Limbaugh Calls The Passage Of Health Care Reform "The Destruction Of America As Founded"
In the wake of the House of Representatives passing historic health care reform last night, Rush regurgitated his old fearmongering talking points today, as he scrambled to convince his audience that reform (or, as Rush likes to call it, the "utter disaster,") spelled the downfall of the country as we know it:Limbaugh is never right about anything. Maybe because he has mental problems or maybe it is connected to his abuse of alcohol and drugs over the years. Never the less his listeners are little sheeple that hang on every word he says without checking the facts. Just a small sample of things LimBo swore was true but were either lies of figments of his deeply disturbed imagination:
LIMBAUGH: We really are facing the prospect that our country will never be the same, if this stands. It will never be the same. And a majority of the American people understand it and know it and are outraged by this.
The Limboracle then prophesized that banning insurance companies from dropping Americans with pre-existing conditions will "bring down the health care system" because it "mandates the destruction of the private health care industry." He added that the bill is "simply the insurance companies being taken over by the government for the express purpose of putting them out of business," just in time to implement the public option that is waiting in the wings.
Limbaugh also couldn't resist repeating the tired falsehood that there is "federal funding for abortions in this bill." The only person who can properly sum our sentiments on this falsehood, is Limbaugh himself: "The lies that we have been told about what is in this bill and what's not in this bill, it is an utter disaster."
LIMBAUGH: "You know the Clintons send Chelsea to the Sidwell Friends private school.... A recent eighth grade class assignment required students to write a paper on 'Why I Feel Guilty Being White". '... My source for this story is CBS News. I am not making it up." (Radio show, quoted in the Chicago Sun-Times, 1/16/94.)
REALITY: When Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times called CBS, the network denied running such a story. Ellis Turner, the director of external affairs for Sidwell Friends, told Roeper: "There is no legitimacy to the story that has been circulating.... We're anxious to let people know that this story is not true." The essay topic would be particularly difficult for the 28 percent of the school's student body that is not white.
LIMBAUGH: Quotes President James Madison: "We have staked the future...upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God." (Told You So, p. 73)
REALITY: "We didn't find anything in our files remotely like the sentiment expressed in the extract you sent to us," David B. Mattern, the associate editor of The Madison Papers, told the Kansas City Star (1/16/94). "In addition, the idea is entirely inconsistent with everything we know about Madison's views on religion and government."
REALITY: Walsh won indictments against 14 people in connection with the Iran-Contra scandal including leading Reagan administration officials like former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and former national security advisers Robert McFarlane and John Poindexter. Of the 14, 11 were convicted or pleaded guilty. (Two convictions were later overturned on technicalities--including that of occasional Limbaugh substitute Oliver North.)
LIMBAUGH: Explaining why the Democrats wanted to "sabotage" President Bush with the 1990 budget deal: "Now, here is my point. In 1990, George Bush was president and was enjoying a 90 percent plus approval rating on the strength of our victories in the Persian Gulf War and Cold War." (Told You So, p. 304)
REALITY: In October 1990, when the budget deal was concluded the Gulf War had not yet been fought.
Conservatives like the late Ronald Reagan, who Republicans venerate as though he was a god said this about Medicare,
Ronald Reagan taped anti-Medicare message saying:
"One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism has been by way of medicine." He urged his listeners to write to Congress opposing Medicare and warned, "If you don't do this, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was like in American when men were free."
This spot was paid for by AMA and AMPAC, and played at Operation Coffee Cup coffees put on by doctors' wives.
Medicare continues to be a vital safety net for America's elderly and disabled. So much for fears of the big bad gov'mint taking over health care.
Conservatives during the Great Depression warned that Social Security would, like the passage of President Obama's health care reform, be the end of America,
Rep. James W. Wadsworth (R-NY), 1935:
This bill opens the door and invites the entrance into the political field of a power so vast, so powerful as to threaten the integrity of our institutions and to pull the pillars of the temple down upon the heads of our descendants.
Social Security, like Medicare has become an integral part of the safety net that protects average Americans. The people that conservatives pay a lot of lip service to, but never actually do anything to protect their interests.
