By Kate Conway

Rush: Obama is “raping” the bankers

Welcome to Rush's “Open Line Friday” show. Rush began the show by gloating over Air America's decision to cease operations, asking “would you call what happened to Air America jobs lost?” He then asked why Obama couldn't save those jobs. Limbaugh called himself the “sole survivor” of the radio wars.

He announced that former Air America listeners would go to the top of the caller queue, but then said that they aren't any, so “they're going to have a damn hard time proving it to me.” He then told Snerdley that every liberal insults him.

Rush then discussed the fact that “Club Gitmo” is still open one year after Obama ordered it closed. He then read from a Washington Post article saying that 50 Guantanamo detainees are going to be held at Guantanamo indefinitely without charges. He attacked the Post for understanding the necessity for this now, but calling for Guantanamo to be closed when Bush was president.

He then moved on to the severance package for Conan O'Brien. He was amazed that Conan had 200 staff people, saying that Rush's show has only three staffers.

Rush said the rise of Scott Brown was “profound.” Rush said he always extols the virtues of ordinary people doing extraordinary things in this country. But that is even more true of Brown then most. Brown has changed Washington as liberals thought that they knew it. A few weeks ago, no one knew Brown. Now, Obamacare is stopped. The arrogant, smug, veto-proof Senators are bouncing off the walls. Sherrod Brown is blaming Max Baucus, Barbara Boxer is in a sweat. Pelosi is concerned. State-controlled media is awaiting orders and deciding whether they should follow them.

He then discussed an article saying that the Clinton years hold lessons for Obama. Rush then said that the left's attack machine hasn't revved up yet. Soon they will paint Brown to be the combination of Sarah Palin, President Bush, Rush, and the tooth fairy. But look how Brown's election has changed things.

Obama is attacking the economy, Rush said. He said that he will now call Obama “Mr. Depression.” Obama is not cracking down on the banks, he is raping them:

LIMBAUGH: One election, one guy -- and now Obama is taking further aim at the economy. Mr. Depression: that is what I am going to -- he is now attacking the banks all over again, and he's doing it because the polling data he has suggests that the public is still mad at Wall Street, still mad at banks, still mad at all these bonuses. So it's pure class envy; it's an attempt to revive his poll numbers, and in the process, he is taking yet another swing at capitalism and is totally taking this country toward depression. He's not cracking down on the banks, folks; he's raping them.

There would be no insurance companies, no oil companies, no people making $250,000 or more. The government will run the banks. It all seems very Mao Zedong -- declared Rush. Obama is talking about reform, but when he uses the word regulation, what he means is nationalization in whole or in part. The words regulations and reform mean nationalization.

Rush said Obama is living in an alternate universe. He sees himself as the guy who caused people to faint during the campaign. But they're not fainting now. Their crying and panicking. Obama confuses big with right. He confuses massive with smart. Obama has gone through his whole bag of trips.

Rush then brought back the old teleprompter attack, saying that “what's left is what's on the telemprompter.” Rush claimed that Obama is lashing out now. Seventy-seven percent of investors oppose Obama. Rush wondered how more than 20 percent of investors can approve of what Obama is doing. Rush said instability is taking over. Obama's comments are not based in reality. Obama can't win a seat on the Chicago city council, much less president now.

Rush then asked folks on the left, what has Obama done for the middle class? We know what he's done to the middle class. They don't have jobs. But what has he done for the middle class and small businesses other than target them. What has Obama done to bring ethics and accountability to government? He has made it worse? What has Obama done to improve education? What exactly has Obama done to improve conditions in the inner cities? Nothing. What has Obama done to clean the air and the water? Nothing. What has Obama done to lower the sea levels? Nothing. Rush said he could go on and on. The only exception are the unions -- public employee unions.

Rather than doing something positive, he spends and spends. Attacks and attacks. Nothing has improved under Obama. But like a child, he still blames George W. Bush. Anger at Bush is what elected both Obama and Brown. This is scary. It is so devoid and so absent reality. Obama is demeaning people who actually created jobs and wealth. He demeans these people and arrogantly makes demands and bullies businesses.

I don't think Obama has the concept of the limits of his office and intelligence, declared Rush. But most people now do. “It is time to regulate Obama, and that's what we intend to do in November,” said Rush.

After a commercial break, Rush told us that Mark Steyn will be covering for him for part of next week because he'll be doing grueling 12-hour days judging the Miss America pageant.

Moving along, Rush declared Obama is an agitator, but is incapable of reaching solutions. He then accused Obama of intentionally attacking the economy:

LIMBAUGH: This -- folks, a little bit of an expansion on what I said yesterday regarding how we have to be alert to the attempts of the left to change their skin, their appearance, to fit the current environment. This -- this is one way they do it. They start talking about things that we are interested in that we think are important, like jobs.

So he's in Ohio today, where the unemployment rate's, what -- 10.8 percent? 10.6? So now backed into a corner, Obama is coming out today and next week to hit the economy and jobs.

And doesn't that sound so good? Oh yeah! He's gotten the message now. Well, it's fake, folks. It is a lie. They've done everything but throw the kitchen sink out to keep jobs from happening in the natural, normal way. They are assaulting the private sector on purpose. They want the public sector to grow.

Rush falsely claimed he was referring only to “Jew-haters” in Wall Street comments

Rush then launched into a 15-minute defense of his comments that “a lot of those people on Wall Street are Jewish. So I wonder if there's starting to be some buyer's remorse there.” Rush falsely claimed that he was referring only to “Jew-haters” in those comments. Responding to the fact that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) condemned his comments as a “new low” and demanded an apology, Rush in turn demanded an apology from ADL national director Abraham Foxman. Rush asserted that his monologues are frequently clipped into sound bites that make him sound bad. Apparently liberals know that Rush doesn't want Obama to succeed, and they want to damage his credibility so that his role in national politics is diminished.

Limbaugh read from a statement by Norman Podhoretz, whose book Rush was plugging, in defense of Limbaugh:

For this, Rush Limbaugh has been subjected to a vile attack by Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Of course, Mr. Foxman has a long history of seeing an anti-Semite under every conservative bed while blinding himself to the blatant fact that anti-Semitism has largely been banished from the Right in the past 40 years, and that it has found a hospitable new home on the Left, especially where Israel is concerned. This makes Foxman a perfect embodiment of the phenomenon I analyze in Why Are Jews Liberals? Now Foxman has the chutzpah to denounce Rush Limbaugh as an anti-Semite and to demand an apology from him to boot. Well, if an apology is owed here, it is the national director of the Anti-Defamation League who should apologize for the defamatory accusation of anti-Semitism that he himself has hurled against so loyal a friend of Israel as Rush Limbaugh.

Rush suggested that if Mr. Foxman is really looking for anti-Semitism, he should start by looking at the Obama administration:

LIMBAUGH: I was alluding to what you know exists. You know that there are Jew-haters out there and I know there are Jew-haters out there, and many of them are in the Obama administration or in his circle of friends.

And Mr. Foxman, if you really want to go after anti-Semitism, you should first start looking at it on the left and within the Obama administration and within his circle of friends because that's where you're going to find it. You're not going to find any Semitism on this radio show. You're going to find nothing but love and respect and admiration for the Jewish people and an unwavering support for Israel. That has not ever shaken.

He then turned to a post on National Review Online affirming Podhoretz's defense of Limbaugh. Finally, Rush cited his friend Mark Levin as evidence that many Jewish people are “disgusted” with Abraham Foxman. Not content to leave the hour without tying his rant du jour to a condemnation of liberalism, Rush then segued into an explanation that liberals' primary identification is “liberal,” and any other labels they apply to themselves are springboards to advance liberalism, which is, of course, a blinding hatred of capitalism.

Rush briefly addressed health care reform, reading a statement Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) made to National Review Online stating that Democrats plan to use reconciliation to pass the health care reform bill. Rush noted that in order to do this both the House and the Senate would need to submit new versions of the bill that include reconciliation, then wondered if Democrats will follow Pelosi “off the cliff.”

Disagreeing with the Supreme Court means you “do[n't] like the Constitution”

Turning to a long tirade surrounding the Supreme Court's decision to lift restrictions on campaign spending by corporations and partially overturn the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law, Rush was predictably unhappy with the White House's criticism of the decision:

LIMBAUGH: Now, I want to point out that Obama was a law professor, or technically a senior lecturer, at the University of Chicago Law School for 12 years. Now, why would a law professor oppose a Supreme Court decision on a matter of constitutional law and not respect the authority of the court and honor our system of separation of powers? Why? Of course, it's easy. Because he doesn't like the Constitution! And this we know. He thinks the Constitution restrains him and restricts him for doing things to people. The Constitution spells out what the government may not do, and that's what he doesn't like.

Apparently as additional evidence that Obama's support of campaign finance reform is out of self-interest, he went on to say that the campaign finance laws are designed to protect incumbents, and then read from a Newsweek post in which Howard Feinman also criticized the Supreme Court.

Rush then read from a Washington Post article saying that Citizen's United created the controversial Hillary: The Movie documentary in order to take on campaign finance reform, concluding that it's a “damn sorry sight” that we need activists like Citizen's United to protect speech and liberty.

To wrap up this segment, Rush read from -- and criticized -- a New York Times editorial saying that the courts have dealt a blow to democracy. Rush defended the idea that corporations deserve protection under the law with the argument that they're made up of ordinary citizens.

In the next segment, Rush resumed his defense of corporations. To counter the argument that ordinary citizens cannot compete with corporations, Rush ranted that ordinary citizens can't compete with unions either. Striking down campaign finance reform is just leveling the playing field. He asked why, if corporations can be censored during elections, aren't media corporations censored? After all, journalists work for corporations. In response to allegations from the left that the Supreme Court engaged in judicial activism with this decision, Rush said that the courts were defending the Constitution, and that defending the Constitution is actually a rejection of judicial activism. He then informed us that conservatives stand for the bill of rights, while “they” (liberals) don't, and said that freedom awoke from a 100-year coma with the Supreme Court's decision. To cap off this topic, Rush played a montage of media figures saying that the supreme court has engaged in judicial activism, and claimed the media want freedom of speech all to themselves.

Getting around to his phone lines on Open Line Friday, Rush took a call from a UFCW member who enumerates the services his union provides for him. Rush sympathized with the caller, saying he had no problem with “rank and file” union members, but then told him that he (the caller) doesn't understand what union leadership is doing. The unions aren't just Democrats, they're far-left liberals who work directly for the destruction of the private sector. Rush then blamed the United Auto Workers for the collapse of GM.

Democrats have destroyed black families

Taking another call, Rush claimed that Democrats never try to elevate people at the bottom, they just punish people at the top. He repeated his earlier assertion that Obama hasn't done one thing for the people of this county, telling the caller to look at how Democrats have destroyed black families with welfare programs:

LIMBAUGH: This administration particularly, Barack Obama and this bunch of Democrats, is destroying the middle class. They are putting more people in poverty. They never try to elevate people at the low end of the scale. They always try to punish people at the top, which is what Obama is doing now by double-taxing the banks.

There's not one thing this man has done for the people of this country. Not one thing, Don. He hasn't done one thing for the middle class. He hasn't done one thing for any group or individual that you can find. He hasn't done one thing. Name for me, anybody, exactly one thing he's done good. You think they are trying. You didn't even say they've done it. You think they're trying, which means that you are falling for their rhetoric. You are falling for their good intentions.

Look how they've destroyed black families in this country, Don, with their welfare programs. Look how they have kept people in poverty with their poverty programs. Look at how they have kept more and more people dependent on government for their lives, for their very existence, and they live as paupers, and yet those people think the Democrats are fighting for them. It's an age-old myth that way too many people believe.

Returning to a bizarre attack on unions, Rush cited the tax on “Cadillac” health insurance plans as evidence that the unions want to lower the standard of living for everyone. He then went on to explain that Democrats look at corporations as bloodsuckers. Apparently Democrats and unions want to pit white-collar workers against blue-collar workers by creating a negative image of white-collar workers as a symbol of corporations. They invent villains because they can't exist without them.

To close out his second hour, Rush takes a call from a listener who asks why states that vote Republican are designated “red” and states that vote Democratic are designated “blue.” Isn't red a symbol of communism? In answer, Rush speculates that democratic states are designated blue because unions are blue.

At the top of the third hour, Rush talked about a Rasmussen poll saying that 61 percent of people want Obama to drop health care in order to focus on the economy. He claimed that if he had Obama's job, he could create more jobs in 25 minutes than Obama could in 4 years:

LIMBAUGH: Folks, if I had the power he's got, I could create more jobs in 25 minutes than he's going to create in four years. If I had the tools that he has at his disposal, I could create more jobs in 25 minutes than this guy is going to create in 4 years.

Rush played a long parody song in which “Obama” sings about bringing the Dow down, then brought up a survey of Bloomberg subscribers finding that 77 percent of U.S. investors see Obama as anti-business. Not content with this number, Rush asked who, after a year-long “jihad” against capitalism, would think Obama isn't anti-business.

Turning to a lighter topic, Rush mentioned that the National Enquirer is submitting its coverage of John Edwards' affair for Pulitzer consideration, noting that Pulitzer founder Joseph Pulitzer got his start in yellow journalism. Rush used this as a springboard to talk about extramarital affairs, including some obligatory discussion of Bill Clinton.

Rush called Obama a “coulda woulda shoulda” guy. He explained that women have told him about such men, who continually create excuses for failures actually attributable to their own lack of ambition or competence. He accused Obama of demanding solutions without creating viable solutions. He called Obama an agitator, then told us that Alinsky has said that agitators are not leaders.

Continuing to mock Obama, Rush played audio of Obama saying that he'll fight on behalf of everyone. Rush assured us that Obama is “flat-out lying” when he said that he'll make sure the banks repay bailout money; Obama will actually take money from the public.

Limbaugh repeated his line from the first hour that Obama is “raping” the banks, then suggested that we should call him “Hugo Obama” or “Barack Chavez” because he will soon own the banks. Rush claimed that Obama's popularity is now so low that he wouldn't be elected to the Chicago city council, much less the presidency, then repeated that Obama hasn't done anything to improve the country before comparing Obama to a spoiled child.

Michael Timberlake, Michael Burns, and Adam Shah contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.