This Tuesday, right-wing radio dumbass Rush Limbaugh engaged in an extended hurricane-related rant that has largely been described in the press as an argument that liberal scientists and media figures overhype and manipulate hurricane forecasts in order to advance their global warming agenda. And yes, it was that, but it was also much more. It was also a comical display of masculine overconfidence:

Just as I am the go-to tech guy in my family and here on the staff, when it comes to a hurricane bearing down on south Florida, I’m the go-to guy. Everybody says, “What do you think is going to happen?” The reason for that is that I’m not biased and I have no agenda with my analysis of the data. … I’ve lived here since 1997, and I have developed a system that I trust, my own analysis of the data. … Let me just put it this way. The latest National Hurricane Center forecast map, the track, which was released at 11 a.m. puts the Sunday target exactly where I told my buddies on Saturday and Friday night that it was gonna go.

(His buddies know what’s up!)

It was an unprovoked attack on the integrity of America’s finest big-box home improvement chain:

So the media benefits with the panic with increased eyeballs, and the retailers benefit from the panic with increased sales … I don’t want to mention brand names because that’s not the point. Let’s call it Basement Depot. Basement Depot huge, huge business, Basement Depot spends gazillions of dollars every year in local advertising in hurricane forced areas.

And it was a devastating indictment of “Big Water”:

Do you realize here in south Florida, from where we are all the way down to Miami, you cannot buy bottled water. … You know, if I were the Big Oil guys I’d be so jealous of the Big Water guys. The Big Water guys don’t have to drill for it. The Big Water guys do not have to spend any research and development money. They don’t have to go through the environmentalist wackos. They just plug into some lake or some tap and fill up some water, put a label on it, put it in grocery store and sell it for more than gasoline costs, in many cases.

Here’s the part about forecasts being phony because liberals have infiltrated “government areas.”

You have people in all of these government areas who believe man is causing climate change, and they’re hell-bent on proving it, they’re hell-bent on demonstrating it, they’re hell-bent on persuading people of it. So here comes a hurricane that’s 10 to 12 days out and here come the initial model runs, and if it’s close—sometimes it’s not close, sometimes the hurricane will turn to the north out in the mid-Atlantic and there’s no way you can fake that. But if, if they are going to approach a hit on the U.S., you will note that early tracks always have them impacting a major population center. … Major population centers is where the major damage will take place and where we can demonstrate that these things are getting bigger and they’re getting more frequent and they’re getting worse. All because of climate change.

Anyway, old Rush announced Thursday that his proprietary data analysis threat matrix system has … convinced him to evacuate the major population center (Palm Beach, Florida) where he records his show.

I’m not going to get into details because of the security nature of things, but it turns out that we will not be able to do the program here tomorrow. … We’ll be on the air next week, folks, from parts unknown. So we’ll be back on Monday. It’s just that tomorrow is going to be problematic. Tomorrow it would be, I think, legally impossible for us to originate the program out of here.

Legal stuff, you guys. And security… the security nature of things. Is Rush Limbaugh actually a government liberal?