What Rush Limbaugh had to say about Barack Obama's trip to Hawaii.

I listen to Rush Limbaugh frequently and often enjoy the show, but he was at his worst yesterday, inanely purporting to expose Barack Obama for not actually caring about his gravely ill grandmother:

If Obama has this election in the bag, if he has this election in the bag... if he's already won the presidency, why hasn't he already gone to Hawaii? Why is he not already there? What's he waiting for? "If she's deathly ill," I'm pretending to be a reporter here. You know they'd ask McCain these questions. "If Obama's grandmother is deathly ill, why has this been announced days ago and he's only going now," or tomorrow, or whenever it is.... Who announces days in advance they're rushing to the side of a loved one who is deathly ill but keeps campaigning in a race that's said to be over, only to go to the loved one's side days later? See, I think this is about something else. You know what's really percolating out there? I've been laying low on this because it hasn't met the threshold to pass the smell test on this program.

He proceeds to rant about Obama's birth certificate (a controversy with its locus in Hawaii):

I have no clue, and folks, I'm telling you, this has not reached the threshold until now, and it's popping up all over the place. There are a lot of people now that are starting to speculate and be curious about this.

"I have no clue" -- that's an apt phrase. I'll give him that.

I don't know, let's say for example that somebody does come up with proof that something's screwy with his birth certificate and something's screwy about the fact that he's allegedly a natural citizen, American citizen, but may not be, dual citizenship, born in Kenya, who knows, there's all kinds of stuff out -- so what? What's going to happen this late in the campaign? Do you think if it's proven that they're going to dump him? That's not going to happen. But still, these are just questions that I have.

So what's your point? That he's personally going to Hawaii to deal with his birth certificate? That's so far-fetched. Then, Rush drops that subject and comes out with this:

And, look, both of my parents have died. When I was told the end was near, bam, I got there, fast as I could.

What a prince of a man!

I didn't announce to the audience, "I just got word my father is said to be passing away and in four or five days I'm going to go to Missouri. In the meantime, I will not leave you here on this radio program." These are just natural questions. I think any inquisitive reporter -- I know the risk I'm running here by raising all this. But I wouldn't be me if I didn't do that.

And I guess you wouldn't be you if you didn't air that birth certificate junk. By the way, were Rush's parents very old and suffering from a long deteriorating illness -- like Obama's grandmother -- or was there a sudden stroke or heart attack?

Rush then switches to the story of the man who says he is Obama's half-brother, who lives in extreme poverty in Kenya:

How about George Onyango Bodongo Hussein Obama in the hut outside Nairobi living on a dollar a month?

Did he just make up a weird racial name for the man? Google seems to say yes. (Here's the original CNN story about a man identified as George Obama.) Back to Rush:

A $20 bill would double his half-brother's annual income. Not even a sign "Home, Sweet Hut" has been sent to George Onyango Bodongo Hussein Obama, and how many other of Obama's family members are living in squalor? Yeah, [quoting Barack Obama] "if you don't take care of your family, if you don't put that first, you're probably not the kind of person that's going to be caring for other people." You have a half-brother living in a hut!

Rush quickly flings one thing and then another and doesn't bother to link things up before he moves on. But it's apparent from the transcript that he means for you to think that Obama doesn't really care about his grandmother (or anyone else in his family) and that his trip to Hawaii was no sign of affection for his grandmother at all, but evidence that he's engaged in a cover-up of evidence that would show he's doesn't meet the constitutional requirement that the President must be a natural-born citizen. And it's worse in audio form, as Rush laughs and scoffs his way through the routine.

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Here's the NYT story on Obama's Hawaii trip:

On the trip to Hawaii, Mr. Obama stayed in the secluded front cabin of his campaign plane, reading and rarely talking with a handful of aides who came along. The knot in his red tie was loosened as he walked down the aisle of his plane to stretch his legs, but he stayed a safe distance from a small group of reporters who accompanied him.

Look, it's possible that Obama isn't shaken to the core by the end stage of the long decline of his very old grandmother. He canceled some campaign stops, but he's getting campaign benefits from press reports like this that make him seem serious, good-hearted, and well-balanced and from the secluded rest time. Let's assume for a moment that he thought about the trip exactly like that. Do you have a problem with it? I don't.