I think taking a day off between Rush sessions is good for my health. Need time to recuperate, so that tone of voice isn’t echoing in my brain all night as I try to sleep.

I joined a few minutes late, and I have to admit that the first thing I heard Rush say made me chuckle and nod my head: “Politics is just showbiz for the ugly.”

Not to worry, though, he got annoying quick. Rush mentions “a so-called poll—” here he effects an annoying mock laugh— “from the USA Today saying that Americans want Democrats and Republicans to work together.”

Wow, two days in a row. Is this a consistent pattern with Rush? He seems to have a genuine hypocrisy about which poll numbers he believes are credible. “We know at the end of the day [the Democrats] are going to govern against the will of the American people.”

The Friedman is Dumb

This hour’s target: New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Rush plays, twice, a quote from Friedman concerning the Chinese president’s visit to Washington: “There’s only one thing worse than one-party autocracy—the Chinese system—and that’s one-party democracy.” Friedman’s larger point is that a majority-rule party finds things hard to accomplish if the minority party is constantly “sticking a spoke in its wheels,” whereas the rulers of an autocracy have the potential to execute their “vision.”

 

I’ll go on and give Rush a point here. Thomas Friedman doesn’t come across too smartly. And it’s a juicy morsel for Rush to savor: “To the ruling-class types…” and here Rush leans into the microphone, “…that is the essence of unique brilliance.” Well, maybe not, but it’s easy to tie a wacky quote like that to the notion that liberals would like nothing better than to enact socialist tyranny.

Meanwhile at the Death Panels…

“Obamacare just got a shellacking, folks.” (The House voted was 245-199 in favor of repeal, a larger margin than they got in passing it.) Of course it’s a pretty safe bet, if you’re a swing-district Democrat, to be able to vote in favor of repeal when you know the entire repealing initiative is a dead end. But a vote is a vote.

And then he pulls his patented Rush move (you might be noticing a pattern here): citing polls which show Americans are strongly in favor of repealing health-care reform. I don’t want to beat Rush at his own game or anything, but those polls are pretty specious:

The pollsters first asked people whether they support the law, and found that 45 percent back it, while 50 percent oppose it and 5 percent have no opinion. That latter 55 percent were then offered a range of options as to what they would prefer be done. The breakdown:

Repeal all of it: 18

Repeal parts of it: 19

Wait and see: 17

Less than one in five support full repeal.

I know what you’re going to say, and the answer is, I provided data.

But anyway.

Closing Facepalm

Sadly my designated hour of Rush-listening ends just as Rush begins mocking, yet again, the notion that checking your tire pressure is a good way to reduce pollution and our dependence on oil. The absolutely correct, true, factual, well-documented notion.

But it ties beautifully into my Rush quote of the day. Y’all might want to get your palms ready, though.

“Lord, my friends. We are surrounded by genuine, institutional ignorance!”

…