Fun_People Archive
6 May
Some documented "Wisdom for the Ages" from Rush

Date: Sat,  6 May 95 02:40:57 PDT
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Some documented "Wisdom for the Ages" from Rush

Forwarded-by: bostic@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
From: FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting)

Rush, on attacking people that can fight back:

	On his TV show in 1993, he put up a picture of Socks, the White
	House cat, and said: "Did you know there's a White House dog?"
	And then he put up a picture of Chelsea Clinton, who was 13 years
	old and as far as I know had never done any harm to anyone.
		-- Molly Ivins

Rush, the scientist:

	"Even if polar ice caps melted, there would be not rise in ocean
	levels... After all, if you have a glass of water with ice cubs
	in it, as the ice melts, it simply turns to liquid and the water
	level in the glass remains the same." (Radio, 6/19/92)

	+ Most of the ice in the world is on land, in Antarctica.  If that
	ice cap melted, sea level around the world would rise about 200
	feet, producing catastrophic results.  (Dr. Donald Blankenship,
	University of Texas Institute for Geophysics, New York Times,
	2/23/93)

	"There are more acres of forest land in America today than when
	Columbus discovered the continent in 1492." (Told You So, p. 1971)
	"Do you know we have more acreage of forest land in the United
	States today than we did at the time the Constitution was
	written?" (Radio, 2/18/94)

	+ The forest land before European settlement in what are now the
	50 states covered about 1 billion acres, according to U.S.  Forest
	Service historian, Douglas MacCleery.  (American Forests) The vast
	majority of this forest still stood at the end of the eighteenth
	century -- roughly 930 million acres.  (Encyclopedia of America
	Forest and Conservation History)  Today, there are only 737
	million acres of forest land, much of which lacks the ecological
	diversity of the original old-growth forest.  (American Forests)

	Responding to an environmentalist's call for a ban on throwaway
	Styrofoam packaging, Limbaugh declared: "Styrofoam and plastic
	milk jugs are biodegradable!  Do you know what isn't
	biodegradable? Paper!"  (Radio, 6/15/91)  A week later, when
	listener Michael Corman sent Limbaugh a letter refuting this
	claim, Limbaugh derided the letter on the air: "I never said that
	Styrofoam is biodegradable."  Weeks after that, when Corman
	managed to get on the air, Limbaugh moved back to his earlier
	claim: "Well, it doesn't happen in a lifetime, Mike, that's the
	trouble with you enviro-Nazis, you want everything to happen in
	your lifetime!  You can't live for 2,000 years to see if it might
	degrade.  We don't know.  Nobody does.  It hasn't been tested."

	+ The biodegradability of polystyrene (commonly called Styrofoam)
	has been tested.  It's a "virtually indestructible
	non-biodegradable plastic," according to Chemical Marketing
	Reporter (2/12/90).  Paper, by contrast, is made of cellulose,
	which can be digested by bacteria under proper conditions.

	"There is no conclusive proof that nicotine's addictive. ...
	And the same thing with cigarettes causing emphysema, lung
	cancer, heart disease."  (Radio, 4/29/94)

	+ Nicotine's addictiveness has been reported in medical literature
	since the turn of the century.  Surgeon General C. Everett Koop's
	618-page 1988 report on nicotine addiction left no doubts on the
	subject.  ... As for cigarettes causing diseases such as lunch
	cancer and emphysema: "Today the scientific base linking smoking
	to a number of chronic diseases is overwhelming, with a total of
	50,000 studies from dozens of countries," states Encyclopedia
	Britannica's 1987 "Medical and Health Annual."

Rush, the economist:

	"Kansas City per capita now has more people working for government
	than they have working in the private sector, so it's a perfect
	place for the president to go.  That's -- it's a true story.  Now
	when you combine the city, state, federal, and all -- more people
	work for government there than work in the private sector." (TV,
	6/15/94)

	+ In the Kansas City metropolitan area, 45,000 out of
	approximately 850,000 works are employed by the federal, state
	and local governments -- about 5 percent of total works.  (The
	New Republic, 8/8/94)

	"Banks take the risks in issuing student loans and they are
	entitled to the profits."  (Radio; FRQ, Summer/93)

	+ Banks take no risks in issuing student loans, which are
	federally insured.

	"Why were people better educated before the American Revolution
	with no public funding than in 1993, when we are spending in
	excess of $100,000 per classroom?"  (Told You So, p. 76)

	+ Before the Revolution, the overwhelming majority of Americans
	were illiterate.

Rush, the man of the people:

	"You better pay attention to the 1993 budget deal because there is
	an increase in beer and alcohol taxes."  (Radio, 7/9/93)

	+ The 1993 budget deal contained no increase in beer and alcohol
	taxes -- either in its final version or the versions that had
	passed the House and Senate at the time Limbaugh made this remark.

	"Let me tell you about imputed income.  Let's say you own a home
	and you live in it, but you could, if you wanted to, rent it for,
	say, $200 a month.  Two hundred times 12 is $2,400.  Under Bill
	Clinton you will have to add $2,400 to your total income because
	that's the imputed value of your asset and then pay taxes on it.
	Not making this up."  (TV, 2/25/93)

	+ He certainly was.  Although imputed income has long been used
	to determine economic statistics, no one has ever had to pay taxes
	on it, and Clinton never proposed that anyone should.

Rush, the protector of the underdog:

	"I don't give a hoot that [Columbus] gave some Indians a disease
	that they didn't have immunity against."  (Ought to Be, p. 45)

	"On the endangered Northern Spotted Owl: "If the owl can't adapt
	to the superiority of humans, screw it."  (Ought to Be, p. 162)

	"There are more American Indians alive today than there were when
	Columbus arrived or at any other time in history.  Does this sound
	like a record of genocide?"  (Told You So, p. 68)

	+ According to Carl Shaw of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs,
	estimates of the pre-1492 population of what later became the
	United States range from 5 million to 15 million.  After centuries
	of European diseases, war, massacres, forced resettlement, and
	planned starvation, Native populations fell to 250,000 in the late
	nineteenth century.  Today, fewer than 2 million people in the
	United States claim Indian ancestry, according to the Census
	Bureau.

	In praise of Senator Strom Thurmond (who'd called a gay soldier
	"not normal"): "He's not encumbered by being politically
	correct. ...  If you want to know what America used to be -- and
	a lot of people wish it still were -- then you listen to Strom
	Thurmond."  (TV, 9/1/94)

	+ In the America that "used to be," Thurmond was one of the
	country's strongest voices for racism, running for president in
	1948 on the slogan "Segregation Forever."

	"Women were doing quite well in this country before feminism
	came along."  (Radio; FRQ, Summer/93)

	+ Before feminism "came along" in the late nineteenth century,
	women couldn't even vote.

	"Columbus saved the Indians from themselves."  (Radio, Flush Rush)

	+ Columbus had the most direct impact on the Taino Arawaks,
	Indians who lived on the island of Hispaniola, where he served as
	the first Spanish governor.  Within a few years of Columbus's
	arrival, tens of thousands of Tainos were dead, through murder,
	mutilation and suicide.  With a few decades, conquest and slavery
	had exterminated almost the whole native population on the island,
	which modern historians estimate at between 60,000 and 250,000
	inhabitants in 1492.  (See A People's History of the United
	States, Howard Zinn; London Times, 5/6/93)

	"On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail.  It carried a total
	of 102 passengers, including 40 Pilgrims led by William Bradford.
	On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract that
	established just and equal laws for all members of their new
	community, irrespective of their religious beliefs."  (Told You
	So, p. 70)

	+ The Mayflower carried not 40, but 78, Puritan Separatists
	(Pilgrims).  Limbaugh neglected to count the 38 Pilgrim women and
	children on board.  Their leader was not William Bradford, but
	John Carver.  The Mayflower Compact, composed by Bradford, said
	nothing about religious tolerance. In fact, it declared that the
	colony was intended to serve "the Glory of God and advancement of
	the Christian faith."  Though referring to "just and equal laws,"
	the compact did not provide political or property rights for women
	or servants.  It was signed by the 40 males that made it into
	Limbaugh's history.

Rush, the lawyer:

	"There's no such thing as an implied contract." (Radio; FRQ,
	Spring/93)

	+ Every first-year law student knows there is.  (Corbin on Contracts)

	"There is a law that's coming down, a regulation from the Equal
	Employment Opportunity Commission, which says that if you have a
	Bible at your desk at work, then you are guilty of religious
	harassment." (TV, 6/9/94)

	+ That very day EEOC Executive Director Douglas Gallegos testified
	before a Senate subcommittee and declared that having a Bible on
	your desk is protected speech.  (The New Republic, 8/8/94)

		-- FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), "The
		   Way Things Aren't".

© 1995 Peter Langston