Now that Sarah Palin is officially out of the race for the GOP nomination for president, and is going to remain a full time wingnut pundit, Rush Limbaugh is feeling the pressure to amp up the stupid. Toward that end he had this to say on his radio program today:

“Obama is setting up riots. He is fanning the flames for riots and eventual violence. That’s all he’s got. And now you look, all this talk about millionaires and billionaires and people not paying their fair share, and this relentless assault on achievement in this country has resulted in … what? The appearance of a spontaneous combustion of angry, white, college students who are fed up with all the injustices that this country is famous for. That’s his base. Occupy Wall Street is his base. Those are his foot soldiers. The anarchists, the union thugs who are occupying Wall Street.”

Of course. Why didn’t I see it? The way to win reelection is to preside over civil unrest and a despondent population. That Barack Obama is a genius. But it took Limbaugh to see through the plot and reveal the President’s dastardly plan. Only Limbaugh could have done this because of his unique experience with setting up riots. Here is what he said just prior to the Democratic National Convention in 2008:

“Screw the World. Riot In Denver,” is the actual headline of Limbaugh’s article on his own web site. He continues…

“Riots in Denver at the Democrat convention would see to it we don’t elect Democrats – and that’s the best damn thing could happen for this country as far as anything I can think.” […]

“I mean, if people say what’s your exit strategery, the dream end of this is that this keeps up to the convention and that we have a replay of Chicago 1968, with burning cars, protests, fires, literal riots, and all of that. That’s the objective here.”

Limbaugh’s absurd allegation about Obama was based on his assertion that Obama expressed solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street protesters, although he offered no support for that claim. The only thing Obama said about the protest was…

“I think it expresses the frustrations that the American people feel. People are frustrated and the protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works.”

That’s not even remotely an endorsement, much less a call to riot. However, Limbaugh did advocate violence himself in no uncertain terms. That just makes his phony whining about Obama and the protesters on Wall Street all the more ludicrous and hypocritical.

Limbaugh is not alone in making unsupported claims about Obama and the peaceful protesters. Fox Nation posted an item with the headline “Obama Gives Blessing to Anti-Capitalist Wall Street Protests.”

This item not only falsely associates Obama with an independent, populist movement, it disparagingly refers to thousands of patriotic demonstrators, who are participating freely in a democratic process, of being anti-capitalist, which Foxheads read as anti-American. And once again, the claim is completely unfounded.

If all of this tells us anything, it is that Limbaugh, Fox, et al, are very much afraid of what’s happening in Lower Manhattan. They are afraid that their benefactors in the Ivory Tower suites on Wall Street and other corporate and media offices are finally being held to account for their abuses and crimes. They are afraid that their position of privilege is being challenged. But mostly they are afraid that Americans are no longer going to tolerate being held down by ultra-wealthy elitists who put more faith in corporations than in people, and don’t care about the Constitution, fairness, and democracy.