LIMBAUGH: HOW DARE DEMOCRATS TRY TO SET THE DAY'S AGENDA AS IF THEY HAVE LEGITIMATE POWER!

Rush Limbaugh today:

RUSH: I don't know, folks. Some days I just feel swamped. I just feel overwhelmed. I feel smothered by the left. I mean, look. Here we are almost at 2015, and this is the day that Jonathan Gruber is testifying before a House committee on all the things he said about the American people and Obamacare, and what's happening instead? The Democrats are blaming the Bush administration.

The Democrats, the main story, the lead story today, by design, is the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, dumping on the Bush administration on "Jonathan Gruber Day." Gruber, what's happening out there is being dwarfed by what is happening with the release of how rotten and horrible this stinking country was when George Bush was president....

And this is the picture being painted today. As we head into the Christmas season, once again, America sucks, and it really sucked during the Bush years, on the day Jonathan Gruber is being questioned about all of the lies that were told in order to pass Obamacare....

So it's pile on America day again on "Jonathan Gruber Day." This is not an accident. Jonathan Gruber, you're gonna have to look long and hard to find it, is testifying before a House committee today on his lies, misrepresentations, and insults to the American people, his role in making sure this flawed Obamacare legislation was passed by virtue of lying to the American people, and it's simply being dwarfed by the news that the United States tortured seven, eight years ago.

This is really how these people think. It doesn't matter that the Democratic Party controls the White House, or that Democrats still control the Senate until January. Any attempt by Democrats to actually use political power is illegitimate by definition. Today, you see, was "Jonathan Gruber Day." Today was the day our Republican overlords decided that we would all be compelled to watch Jonathan Gruber's public shaming. But the illegitimate head of the Senate Intelligence Committee forgot her place and willfully defied Republicans, who, needless to say, wield all legitimate power in the U.S. government. How dare she!

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BONUS LIMBAUGH QUOTE: In the course of this monologue on the torture report and Gruber, there's this aside from Limbaugh:

And Obama, if you hang around long enough, it becomes inarguably true that I am right. Obama in TheHill.com: "Protests Necessary to Trigger Nation's 'Conscience.'" Our president, in effect, is admitting that he welcomes all of these protests, that he welcomes all of this unrest because it allows him to further his radical agenda. And the radical left is famous for creating a crisis and then using the crisis to justify expanded government control. They got a crisis. The people are protesting. It's out of control. The government must move in and stop it. The government must do something. What do we do? Well, we grant the protestors whatever it is they're demanding and then we're all considered to be great guys.

Remember, this is the guy who said the following a couple of days ago about the Eric Garner case:

"How many cops descended on that situation for cigarettes?" he said. "How many people smoking marijuana did the cops ignore on the way to Eric Garner?...I think the real outrage here is an American died while the state is enforcing tax collection on cigarettes! It's absurd. People talk about the left, they want a big state, they want a powerful state. Well, here it is."

So let me see if I have this straight: the cops killing Eric Garner is liberal big government ("a powerful state") ... and any restraint of police encouraged or endorsed by Obama is also big government ("expanded government control").

Yeah, right. That makes sense.

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ADDITIONAL BONUS LIMBAUGH QUOTE: Back to Limbaugh's discussion of torture, and his contempt for its critics :

But these people are hell-bent on convincing as many people in this country as they can that we are rotten to the core, because all we do is torture. We don't interrogate with valor and with character. No, no, no.

That's his take on what the torturers did: "interrogate with valor and with character." Yes, he really said that.

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AND FINALLY: Limbaugh is so taken with an old 60 Minutes clip of Jose Rodrigues, the Bush-era head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, that he plays it twice. Here's part of what Rodriguez said on that broadcast to Lesley Stahl about what happened to Khalid Sheikh Muhammad in between torture sessions:

RODRIGUEZ: No. He gets a good night's sleep. He gets his Ensure. By the way, he was very heavy when he came to us and he lost 50 pounds.

STAHL: What, his Ensure? You mean like people in the hospital who will drink that stuff?

RODRIGUEZ: Yes. Dietary manipulation was part of these dire techniques.

STAHL: So sleep deprivation, dietary manipulation, I mean, this is Orwellian stuff. The United States doesn't do that.

RODRIGUEZ: Well, we do.

To which Limbaugh replies:

RUSH: I don't know, folks. I just love this. Yes, giving a terrorist who masterminded the 911 attacks a can of Ensure is a dire interrogation technique. Yes, it was part of these dire techniques. He's just openly mocking her, she didn't even know it.

I bring this up because of one revelation in the terror report, about Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who was also tortured:



Yeah, al-Nashiri was fed Ensure -- up his rectum, by force.

Oh, but I'm sure it was all done with valor and with character.