Derision of the president on his program is nothing new, but Rush Limbaugh’s tone today may have struck the ears of regular listeners as particularly disdainful, taking his contempt of the president to a new level. The nation’s preeminent conservative talk radio host referred to Mr. Obama as a “jackass,” an “economic illiterate” and an “idiot, where capitalism is concerned.”

The rough stuff came during a monologue on the president’s position on extending the Bush tax cuts to all but the top two percent of wage earners. Obama, Limbaugh says, is an “economic ignoramus” for not understanding how a “tax increase” on the wealthy won’t stimulate growth.

Quoting an AP article from yesterday, Limbaugh pointed out Obama’s remarks at a meeting of his Economic Recovery Advisory Board that the wealthy would “take our ball and go home” if their tax cuts aren’t extended. Limbaugh then addressed the following line to the president directly:

“Mr. Obama, our imam-child, they have already taken their trillion dollar ball home, and they’re sitting on it, you jackass.”




  1. Olo Baggins of Bywater says:

    Alfred: that Frank/Dodd thing happened well before 2006…the Dem congress. Was Bush in charge then, or not? Are you saying that the minority party was in control?

    Or, all good is Bush’s to claim, all bad is someone else’s fault. Conservative principles, my ass.

  2. TThor says:

    The truth is being told – Obama is an economic illiterate. Period. Barnake is as well. The Keynesians are defeated, their economic theories does not work, has never worked and will never work. Right now it is fiat money killing everybody and everything. Confidence is close to zero. The US is on the verge of becoming a banana republic for Gods sake. Wake up! The White House layer runs the country like the Politburo. As if that is a solution. It won’t work. Reality bites. Viscously.
    And as Ron paul predicted, the USD is sliding down fast…the exchange rates are horrible! And guess who will be paying? YOU! Not Washington, not Big Biz but you – poor slaves.

  3. Rightwing Nutjob says:

    #61

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t lefties the scum (applies to all lefties: lefty girls are basically guys in drag) who spent 8 long years yelling, whining, moaning, bitching, kvetching, and screaming at the top of their lungs that dissent is healthy and patriotic, and that “Bush isn’t my president” and so on? What changed?

    And that’s not even starting on the racism, classism, paranoid delusions, puerile insults, etc.

  4. Greg Allen says:

    >> Alfred Persson said, on October 5th, 2010 at 6:30 pm
    >>Typical Progressive cult, stroke each other by piling on Rush, without discussing the basic premise of his argument.
    >> Self interest.
    >> Human being operate, perform, because its in their self interest.
    >> Obama threatens the profits from any investment, therefore he gets no investment.

    Talk about a cult! This is typical libertarian cult nonsense.

    1) Narrow self-interested isn’t the only think that motivates people.
    2) A mild tax increase THAT IS STILL LOWER THAN UNDER REAGAN is hardly going to make people stop working!

    You gotta be nuts to even suggest that.

  5. Greg Allen says:

    >> # 68 Rightwing Nutjob said, on October 6th, 2010 at 6:30 am
    >> who spent 8 long years yelling, whining, moaning, bitching, kvetching, and screaming at the top of their lungs that dissent is healthy and patriotic, and that “Bush isn’t my president” and so on? What changed?

    This didn’t happen. We mainstream left disagreed with Bush ON POLICY. There was no screaming or whateverthehell is kvetching.

    We had nothing on the left like Limbaugh, Beck and the Tea Party.

    Yes, on the left we have an extreme nutcase stupidass tiny fringe — but THIS IS THE GOP MAINSTREAM.

    Your false parity is just that — TOTALLY IN YOUR IMAGINATION. And you claim it in an attempt to deny how unhinged, stupid and mean your party has become.

  6. Greg Allen says:

    >> TThor said, on October 6th, 2010 at 6:19 am
    >> The truth is being told – Obama is an economic illiterate. Period

    He. He. As if, saying “Period” made your totally ignorant and false statement undebatable!

    Your economic declaration are so wrong and nutty, there is no way to debate them.

    To suggest that Keynesian economics didn’t get us out of the first Republican Great Depression is just bizzarro world.

    You can have your own opinions but you aren’t allowed your own facts.

  7. Greg Allen says:

    >> scadragon said, on October 5th, 2010 at 5:12 pm
    >> Obama IS a jackass. What’s the question?

    Undermining a war-time president is traitorous.

    Why do you and Limbaugh hate the troops and want the terrorists to win?

  8. orizzle says:

    where is kanye?

  9. Greg Allen says:

    >> freddybobs68k said, on October 6th, 2010 at 5:56 am
    >>>> #58 Benjamin
    >>>> “The top two percent are not going to produce as much and therefore provide jobs if they get taxed more for their effort.”
    >> There’s your error.
    >> If I’m taxed a bit more do I work less?

    Exactly right Freddy,

    Can you believe how propogandized and out-of-touch with reality they supply siders are?

    The other reality THEY COMPLETELY HAVE NO CLUE ABOUT is that fact that taxes are absolutely needed for free enterprise and capitalism.

    Limbaugh made his fortune off the FCC, for example.

    Without the FCC there would be no commercial radio — it would pirate radio. Limbaugh would be nothing more than some crank with a CB radio.

    This is true for virtually ALL business. Without taxes, government, regulations and government-built and maintained infrastructure we’d be like Somalia or Pakistan. Carly Fiorina would — at best — would be running a 8’x8′ shop in some primitive market somewhere.

  10. jman says:

    how is this news? I hear at least 10 people a day call him this and worse.

  11. Rightwing Nutjob says:

    #70 > This didn’t happen. We mainstream left
    >disagreed with Bush ON POLICY. There was no
    >screaming or whateverthehell is kvetching.

    Yeah. It did. We both know you leftists harped on and on and on with that crap. No need for denial. It started on day 1. “Not my president” because I disagree on this or that policy. “Not my president” because I’m a sore loser. “Not my president” this, “not my president” that.

    And, yeah, “Bushitler”, monkey cartoons, whinging because he is white, whinging because his family is rich, calling him a drug addict, describing him as retarded, and on and on, yeah, that’s a disagreement on policy. Seriously, you believe yourself??

    > We had nothing on the left like Limbaugh,
    > Beck and the Tea Party.

    Olbermann, Maddow and the Obamacult. Of course, the first two are unqualified ignoramuses and the Obamatrons were basically a bunch of welfare bums and naive idiots. But otherwise it’s kind of the same. Except they have successfully had a vastly destructive effect on the country.

    > Your false parity is just that — TOTALLY IN
    > YOUR IMAGINATION. And you claim it in an
    > attempt to deny how unhinged, stupid and mean
    > your party has become.

    I wasn’t trying to say it was equal, since leftists are basically an angry rabid horde who will surround and shout down anything that they disagree with. Not really something anyone aspires to, let alone wants to beat.

    P.S. You mentioned your ignorance so I tried not to use too many big words for you this time.

  12. MikeN says:

    Rush was just referring to the symbol of the Democratic Party, of which Obama is a member.
    IT is no more controversial or offensive than saying Bush is an elephant.

  13. Ah_Yea says:

    Or Bush was the “Chimp in Chief”

    How many lefties would HOWL if we said that about Obama?

  14. JMRouse says:

    #65 – Sea Lawyer

    Except it’s not “Post hoc ergo propter hoc.” If people are making the case that tax cuts for the wealthy lead to more jobs and a better economy then it is fair to look at history and see if this is true. Bush gave tax cuts to the wealthy. These tax cuts didn’t stimulate the economy.

    A true example of “post hoc ergo propter hoc” would be if I made a statement like this: “Crime rates are higher when there is a full moon. This makes it clear that full moons are having an adverse effect on the population and making people more likely to commit crimes.”

    Also, you avoided actually answering the question. Good job.

  15. Olo Baggins of Bywater says:

    #76 it’s still false-equivalence. There was no mainstream outlet for the liberal nuts who did some wacky stuff…it existed on the extreme fringes, mentioned then forgotten. That Bush-Hitler ad was an anomaly, unknown and recently conflated to justify the widespread hate coming from the right these days. “Liberals” didn’t do that…..a guy did, and it went nowhere until the right pulled it out of obscurity.

    The hate that spews from the right-wing media is everywhere, all the time, all over AM radio and Fox News. Several hours of hate each and every day from Fox news. It will continue until there’s an old religious white republican in the white house.

    There is no objective comparison. You don’t get to create new facts to suit a bad argument.

  16. Sam says:

    Well it’s clear, it to took 30 years but the Republicans and the Christian Right with there parochial school madras’s have successfully trashed public education and the THINKING minds of many people in America.

    It’s the only explanation for some of the incredibly ignorant and uninformed views. Rush knows it and he has used it to lead so many by the nose with his propaganda in an attempt to maintain his power and influence. He despises the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and anyone that would return power to the people of America in favor of big money (corporations) and big power. He is simply a Fascist!

    Fascism: is a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy. ( ie. Screw the individual, screw freedom and screw democracy)

    Is that what you want?

  17. Thomas says:

    #38
    Yes, I am fully aware of the AMT (have hit it myself. Thankfully they adjusted it for inflation). The AMT only accounts for taxable income. If you run a Schedule C with 100 million in revenue and 99 million in expenses, your AMT cost is a fraction of your total income. The AMT really does not go far when you are talking about the upper 1%. The way that rich pay less tax is to have less income directly attributed to them. They own corporations which write-off “purchases” as business expenses that in effect go to the owner.

    Whether you want to admit or not, the rich will find ways of avoiding very high tax rates. You can bitch about it all you want, but that is the reality. Calling in “Anti-America” is simply childish. It’s the kind of thing I’d expect to hear from a Republican or Tea Party person but not you.

    You seem to forget that there was a time when *only* the super rich (the upper 1%) were the ones that paid any income tax. Now it is mostly paid by the people in the upper 50%-80% range. Again, if you think increasing taxes on the rich is good, why not stop at 39%? Why not 50%? Why not 80%?

    #45
    Actually, the 16th Amendment does not afford the Federal government the power to tax income. That authority has always existed according to the courts (despite the “no direct tax” clause in the Constitution).

    #60
    If I’m taxed a bit more do I work less?

    Check. If that’s the case, we should tax everyone at 90%. Think how hard they will work.

  18. Thomas says:

    #71
    To suggest that Keynesian economics didn’t get us out of the first Republican Great Depression is just bizzarro world.

    Actually, no it did not. Roosevelt practiced Keynesian economics for eight years with no results. It wasn’t until WWII that we got out of the Great Depression. You cannot spend your way out of recession. The Federal government has almost no power to stimulate the economy. However, it has an unlimited ability to make it worse. The best that it can achieve is to not make it worse.

    #74
    fact that taxes are absolutely needed for free enterprise and capitalism.

    That’s a strawman. No one argues that taxes and government are not needed for capitalism. No one. The question is not *whether* taxes are needed, but rather *how much* tax is needed. The Federal government has a much larger spending problem than revenue problem. It is simply disingenuous to say that the Federal government needs more money after the porkulus bill. They need more money so they can give it back to us as they wish at pennies on the dollar? Ridiculous.

    I’ll believe that the Federal government needs more money when it actually balances its budget for say four years straight. Do that and convince me of a specific need for which additional revenue is necessary and then I might be on board for increased taxes.

  19. Sea Lawyer says:

    #JMRouse,

    You challenged the idea that tax cuts for the weathly stimulate the economy by offering as evidence that the economy crashed after the Bush tax cuts. In truth, the economy crashing says nothing about whether or not tax cuts stimulated growth, when there are thousands of other variables involved. But your simpleton question doesn’t take that into account at all.

  20. Dallas says:

    #83 ..The Federal government has almost no power to stimulate the economy

    Whaaaa? I can think of one. Begins with W

  21. Sam says:

    #82/83

    http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php

    In 1918, tax rates were raised again with a bottom rate of 6 percent and a top rate of 77 percentIn 1936, the lowest tax rate was 4 percent and the top rate was 79 percent
    In 1951 the top marginal tax rate was 91%
    In 1964 the top rate was dropped back to 77%
    Reagan dropped the top tax rate from 70% to 28% over his presidency (Which is when the mess started)

    OK 80% sounds good.

    The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration. – 16th Amendment

    It was difficult for Congress to impose a national income tax that applied to all forms of income until the 16th Amendment was passed by Congress in 1909 and purportedly ratified in 1913. The Amendment, which overrules the effect of Pollock, essentially means that when imposing an income tax, the Congress may impose the tax on income “from whatever source derived” without having to apportion the total dollar amount of tax collected from each state according to each state’s population in relation to the total national population. As a result, after the Sixteenth Amendment, no Federal income taxes are required to be apportioned, as per the U.S. Constitution, regardless of whether they are direct taxes (taxes on income from property) or indirect taxes (all other income taxes).

  22. Mextli says:

    #70 “This didn’t happen. We mainstream left disagreed with Bush ON POLICY. There was no screaming or whateverthehell is kvetching”

    Martin Sheen “George W Bush is a moron”

    Jessica Lange “I despise him (GW Bush)”

    Alec Baldwin would leave the country if Bush were elected president.

    Harry Belafonte Called Colin Powell an “Uncle Tom”

    Jennifer Aniston “Bush is a f#cking idiot”

    and so on.

  23. tcc3 says:

    83: “you cannot spend your way out of recession.”

    Ask the Japanese how no stimulus worked during their recession in the 90’s. I’ll give you a hint: they call it “The Lost Decade”

    Stimulus isn’t a magic bullet; there are many factors for many situations. But to say its never appropriate is myopic at best.

  24. JMRouse says:

    #84

    You and I need to agree to disagree on if my question was a fallacy.

    How about I simply ask, is there proof the Bush tax cuts stimulated the economy? If not, then how can we be so certain that not extending them will be harmful to the economy or that further tax cuts for the wealthy will be beneficial?

  25. ManusFerrea says:

    I never got a job from a poor person.

  26. Angus says:

    This country as a whole hasn’t respected the office of President since Nixon. No news here.

  27. Sam says:

    Follow the money!

    Tax cuts for Companies only create and advantage for America when you couple the tax cuts with a method of blocking the additional profits from being invested outside the country. Tax cuts for individuals only create an advantage for America when the extra money that an individual has is spent on goods and services that originate or are manufactured in America by the same companies that reinvest in holdings in America.

    Unfortunately the Bush tax cuts came with increased methods for corporations to invest and move jobs outside America.

  28. MrMiGu says:

    #87

    how many of those people will claim today that you should not be able to criticize the president as Limbaugh did when people were speaking out against Bush?

    Rush is a hypocrite who continues to convince people to vote against their self interests while voting for his interests.

  29. chiarde says:

    And this is why I vote Democratic. This guy takes the civil discourse and craps all over it. I really wish he’d run for office himself if he has such strong ideas and opinions. It’s far to easy to sit on the sidelines and collect a paycheck.

  30. right says:

    It’s funny reading the Rush lovers. It’s also funny they want someone like Chrissy O, Failin’ Palin, Angle and the other crazies for office. I hope the smart, normal people shut these fact free idiots out.


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