A lot of attention from the mainstream media has focused on the misleading and error-prone facts Senator John McCain is using in campaign ads. Radio talk show host, Rush Limbaugh, on the other hand, is enjoying three hours of pure and unadulterated lying and slander.
Limbaugh told listeners today that, "Obama wants to get rich, and he wants [vice presidential candidate Senator Joe] Biden to get rich, and he wants his Democratic friends to get rich, but he doesn't want you to get any money."
Senator Obama's tax plan would give 81 percent of all households and 95 percent of households with kids a tax cut. Rush Limbaugh is one of the roughly 7 people who would see their taxes rise under an Obama presidency.
And even if Barack Obama wanted to get rich, who is Limbaugh to criticize him? Limbaugh lives chantilly-lace and foppy decadently like the Marquis de Sade in his castle at Lacoste.
His salon is meant to suggest Versailles. "His main guest suite," according to a New York Times Magazine reporter, "which I did not personally inspect, was designed as an exact replica of the presidential suite of the George V Hotel in Paris." He just bought a Gulfstream G550 worth $54 million.
He makes $38 million a year.
Not a single Limbaugh listener has any idea how rich it is to be Rush Limbaugh. The man is the walking incarnate of greed itself--and he feigns populist irascibility with Senator Obama for a supposed desire to get rich...which is a Limbaugh-invented scam idea in the first place. His fabrications mask a deeper profit motive, to make as much money as possible avoiding higher taxes, much of whose revenue is going to fund the troops.
Limbaugh went on to suggest that Obama gained his wealth from some sort of a shadowy Democratic racket in Chicago. He kept repeating, "If you want to get rich, get a Tony Rezko." He mentioned Barack Obama's nice home in Illinois as if Rezko and Obama scammed the system and got Obama a house in Illinois. Simply not true.
Limbaugh has also strained the limits of reason and logic over the last few days to place the blame for the collapse of Freddie Mae and Fannie Mac at the feet of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Bill Clinton. "We're living in anything but a free market," he is telling his listeners, arguing all the more strenuously for a president who will de-regulate the market...John McCain.
Where are the mechanisms to control the outright falsehoods and lies spewed out across the airwaves every day?
He is essentially arguing that Democrats engineered the government take-over of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, when it was President Bush's administration that came up with the plan to throw billions of our tax dollars at the reckless institutions that lacked oversight and control throughout Bush's presidency.
The collapse of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae was like the collapse of the levies in New Orleans. Bush and his administration saw it coming and he let it happen. Hundreds of scam artists got rich off of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and there will never be investigations; there will never be accountability. The indignity and outrage is not for Limbaugh. It is for us, dammit. He promotes a political agenda that ushers in these scandals, and someone needs to hold him accountable.
Finally, Limbaugh told his listeners last Wednesday at the top of his second hour of broadcasting that "The head that needs to roll is Obama's." How does he get away with this sort of rhetoric on a nationally syndicated radio program?
David Axelrod and David Plouffe need to make sure that Obama is hitting back hard on Limbaugh. Limbaugh needs to be held accountable, otherwise, 15 million listeners are saturated with uncontested lies three hours a day. Put Limbaugh on the defensive...he'll start spending more time talking about himself than about Obama.
