Highlights from Hour 2

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: Folks, let's not forget here -- let's not forget just how outrageously treated the men and women of the U.S. military were by the Democrat Party for the entire duration of the Iraq war, not just the last couple or three years. It was just a year ago that Obama was chiming in on all this.

In fact, Associated Press, August 14th, 2007: Presidential hopeful Barack Obama was warned by a friendly voter Monday to avoid public spats with his Democrat rivals. But remarks he made later could add fuel to the criticism against him. Asked whether he would move U.S. troops out of Iraq to better fight terrorism elsewhere, he brought up Afghanistan. He said, “We've got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians.”

So, here is our president, in the campaign, August 2007, saying we gotta do more than kill civilians.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: One more sound bite from our archives: President Obama in Berlin on July 4th -- 24th, sorry, July 24th, last summer.

OBAMA [audio clip]: People of Berlin, people of the world, this is our moment. This is our time. I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we've struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We've made our share of mistakes. And there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.

LIMBAUGH: So there you have it. And this is the essence of Barack Obama: to go around the world, apologize for America, admit what he thinks are the imperfections; to disown and ignore the entire concept of American exceptionalism.

As somebody with this view of America has been elected president is still something I have trouble believing. I don't know that I've actually gotten over this. I mean, I'm an adult, and it is what it is, and you have to deal with it. But I can't -- we've actually elected somebody with this attitude about his own country to be president.

I'm not gonna bother analyzing the voters. You know, they're cult followers. They don't care what he says; it's how he says it, blah, blah, blah, blah. I -- there's no suitable explanation that's good. There's no explanation that will excuse this.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: You know, people are like, “How come piracy is rebounding?” Piracy is rebounding precisely because of the American left and the European left's lack of intestinal fortitude -- gonads, if you will -- to categorize these people as they really are and to pursue them on that basis.

“We can't torture them.” When we don't torture -- whatever we do is called torture. Everything we did to get answers was called torture. We can't do that.

We're mean. We're the bad guys. We put them up in a hellhole called Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. We're the bad guys. We're setting a bad example for the world. These people are just from an oppressed minority. We're too big. It's totally understandable why these people would hate us. We're the world's superpower. We steal the resources of the world to enrich ourselves, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

The Democrat Party -- enemies of America are friends of the Democrat Party.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: He intends to. There is -- U.S. national security is going to be improved by making us weaker. That way we'll be less of a threat.