Rush Limbaugh stated last week that the Obama Administration’s campaign to help out the earthquake-ravaged nation of Haiti was nothing more than a political sham designed solely to win favor with the global community. He then strongly urged his listeners not to donate to the cause because we already contribute enough to such things through our income taxes.

Can you believe that? In my opinion, that is just one more sign of the man's complete disregard for the plight of his fellow man. Listening to the statement he gave about this topic, it becomes readily apparent that Mr. Limbaugh values holding on tight to every last penny of his millions rather than donating a fraction of them to save human lives.

Remember, this is the same man who made fun of Michael J. Fox for shaking from Parkinson’s Disease while he was making a political commercial. (I have a very good friend of mine who suffers from the same disease. I remember at the time wishing that Limbaugh contracted the disease himself so that I could poke fun at his misery right in front of his face.)

I really don’t understand how the man can sleep at night.

If you want to talk about shams, frauds and hypocrites, let’s take a look at the “Man behind the golden E.I.B. microphone” himself.

Rush has always claimed to be one of the common folk. Part of the reason why he appeals to so many “Middle Americans” is because they believe he is one of them.

The fact of the matter is that Rush Limbaugh was born into a very wealthy Missouri family. His grandfather was America’s Ambassador to India during the Eisenhower administration. His uncle was a federal judge appointed by Reagan, his cousin was appointed to the U.S. District Court of by George W., and his father was a very successful local attorney.

Rush pulls down a salary of $45,000,000 annually, and his estimated net worth is over $281,000,000. Yet he claims that he hates rich people, calling them the wealthy elite and saying things like, “All of these rich guys – like the Kennedy family and Perot – are pretending to live just like we do and pretending to understand our trials and tribulations and pretending to represent us." Again, Rush makes over $45,000,000 a year. Who’s this “us” he’s talking about?

Is it really so difficult for people to see that, rather than standing up for “the little people” with his radio commentaries, he is actually suggesting that they perpetuate their misery while protecting his own millions? Do you really believe that somebody coming from that background knows what the average American is going through? Really? (At one point, Mr. Limbaugh was discussing the people living at the poverty level in this country. At that time, the poverty level line for a family of four was a little less $15,000. Rush’s response to that fact was, “$15,000? That’s not so bad!” Kind of like when Marie Antoinette uttered, "Let them eat cake." She was beheaded.)

Rush Limbaugh is a staunch opponent to gay the rights movement. Yet it was a gay man who really got his career going. Norm Woodruff was a San Francisco radio executive who urged radio stations to hire Limbaugh when Limbaugh was an unknown. Woodruff even took Limbaugh shopping for clothes in order to have him make a better impression on perspective employers at job interviews.

From time to time Rush mentions Woodruff’s name and calls him an important person in his life and his career. However, he always fails to mention that Woodruff was gay, and that he died from AIDS in the 1980’s.

And, can somebody tell me how a man who has been divorced three times can claim to be a proponent of "conservative family values"? I don't get it.

Often times, when Rush states “facts”, they are not facts at all; they are fabrications. For example, he did this many times while attempting to justify Reagan’s Iran-Contra scandal. He said that, if it was such a horrendous, illiegal operation, how come none of the participants were ever indicted? In fact, 14 of the participants were indicted.

He has stated that America has more forest land now that it did in 1492. In fact, according to the US Forest Service, we have ¼ of a billion acres less now than we had then.

He has stated that 75% of Americans who earn minimum wage are teenagers in their first job, so those numbers are skewed. The fact is that the vast majority of minimum wage earners are over the age of twenty.

With examples like these, and many more, as evidence, it becomes readily apparent that if Mr. Limbaugh doesn’t like a fact, he dismisses it and makes up one to take it place. He’s proven himself to be pretty unencumbered by the truth.

Rush champions the military, and he defames those who do not serve. However, Mr. Limbaugh was never in the military. He avoided the military by having his physician claim that he was unfit for military service because he had an inoperable pilonidal cyst. A pilonidal cyst is a chronic collection of pus or an abnormal draining passage leading to an abscess, located in the opening between the buttocks muscles. It is susceptible to infection, which can be dangerous on a war front. So severe pilonidal cysts have long been (and still are) legitimate grounds for exemption from military service.

The funny thing is that today Rush denies ever having a pilonidal cyst, calling the story “internet bull.” However, the records show that just the opposite is true.

Rush has always insisted on harsh penalties for drug abusers. He has said, “if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused, and they ought to be convicted, and they ought to be sent up.”

Then, as a result of a federal investigation, he was forced to admit that he had an addiction to Oxycontin, which is a strong opiate, and he was guilty of “doctor shopping” in order to procure enough of the drug to feed his habit. Rather than cooperate with officials, he spent years battling Florida investigators who sought his medical records to indict him for attempting to obtain the same prescription from a number of different doctors. (He did that because his use of the controlled substance far exceeded what any doctor would prescribe.)

In his court fight to keep him medical records private, (for some reason, he has a problem with people finding out the truth) he accepted the help of lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, a group he has often criticized before and after accepting their help.

In a 2006 plea bargain, charges were dropped in exchange for Limbaugh's payment of $30,000, agreement to undergo 18 months of drug abatement therapy, and his agreement to submit to random drug testing.

One last fact.

Did you know that Rush’s theme song “My City is Gone” (performed by The Pretenders and written by Chrissie Hynde) has extremely liberal lyrics? Limbaugh never sought permission to use the song, and he never paid royalties on it. Hynde knew about him hijacking her song, but she never did anything about it until one day she heard Limbaugh in an interview discussing the song. He said it was, "icing on the cake that it was [written by] an environmentalist, animal rights wacko and was an anti-conservative song. It is anti-development, anti-capitalist, and here I am going to take a liberal song and make fun of [liberals] at the same time."

At that point, Hynde instructed her attorneys to contact Limbaugh. As a result, every time he plays that song on his show now, he must cut a royalty check and mail it to the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Talk about poetic justice!

Knowing all of this about the man, could you REALLY look up to him and trust anything that he has to say? Would you hold him up as an ethical role model for your children to emulate? Would you want a liar like this to run for President Of The United States, as some have suggested?

God bless America, huh?