By Brooke Obie
Rush's four-day break from the airwaves mellowed him none. He started off the show by pondering out loud which race Obama put down when he filled out the census form: Negro? Indonesian, perhaps? Rush then spent time delivering the “story” of the global warming activist who supposedly froze to death in Antarctica. After a short commercial break, Limbaugh came back to acknowledge that the story was a hoax from a satirical website. April Fools! He then devoted the remainder of the show to expressing outrage at Congressman Henry Waxman's committee hearing looking into corporations' claims about the detrimental effect health care reform will have on them. Deviating only to remark that seeing a brunette on the Fox News Channel must be an “April Fools,” Limbaugh repeatedly warned that this hearing is just the beginning of “statism,” that we are now “watching” “Stalinist[s]” at work, and that Castro and Obama are the “same thing.” He advised the CEOs attending this hearing to “fire back with both barrels.”
Here are some highlights from the show:
Limbaugh on Obama's census form: “What race does he put down?”
Limbaugh: “I'm seeing a brunette on the Fox News Channel ... maybe it's just April Fools”
Limbaugh falsely claims idea for health insurance exchange didn't come from the Heritage Foundation
Limbaugh on Obama executive order: “We're not a democracy anymore”
Limbaugh: “I was not wrong, I was just uninformed”
Rush ended the second half of the show on the same note as the first, cautioning yet again that there was no such thing as a moderate Democrat, and that anyone “with a 'D'” beside his or her name “is our political enemy,” and that the real “death threat to this country is Barack Obama and his agenda.” (What violent right-wing rhetoric?) Rush went on to say that Obama lied when he said “A lot of the ideas in terms of the (health insurance) exchange, just being able to pool and improve the purchasing power of individuals in the insurance market, that originated from the Heritage Foundation.” PolitiFact, however, has graded Obama's claim as "mostly true." Never one to be humbled by the truth, Rush then went on to backtrack on his claim that insurers will not cover children with pre-existing conditions until 2016, saying, “I wasn't wrong, I was just uninformed.” That statement applies to so many things.