Yesterday when I was listening to Rush Limbaugh's torrent of ignorance, he took another call from fellow Kossack Mike Stark, where Mike once again tries to correct the distortions Limbaugh propagates about Saint Reagan. In particular that Reagan's voodoo economics produced abundance and prosperity for Americans including robust job creation.
RUSH: Joe in Fairfax, Virginia. Hi. Great to have you on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush. One thing I always like about you is you're always kind of a nice guy as wrong as you are. You started out your show today talking about, uh... uh... the -- the failed progressivism and Obama. (laughs) I want to know what you're thinking, man. I mean, we had eight years of George Bush. He started out with a balanced budget. He gave us huge tax cuts, and over his eight years? Well, we had the lowest job growth of any eight-year president ever. In fact, the eight year -- the job growth over those eight years was, uh, generally worse than most four-year presidents.
RUSH: Where are you reading that?
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CALLER: I'm not reading it. It's just a fact. But, uh, if you --
RUSH: No, it's not a fact, which is why I'm wondering where you're reading it.
CALLER: Over eight years, three million jobs were created under George Bush.
RUSH: Uhhhhhhh --
CALLER: 3.2 million jobs (garbled).
RUSH: How is it then that the unemployment rate was 4.7%? You know, we came out of this double-dip recession. We had a recession and we had 9/11, and we had huge economic rebound coming out of both of those things and eventually we got the unemployment rate down to 4.7%. Now, how did that happen?
CALLER: I don't know, but I see on your Dittocam. You can Google the same things I can Google. All I know is that he was the worst job-creating president ever after eight years of huge tax cuts.
RUSH: Google is an arm of the government. Google is the arm of the regime.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: You put in the word "stupidity" and the first search result is Bush. Now, you gotta be more open-minded than this. The question I asked was, for those of you who support Obama, what's Obama done for you? I mean...
Well I just did a Google search for "stupidity" and a reference to Bush does appear... on the fourth page of the Google search results.
Rush's insistence that his notions are more accurate than on line research utilizing the dominate internet search engine is too preposterous for words. Rush wants his listeners to only trust information that comes from him, something his listeners who tend to be intellectually lazy, are willing to accept.
What's the true story about the job creation under Ronald Reagan?
Media Matters
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the United States has gained 2,866,000 net private-sector jobs between 2001, when President George W. Bush took office, and the first quarter of 2008. (According to the BLS, the United States has experienced a net loss of private-sector jobs each month since the first quarter of 2008 ended in March.) In contrast with Bush, the United States gained 10,749,000 net private-sector jobs during President Clinton's first term in office, from 1993 through 1996. The U.S. gained 10,270,000 net private-sector jobs during his second term, from 1997 through 2000.
Mike Stark wrote an account of his call to Rush yesterday in his diary: That Rush fellow sure is chatty, eh?
UPDATE:
Today on his show Glenn Beck joins Rush in saying Google is a tool of the insidious left wing:
Beck: "There Is A Strange Thing Going On With This Search Engine And Our Government"
Millions of Rush's Dittoheads and Beck's viewers now will regard the internet with suspicion because Rush and Glenn told them to. They've been inoculated against reality intruding into their delusional little worlds. That destroys the any prospect of a fruitful exchange of ideas from taking place.