This hour of the Limbaugh Wire brought to you by the “red-light express” ghost train
By Simon Maloy

Rush got the final hour a-rollin' with another plug for his interview with Sean Hannity, part one of which will air on Fox News tonight. If you're interested in seeing Rush say what you've already heard him say for the past five months, and seeing Hannity's child-like wonder at it all, we suggest you tune in.

Then Rush noted that CNN conducted another poll on the popularity of the country's Republican head honchos, and that Rush came in at 30 percent. Rush was pleased with this number: "[T]his is not bad for a Muslim nation, folks. For a guy like me to have 30 percent approval in a Muslim country, I'll take that any day. Well, that's what Obama said. He went over there and he said that the United States is a Muslim country." Once again, that's not what Obama said. Not even close.

Anyway, after attacking Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as “ignorant” for saying that he hasn't read any of Judge Sotomayor's opinions, Rush read extensively from a Bloomberg commentary piece, “As GM Goes So Goes California in Pensions.” Rush said this is excellent stuff, and that California, like GM, has pension problems “out the wazoo.” Rush said he doesn't know what the solution to all this is -- no, wait, he does know. Rush said the solution, for GM, anyway, was a standardized Chapter 11 bankruptcy, not one run by and for the government. The point is that there is some common sense here, said Rush -- when you promise to pay people who are no longer working and they live longer, the system that does that is going to collapse. Rush then asked us to suppose that someone pays you to not work -- at what point would you say this is not right? It can't last, said Rush, so the lesson here is that this was destined to happen after a certain number of years and a predictable market decline. We guess Rush believes that pensions and employer contributions to 401(k)s are all recipes for disaster, or maybe it's just the concept of retirement altogether that annoys Rush.

Then Rush noted that Ben Bernanke “said large U.S. budget deficits threaten financial stability.” Rush was upset that Bernanke is warning us “after it's done.” This is going to be laid on Bush, Rush said, because Bush gets blamed for everything. What this means, said Rush, is major tax increases for everybody, including your health care benefits, and a lowering of the mortgage interest deduction. They're going to need money, Rush explained, because they are monetizing our debt and have already taken the income of people not yet born.

After the break, Rush was up in arms about a Wired.com story on how the “Earth could be habitable for another 2.3 billion years, extending previous estimates of life's horizon by more than 1 billion years.” Rush said that if the planet's life expectancy has been extended, can we please start talking about drilling for oil? Rush also wondered what this will do to the global warming types who say we're going to destroy the planet by the middle of the century.

This story proved to be the breaking point for Rush -- and frankly, we thought we'd lose it before he did:

LIMBAUGH: I'll tell you, you know, the news today, this whole news day, I won't be surprised if I wake up in a moment and this whole thing's a dream, that it's a nightmare -- that I did not do the interview with Sean Hannity; that Barack Obama did not say America is a Muslim nation; that Lara Logan did not say that the Muslim world's hopes reside on the shoulders of one man; that Newsweek did not say that Osama bin Laden is a myth, that he's not important anymore. And when you take those two things together, what you have here -- state-controlled CBS, state-controlled Newsweek have made Obama the titular head of the Muslim world. It used to Obama that inspired -- Osama, but now it's Obama. And then, if their hopes, the Muslim world's hopes rest on his shoulders, what are their hopes? They want their share of the stimulus. Do they want new little cars? Or do they want no Israel to exist? What are their hopes? This has to be a dream. I know I'm going to wake up and I'm not going to believe any of this really happened and I'm going to be relieved that it didn't.

After the break, Rush said that whatever he's doing is “working like a charm,” because MSNBC was doing a segment on Rush “eating his words” over Sotomayor, and talking to Sen. Barbara Boxer about it. Rush then read extensively from Thomas Sowell's column this morning -- lamentably side-stepping Sowell's falsehood about Sotomayor -- saying that Sowell made an “excellent point.” He didn't tell us what that “excellent point” was, so we were left guessing.

Then he moved on to a spittle-flecked harangue about how Dick Morris and Diana West had uncovered something about the State Department agreeing to the Saudi government's request to have journalists confined to their hotels during the president's visit to the country. Rush noted that Michael Scherer of Time also wrote about it, and Scherer seems to indicate that the whole thing was a misunderstanding, but Rush was nonetheless outraged that Obama and the press would agree to such restrictions.

One more break and Rush took a call from a man explaining that Nevada's first stimulus project was under way -- a tourist railroad to “the brothels.” The caller said it was the “red-light express” that Fox News talked about. Rush, as you might expect, centered much of his response around the word “stimulus.” Now, we hadn't heard anything about Fox News and the “red-light express” for a few months now, largely because the last time they started talking about it, the whole idea was revealed to be 100 percent untrue. What's more, the Republican congressman from whom this allegation emerged reportedly acknowledged that it isn't true. So unless something's changed in the past three months and the stimulus bill was retroactively amended to include money for trains to “the brothels,” we're going to go ahead and say this one is still 100 percent false.

Rush closed out the show with a call from an man who said that if he walked around talking up his ethnic background like Sotomayor does, it wouldn't get him anywhere. Rush once again said Sotomayor is “obsessed” with and “fixated” on her ethnicity, as evidenced by her ... Wikipedia page.

And that's all, folks. We're tempted to send an e-mail over to MSNBC telling them that they're missing the boat on this Limbaugh/Sotomayor stuff -- he isn't eating his words, he's saying that a racist Supreme Court justice would be acceptable so long as he or she is pro-life. We're sure even Rush would thank us for clearing up that confusion. We'll see you tomorrow. Until then, you have eyes and we have Limbaugh Archives, and we think they were made for each other.

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

Highlights from Hour 3

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: I'll tell you, you know, the news today, this whole news day, I won't be surprised if I wake up in a moment and this whole thing's a dream, that it's a nightmare -- that I did not do the interview with Sean Hannity; that Barack Obama did not say America is a Muslim nation; that Lara Logan did not say that the Muslim world's hopes reside on the shoulders of one man; that Newsweek did not say that Osama bin Laden is a myth, that he's not important anymore. And when you take those two things together, what you have here -- state-controlled CBS, state-controlled Newsweek have made Obama the titular head of the Muslim world. It used to Obama that inspired -- Osama, but now it's Obama. And then, if their hopes, the Muslim world's hopes rest on his shoulders, what are their hopes? They want their share of the stimulus. Do they want new little cars? Or do they want no Israel to exist? What are their hopes? This has to be a dream. I know I'm going to wake up and I'm not going to believe any of this really happened and I'm going to be relieved that it didn't.

America's Truth Rejector

LIMBAUGH: If 30 percent of the country likes me or approves of me -- or at least in their poll -- that makes me more popular than most Americans. You got that -- this is not bad for a Muslim nation, folks. For a guy like me to have 30 percent approval in a Muslim country, I'll take that any day. Well, that's what Obama said. He went over there and he said that the United States is a Muslim country. Now here I've got 30 percent approval in a Muslim country -- I'll take it.