Manifesto

Rush Limbaugh is the most popular political commentator on the radio. He is a Conservative, and in his program routinely rips the Democrat Party, in particular President Obama, his wife, and the top Democratic leaders - Hilary Clinton, Harry Reid, and so on.

He invariably gives only one side of any story - his side. In this blog, I provide "the rest of the story" - the elements of the stories Limbaugh covers, that he leaves out, thus influencing his listeners to believe the worst of the Democrat side.

For example, whenever Limbaugh speaks of the Harry Gates affair - the event where the black professor was arrested in his own home (for verbally abusing the police officer who had come to the house in response to a call that a burglar was breaking into the home), Rush (and Sean Hannity) always quote President Obama as saying, "The police acted stupidly."

But that's just the first phrase of one sentence of what President Obama said. What he said in its entirety was:

"Now, I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that, but I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry. Number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. And number three, what I think we know, separate and apart from this incident, is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. And that's just a fact."

So Obama wasn't saying the police acted stupidly in investigating whether a black man was breaking into a home, but rather, once the man had proved that he was in his own home, it was rather over-the-top to arrest him just because he was being rude to the police officer.