Day: April 15, 2009

Just as Jon posts on Rush Limbaugh’s mental gymnastics (the only kind we’ll ever see him do) to find something to criticize Pres. Obama over, a new poll shows just as how out in right field the Portulant Guy is.

Nearly nine-out-of-10 voters (89%) nationwide approve of President Obama’s decision to use Navy SEALs to rescue U.S. commercial ship captain Richard Phillips by killing his Somali pirate kidnappers. Phillips was being held hostage after the pirates botched an attempt to hijack his ship. Just three percent (3%) disapprove.

Rush’s own team is even more on Obama’s side on this one.

Ninety-six percent (96%) of Republicans, 91% of unaffiliateds and 83% of Democrats approve of the decision to rescue the captain by killing the kidnappers.

Limbaugh’s latest tirade, defending the pirates as “teenagers” who were “upset” and “just wanted out of there,” comes at a particularly bad time for mouth-breathers. Many on the political right (and by many we mean, actually, many) are questioning the leaders of the so-called conservative movement, which has lost itself in social issues and can’t seem to find a working target in Obama. FOX News is drawing the most attention.

[…]

GOP party boss Rush Limbaugh is no longer content merely to wish that Pres. Obama, and thus the U.S. government, will fail. Now he’s also expressing sympathy for enemies of the country — specifically the hijackers who threatened the lives of American merchant marines on the Maersk Alabama last week:

They were kids. The story is out, I don’t know if it’s true or not, but apparently the hijackers, these kids, the merchant marine organizers, Muslim kids, were upset, they wanted to just give the captain back and head home because they were running out of food, they were running out of fuel, they were surrounded by all these U.S. Navy ships, big ships, and they just wanted out of there. That’s the story, but then when one of them put a gun to the back of the captain, Mr. Phillips, then bam, bam, bam. There you have it, and three teenagers shot on the high seas at the order of President Obama.

And then Limbaugh made this (typically) factually challenged assertion:

If only President Obama had known that the three Somali community organizers were actually young black Muslim teenagers, I’m sure he wouldn’t have given the order to shoot. That’s the correct way to look at it. If only Obama had known.

It is well known — and there is no doubt Pres. Obama’s security advisers knew it — that Somalia is, by law, nearly 100 percent Muslim. In fact, the Somali constitution specifically discourages the influence of any other religion.

So Rush is wrong as usual — the president and his team had to know the pirates were Muslim. The main point, of course, is that their religious faith was irrelevant to the fact that they were hijackers who were holding an American citizen captive.

Update: Some have claimed that the quote is taken out of context. The above is from the second paragraph of the transcript of Rush’s remarks from his site. In the spirit of fair play — which we should never expect from Rush or his ilk, for what it’s worth — here is the first paragraph:

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Most viewers of This Week with George Stephanopoulos were surprised Stephanopoulos began the Easter Sunday broadcast with this announcement.

Exhaustion? Isn’t that the diagnosis Hollywood types use as a euphemism for “wasted on drugs” or “too drunk to perform?” And now Pastor Rick had this very malady? So it ain’t so, Rick!

We admit it probably isn’t, but the only other explanation that comes to mind is the third condition “exhaustion” is often used to shield, and that’s dodging the press and public when you’ve done or said something you will never, ever get away with. It’s this category into which the good pastor’s illness most likely falls.

Jon told us how Warren recently appeared on Larry King Live and denied campaigning last year in favor of California’s Proposition 8, which banned same sex marriage. That abundant video evidence exists to the contrary must not have occurred to Warren, at least until after the broadcast, when it was all over T.V. and the web. Had Warren kept his date with This Week, no doubt much of the interview would have been devoted to explaining what Warren said versus what your lying eyes and ears were telling you.

Now Politico has a statement from the Warren camp that only makes the pastor look lamer.

“My understanding was that Dr. Warren’s condition was related to fatigue and exhaustion — which affected his voice — exacerbated by inhalation of fumes from the newly refurbished (but still drying) pulpit used in the televised services the previous night. After initially informing George Stephanopoulos of his inability to pre-tape on Saturday, I put him directly in touch with his chief-of-staff after doctor consultation to pursue the remote possibility of an early [Sunday] AM pre-tape. That turned out to not be a possibility as he had to cancel half of his sermons today, though he was able to preach several of the six services at which he was scheduled to preach.

“There has been a lot of blog chatter trying to connect the dots with the interviews this weekend and comments Dr. Warren made on CNN Larry King Live, but his cancellations were related to health and fatigue…. I was looking forward to the opportunity for him to clarify his position with Messrs. Stephanopoulos and Huckabee (the latter with whom he was to interview live at 2:45 PM EDT on Saturday) to reframe the picture for television viewers the way we had been trying to do on a per-inquiry basis with print outlets by sending out the statement below:

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“Fox News has a fever. And the only prescription is… More tea bagging!!!”

— Progress Florida via twitter

h/t to Kenneth Quinnell