The Auction Has Ended...and Harry Tries to Take Credit???

The ebay auction for the Harry Reid smear letter has ended...with a winning bid of $2,100,100. This means that because of Rush Limbaugh's efforts, $4,200,200 will be donated to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation (and that's not counting donations made by people who couldn't afford to bid on the letter itself).

I stated in my post yesterday, and I still believe, that this move by Rush is one of the most brilliant political maneuvers of our time...and today, Harry Reid himself tried to take credit for it.

On the floor of the Senate today, Reid stated:

Earlier this month, I came to the floor discussing comments made by Rush Limbaugh. Following my remarks, more than 40 of my Senate colleagues and I cosigned a letter to the chairman of Clear Channel, Mark May, telling him that we wanted him to confer with Rush Limbaugh regarding the statements he made. I've since spoken to Mark May about this. Mark May in fact called me regarding this letter.

This week, Rush Limbaugh put the original copy of that letter up for auction on eBay. Mr. President, we didn't have time or we could have gotten every Democratic Senator to sign that letter. But he put the letter up for auction on eBay. And I think very, very constructively, let the proceeds of that to go to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. What is the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation? It provides scholarship assistance to children of Marines and federal law enforcement personnel whose parent dies in the line of duty, as well as health care assistance for disabled children of fallen troops. What could be a more worthwhile cause? And I think it's really good that this money on eBay is going to be raised for this purpose.

When I spoke to Mark May I think that he and I thought this would probably not raise much money, a letter by Democratic Senators complaining about something. This morning, the bid is more than two million on this. We've watched it during the week. It keeps going up and up and up, and there's only a little bit of time left on it. But it's certainly going to be more than two million. Never did we think that this letter would bring money of this nature. The cause, Madam President, extremely good.

Now, everyone knows that Rush Limbaugh and I don't agree on everything in life, and maybe that's kind of an understatement. But without qualification, Mark May, the owner of the network that has Rush Limbaugh, and Rush Limbaugh should know that this letter that they're auctioning is going to be something that raises money for a really worthwhile cause. I don't know what we could do more important than helping make sure that children of our fallen soldiers and police officers who have fallen in the line of duty have the opportunity for their children to have a good education. Think about this. More than $2 million, this is going to really help. And that's, again, an understatement. There's only a little bit of time left.

So I would ask those that are wanting to do more, that they can go to the Harry Reid, search -- actually go on say "Harry Reid letter," this will come up on eBay. I encourage anyone interested in this with the means to do so to consider bidding on this letter and contributing to this worthwhile cause. I strongly believe that when we can put our differences aside, even Harry Reid and Rush Limbaugh, we should do that and try to accomplish good things for the American people.
(emphasis added)

So, let's get this straight: earlier this month, Harry Reid, in response to a smear campaign perpetrated by a left-wing attack organization, sent a letter to Mark Mays in an attempt to intimidate Mays into restricting just what Rush will and will not be allowed to say on the air. This letter was signed by Reid and 40 other Democrat senators.

Basically, the Senate tried to censor Rush Limbaugh, a private citizen.

In an act of defiance specifically aimed at embarrassing Harry Reid, Mark Mays gave the original copy of the letter to Rush, who in turn auctioned it off for charity.

And then, Harry Reid stood on the floor of the Senate and made a pathetic attempt to wipe the egg off of his face and fry it into an omlette. The way Reid talks, you'd think his purpose of writing the letter in the first place was to raise money for charity, and Mays and Limbaugh played along with his scheme.

The truth is that this campaign by Reid has been a lie since the beginning: the original smear by Media Matters was a lie, Reid and other Senate Democrats perpetrated that lie, and Limbaugh, who has been in the right on this from the beginning, threw it back in their faces...Harry Reid did nothing more than attempt to censor Rush Limbaugh, and now Harry Reid has the audacity to try and take credit for Limbaugh's raising money for charity!

When I first heard Reid's comments (as I was listening to Rush this morning), my head almost blew clean off of my shoulders, I got so angry. Harry Reid and 40 other Senate Democrats tried to weasel their way around the First Amendment and restrict a citizen's right to free speech, all based on a lie. Rush unmasked their lie and auctioned off the letter as concrete proof that the smear was false, and now Harry Reid is acting as though it was his idea from the beginning.

I've always thought of Harry Reid as a liberal blowhard, but how he's exposed his true nature: not only is he a liberal blowhard, but he is a despicable human being. His presence as a member of the US Senate is a stain on our nation.

***UPDATE***
The lies continue: ABC News has credited the Democrats with raising the money for the charity. So now not only has the left lied about Rush's comments and Harry Reid insinuated that the auction was his idea, but ABC News is turning Harry Reid's insinuation into yet another lie.

What's more, they make no mention of the fact that Rush is matching the donation.

One of the greatest maneuvers of all time...

Earlier this week, Rush Limbaugh took the letter sent from Harry Reid to Mark Mays, Rush's ClearChannel syndication partner, and put it on ebay for auction to the highest bidder. The letter was signed by 41 US Senators.

The letter was basically a denunciation of the out-of-context "phony soldier" remark, and a call for Mr. Mays to "publicly repudiate these comments." Obviously, Mr. Mays did not do so.

Rush decided to auction off the letter and donate the proceeds to charity (the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, which provides support for the families of deceased military and law enforcement personell). He has also stated that he will match the donation with his own money.

As of now (10/18/2007, 10:10 PST), the bid is up to $2,000,200. That means that the total donation will be $4,000,400, with Rush donating over 2 million dollars out of his own pocket.

Rush has been a steadfast supporter of the troops for many years, and this just makes it clearer than ever that Rush Limbaugh is not the man that the Left says he is.

Sounding Off on Limbaugh

It's a little late in the game, but I decided that it was time for me to finally sound off on my support for Rush Limbaugh.

Like waves against a cliff, liberals have tried to beat up on Rush Limbaugh over and over and over throughout his history in talk radio. Every time some left-wing media watchdog takes a Rush quote out of context, they jump all over it, and this is no exception.

When it became known that Rush was addicted to prescription painkillers (following a painful back surgery), Democrat leaders and leftist wackos called him a pothead. But, as one bumper sticker I saw said, "Even on drugs, Rush is still right." Even when addicted to painkillers, Rush continued his tradition of excellence in broadcasting. He managed to shake his addiction, and despite losing his hearing, he is going on, stronger than ever.

When Rush made comments about the possibility of Michael J. Fox foregoing medication for his Parkinson's in order to appear symptomatic in a Democrat's campaign commercial (as supported by the fact that Fox had admitted to doing this before), Left-wing media (aka "the drive-by media") jumped all over Limbaugh for weeks. They somehow forgot to mention that Rush had been corrected by a listener via email, and apologized to Fox at the beginning of the very next segment.

The current controversy is over the "phony soldiers" comment. The truth is this: leftist anti-war groups do put forward phony soldiers to preach against the war. The soldier in question (Jesse Macbeth) was a phony soldier - and he is currently serving out a jail sentence for falsifying DOD records.

This controversy came about because Media Matters (a liberal "media watchdog" organization with ties to George Soros and Hilary Clinton) took Limbaugh's discussion out of context. They say that Rush couldn't have been referring to Jesse Macbeth because Macbeth's name doesn't enter the conversation until a minute or two after Rush used the words "phony soldiers."

The truth (if anyone had actually listened to Rush, instead of getting all of their information through the Media Matters filter) is that Rush was talking about Jesse Macbeth. Any regular Rush listener knows that Rush does a "morning update" every morning - a segment about 2 minutes long that is aired before the start of Rush's program. In the morning update, Rush talked about Jesse Macbeth being an anti-war activist and a phony soldier. Any regular listener would be able to tell this very easily, having heard the morning update that morning (as I did), but the truth is that liberals out to smear Limbaugh rarely, if ever, care about the whole story (especially when the whole story shows that Rush is right).

More recently, there have been rumors floating around about how this smear campaign is just another step liberals are taking to try and revive the Fairness Doctrine - a law aimed at killing conservative talk radio. I haven't seen any real evidence of this, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least.

The truth on this issue is that Media Matters is a liberal smear organization fronting as a media watchdog. They've shown that they're not truly interested in presenting facts - they believe in the stereotypes that conservatives are racists, bigots, homophobes, and hate-mongers, and their entire organization revolves around taking conservatives out of context to try and "prove" that. The truth is that Rush Limbaugh has been a supporter of the US military for even longer than I've been a listener, and this controversy amounts to nothing more than yet another wave pounding against the cliff.

Al Gore & Rush Limbaugh

This week, Al Gore and Rush Limbaugh were both nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize - Al Gore for his global warming propaganda film "An Inconvenient Truth," and Rush for "fighting for conservative principles in America," and because of his "tireless efforts to promote liberty, equality and opportunity for all humankind, regardless of race, creed, economic stratum or national origin."

Since the inception of his program, Rush has been decried as a Nazi, homophobe, and many other divisive names. As one responder to "The Lede" blog on the New York Times website put it, Rush is "a crack-addicted neo-nazi bigot who rants at every opportunity against Jews, Blacks, homosexuals, Muslims and non-European visitors to the United States." Personally, I don't know how so many people got it into their heads that Rush is evil; I listen to his radio program almost every day, and the most evil thing he tends to do is to use logic to defend conservatism and argue against liberalism. Of course, to too many liberals and members of the Democrat party, logical argument is the very definition of evil, so I guess that works. The "crack-addicted" remark makes me laugh, though - Rush Limbaugh was addicted to prescription painkillers after he received back surgery - something that could happen to anyone, and has, in fact, happened to many people. Rush was not using crack, heroine, meth, or any other illegal drug; he became addicted to medicine that had been prescribed to him by a doctor. The sad truth of it is that many liberals are willing to give more compassion to real crack addicts whose own choices lead them into their addiction than they are willing to give to someone who becomes addicted because he is trying to deal with unbearable pain.

There apparently are some questions surrounding the validity of Rush's nomination, but regardless of the hair-splitting when it comes to the nomination rules, I believe (obviously) that Rush's nomination is the more valid of the two. Here's why:

Al Gore was nominated because, as one of his nominators stated,

A prerequisite for winning the Nobel Peace Prize is making a difference, and Al Gore has made a difference. …

Al Gore, like no other, has put climate change on the agenda. Gore uses his position to get politicians to understand, while Sheila works from the ground up.

(Note: "Sheila" refers to Sheila Watt-Cloutier, a Canadian Inuit activist.)

The only "inconvenient truth" when it comes to global warming is that the science behind the theory, at this point, is inconclusive. According to liberals, failure to accept each and every tenet of man-made global warming is tantamount to heresy, and as time goes on, liberals come closer and closer to stoning those they deem heretics. The best defense that liberals have come up with for man-made global warming is that there is a "scientific consensus," and as I addressed in my last post, scientific consensus is itself a farce. Science does not operate by consensus, it operates by process; this process is known as the scientific method (note that "form a consensus" does not appear as part of that method). As Rush Limbaugh and others have pointed out, if consensus dictated science, we would still believe that the world was flat!

Rush Limbaugh, on the other hand, has spent the last 20+ years enhancing the democratic process in America by defending conservatism and advocating for conservative values. He has created a media empire in a nation whose media has, for decades, been overwhelmingly liberal. He is rightly the father of talk radio, one of the most popular and profitable forms of media in the 21st Century. He has approached issues with logic, humor, and sarcasm, but rarely, if ever, with divisiveness. He is hated by many liberals, but this is only because he proves, again and again, to be right on almost every issue.

The simple truth of the matter is that, when it comes to Rush Limbaugh, liberals hate him because he presents the conservative side of the debate clearly, articulately, and with humor, and for all of the liberals' lip-service to debate, they would much rather shut the conservative side down. But Rush is here to stay, and I pray that he wins the Nobel Peace Prize, because if he does win, it is not just a victory for Rush Limbaugh, it is a victory for conservatism in America.