Oh boy, is Rush Limbaugh in trouble. This time he’s gone too far!
For at least two days earlier this week the lefty media and blogosphere have been abuzz with two different statements that he made w.r.t. the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
First is Rush’s claim that environmentalist wackos blew up the oil rig on purpose in order to show the country that off-shore drilling is too detrimental to the environment and should be immediately stopped. Chris Hayes of The Nation, Anderson Cooper on CNN, Joy-less Behar of ABC and somewhere else, Stephen Colbert on MSWTF, some Brown chick. And that’s just folks talking on TV. The lefty e-zines from Mother Jones to the Atlantic are discussing it too. Oh yeah, and Chris Matthews on his show reported that Rush suspected the Obama administration of sabotaging the oil rig to advance their environmentalist agenda.
Except for one small problem: Rush never said any of those things. He was merely wondering out loud (on April 29 and some other subsequent days) why the Obama administration sent SWAT teams out there to investigate the exploded oil rig and that perhaps they suspected some sort of sabotage.
As to Chris Matthews statement that Rush was implicating the Obama administration itself, he was clearly confused by the fact that while discussing Obama’s decision to send SWAT teams, he noted that the sequence of events was quite curious: The oil rig exploding on Earth Day, the administration taking over a week to respond to the crisis while the oil gushed, and then sending SWAT teams out there (not before they sent attorneys). If anything, Rush was questioning the type and timing of the adminstration’s response to the rig explosion, and not that the administration plotted the explosion itself!
Here is exactly what Rush said on April 29:
RUSH: Wow. All right, so SWAT teams, we’re sending big sis down there, Janet Napolitano, to look at all the valves and stuff, make sure they’re properly greased. He-he-he-he. Ahem. And Lisa Jackson is doing the same thing. So obviously the regime is open to the idea that this is not an accident. The regime is open to the possibility that this could well have been on purpose. Don’t forget, the original Earth Day, 40 years ago, was inspired by the river in Cleveland catching fire. Forty years later, the day before Earth Day this year, the Gulf is on fire. Coincidence? Jury’s still out. The regime is on the case, soon to tell us what happened.
I want to get back to the timing of the blowing up, the explosion out there in the Gulf of Mexico of this oil rig. Since they’re sending SWAT teams down there now this changes the whole perspective of this. Now, lest we forget, ladies and gentlemen, the carbon tax bill, cap and trade that was scheduled to be announced on Earth Day. I remember that. And then it was postponed for a couple of days later after Earth Day, and then of course immigration has now moved in front of it. But this bill, the cap-and-trade bill, was strongly criticized by hardcore environmentalist wackos because it supposedly allowed more offshore drilling and nuclear plants, nuclear plant investment. So, since they’re sending SWAT teams down there, folks, since they’re sending SWAT teams to inspect the other rigs, what better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig? I’m just noting the timing here.
You will note that Rush himself admits that he never even suspected foul play until the administration announced it was sending out a SWAT team. Why would one be sent out to an explosed oil rig unless the Obama administration suspected criminal or terroristic involvement? But the Obamedia from Matthews to Colbert to Behar twisted Rush’s words and/or put new words in his mouth in order to impugn him.
I don’t think Rush is wrong at all to think out loud about the timing. His prediction of anti-oil rhetoric was borne out when eventaully folks like the loony RFK, Jr. and Ahhnold the governator were declaring, “That’s it. No more oil drilling! It’s too dangerous.” Plus, all this was set against the background of the c(r)ap-and-tax bill.
This is a conspiracy theory lefties should appreciate! Compared to all the conspiracies propogated by the Democrat-media complex about the Bush administration and 9/11, the Bush administration and the War in Iraq, and the Bush administration and Hurricane Katrina, this one is a no-brainer.
Again, like Rush I’m not accusing the Obama administration of plotting the explosion although I am questioning both the type and timing of their response. And I’m wondering—as Rush did—whether or not this curious sequence of events is coincidental.
Anyway, Rush is in trouble with the mainstream media for another thing: for the claim that is oil is natural just like water is (!) and for saying we shouldn’t do anything to clean up the spill because the ocean will do it itself.
How callous. How uncaring.
Except for one small problem: Rush didn’t say those things either (the second part, that is - that we shouldn’t do anything about it.)
Here is what Rush said, also on April 29:
Our official climatologist, Dr. Roy Spencer has just sent me something. I’ve been wondering about this. He must have been reading my mind. We’ve got 5,000 barrels a day being spilled from the rig, and Dr. Spencer looked into it. … There’s natural seepage into oceans all over the world from the ocean floor of oil—and the ocean’s pretty tough, it just eats it up. Dr. Spencer looked into this. You know the seepage from the floor of the Gulf is exactly 5,000 barrels a day, throughout the whole Gulf of Mexico now. …
You do survive these things. I’m not advocating don’t care about it hitting the shore or coast and whatever you can do to keep it out of there is fine and dandy, but the ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone and was left out there. It’s natural. It’s as natural as the ocean water is.
So there you have it. Two items that the Obamedia has gone batty with for days impugning Rush for saying, except he never said them.
Nope, no liberal media bias here!
Here is Rush addressing the media frenzy and trying to set the record straight. The first clip is from Tuesday May 4; the second one from Wednesday the 5th:
[Edited for long silences, commercial breaks, and extraneous talking]
(Download here)
(Download here)
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