Never one to waste any moment he can get in the spotlight, Rush Limbaugh used the press conference after his hospital visit on New Year’s Eve to pontificate about the merits of our current health care system, claiming that his situation was proof that no reform is needed. And since he can’t seem to open his cigar hole without lying, he claimed that he received no preferential treatment for being a celebrity. Here’s his version of the story…
And here’s the truth…
When Limbaugh called 911, he received special treatment from the Kahala Resort Hotel to start his king-like medical service. The hotel staff got him out of the venue in such a way that he could not be seen by on-lookers. When Rush arrived at the medical center, the hospital managers made sure the entire wing that Rush was on was placed on restricted access status.
That means even if you had a loved one who happened to be on the floor Rush Limbaugh was on at the hospital, you could not just walk up there to see the person you were concerned about. You had to check in, and may have been turned away depending on who you were. All of this was done by others to benefit Rush Limbaugh’s peace of mind so that he could recover faster. He did.
I just took my mother to the hospital to have surgery today and we were supposed to be in and out within two hours – it took over six. Four of those hours were spent waiting for the doctor to return to the building. According to her nurse, the doctor had to “step out” for a little while. When I saw him come back in, he had a cell phone to his ear and a shopping bag in his hand. My mom wasn’t allowed to eat or drink for the entire previous day, she sat with an IV in her hand for more four hours after her surgery was scheduled to begin, and this guy thought it would be a good time to go to the mall and spend some of that fat paycheck of his. Yes, this wasn’t an emergency, as in Rush’s case, but my point here is that the rest of us don’t get an entire wing dedicated to our care and recovery – we get what the rest of the peons get.
Rush is so clueless as to how things actually work in the real world that he didn’t even realize that this particular hospital that he was praising was staffed by union nurses and “is a shining example of progressive health care reform.” As it turns out, Hawaii has one of the greatest percentages of organized workers of any state and also has the highest percentage of organized RNs…but we shouldn’t expect a moron like him to know something like that. He’s paid to talk, not to research, after all. (The wing closing, however, was obviously connected to his celebrity…another reason he’s so out-of-touch.)
So I found it hilarious that we received this comment from a reader when we posted about Limbaugh’s chest pains and our strong hopes for a not-so-successful recovery…
david
Why is it that you libs are the ones to “save the earth” through your taxing bleeding hearts yet are the most mean spirited of all? You are the real terrorists this country should be fighting and may be in the near future. You are the ones that our forefathers came here to get away from. Try Cuba I think they need you
Right off the bat, let me just point out that when Bush’s tax cuts for the rich expire this year, the wealthiest people in the nation will be paying more, which, according to your “tea parties,” is exactly what you wanted, right? And comparing liberals to terrorists makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, considering terrorists use violent religious extremism to get what they want, whereas the current administration was democratically elected by a landslide. Our forefathers were fighting to build the democracy that put the Democrats in office, if I remember my history classes correctly. I may not agree with everything they’re doing, and I certainly don’t think that they as “liberal” as they should be in many of their policies and decisions, but to imply that “this country should be fighting [them] and may be in the near future” sounds like your side is hoping to incite violence, which sounds way more like terrorism than health care reform.
But let’s get to the main reason that you are an absolutely misinformed simpleton, David – Rush isn’t one of you. You probably consider yourself Mr. Average Joe, standing up for freedom in the free world by working 9-5, watching football, and drinking beer, and guys like Rush play people like you like a fiddle. While you scraped together your last few bucks to buy a bottle of champagne for New Year’s, Rush Limbaugh spent his holiday at the Kahala Hotel & Resort in Hawaii, probably snorting lines off a hooker in a grass skirt. Tell me the last time you and your family (I’m going out a limb and assuming that you have people that care about your sad, pathetic soul, which is a stretch, I know.) were able to even go a vacation at all, never mind to a classy resort in Hawaii. This guy pulls in over $38 million from people like you annually, yet you still buy into his “I’m just a middle-class schmuck like you!” shtick and nod at every one his agenda-laced opinions like a good little dittohead. If America is about rebelling against the establishment, as you say it is, then you’re the philosophical equivalent of a policeman in full riot gear beating down a teargas-blinded protester with a nightstick. You say that we’re mean-spirited? This is a guy who has made his living from offending people and crossing the lines of decency (and truth), spouting hateful, racist, and spiteful comments on a daily basis, and we’re mean-spirited for giving it back to him? It’s funny how hateful words are only wrong if you don’t agree with their sentiments. I think anyone who wishes the president (and, therefore, the country) to fail simply because of their political leanings is way more unpatriotic than a blogger wishing death upon a cigar-chomping elitist who brainwashes 20 million weekly listeners into voting against their own interests for his personal financial gain, but I guess that makes me a Godless-Cuban-Nazi-Anarchist-Socialist. Next time, show us your sources, not your ignorance, jackass.
(And as for Rush, please fucking die next time…if only your heart would fail as bad as your listeners do at making a well-reasoned political stance…but at least your survival is a great example of what an improved health care system can provide, even if it doesn’t always save the right people.)
{ 1 trackback }
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I smell a podcast……. (sniff sniff). Yeah I think there needs to be a “rip Limbaugh a new asshole” podcast. please? oh pretty please?
Your commenter was making a veiled threat of violence.
“Right off the bat, let me just point out that when Bush’s tax cuts for the rich expire this year, the wealthiest people in the nation will be paying more, which, according to your “tea parties,” is exactly what you wanted, right?”
—-
Unsure which Tea Party to which you’re referring. Certainly none of the ones which I’ve attended, where the attendees see this expiration as another tax hike.
R.J, I’m unaware of ANY Tea Party protest where the protesters do not decry the rich for getting richer and the poor for getting poorer. So wouldn’t a tax increase to pay “their fair share” be exactly what they’d want? That tax bracket DOES include our politicians they hate so much, after all. Although, let’s be fair – some of the idiots who attend Tea Parties don’t think that they should have to pay taxes AT ALL, so that shows you how much they know about running a government. After all, even after the tax hike on wealthier Americans, they will still be paying 10% less than they did during most of the Reagan administration, and he was the GOP savior, right?
But since you mentioned that you attend Tea Parties, I can’t expect you to know much about REAL protesting. We didn’t see your kind around when Bush went wild with our money and sunk us into all this debt and 2 failing wars in the first place. Back then, protesting was un-American. Now that “random public outpouring” is run by Republican billionaires and GOP strategists, you’re all about it – thanks for doing the legwork of the very people you’re supposedly against. Look up some information on FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, to name a two, and see who you’ve been campaigning for.
Just wanted to point a terrorist can be anyone they do not need to be religious. It’s only a more recent view that terrorists are religious extremists.
Just a thought, MRose – why is it that you are so quick to correct MY definition of a terrorist, but not R.J.’s? I think my definition is a HELL of a lot closer than his, which is anyone who questions the GOP, even through completely nonviolent means. According to dictionary.com, a terrorist is “a person, usually a member of a group, who uses or advocates terrorism.” Let’s be honest – most of the time a group of people are motivated enough to blow people up or gun people down, it’s because their invisible man told them to do it. It’s not like in James Bond films where guys are plotting government upheavals or world domination because they’re greedy megalomaniacs – they usually just want to punish people for not subscribing to their god. Yes, there are political terrorists, but not nearly as many as the religiously motivated (and even those are often intertwined, as is often the case in the Middle East).
So what is YOUR definition? Do you agree with R.J.’s over-the-top, reactionary description, and if not, why didn’t you feel the need to correct anything HE said?