Posts Tagged ‘Rush Limbaugh’
Written on July 21st, 2010 by jo2 shouts
If you were in the presence of a man having a heart attack, how would you respond? As he clutched his chest in desperation and pain, would you call 911? Would you try to save him from dying? Of course you would.
But if that man was Rush Limbaugh, and you were Sarah Spitz, a producer for National Public Radio, that isn’t what you’d do at all.
In a post to the list-serv Journolist, an online meeting place for liberal journalists, Spitz wrote that she would “Laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out” as Limbaugh writhed in torment.
In boasting that she would gleefully watch a man die in front of her eyes, Spitz seemed to shock even herself. “I never knew I had this much hate in me,” she wrote. “But he deserves it.”
Spitz’s hatred for Limbaugh seems intemperate, even imbalanced. On Journolist, where conservatives are regarded not as opponents but as enemies, it barely raised an eyebrow.
In the summer of 2009, agitated citizens from across the country flocked to town hall meetings to berate lawmakers who had declared support for President Obama’s health care bill. For most people, the protests seemed like an exercise in participatory democracy, rowdy as some of them became.
On Journolist, the question was whether the protestors were garden-variety fascists or actual Nazis.
“You know, at the risk of violating Godwin’s law, is anyone starting to see parallels here between the teabaggers and their tactics and the rise of the Brownshirts?” asked Bloomberg’s Ryan Donmoyer. “Esp. Now that it’s getting violent? Reminds me of the Beer Hall fracases of the 1920s.”
Richard Yeselson, a researcher for an organized labor group who also writes for liberal magazines, agreed. “They want a deficit driven militarist/heterosexist/herrenvolk state,” Yeselson wrote. “This is core of the Bush/Cheney base transmorgrified into an even more explicitly racialized/anti-cosmopolitan constituency. Why? Um, because the president is a black guy named Barack Hussein Obama. But it’s all the same old nuts in the same old bins with some new labels: the gun nuts, the anti tax nuts, the religious nuts, the homophobes, the anti-feminists, the anti-abortion lunatics, the racist/confederate crackpots, the anti-immigration whackos (who feel Bush betrayed them) the pathological government haters (which subsumes some of the othercategories, like the gun nuts and the anti-tax nuts).”
“I’m not saying these guys are capital F-fascists,” added blogger Lindsay Beyerstein, “but they don’t want limited government. Their desired end looks more like a corporate state than a rugged individualist paradise. The rank and file wants a state that will reach into the intimate of citizens when it comes to sex, reproductive freedom, censorship, and rampant incarceration in the name of law and order.”
On Journolist, there was rarely such thing as an honorable political disagreement between the left and right, though there were many disagreements on the left. In the view of many who’ve posted to the list-serv, conservatives aren’t simply wrong, they are evil. And while journalists are trained never to presume motive, Journolist members tend to assume that the other side is acting out of the darkest and most dishonorable motives.
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Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/21/liberal-journalists-suggest-government-shut-down-fox-news/2/#ixzz0uJhQY6lN
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Filed under Media Bias
Tags:Bloomberg, Daniel Davies, Federal Communications Commission, Guardian, Howell Raines, John Judis, Jonathan Zasloff, JournoList, Lindsay Beyerstein, Michael Scherer, National Review, New Republic, Richard Yeselson, Rush Limbaugh, Ryan Donmoyer, Sarah Spitz, Tea Party movement, UCLA, Victor Davis Hanson, White House
Written on May 21st, 2010 by jo3 shouts
The “most open and transparent” president in American history is still playing hide-and-seek with the press, and even the liberal New York Times has begun to notice it, as indicated by this headline: “Obama Turns His Back On the Press.”
If the mainstream media were not so ideologically wedded to Obama’s big-government agenda, they would be doing more than pointing out his secrecy and hypocrisy with the occasional headline. They’d be skewering him daily for his marked inaccessibility. Not having a genuine news conference since July would be remarkable for the least transparent administration, let alone one that made openness a signature campaign issue.
But not everyone in the leftist press is exercising such restraint about Obama’s media blackout. CBS News’ Chip Reid decided to ask Obama a question following his signing of the Freedom of the Press Act. Doing his best Hugo Chavez, Obama said, “I’m not doing a press conference today, but we’ll be seeing you guys during the course of this week.”
HotAirPundit posted a video of Reid explaining that he asked the question because the irony of Obama’s signing the Freedom of the Press Act while rarely fielding questions “in impromptu situations” was “too rich to resist.” Reid asked, “Mr. President, in the interest of press freedom, might you consider a couple of questions on BP?”
When Reid took Obama up on his noncommittal pledge and tried to ask him a question at the Rose Garden “news conference” with the president of Mexico a few days later, Obama ignored him.
This should surprise no one. A case could be made that Obama’s never had a news conference that he hasn’t largely controlled. He and his handlers, from David Axelrod to Rahm Emanuel, understand the importance of managing the press to control the message in the interest of advancing the leftist agenda.
They know that their statist goal of greatly expanding government depends on Obama’s not revealing any more than necessary how radical to the core he actually is because true transparency about his real agenda would be suicidal.
But his handlers also realize, even if Obama doesn’t, that the less scripted he is the more difficult it is to manage the message. And they understand that he ought not be allowed to venture too far from the teleprompter very often, lest he demonstrate that his manufactured reputation both for eloquence and wisdom are, well, manufactured.
Oh, yes, and don’t let me forget those manufactured bipartisan myths, but surely no one is clueless enough to pay any attention to those anymore.
There’s just no telling what he might say off the cuff, whether it’s an awkwardly inappropriate “shout-out” to Dr. Joe Medicine Crow before delivering curiously disconnected remarks on the Fort Hood massacre or telling Joe the Plumber we need to spread the wealth around a little or saying, “At a certain point, you’ve made enough money.”
But Obama’s repeated gaffes tell me that he’s too narcissistic to fully grasp that he often undermines his own cause when off-script because he can’t refrain from playing his hand.
But I would bet that in their inner-circle huddles, Obama’s handlers have somehow persuaded him — because he always must be the boss — to studiously avoid unscripted moments like the plague, leave the message scripting to the choreographers, and deal with any press blowback through damage control. That’s a much lesser evil than getting off-message.
In one of his extemporaneous moments at Hampton University, he unwittingly disclosed the administration’s MO, not that discerning observers didn’t already know it. He openly lamented the advent of the “24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter.”
He might as well have just directly said it: “I don’t like the free flow of information in the new media, which tends to impede the advancement of my agenda, which depends on keeping the public in the dark.”
That is exactly the philosophy of his appointed “diversity czar,” Mark Lloyd, who idolizes Hugo Chavez and believes freedom of speech must be subordinated to the left’s “greater” societal goals, and of his Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan, who complained about the “overabundance” of ideas that might require government action to “un-skew.”
Think about it: Without Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the new media shining the light of truth daily, populist lies, such as that the Arizona law is racist and discriminatory, might go unchallenged.
We are dealing with a totalitarian mindset in this administration, and it might sound more civil to candy coat that fact, but it doesn’t serve the interests of truth or of the nation.
Read the original article Creators.com
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Filed under Obama
Tags:Arizona, Axelrod, diversity czar, Elena Kagan, Fort Hood massacre, Freedom of the Press Act, Hampton University, Hugo Chávez, Inthrutheoutdoor, news conference, Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Reid, Rush Limbaugh, Supreme Court nominee, totalitarian mindset, transparent administration
Written on May 20th, 2010 by jo2 shouts
THERE are many theories for why very conservative Republicans seem to be doing so well lately, taking their party’s Senate nominations in Florida, Kentucky and Utah, and beating Democrats head-to-head in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia. Some attribute this to a generalized anti-incumbent mood. Others say it reflects the tendency of parties in power to falter in midterm elections. Recently it has been fashionable to ascribe right-wing success to the Tea Party movement.
But the most obvious explanation is the one that’s been conspicuously absent from the gusher of analysis. Republican success in 2010 can be boiled down to two words: Rush Limbaugh.
Mr. Limbaugh has played an important role in elections going back to 1994, when he commanded the air war in the Republican Congressional victory. This time, however, he is more than simply the mouthpiece of the party. He is the brains and the spirit behind its resurgence.
How did this happen? The Obama victory in 2008 left Republicans dazed, demoralized and leaderless. Less than six weeks after the inauguration, in a nationally televised keynote address to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, Mr. Limbaugh stepped into the void with a raucous denunciation of the new president’s agenda and a strategic plan based on his belief that real conservatism wins every time. He reiterated his famous call for Mr. Obama to fail and urged the party faithful to ignore the siren song of bipartisanship and moderation and stay true to the principles of Ronald Reagan.
Democrats responded by branding Mr. Limbaugh — whom they considered self-evidently unattractive — as the leader of the opposition. The day after the conservative conference, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, went on “Face the Nation” and described Mr. Limbaugh as the “voice and the intellectual force and energy” of the G.O.P.
Mr. Limbaugh loved being tossed into this briar patch. He mocked the notion that he was the titular leader of the Republicans even as he was becoming the party’s top strategist and de facto boss.
His strategy was simple. With Democrats controlling Congress, Mr. Limbaugh saw that there was no way to stop the president’s agenda. He dismissed the moderates’ notion that compromising with the president would make Republicans look good to independents. Instead he decreed that the Republicans must become the party of no, and force Democratic candidates — especially centrists — to go into 2010 with sole responsibility for the Obama program and the state of the economy. And that is what has happened.
Mr. Limbaugh was not just the architect of this plan, he was (and continues to be) its enforcer. Dissenters like Arlen Specter, whom Mr. Limbaugh disparaged as a “Republican in Name Only,” found themselves unelectable in the party primaries. Moderates like Michael Steele, the party chairman, were slapped down for suggesting cooperation with the administration. When Representative Phil Gingrey of Georgia had the temerity to suggest that Mr. Limbaugh was too uncompromising, he was met with public outrage and forced into an humiliating apology.
When the Tea Party movement emerged, Mr. Limbaugh welcomed it. The movement’s causes — fighting against health care reform, reducing the size and cost of government, opposing the Democrats’ putative desire to remake America in the image of European social democracies — were straight Limbaughism. A very high proportion of the Tea Partiers listen to Mr. Limbaugh. Sarah Palin’s biggest current applause line — Republicans are not just the party of no, but the party of hell no — came courtesy of Mr. Limbaugh. (Ms. Palin gave the keynote address at the first national Tea Party convention.) Glenn Beck, who is especially popular among Tea Partiers, calls Mr. Limbaugh his hero.
So why the lack of attention? Mr. Limbaugh has studiously refrained from claiming credit for the movement. His only intervention thus far has been to quash talk about the Tea Party becoming a third party. He wants a unified, right-wing G.O.P. in 2010, and by all appearances he is going to get it.
Rush Limbaugh came along after the age of Ronald Reagan. He has never really had a Republican presidential candidate to his ideological satisfaction. But if the party sweeps this November under the banner of Real Conservatism, Mr. Obama will find himself facing two years of “no” in Washington and, very likely, a Limbaugh-approved opponent in 2012.
Read the original article New York Times
Written on April 2nd, 2010 by jo5 shouts
Limbaugh responds to Obama: ‘Never in my life have I seen a regime like this’
By:
Byron York
In his new
interview with CBS, President Obama refers to the “troublesome” talk and “vitriol” of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. “Keep in mind that there have been periods in American history where this kind of vitriol comes out,” Obama says. “It happens often when you’ve got an economy that is making people more anxious, and people are feeling like there is a lot of change that needs to take place. But that’s not the vast majority of Americans. I think the vast majority of Americans know that we’re trying hard, that I want what’s best for the country.”
I asked Limbaugh what he thought about the president’s comments. His program’s popularity is undeniably soaring now, but has it risen and fallen with economic anxiety — that is, was he less popular during times of economic security and more popular in times of economic worries? Since Limbaugh has been broadcasting nationally for more than 20 years, there ought to be some sort of pattern, if what Obama says is accurate.
“I have yet to have a down year at the EIB Network,” Limbaugh responds. “I and most Americans do not believe President Obama is trying to do what’s best for the country. Never in my life have I seen a regime like this, governing against the will of the people, purposely. I have never seen the media so supportive of a regime amassing so much power. And I have never known as many people who literally fear for the future of the country.”
The point, Limbaugh says, is not that listeners are feeling anxiety about the economy, although many undoubtedly are. It’s that they are feeling anxiety about the Obama agenda.
Read the original article Washington Examiner:
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Filed under Rush
Tags:American history, Byron York, CBS, economic security, economic worries, EIB Network, Glenn Beck, Inthrutheoutdoor, majority of Americans, President Obama, Rush Limbaugh, vitriol, will of the people
Written on February 25th, 2010 by jono shouts
David Hinckley
To no one’s surprise, the top dogs in talk radio remain a chorus of Barack Obama critics led by Rush Limbaugh.
Limbaugh is No. 1, as usual, on the annual “Heavy Hundred” list of influential hosts just published by the trade magazine Talkers.
Sean Hannity, ranked No. 2, commented on the eve of the 2008 election that while he felt John McCain would be a better President, an Obama presidency would be a bonanza for talk radio.
He’s been proven right, as the conservatives who dominate the major talk radio airwaves have scored solid ratings by teeing off on all things Obama.
No. 3 and 4 talkers Glenn Beck and Michael Savage also have little use for Obama, nor do No. 6 Laura Ingraham, No. 8 Mark Levin or No. 9 Lou Dobbs.
Even the two advice talkers in the top 10 – Dr. Laura Schlessinger at No. 5 and Dave Ramsey at No. 7 – don’t care much for Obama’s policies.
The Talkers list does have a growing nonconservative presence this year, led by Thom Hartmann (No. 10), Ed Schultz (No. 11), Joe Madison (No. 12), Alan Colmes (No. 16) and Stephanie Miller (No. 24).
While none of these hosts draws ratings comparable to those of the top conservatives, Talkers also considers satellite, online and other nontraditional ways of delivering programming.
Outside strictly political talk, morning host Don Imus of WABC is No. 21 and Howard Stern of Sirius XM is No. 32 – a big drop from his broadcast radio days.
Opie and Anthony of Sirius XM are No. 65.
The Talkers list is based on “courage, effort, impact, longevity, potential, ratings, recognition, revenue, service talent and uniqueness.”
Editor Michael Harrison, a former WNEW-FM morning host, stresses that the final rankings are “as much art as science.”
George Noory, whose overnight “Coast to Coast” show was recently dropped by WABC, is No. 20. Morning hosts Boomer Esiason and Craig Carton of WFAN (660 AM) are No. 35, while Mike and Mike of WEPN (ESPN Radio, 1050 AM) are No. 48.
New York‘s talk stations are well-represented.
WABC (770 AM) has four of its five daytime hosts in the top 25, and its three other weekday hosts – John Batchelor, Doug McIntyre and Joe Scarborough/Mika Brzezinski – all made it into the top 250.
WOR (710 AM) has Beck, Savage and Dobbs in the top 10, plus Dr. Joy Browne at No. 27, Steve Malzberg at No. 56 and Joey Reynolds at No. 76. Morning host John Gambling is in the top 250.
WWRL (1600 AM) has Hartmann, Schultz and Miller in the top 25, plus morning host Errol Louis at No. 90.
WNYM (970 AM) has Mike Gallagher (No. 19), Michael Medved (No. 23), Bill Bennett (No. 25), Dennis Miller (No. 34), Dennis Prager (No. 40), John Gibson (No. 50), Hugh Hewitt (No. 67) and new morning host Curtis Sliwa at No. 87.
Bob Slade, Bob Pickett and James Mtume of “Open Line” on WRKS (98.7 FM) are in the top 250.
Read original article New York Daily News
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Filed under Conservative
Tags:Bill Bennett (No. 25), Dennis Miller (No. 34), Dennis Prager (No. 40), Dr. Laura, Glen Beck, Hugh Hewitt (No. 67), Imos, John Gibson (No. 50), Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, Michael Medved (No. 23), Mike Gallagher (No. 19), Obama, Rush Limbaugh, Savage, Sean Hannity, Stern
Written on January 4th, 2010 by jono shouts
Matt Lewis
Rush Limbaugh is out of the hospital now, and by his own account on his way back to work. But his recent health scare, and the ensuing vitriol from his detractors on the world wide web, got me thinking that many non-fans don’t truly “get” the Rush phenomenon. What I mean is, they don’t really understand why he’s so popular. Nor do they appreciate the depth of his appeal – and why many of his fans don’t just like his show, but would literally take a bullet for him.
Those who only know what they hear from cable news sound bites might assume his show is filled with nothing but angry conservative rhetoric. Yet the proof that his message isn’t marginal is that his is the most popular radio show in America; he has been nationally syndicated for more than twenty years, and is on the air fifteen hours a week.
Unlike in Limbaugh’s early days, today’s conservatives can get political news and opinions from a wide variety of sources, yet they continue listening to Limbaugh day after day. Why? To be sure, he’s talented, but he’s also…lovable.
Listen to Limbaugh, and you’ll quickly learn that he doesn’t just talk about politics. Listen to him consistently, and you’ll learn of his love for the Pittsburgh Steelers, his desire to stay on the cutting edge of music, entertainment, and technology, and his past struggle to succeed. Limbaugh also frequently gives “aspirational” advice to listeners, encouraging them to associate with positive people, to follow their dreams, and to take personal responsibility.
Of course, to some, the notion that Limbaugh is lovable might be laughable. But then, I would say the same thing – though for entirely different reasons – about shock jock Howard Stern. If you’ve watched the movie about his life, “Private Parts,” you know that underneath the vulgar exterior, there is something sweet about Stern. Regular listeners have a loyalty and affinity for the man that the casual observer would find odd, to say the least.
There’s also something special about Limbaugh and Stern’s shared medium; though Limbaugh dabbled in television, his greatest success has obviously come on the radio, and I think that explains a lot about the extent of his emotional appeal.
This past autumn, I mentioned on Twitter that I had turned off my television and was instead listening to the World Series on the radio. I noted that listening to broadcasters Jon Miller and Joe Morgan was far more enjoyable than watching the game on TV; there was something quaint and comforting about it, like lighting a fire in the fireplace and reading a book.
The online world can often be callous and childish, yet something amazing happened; a conversation occurred in which dozens of my Twitter followers began telling stories, via Twitter, about their love of listening to sports on the radio. Whether their story revolved around radio legends Harry Caray or Bob Uecker or Harry Kalas, the message was the same; grown men were getting choked up reminiscing about listening to baseball on the radio.
One of the most touching stories came from a conservative on Twitter named Tony Lee (on Twitter, he’s @TheTonyLee). We began emailing, and here’s his story:
“My Dad came to California in the 1970s to take his shot at the American Dream. He had a lot more riding on his success than most immigrants. He was in love with my Mom (still back in Korea at the time), but she refused to marry him unless he could prove to her that he could succeed here. My Dad was a huge baseball fan–he heard about and loved the then-Brooklyn Dodgers when he was in Korea–so it was only natural that he would become a Dodger fan when he came to California. And listening to Vin Scully on the radio — both to and from his shifts as a janitor — or to and from his night classes at the community college, more than anything, helped him to learn enough English to eventually get a job at the shipyard and eventually start a couple small businesses. Vin was his English tutor, helped him assimilate, and Vin didn’t even know it!
My Dad always said to think of Vin as a surrogate baseball grandfather. He was a lot more. I can probably say that because he helped my Dad learn English quicker, my Dad started to succeed, and my Mom saw enough in him that she would agree to take the leap of faith with him and give up her life in Korea to come here to marry him.”
I related to this story because I remember listening to Orioles games along with my dad in the 1980s (yes, they actually were good back then). During a long, 162-game season, day-in and day-out, there one was constant: the Orioles would be on. Even if you had nothing in your life to look forward to, you at least knew that – like a “serial” or a soap opera – the team’s record would be on the line that night. To this day, hearing Jon Miller’s voice – he was the “voice of the Orioles, then” – can transport me back in time.
In the late 1980s, my dad also introduced me to Rush Limbaugh’s new nationally syndicated radio show. Since the arrival of television, AM radio had gotten pretty boring. But once the Reagan Administration withdrew the “Fairness Doctrine,” which had forced stations to provide equal time for opposing viewpoints, shows like Limbaugh’s began to flourish.
As a young libertarian/conservative attending public schools and then a liberal arts college during the Clinton years, being conservative was about the most alternative/anti-authoritarian stance a rebel without a cause could take, and I reveled in it.
Rush, who was in his thirties at the time, provided a perfect outlet for a young libertarian/conservatives – like me — who believed the liberal dogma being taught to us by our teachers was mere utopian propaganda. Unlike the stodgy country club Republican types we also rebelled against, Limbaugh used humor and satire to poke fun at the liberals in a new and fresh way. I would often spend three or four hours listening to my liberal professors in the morning, and then, occasionally switching back and forth from Zeppelin, Gin Blossoms, or Sublime, tune in to Limbaugh for several hours in the afternoon. It was a great way to balance out my college experience, and it’s fair to say he changed my life.
While I do believe his anti-intellectual diatribes reinforce the notion that being smart isn’t “cool,” most of his advice is straight out of the Dale Carnegie “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” school of thought. And for me, Rush remains an important mentor.
As news broke of Rush’s chest pains, and some on the internet were even saying he had died, this thought occurred to me: Because he comes into so many homes every day for three hours, the emotional impact of losing Limbaugh would be intense. Thankfully, the chest pains were not a heart attack, and his talent, as he often says on the radio, is still “on loan from God.” In the decades since I first started listening to Limbaugh, I’ve married, lost my father, and become a conservative commentator myself. But there is one constant: Rush is still on at noon.
Written on January 2nd, 2010 by jono shouts
Mark Niesse
HONOLULU (Jan. 2) — Conservative talk radio show host Rush Limbaugh said Friday tests showed nothing was wrong with his heart after he was hospitalized with chest pains.
Limbaugh, 58, was released from The Queen’s Medical Center two days after he was rushed there during a vacation. Doctors said he did not have a heart attack or heart disease.
“The pain was real, and they don’t know what caused it,” Limbaugh said, adding his best guess was he had a spasm in an artery.
Limbaugh said he was not taking painkillers.
In 2003, he acknowledged an addiction to painkillers for severe back pain and took a five-week leave from his radio show to enter rehab.
Chris Carlson, AP
Dr. Joana Magno, chief of the Dept. of Cardiovascular Diseases at The Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu, appears with Rush Limbaugh Friday to discuss his condition.
Limbaugh couldn’t resist a few political comments during his short news conference at the Honolulu hospital.
One appeared to be aimed at health care reform, when he said he got the best health treatment in the world “right here in the United States of America.”
“I don’t think there’s one thing wrong with the American health care system,” Limbaugh said. “I got no special treatment other than what anybody else that would have called 911 and had been brought in with the same kinds of symptoms.”
Caller after caller to his show Thursday sent get-well wishes. Friday’s show was a “Best of Rush” special.
In a poll last month, Americans called Limbaugh the nation’s most influential conservative voice. More than 14 million people listen to his show at least once a week, making him the nation’s highest-rated broadcaster.
Limbaugh called his health scare a “blessing in disguise.”
“It takes things like this in life maybe to prepare you for the eventuality that you are getting older, you’re not as young as you were, and not as invincible as you once thought you were,” he said.
Limbaugh said when he first felt the chest pain, he walked around, sat down then quickly called for help. He was in the hospital within 20 minutes.
Dr. Joana Magno, a cardiologist who treated Limbaugh at the hospital, urged people to call for help immediately if they think they have a heart problem.
“Time is very, very important, and the sooner you can get to the medical care for your heart, the sooner we know what the problems are and the sooner we can treat it,” Magno said.
Read the original article on Sphere
Written on December 31st, 2009 by jono shouts
By AUDREY McAVOY
Associated Press Writer
HONOLULU (AP) – Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh was taken to a hospital after suffering chest pains and was resting comfortably Wednesday, his radio program said in a statement.”Rush was admitted to and is resting comfortably in a Honolulu hospital today after suffering chest pains,” the statement said. “Rush appreciates your prayers and well wishes and will keep you updated via rushlimbaugh.com and on his radio program.”
Kit Carson, Limbaugh’s chief of staff, said he had no further information on Limbaugh’s condition.
He said the 58-year-old left for his usual Christmas vacation on Dec. 23 and is due to return to his show on Jan. 4. Carson didn’t have any information on whether that schedule would change.
Limbaugh’s three-hour weekday show is heard on some 600 radio stations across the country, and more than 14 million people listen to him at least once a week.
Honolulu television station KITV reported Wednesday that paramedics took Limbaugh to The Queens Medical Center in serious condition from the Kahala Hotel and Resort.
Limbaugh was seen golfing at Waialae Country Club—a country club next to the hotel—earlier this week, KITV said.
Americans said in a poll last month that Limbaugh was America’s most influential conservative voice.
With his sarcastic putdowns of liberal policies, off-color parodies and bombastic self-promotion, he began capturing conservative listeners in the 1980s and grew to become the highest-rated radio broadcaster in the U.S. Recently, he’s found a renewed purpose and has boosted ratings by railing against Barack Obama’s presidency.
In 2001, Limbaugh reported he had lost most of his hearing due to an autoimmune inner-ear disease. He had surgery to have an electronic device placed in his skull to restore his hearing.
Two years later Limbaugh acknowledged he was addicted to pain medicine. He blamed the addiction on severe back pain, and took a five-week leave from his radio show to enter rehab.
Read the original article on Breitbart with updates
Written on December 1st, 2009 by jono shouts
John Hawkins
Since he has been elected, Barack Obama has been like a four year old wearing water wings and desperately trying to reach the edge of the pool. In other words, he has been completely out of his depth. Who could have known that giving soaring speeches about “hope” and “change” while voting “present” on the tough issues wouldn’t be enough preparation for the most important job on Planet Earth — oh wait, millions of Americans knew that and pointed it out at every opportunity. Unfortunately, the media was too busy obsessing over Sarah Palin’s wardrobe and parody songs on the Rush Limbaugh show to actually consider whether or not a man whose biggest accomplishment was winning a Democratic primary against Hillary Clinton was qualified to be President.
Of course, we can debate Obama’s ideological decisions all day. Does the country need socialized medicine? Should he have pursued that staggeringly expensive stimulus program? Has he been applying enough pressure on Iran? The answers to those questions are no, no, and no — but, there’s a more important question we need to consider: does Barack Obama know what he’s doing?
Early on, the Obama Administration made a lot of foolish mistakes. Obama selected numerous tax cheats for his Cabinet. They gave the Russians a button that was supposed to say “reset”– but that actually said “overcharge.” They gave our best allies, the Brits, 25 DVDs of American movie classics — that were not only wildly inappropriate, but wouldn’t even play in their DVD players. Unfortunately, those early gaffes have not only continued; they’ve begun to have more serious policy implications.
1) What are we trying to do in Honduras? After Fidel Castro wannabe, Manuel Zelaya, started trying to engineer a rigged vote to overthrow democracy in Honduras, the rest of the government there sprang into action and bounced him right out of the country. Bizarrely, the Obama Administration sided with Zelaya and against democracy in that nation. Eventually, by making it known that they wouldn’t recognize the results of a new election, the Obama Administration seemed to have Honduras right where they wanted them: they appeared to be on the brink of putting Zelaya back in power. Puzzlingly, the Obama Administration then switched course on a dime and made it known that they’d accept the results of the election whether Zelaya was back in charge or not. In light of the change in American policy, Honduras went ahead with their elections without giving power back to Zelaya. There was no explanation for the Obama Administration’s original position, beyond catering to leftist thugs like Hugo Chavez, and no explanation of their radical shift at the last minute. If you can figure out what they were trying to accomplish, you should tell Obama. He’s probably still trying to figure it out.
2) Russia’s missile defense date dupe: It’s bad enough that Barack Obama, in a display of cowardice that would make Neville Chamberlain wretch, unhesitatingly tossed the Poles and Czechs over-the-side on missile defense in an effort to appease Russia. Keep in mind that when we first went into Iraq, Poland was one of only three other nations to actually put their troops in harm’s way to help us. Their repayment for that act of friendship and loyalty? We pulled back from building missile defense in their nation and made the announcement on the 70th anniversary of Poland’s invasion by Russia in return for…well, nobody seems to know. There was an unmistakable message that Russia wanted to send to the small Western European nations on its borders by making the announcement on that date: It was, “America can’t help you now. Russia owns you.” Their message was sent with Obama’s help as once again, he was played for a fool. Since then, Obama has backpeddled in an effort to fix the damage his bungling caused in the first place. It’s almost as if Obama has no coherent strategy, no idea what he’s doing, and is so far over his head that he doesn’t know which way is up. But, it couldn’t be that because if it were, Chris Matthews and the New York Times would be talking about it on a daily basis — right?
3) Putting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial in New York: No one seems to be able to give a coherent explanation for the decision making process behind this. Other terrorists are being put on trial at military tribunals, so why not Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? Why put someone through the American system of justice when both the President and Attorney General are publicly assuring everyone that no matter what happens, he can’t be found innocent and released? You think putting KSM in front of a military tribunal, where at least, theoretically he could be found innocent looks bad? Well now, we’re risking intelligence secrets getting out, increasing the risk of a terrorist attack on New York, and making it possible KSM might be acquitted on a technicality for a hearing that makes the greatest system of justice in the world look like a show trial cooked up by North Korea.
4) Cash for Clunkers: In a nutshell, the Cash for Clunkers program involved borrowing billions from the Chinese to incentivize Americans to destroy their working cars in order to buy brand new foreign cars. Although it’s debatable how accurate their data is, according to the Department of Transportation, 4 out of the top 5 models bought in the program were made by foreign car companies. Moreover, after the program ended, predictably, the sales of new cars dropped considerably because the program didn’t create new demand so much as cause people to buy a few months earlier than they would have anyway. In other words, not only did the program fritter away 3 billion dollars in borrowed money, it led to the destruction of more than a quarter-of-a-million functional cars that were bought and paid for by the government and could have been given to the poor or charity. The Obama Administration’s reaction to this debacle? They want to create a cash for appliances program. Will they ever, ever, ever learn anything?
5) Why all the bowing? Most Americans find the idea that they should bow to another person offensive and they find it even more galling when their President does it. It’s almost an insult by proxy. If even your leader is willing to admit he’s inferior, what does it say about you? Obama seemed to realize this mistake, albeit after the fact, when he bowed to the Saudi King. Weirdly, even though many Americans actually saw Obama bow on video, the White House simply denied that it happened. How much audacity do you need to lie about something that tens of millions of Americans have seen with their own eyes? Even after that experience, Obama went on, in a grotesque, servile fashion to bow to both the Emperor of Japan and the Chinese Prime Minister. It was a pointless, humiliating display that quite frankly, made many Americans embarrassed for him as a man and slightly ashamed that we have such a weakling in the White House.
Read the original article on Townhall.com
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Filed under Obama White House, Uncategorized
Tags:"hope" and "change", americans, Barack Obama, bowing, Cash for Clunkers, Hillary Clinton, Honduras, Inthrutheoutdoor, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Saudi King
Written on November 22nd, 2009 by jono shouts
Here is the letter.. published on Organizing For America..
Help push back against Sarah Palin and her allies
Friend—
Right now, Sarah Palin is on a highly publicized, nationwide book tour, attacking President Obama and his plan for health reform at every turn.
It’s dangerous. Remember, this is the person who coined the term “Death Panels”—and opened the flood gates for months of false attacks by special interests and partisan extremists.
Whatever lie comes next will be widely covered by the media, then constantly echoed by right-wing attack groups and others who are trying to defeat reform.
As we approach the final sprint on health reform, we can’t afford more deception and delay. We need to be ready for anything—and have the resources to respond with ads, events, and calls to Congress when the attacks come.
So we’re setting a big goal: $500,000 in the next week to help push back against Sarah Palin and her allies. Please chip in $5 or more to help reach our goal.
Earlier this month, Palin publicly said that she hopes health reform will be “dead on arrival.” And since then, she’s been working fiercely toward that goal.
On Tuesday, Palin went on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show where she outrageously—and falsely—suggested that Americans could “face jail time as punishment” if they don’t buy insurance.
Palin has many more interviews scheduled on Hannity and other conservative shows in the next few weeks, with more platforms to go after the President. As soon as she does, the rest of our opponents will likely parrot those attacks.
We need to be prepared. And we’re counting on you help. Can you chip in $5 or more?
Thanks,
Mitch
Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for America
Read the original copy on Canadian Free Press
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