By Solange Uwimana

Rush kicked off "Open Line Friday!" by saying he had a “smorgasbord” of things to talk about, but as today was the 20th anniversary of his cure-a-thon for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, he devoted the first few minutes of the program to thanking his listeners for their generosity and compassion. He said the total raised from these cure-a-thons amounted to more than $25 million over a 20-year period, in basically just an hour a year, he specified. Today, he started things off by donating $250,000 himself, but later said that, not counting his donation, the show had already raised three times the amount from last year in the same first hour. He later upped his donation to $400,000 so he wouldn't look like a “piker” and “to stay in the game” because he said that this year's “stunning” donations were well ahead of what they collected last year. Rush took his first caller of the day near the end of the first hour, a woman who thanked him for hosting the cure-a-thon as she once suffered from Hodgkin's disease. During her year-long care, she said, she scheduled treatments around his show. Rush then joked that “that was highly contributory to the success of the treatment,” adding, “it has to be, has to be.” In the third hour, Rush reported that two sisters matched his $400,000 donation, and said that today's contributions exceeded last year's take by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Throughout the show, Rush skillfully interwove his cure-a-thon with attacks on President Obama and former President Bill Clinton and spent an inordinate amount of time defending the tea party movement from claims of racism, which, he (echoing other conservative figures) said were “never accurate in the first place.” But, as we've repeatedly pointed out, the tea party is not totally devoid of racial animosity. Rush also claimed that tea partiers “are not causing any violence out there” and asked: “Where is this raucous society that is made up of right-wingers and tea partiers?” He concluded: “It doesn't exist.” Um ... Except. That. It. Does. Instead, Rush blamed Clinton and Obama for any future terrorist attack, saying that the blame “rests squarely” on their shoulders for comments Clinton made today during a speech commemorating the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Rush also played comments Obama made recently in which he said he was “amused” by the tea party movement, including Obama's comment that “You would think they would be saying thank you.” Rush called this “classic illustration of authoritarian mocking control” (yeah, I don't know what that means, either) and repeated, yet again, the false right-wing mantra that Obama hasn't cut anybody's taxes, saying “it's all bogus.” Rush then “obliged” Obama, saying: “Mr. President, I want to thank you for seizing General Motors and Chrysler. I want to thank you for appointing a pervert as our safe school czar. I would like to thank you, Mr. President, for the generational theft that you have committed with all of this borrowing and spending. You have spent the wealth of two to three, maybe four, generations in the future, before they're even born.” He also thanked Obama for his “arrogance,” his “divisiveness,” “mocking and disrespecting the American people,” but “most of all,” he said, “for arousing the sleeping, silent majority because we have been asleep too long.” He then concluded, ominously: “November is coming, Mr. President, and that is when we will really thank you.”

You can hear Rush's full comments here, and they are also below, where you can listen to other highlights from today's Rush Limbaugh Show:

Limbaugh: “I want to thank you, Mr. President...”

Rush places blame “squarely on the shoulders of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama” for future terrorist attack

Limbaugh: “God may have replied” to passage of health care reform with volcano eruption in Iceland

Limbaugh says NY Times is “responsible for any terror attack on this country”

Limbaugh: Obama is “finally fulfilling” the Left's “dream of doing away with NASA”

Limbaugh blames Frank, Dodd and Dems for “unsustainable mortgage situation” that led to alleged Goldman Sachs fraud

Limbaugh says the middle class is “under assault by the regime”

Rush conspiracy theory: KSM being put on trial so that ICC will file war crimes charges against Bush & Cheney

Justin Berrier and Zachary Pleat contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.