Posted on 06/12/2002 8:21:43 PM PDT by 50sDad
Rushisms?
I got a list of supposedly incorrect Rush statements from a well-meaning Liberal friend, and wanted to get some input. I am not the kind of Conservative that would say "Rush is always right", but I would think that this problem has come up before. Can anyone read the following, and provide verification that they are wrong, or right for that matter? Or link a webpage debunking this? I am sure that anybody would make ten errors in a 20 year career, but my friend has latched onto this like it is the Holy Grail...
Rush: Do you know we have more acreage of forest land in the United States today than at the time the Constitution was written?"
Truth: Before European settlement, the U.S. Forest Service estimates that there were about 1 billion acres of forestland in what are now the 50 states. Toady there are 737 million acres of forestland in the 50 states.
***
Rush: Styrofoam and plastic milk jugs are biodegradable! Do you know what isn't biodegradable? Paper! He later claimed he had not made this statement. When a letter writer challenged him, he said, "I never said that Styrofoam is biodegradable." When this same writer called his show, he said "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 2000 years to see if it might degrade. We don't know. Nobody does. It hasn't been tested.
Truth: The biodegradability of polystyrene (Styrofoam) has been tested. It's a virtually indestructible non-biodegradable plastic (according to Chemical Marketing Reporter.
***
Rush: Banks take the risks in issuing student loans and they are entitled to the profits.
Truth: Banks take no risks in issuing student loans, which are federally guaranteed.
***
Rush: On reports that Bill Clinton's budget deficit might drop to $180 billion. "$180 billion is still billions more than any of the evil deficits that Reagan ever ran up."
Truth: There you go again, Rush. Reagan's budget deficits from 1983 through 1986 all exceeded $180 billion dollars, with the 1986 deficit over $220 billion. (adjusting for inflation to 1994 dollars when Rush made this statement, all 8 of Reagan's budgets exceeded $180 billion.
***
Rush: Stop and think about this a minute. Bill Clinton is the first president in modern history to have both houses of Congress. We've got every branch of government controlled by the democrats."
Truth: Clinton was the fourth president since 1960 whose party had a majority in both houses of Congress. Seven of the eleven presidents prior to this Bush had party majorities in both houses of Congress for at least some part of their terms in office.
***
Rush: "The worst part of all this is the lie that condoms really protect against AIDS. The condom failure rate can be as high as 20%.
Truth: According to DR. Joseph Kelaghan, who evaluates contraceptives for the National Institutes of Health, this isn't true. "There is substantive evidence that condoms prevent transmission if used consistently and properly. He pointed to a two-year study of couple where one partner was positive and one was negative. Of the 123 couples who used condoms regularly, there was not one single new infection. Rushisms?
I got a list of supposedly incorrect Rush statements from a well-meaning Liberal friend, and wanted to get some input. I am not the kind of Conservative that would say "Rush is always right", but I would think that this problem has come up before. Can anyone read the following, and provide verification that they are wrong, or right for that matter? Or link a webpage debunking this? I am sure that anybody would make ten errors in a 20 year career, but my friend has latched onto this like it is the Holy Grail...
***
Rush: "I, for one, remember the long gas lines on the 1970s…Those gas lines were a direct result of the foreign oil powers playing tough with us because they didn't fear Jimmy Carter."
Truth: This one's almost too easy. The worst gas lines were in late 1973 and early 1974, during the administration of Richard Nixon.
***
Rush: On the gulf war: "Everybody in the world was aligned with the United States except who? The United States Congress."
Truth: Both houses of Congress votes to authorize the United States to use force against Iraq.
***
Rush: "all of these rich guys-like the Kennedy family and Perot-pretending to live just like we do and pretending to understand our trials and tribulations and pretending to represent us, and they get away with this." (11/18/93)
Truth: Rush's 1993 salary was estimated at $15 million.
Actually, this is true of Polystyrene, but plastic milk containers aren't made of polystyrene, they are made of poly-ethylene. Polyethylene is biodegradable, and breaks down quite quickly with exposure to ultra-violet light (otherwise known as sunlight). Also, one little statistic your liberal freind might like is that approximately 15% of all materials used in plastics production is recycled material. Excepting steel, it's the single most recycled material on the planet.
What can I tell you,... my dad was an injection molder.
I have listened to Rush for many years & have NEVER heard the term 'enviro-Nazis.' He refers to them as environmental whackos.
Well I was working and supporting myself at that time. I never saw a gas line even though I drove my car every day. It must have been a regional problem, if it existed at all.
Even if the banks collect on a guarantee they still loose money whenever a loan goes into collections. It not only out of pocket for its collection costs it could have made more money on providing more profitable loans to others.
Rush is losing his touch as a thoughtful commentator on the American scene.Do you really have the time and prescence (sp?) of mind to thoughtfully listen to what he is saying?
If you would like - I'll send you a CD of that week's program (in ".wav" file format) and you can judge for yourself *upon* listening thoughtfully this time and with the ability to replay portions again and again (if need be) in order to fully garner what it was he *really* said and meant.
The ball is in your court ...
This stuff you posted - OLD HAT!
Listen to him again - FIND something recent NOTING the date and time and I'll post **the audio** from that segment - then we'll discuss -
- okay?
Do you really have the time and prescence (sp?) of mind to thoughtfully listen to what he is saying?I'm retired so I have the time, but when Limbaugh starts ragging on Bush without having all — or maybe even any — of the facts at hand I don't have the patience to listen to him.
Let's revisit the global-warming memo by the EPA which sent Rush into a hissy fit for several days.
Today on Fox News Tony Snow revealed that the report was prepared in secret without peer review by bureaucrats in the EPA. who were determined to embarass Bush.
The report was released without Christy Todd Whitman or anyone else in the Bush administration even being aware of its existance until they read about it in the NY Times.
But there was Maha Rushie in a state of blissful ignorance shooting off his big bazoo ad nauseam about a Bush flip-flop .
In point of fact, Bush's position on global warming has not changed one iota.
As for sending me a CD, I have a Mac and most of that stuff from Wintel machines won't work.
Besides, I subscribe to Rush 24/7 so I can revisit anything on the programs at my convenience.
I don't remember the last time someone got it so wrong before.
Go back and listen to the first half-hour of Rush's broadcast on 2002-06-03 (3rd of June 2002) and THEN report back.
If you have the same opinion I am going to post a transcript of that period along with a RealAudio link and prove to you, to God and the world you got it wrong ...
However, the US government has. At least it has crossed the line into claiming that human activities are the main cause of global warming. The report from last year did not make that claim. As far as I know, no official US government report has ever made that claim prior to this EPA report.
The problem is that Ari Fleischer came out and directly linked the President to the EPA report. The presidential spokesman has endorsed the report in the name of the President. It was an avoidable mistake, IMO.
I don't remember the last time someone got it so wrongGo ahead and post a transcript if it'll make you happy but don't bother with the audio link.If you have the same opinion I am going to post a transcript of that period along with a RealAudio link and prove to you, to God and the world you got it wrong ...
I have two news portal web sites to feed and I don't have time to bicker endlessly about minutia here.
Nothing's going to change the fact that Rush has gone off half-cocked a number of times when he's been ragging about Bush.
The more I learn the more I am increasingly of the opinion that this had much less to do with 'principles' than with increasing his audience share for the pre-summer ratings period — during which, incidently, his whole Bush-bashing riff began.
Nothing's going to change the fact that Rush has gone off half-cocked a number of times when he's been ragging about Bush.Bud, you got it wrong, I didn't expect you to admit it, and I think age has finally caught up with you and I just thought you should know.
Apparently at your present age you are unable to grasp the subtleties of Rush anymore - his response that Monday was quite well reasoned and calculated.
YOU missed it.
I see why they retire some people when they get older and they *are* no longer able to hack it.
I hope to never reach that point.
For your information - Rush DIDN'T even lead with that story (EPA) that morning - and when he did it was via reading several e-mails he had received.
You got it ALL wrong ...
Nothing personal - I just call it like I see AFTER reviewing the facts.
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