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On his radio show today, Rush Limbaugh suggested that the government manipulated hurricane forecasts in order to force Republicans to cancel a day of their national convention, saying the model “allows them to do it.”

“The hurricane center is the regime; the hurricane center is the Commerce Department. It’s the government. It’s Obama,” Limbaugh said.

In reality, the National Hurricane Center forecast is, roughly, what you get if “you average together the track forecasts from” several models, most of which are done by other organizations, in some cases other countries. Obama would have more luck using his apparently omniscient powers to alter the course of the hurricane itself than somehow trying to rejigger the storm tracks from all these different models, which are publicly available and updated continuously.

Limbaugh communicated his absurd theory on this imaginary scheme while simultaneously claiming “I’m not alleging conspiracy.”

His latest conspiracy theory matches the absurdity of his claim from last July, when he said the heat index was “manufactured by the government” in order to convince the American people that it’s hotter outside.

Listen to Limbaugh’s paranoid rant on hurricane forecasting:

Here’s part of the full transcript (emphasis added):

So this whole thing has been politicized, as the Democrats politicize everything, and that’s why we are talking about it. Now, I want to remind you: All last week … And, no, at no time here am I alleging a conspiracy. At no time. With none of this am I alleging conspiracy. All last week what was the target? Tampa. What was going on in Tampa this week?

The Republican National Convention. A pretty important one, too. Introducing the nominee, Mitt Romney. It’s only after the convention that Romney can actually start spending all of this money that he’s raised, so this convention is very important. It’s a chance to introduce Romney to a lot of people who don’t know him yet. And I noticed that the hurricane center’s track is — and I’m not alleging conspiracies here. The hurricane center is the regime; the hurricane center is the Commerce Department.

It’s the government.

It’s Obama.

And I’m noticing that that track stayed zeroed in on Tampa day after day after day. And the Republicans react to it accordingly over the weekend, canceling the first day of the convention. What could be better for the Democrats than the Republicans to cancel a day of this?

… Again, I’m alleging no conspiracy. I don’t want anybody thinking I’m going somewhere with this. I’m just telling you what happened.

I’m sharing with you my thought process, ’cause I know full well that if you give these people the slightest chance and they’re gonna turn this into Katrina and they’re gonna scare the hell out of New Orleans and they’re gonna revive, “Bush doesn’t care about people” and revive all of it. They’re gonna politicize everything ’cause they do it. And now they had the model runs allowing them to do it.

Now they had these model runs allowing them to start scaring the hell out of people in New Orleans and make political connections to Bush.

It was all there.

I’m afraid Limbaugh isn’t all there …

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By Brad Johnson

Photo by Dan Correia.

Cross-posted from ThinkProgress Green.

Rush Limbaugh continued his bizarre attacks on clean energy innovation Monday, claiming that the solar and wind energy sectors don’t exist. Limbaugh was responding to a ThinkProgress Green post that noted his role in scaring American customers against the Chevy Volt. He has even claimed that GM is “trying to kill its customers.” Attempting to justify his denigration of the extended-range electric vehicle, Limbaugh said that “all of Obama’s green energy” is a mirage (listen here):

The problem with the Volt is just like all of Obama’s green energy, there’s no business there yet. There’s no solar energy business yet. There’s no wind energy yet. It’s not there yet. But we can’t have more oil. We can’t have cheaper gasoline prices.

Limbaugh is wrong. Clean energy isn’t just the future of the 21st century economy, it’s driving the present.

In 2010, global investment in wind, solar, and biomass energy hit $187 billion, exceeding the $157 billion spent on fossil fuel energy. U.S. solar installations more than doubled in 2011. U.S. wind power capacity represents more than 20 percent of the world’s installed wind power. Over 400 manufacturing facilities across the U.S. make components for wind turbines. In July 2011, the Brookings Institute found that the green energy sector has had “explosive job gains” since 2003.

Limbaugh’s attitudes about energy, like his opinions about women, are stuck in the 19th century.

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by Jess Zimmerman.

If you look under “irony” in the
dictionary, there’s a picture of Rush Limbaugh calling Michelle Obama
fat. But that’s just
what he did on Monday on his colonic irrigation of a radio show.
Let’s take this piece by piece, because there is too much stupid to
swallow without chewing.

“The problem is, and dare I say this, it doesn’t look like
Michelle Obama follows her own nutritionary, dietary advice,”
Limbaugh said Monday on his radio program. “And then we hear
that she’s out eating ribs at 1,500 calories a serving with 141 grams
of fat per serving.”

Okay, listen, I don’t know what Rush Limbaugh eats. I know he’s a
fatass, but so am I, and I have days when I’m lucky to get 1,500
calories period. (Stomach problems. Limbaugh might have them too,
right? It would explain the painkillers.) So I am open to the
possibility that this is the one time in the history of ever that
Rush Limbaugh is not being a towering hypocrite. However, the fact
that he thinks a serving of ribs has 1,500 calories when the internet
says it has 234 implies that either he likes making up numbers, or he
eats A LOT OF RIBS.

(In fact he might be looking at the calorie content of an entire
rack of ribs, which would mean it’s the latter. Perhaps that’s how food works
for Rush—if you “eat cake,” it means you eat a cake, if you
“eat cereal,” it means you eat a box of cereal, etc. Let me be
the first to say that is NOT how it necessarily works for me and
Michelle and the rest of us fatties.)

“She is a hypocrite,” Limbaugh continued. “Leaders
are supposed to be leaders. If we are supposed to go out and eat
nothing, if we are supposed to eat roots, berries, and tree bark,
show us how.”

So the options are 1) ALL-DAY RIB PARTY or 2) tree bark. Seriously, does Rush
know how food works? I guess he has people to go to the grocery store
for him.

The Vail
Daily reported Sunday Mrs. Obama dined at the restaurant Kelly
Liken in Vail Village, ordering “a pickled pumpkin salad with
arugula and a braised ancho-chile short rib with hominy wild
mushrooms and sautéed kale.” The first family, minus the
president, went to Colorado for a long weekend of skiing.

Wait, these were BOUGIE RIBS? I’m pretty sure that when you get
bougie ribs you are not eating an entire rack. JUST A GUESS but I
don’t think a restaurant that has “pickled pumpkin salad” is
serving up ribs by the bucket. What this meal looks like is a
pantload of exciting vegetables plus some meat. THIS IS NOT THE
BUTTER AND BBQ SAUCE ORGY YOU ADVERTISED, RUSH.

“I’m trying to say that our first lady does not project the
image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports
Illustrated Swimsuit Issue or of a woman Alex Rodriguez might date
every six months or what have you,” Limbaugh also said Monday.

Okay, first of all: Dear pot, this is
kettle, go f*ck yourself. Second, obviously I shouldn’t be surprised
that Limbaugh’s idea of the pinnacle of female health is “a woman
Alex Rodriguez might date,” but it is pretty telling. These are
models and actresses—you want to talk about people who only eat
tree bark? Pretty sure Michelle’s recommendations about “healthy
eating” still involve eating. Also, Alex Rodriguez has been dating
people like Madonna, Cameron Diaz, and Kate Hudson; black women have
been on the cover of the SI Swimsuit Issue three times, and two of
them were Tyra Banks. There JUST MIGHT be more than one reason why
Michelle Obama doesn’t match Limbaugh’s picture of ideal health -
and more than one reason why his picture of ideal health is obscenely
and insultingly narrow.

And here’s where this becomes worth
spending the time to demolish, instead of just filing under “Rush
Limbaugh is a gigantic butthorn”: Rush isn’t the only one who
thinks, on some level, that healthy living is only for people that
A-Rod might date. If he wants to undermine Michelle Obama’s
pro-healthy-child efforts, he couldn’t be doing a better job—even
though everything he’s saying is patently ridiculous to anybody with
a working cerebellum—because his stupid horsecrap feeds into that
widespread fallacy. Nothing jacks up health promotion like the idea
that health is for other, better people.

Michelle, you eat your goddamn ribs,
and your kale and pumpkin, and then you go the hell skiing. Skiing is
fun, all those foods are made out of food, and not that this matters
but you look awesome. That makes you the perfect leader for the sort
of movement that might actually make America healthy. The movement
that says you give up the ability to be healthy if you eat a rib, or
if you can’t see your ribs, has been doing a lousy job so far.

Related Links:

Palin and Bachmann trash Michelle Obama’s breast-feeding advocacy

It’s like Gadhafi is telling us to get off oil or something

Are the British building the perfect town?

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