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As soon as Rush Limbaugh linked Friday's shooting near the Empire State Building with President Barack Obama's policies, he started qualifying the connection as "absurdist," which is the same way he qualified calling Sandra Fluke a slut. Shouldn't that word trigger some kind of a warning for him? From the transcript of Friday's show:

[Alleged shooter Jeffery Johnson] was fired. He went out there and he killed his boss. I wonder if Obama's constant warfare on bosses and so forth might have led this guy to pull the trigger? Oh, you ought to see the faces of the people on the other side of the glass! "Oh, no. Rush, you didn't really say that! We have time on the delay to bleep it. No, Rush! Oh, you didn't really say that!"

But Limbaugh's producers didn't bleep it. Limbaugh forbade that. He was beating the liberal media boogeymen to the punch: "We're trying to illustrate absurdity by being absurd," he said. "That's the absurd way the news media and the rest of the left try to capitalize and politicize any terrible crime that they think they can associate with Republicans or conservatives. Do you think Obama, do you think the Democrats, have any blood on their hands with this shooting today?"

Limbaugh is still harping on Brian Ross' erroneous ABC News report of a Tea Party connection in the Aurora shootings, which at the time he included in a rant about "Politically Ill Leftists Exploit[ing] an Unspeakable Human Tragedy." But Limbaugh's little disclaimer that he's being "absurdist" doesn't really cover the apparently earnest link he's trying to make between Friday's shooting and the politics of non-Republicans (Mayor Michael Bloomberg is an independent). He's still making the connection, even if he does yell "psych!" afterward:

Yes, I said it, and we're not gonna bleep it out. I'll guarantee you. The last time there was a shooting in New York, who'd the mayor blame it on? Tea Party people that didn't like health care, right? Gabby Giffords, you name it. The shooting out in Colorado? Brian Ross said the Tea Party did it. Well, here you have a guy shooting his boss for being fired. Who's out there ripping bosses to shreds every day? Who's out there ripping businesses to shreds every day? And who's out there killing jobs every day?

"Absurdist" or not, that's Rush Limbaugh linking Friday's shooting to Obama and non-Republicans. Remember this the next time he calls someone "politically ill" for doing the same thing.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.