This hour of the Limbaugh Wire brought to you by living the “easy life” of illegal immigrants
By Greg Lewis

The third hour began with Rush describing the comments he made on yesterday's program, that if Sotomayor can say that Sandra Day O'Connor “couldn't have meant what she said,” then Sotomayor can say the same thing about the Founding Fathers and the Constitution. Anyway, Rush said this gets to the idea of wisdom. Rush characterized Sotomayor as saying that two judges could reach different legal conclusions, but they could both still be wise. Rush then quoted Thomas Jefferson: “Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.” Rarely, Rush said, is someone who is wrong called “wise,” and someone can clearly make a “wrong” legal decision.

Rush spent the remainder of the segment recounting anecdotes about how his cat and puppy haven't been getting along recently, and bragging about his new iPhone charger. We should point out here that Rush Limbaugh's cat is named Punkin. And when you consider that Rush has spent most of today's show attacking Obama's pitch at the All-Star Game for failing to meet some arbitrary level of manliness, we should point out again that Rush Limbaugh has a cat, and its name is Punkin. Anyway, Rush managed to squeeze in a quick swipe at a Democrat before he went to commercial -- by talking about his iPhone charger, which is made in Michigan, he's done more for the Michigan economy than Gov. Jennifer Granholm has done in two terms.

After the break, Rush took a call from a health care insurance agent. The caller said the role of the agent in the health care system would be reduced or eliminated under the Obama reform plan, even though it provided a useful service and only represented a small portion of health care spending. Rush explained how the Obama plan would eliminate the need for agents because it would replace them with bureaucrats, like at the DMV. Rush also said the idea that health care reform would result in costs going down was “absurd.” As we so briefly, but meaningfully, explained at the top of the first hour, the idea that costs would go down isn't absurd at all. Rush continued his conversation with the caller, repeating his claim that the Obama's tactic on health care reform is to ram it through Congress, and saying that Obama's tactic of “demonizing” private insurance companies is right out of the “class envy playbook.”

Rush's next caller said that Democrats keep saying that they'll cut costs from Medicare and Medicaid with their health care plan, but if those costs can be cut, why don't they just do it already? Rush said that there are no savings from either program because they're broke. The only way they can save money is by rationing care to grandma and grandpa and letting old people die -- Rush claimed that's what Obama admitted that at a recent town hall. Of course, Obama didn't say that. Also, this is another example of conservatives using the rationing bogeyman to scare people away from health care reform.

After another break, Rush explained that he received a note from Debbie Schlussel, who explained that the company that makes his iPhone charger, Mophie, is in western Michigan, which is “Reagan country,” and that might explain why this company is doing so well. We'll just take a second here to point out that the company's mailing address is in Paw Paw, Michigan, which is in Van Buren County. According to CNN, Van Buren County went for Obama last year 53-45. Anyway, Rush took a caller who was upset that elected officials weren't picking up the fight to keep the country the way the Founders made it. Then the caller made the case for renouncing his citizenship and living his life like an illegal immigrant, because then he could live the “easy life”-- he could get food stamps, free health care, and free education. Rush told the caller he would hate himself if he actually did that.

Then Rush dove headfirst into the House health care bill, reading from a New York Times blog entry about the proposed income surtax in the bill on those making over $280,000. Rush made the point that this is where the surtax starts, because it would inevitably go higher. He also argued that rich people would find ways around paying the surtax, so it wouldn't actually raise the amount of revenue they think it would. He also criticized House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a “glittering jewel of colossal ignorance,” for saying the surtax won't affect small business because most don't make enough money to qualify for the surtax. Surprise! Hoyer was in the right.

Finally, Rush let go of all pretense of a substantive discussion of the health care bill as his monologue devolved into his usual rant about Obama “punishing achievement.” You know, the same thing he's been saying for months -- that it's designed to punish achievers, transfer wealth, and redistribute wealth from the successful to its rightful owners. Then Rush let off a string of adjectives to better express how he felt about Obama's health care efforts -- it's “despicable,” “heinous,” and “almost unconscionable.” Rush's downhill tumble continued:

And we had a call earlier, a drive-by call - wasn't able to hang on. “Rush, you're over-reading this. Obama doesn't know what he's doing. He's over his head.” Well let me allow for that; somebody knows what they're doing then. Rahm Emanuel, Soros, Axelrod, Mayor Daley who's running his show. Somebody knows what they're doing if he's just a figure - I don't care. My guess is he knows exactly what - he's been raised by communists. Frank Davis, Saul Alinsky -- his mentors -- Reverend Wright. He's been raised by people who despise free markets and capitalism. It's unjust and it's immoral and it's unfair.

I don't care whether he's a figurehead and they put the words for him on the prompter and his job is to go out and sell it and bone up on enough so that he can sound intelligent when he's talking about -- I don't care. Somebody's doing it.

One more break, and Rush returned with another caller who said that the stock market was going up because investors are looking ahead and seeing that cap-and-trade and health care reform are going to fail, and that Obama's popularity is going down. The irony, said the caller, is that when the economy improves because of this, Obama will take credit for it. Rush was all about this panglossian view of the economy, but warned again that we don't know where the economy will be in the future because we don't know which of his proposals Obama will manage to pass.

Rush had one more quip to close out the show: we need to stop calling Obama's plans “health care reform,” said Rush. “It's about health care destruction.”

And on that note, we must embark on our 21-hour break until Rush returns to the microphone tomorrow. We'll be here, as always, and we hope you will be, too. If you're looking for some obscene health care misinformation in the meantime, the Limbaugh Wire archives are always a great place to look.

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

Highlights from Hour 3

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: And we had a call earlier, a drive-by call - wasn't able to hang on. “Rush, you're over-reading this. Obama doesn't know what he's doing. He's over his head.” Well let me allow for that; somebody knows what they're doing then. Rahm Emanuel, Soros, Axelrod, Mayor Daley who's running his show. Somebody knows what they're doing if he's just a figure - I don't care. My guess is he knows exactly what - he's been raised by communists. Frank Davis, Saul Alinsky -- his mentors -- Reverend Wright. He's been raised by people who despise free markets and capitalism. It's unjust and it's immoral and it's unfair.

I don't care whether he's a figurehead and they put the words for him on the prompter and his job is to go out and sell it and bone up on enough so that he can sound intelligent when he's talking about -- I don't care. Somebody's doing it. Whether it's him or not doesn't matter. The Democrat Party is doing it, and Pelosi's going along with it, and Harry Reid is going along with it, and that racist Dick Durbin is going along with it, and Chuck Schumer is going along with it, and Pat Leahy is going - all of them are going along with it. The Democrat Party is out to destroy the private sector and the economy of this country in exchange for power they think they will never lose.