by Stephen M. Silverman
via people.com

Talk about an odd couple: conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh and outspoken gay civil-union advocate Elton John.

But, according to a News Corporation (which owns Fox News) wire report, the Rocket Man, 63, serenaded the 400 guests into the wee hours Saturday night to celebrate the marriage of Limbaugh, 59, to Kathryn Rogers, 33, in the Ponce de Leon ballroom of Florida's fabled Breakers hotel in Palm Beach. Sir Elton's fee: $1 million, the report notes.

Amid dozens of giant bouquets of white roses (and very tight security), reports the Palm Beach Post, guests at the wedding included former Bush adviser Karl Rove; actor-politician Fred Thompson; former Kansas City Royals slugger George Brett; Fox News commentator Sean Hannity; former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani; New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft; former Clinton adviser James Carville and his wife, GOP analyst Mary Matalin; and golfer Tom Watson. A wedding guest also tells PEOPLE that among the others was Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

(READ MORE)

Filed under: Elton John • Rush Limbaugh

From NY Times' Maureen Dowd

I had a four-hour dinner once with Rush Limbaugh at the “21” Club in Manhattan, back in the days when I was still writing profiles as a “reporterette,” to use a Limbaugh coinage.

He was charming, in a shy, awkward, lonely-guy way. Not a man of the people. He arrived in a chauffeured town car and ordered $70-an-ounce Beluga, Porterhouse and 1990 Corton-Charlemagne.

But he was not a Neanderthal, though he did have a cold and blew his nose in his napkin. He talked about Chopin’s Polonaise No. 6, C.S. Lewis and how much he loved the end of the movie “Love Story.”

In those days, he called himself a “harmless little fuzzball.” He’s a lot less harmless now. I went on to columny, as my pal Bill Safire called it, and Rush went on to calumny.

As he and Sarah Palin conduct their auto-da-fé of moderate Republicans — “Moderates by definition have no principles,” he told his radio audience on Monday — Limbaugh is more than ever the face of his party, as Rahm Emanuel said.

He’s also the mouth.

Limbaugh is right that Democrats tend to dither too much. They’re always wondering if they’re doing the right thing, indulging in on-the-one-hand, on-the-other paralysis by analysis, seeing, as James Carville put it, “six sides to the Pentagon.”

(Read more from NY Times)

Filed under: Maureen Dowd • Rush Limbaugh

If conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh ever had much of a chance to be a minority owner in a successful bid to buy the NFL's St. Louis Rams, it is now over, two league sources have confirmed to SI.com.

In a statement released Wednesday evening by St. Louis Blues chairman Dave Checketts - who is heading the group that hopes to buy the Rams - he announced Limbaugh's official exit from the bid. It is believed that Limbaugh's controversial participation would have doomed the group's effort in the eyes of NFL owners. League sources told SI.com that Limbaugh's candidacy in any Rams bid had "zero chance" of being approved by the league's owners. In his statement, Checketts said Limbaugh's participation had become "a complication and a distraction" to the group's efforts.

According to league sources, Limbaugh comes with too much troubling baggage in terms of his outspoken views that often intersect the divisive issues of politics and race in America. In a time when the NFL is hoping to have complete uniformity among its team owners in anticipation of the tough collective bargaining negotiations to come with the players union, there was little interest within the league to associate with an owner who is paid to give his highly charged opinions on the radio for hours each week.

(Read more)

Filed under: Rush Limbaugh

By Jonathan Martin via Politico

Conservatives pounced on the the Nobel Prize committee's decision to award President Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize, with talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh calling it a "greater embarrassment" than losing the Olympics.

"This fully exposes the illusion that is Barack Obama," Limbaugh told POLITICO in an e-mail. "And with this 'award' the elites of the world are urging Obama, THE MAN OF PEACE, to not do the surge in Afghanistan, not take action against Iran and its nuclear program and to basically continue his intentions to emasculate the United States."

Limbaugh continued: "They love a weakened, neutered U.S, and this is their way of promoting that concept. I think God has a great sense of humor, too."

The Nobel award comes a week to the day after Obama's personal pitch for the 2016 Olympics in Chicago was rejected by the International Olympic Committee.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele echoed the view: “The real question Americans are asking is, ‘What has President Obama actually accomplished?’ It is unfortunate that the president’s star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights. One thing is certain — President Obama won’t be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action.”

(READ MORE)

Filed under: Obama • Rush Limbaugh

From CNN Ticker Producer Alexander Mooney

Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh responded Thursday to recent comments by Roberta McCain, the mother of Republican Sen. John McCain.

(CNN) — Rush Limbaugh responded to Roberta McCain's criticism of his tough radio persona Thursday, joking over the fact "McCain's mother is dumping on me."

"She is absolutely right" in her assessment that that she belongs to a different Republican Party than he does, Limbaugh said during his radio show: "The Republican Party she belongs to gets shellacked election after election after election."

In an appearance on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno Wednesday, the outspoken 97-year-old mother of Sen. John McCain said, to cheers from the audience, that Limbaugh "does not represent the Republican Party that I belong to."

"I belong to the Republican Party," she said. "What he represents of the Republican Party has nothing to do with my side of it. I don't know what the man means, I don't know what he's talking about."

On his show Thursday, Limbaugh made clear he found the criticism quite amusing.

"Sending Sen. McCain's mother out to dump on me?" Limbaugh said, laughing. "I love it."

Filed under: John McCain • Larry King Live • Politics • Rush Limbaugh

By Eric Boehlert/Media Matters

Clear Channel's fall from business grace remains epic in its proportions. In 10 years time the company has gone from dominating a flourishing radio industry to a corporation that now teeters on the brink. (Clear Channel stock traded for $90 a share in 2000. When the radio company went private last year, pre-crash, the stock was already down in the $30s.) Lots of over-extended, debt-ridden media conglomerates are struggling through today's deep economic recession, but few face a future quite as perilous as the one staring back at the San Antonio radio giant.

And yet Clear Channel's most famous employee, Rush Limbaugh, remains oblivious to it all. I sometimes wonder what Limbaugh thinks when he reads about the not-so-slow-motion collapse of his radio employer while lounging in his 24,000-square-foot Florida estate or motoring in his $450,000 car to the airport to ride in his $54 million jet. Does Limbaugh feel bad? Does he feel a little guilty? And does he ever think about giving some of his riches back so that thousands of radio colleagues wouldn't have to be bounced to the curb?

And I wonder what those pink-slipped Clear Channel employees - some of whom spent decades working for the company - think about Limbaugh as they're ordered out the station door and onto "the beach." (That's radio-speak for unemployment.)

(Read More)

Filed under: Economy • Larry King Live • Rush Limbaugh

By Julie Limbaugh via Salon

From third grade on, I have been asked, "Are you related to Rush Limbaugh?" My teachers' whispered questions about the man on the radio made me feel important, even though my 8-year-old comrades had no idea who he was, since he didn't appear on the Disney Channel or in ABC's Friday-night sitcom lineup. During those years, I didn't know who he was either. I knew Cousin Rusty kicked a football pretty well and always brought Cuban cigars to family gatherings. Sometimes he would get Aunt Patty to smoke one and my cousins and I would laugh at her coughing as we watched from the neighbor's trampoline. I was proud of him like I was proud of my brother, who's older than your brother and can beat your brother up.

It was pretty hit-and-miss but clear-cut all the same. People either didn't know who he was or didn't care or loved him or hated him. There was no like in the equation. If they had an opinion about him, once they learned of our connection, they offered that opinion.

"Really?! Well, this is what I think of him …"

Just when a school would know me, know my family, know Rush was my Dad's cousin, ask the questions, tell about their love or hate, my dad's career as a lawyer in the military would move us and the process would start over. Once again, new friends and acquaintances would introduce me as "the girl related to Rush Limbaugh."

And I would evaporate.

Limbaugh - it was like when my dad would pick me up from middle school in his '87 maroon conversion van with the canoe strapped on top and my dog slobbering out the passenger window. Dad loved me and I loved him, but I just wanted him to disappear so I could blend in on the bus like all the other kids.

(Read More)

Filed under: Larry King Live • Rush Limbaugh

By David Frum, former speechwriter for President George W Bush

It wasn't a fight I went looking for. On March 3, the popular radio host Mark Levin opened his show with an outburst (he always opens his show with an outburst): "There are people who have somehow claimed the conservative mantle … You don't even know who they are … They're so irrelevant … It's time to name names …! The Canadian David Frum: where did this a-hole come from? … In the foxhole with other conservatives, you know what this jerk does? He keeps shooting us in the back … Hey, Frum: you're a putz."

Now, of course, Mark Levin knows perfectly well where I come from. We've known each other for years, had dinner together. I'm a conservative Republican, have been all my adult life. I volunteered for the Reagan campaign in 1980. I've attended every Republican convention since 1988. I was president of the Federalist Society chapter at my law school, worked on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal and wrote speeches for President Bush—not the "Read My Lips" Bush, the "Axis of Evil" Bush. I served on the Giuliani campaign in 2008 and voted for John McCain in November. I supported the Iraq War and (although I feel kind of silly about it in retrospect) the impeachment of Bill Clinton. I could go on, but you get the idea.

I mention all this not because I expect you to be fascinated with my life story, but to establish some bona fides. In the conservative world, we have a tendency to dismiss unwelcome realities. When one of us looks up and murmurs, "Hey, guys, there seems to be an avalanche heading our way," the others tend to shrug and say, he's a "squish" or a RINO—Republican in Name Only.

Levin had been provoked by a blog entry I'd posted the day before on my site, NewMajority.com. Here's what I wrote: President Obama and Rush Limbaugh do not agree on much, but they share at least one thing: Both wish to see Rush anointed as the leader of the Republican party.

READ MORE of Frum's commentary HERE

Filed under: Rush Limbaugh

by David Plouffe, Campaign Manager for Barack Obama's presidential campaign

The 2008 election sent many messages. At the top: Americans wanted to turn the page on the politics of division and partisan pettiness, and they wanted a government - and country - that would put the middle class first.

Watching the Republicans operate this past month, it would appear that they missed that unmistakable signal.

Instead, Rush Limbaugh has become their leader.

Limbaugh, of course, told his radio listeners that he's rooting for President Obama to fail - and hoping the president's ideas for bolstering our economy fail with him. For many Americans, hungry for leadership and cooperation, this sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard. When Limbaugh reiterated the sentiment this weekend, hundreds of Republican conservatives cheered him on. But instead of rebuking the radio personality or charting their own course, Republican leaders in Washington are paralyzed with fear of crossing their leader. Less than 24 hours after committing the unforgivable sin of criticizing Limbaugh, RNC Chairman Michael Steele felt compelled to publicly apologize. He was not the first and will certainly not be the last.

READ MORE of Plouffe's commentary

Filed under: President Obama • Rush Limbaugh

Tonight ... Is it all-out war within the GOP?  Are Rush Limbaugh and GOP Chairman Michael Steele fighting for control of the party?  Steele says he has "big plans" to shake up the GOP.  Will he succeed in building a winning strategy in time for the next election?  Larry's political panel talks about it tonight.

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! Comment HERE and tune-in tonight!  We just may use your comment on the air!

Also tonight, Tavis Smiley and Bob Woodward join Larry to talk politics and the state of our nation.  It's all tonight on "Larry King Live," at 9 p.m., ET.

Please:
1) Stay on topic.
2) Keep it short
3) No curse words
4) No links

5) Use a name (no initials or screen names)

Filed under: Bob Woodward • Larry King Live • Rush Limbaugh