Ladies and gentlemen, as your Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Operation Chaos, I'm looking out over the battlefield.
Mrs. Clinton's in trouble, and something that I never anticipated may be necessary, and that's mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for her candidacy.
It's, but we've got, we've still got time.
We've got a lot of work to do here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network greeting, my friends.
Great to have you with us, Rush Limbaugh.
Funny, snerdly.
You got to lighten up in there.
What is it about today?
Everybody's wound up so tight out there.
No need to be.
We're here, and we've got three hours of fun, frolic, and frivolity, as well as the serious discussion of issues.
The telephone number if you want to be on the program 800-282-2882 and the email address lrushbow at eibnet.com.
Ladies and gentlemen, before we get into the political news of the day, I want to play for you something that happened this morning on the White House lawn.
The largest welcoming ceremony ever in the history of the White House for Pope Benedict XVI.
We have audio soundbites of the president's greeting to the Pope, the Pope's response.
And I saw something that genuinely moved me.
And I was sitting here staring at this and listening to this.
And I was just blown away by it.
I was two things happened.
The event and the music itself moved me like I haven't been moved in quite a while.
And the setting where it took place and the reason that it was happening just, I mean, it was, I'm sitting here thinking divine intervention today at the White House.
Battle Hymn of the Republic was sung by the U.S. Army Chorus.
And you have to hear this, particularly if you haven't had a chance to have your TV on today or radio and you didn't hear this.
You have to hear it.
And you have to imagine a crystal blue sky, a crisp day in Washington, the Pope and the President on the reviewing stand with others, the camera occasionally focusing on the Army, U.S. Army chorus.
And you realize this is at the White House.
And a song written in tribute to God is being played at the White House.
We have, in this country, there has been such an effort, and it has been way too successful to remove God from anything public.
Not only was God present, but the largest White House welcoming ceremony ever participated in a ceremony thanking God of respecting God and of offering up a tribute to God.
And this is, you just have to hear this.
It runs about 4:47.
It's infectious.
So well done.
U.S. Army Chorus, the battle hymn of the republic.
He is grandming out the angels where the grace of breath was born.
He has lost the faithful lightning of his perilous sword.
His truth is parting home.
Going, glory, allah.
Oh!
Amen.
They have been in an altar in the evening hills and damps.
Why can we pray just and sin the living prayering lands?
His praise parting more.
Glory, glory, hallelujah.
His heart is mighty glory.
In all beauty of the Lives.
Christ was born on cross the sea with all glory.
In his whole song that transfigures you and me as he died to make men holy.
Let us die to make men free while God is hearty home glory glory hallelujah glory glory hallelujah
That is just beautiful.
I'm at a loss for words to describe the impact that had on me.
And I was not even paying close attention.
I was looking at the computer and I had the TVs on, which are to my left when I'm sitting at the computer.
And all of a sudden, I heard this start.
And, you know, I told Cookie up in New York, get me the song.
I want the song as part of the audio soundbite.
She said, you can hear it?
I said, I can always hear God's music.
I can always hear God's music.
Battle Hymn of the Republic.
That's the U.S. Army chorus.
And that was at the welcoming ceremony for His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI at the White House today.
Again, the largest welcoming ceremony in the history of the White House.
Here's a portion of President Bush's remarks.
In a world where some treat life is something to be debased and discarded, we need your message that all human life is sacred and that each of us is willed, each of us is loved.
And your message that each of us is willed, each of us is loved, and each of us is necessary.
In a world where some no longer believe that we can distinguish between simple right and wrong, we need your message to reject this dictatorship of relativism and embrace a culture of justice and truth.
This is just fabulous.
This is exactly what this country needs at this time.
It took the arrival of Pope Benedict XVI to bring forth a discussion, a discussion I have been so desirous that happen at the highest levels of our elected leadership, a discussion of American exceptionalism.
And we are back, Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, two sound bites from the Pope today at the greeting ceremony, the welcoming ceremony at the White House.
Once again, as you know, folks, I have been begging, I have been clamoring, I have been asking, where is the discussion in this country of American exceptionalism?
Where is it in this presidential campaign?
It's nowhere to be found.
You won't find it.
It took the arrival of Pope Benedict XVI for a discussion and statement of American exceptionalism to be made.
From the dawn of the Republic, America's quest for freedom has been guided by the conviction that the principles governing political and social life are intimately linked to a moral order based on the dominion of God, the creature.
The framers of this nation's founding documents drew upon this conviction when they proclaimed the self-evident truth that all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights grounded in the laws of nature and of nature's God.
And one more.
All believers have found here the freedom to worship God now accordance with the dictates of their conscience, while at the same time being accepted as part of a common will in which each individual and group can make its voice heard.
As a nation faces increasingly complex political and ethical issues of our time, I'm confident that the American people will find in their richest beliefs a precious source of insight and an inspiration to pursue recent, responsible, and respectful dialogue in the effort to build a more human and free society.
And he continued on, and he ended it by saying, God bless America.
He's a big fan of America.
Joseph Ratzinger is his pre-papal name.
He's from Germany, as you can tell.
But it was just, this is uplifting to me.
I take this stuff personally.
I love this country.
I love anybody else who loves this country.
And I don't care who it is that requires or necessitates or creates this discussion, gets it started of the concept of American exceptionalism, whether it's the Pope or whether it's somebody.
But I really wish that some of our own elected officials in powers, leadership positions, would have the guts to speak of it in that context rather than wringing our hands and whining and moaning about how hard we have it and how horrible things are and how unfair life is and all the other things that people have become comfortable whining about.
Thanks to the Pope and the President today for this remarkable, remarkable ceremony at the White House.
Now moving on to our political news, ladies and gentlemen, CNN has said today that its wacko commentator Jack Cafferty was referring to China's leaders, not the Chinese people, when he described them as a bunch of goons and thugs.
And CNN has apologized to anybody who thought otherwise.
On Tuesday, the Chikoms demanded an apology for Jack Cafferty's comments broadcast on CNN in which he described Chinese products as junk.
Beijing had already singled out U.S.-based CNN as among Western news outlets that produced allegedly biased coverage of violent anti-government protests in Tibet and across Western China last month.
The statement from the network said, CNN would like to clarify it was not Mr. Cafferty's nor CNN's intent to cause offense to the Chikom people and would apologize to anybody who has interpreted the comments in this way.
CNN's a network, they said, that reports the news in an objective and balanced fashion.
The ChiComs aren't going to buy that.
But they'll at least take the apology.
Now, it was only, I guess, day before yesterday that Jack Cafferty on CNN compared all of you people who live in the small towns that Obama was talking about to Al-Qaeda terrorists.
Will CNN and Jack Cafferty apologize to Americans who live in small towns for being compared to al-Qaeda.
Oh, you didn't hear this?
Oh, folks, I wish I had the bite.
I should have thought to ask Cookie to get the, but I'm sure she can drum it up real quick.
But he and Jeff Toobin were talking about Obama's comments in San Francisco about people in small towns being bitter and clinging to God and their guns because the government's forgotten about them and they're miserable out there.
And Toobin said, he's exactly right.
He's exactly right.
And Cafferty then chimed in, yeah, not only that, he's exactly right.
Look what happens.
It's going up for 30 years.
These people in the Rust Belt and these small towns have been ignored.
And what happens?
You have it?
Good.
I don't have to paraphrase.
Here is what Cafferty.
What Cafferty said here is far more insulting and far more inaccurate than what he said about the Chikom League.
They are thugs.
They're communists.
They are thugs.
And some of their stuff is junk.
You ever heard of Lead Toys?
But CNN rolling over for the Chikoms, because at the CHICOM, nobody plays around with the Chikoms.
Chikoms come after you.
He says, okay, okay, okay.
You know, Chikoms are not a paper tiger.
We are.
We're so concerned what the world thinks of.
Chikoms couldn't care less what anybody thinks of them.
All they care about is the world fearing them.
And they've pulled that off.
The same thing with the Soviet Union.
Anyway, the old Soviet Union.
Here's what Cafferty said yesterday.
Jeff Toobin starts this out.
Hillary Clinton is clearly distorting what Obama said.
And by the way, what Obama said is factually accurate.
It's been true throughout history that people who have economic problems lash out against various others.
I mean, I just think it is embarrassing for the Clinton campaign to hang on this as if it's some sort of gaffe.
Look, Jeff's right.
They call it the Rust Belt for a reason.
The great jobs and the economic prosperity left that part of the country two or three decades ago.
The people are frustrated.
The people have no economic opportunity.
What happens to folks like that in the Middle East, you ask?
Well, take a look.
They go to places like Al-Qaeda training camps.
I mean, there's nothing new here.
You know, everybody talks about the crazy uncle you have upstairs in the basement or downstairs.
It's Cafferty.
Cafferty is everybody's, every family's number one embarrassment, except CNN's put him on the air.
Your crazy uncle has a commentary position on CNN.
So he calls the THICOMs thugs and says their stuff, goons and thugs and says their products are junk.
Isn't it amazing how communist nations control our drive-bys?
I mean, here, the THICOMs call up CNN or they issue some statement and then see probably peeing in their pants over there down in Atlanta and probably arming up the security detail.
And first thing they do, first thing they do is they head out there, they make a statement, get, oh, we're sorry, well, you're sorry, we're not talking about your people.
We're talking about your leaders, and we're terribly sorry.
You were talking, that's going to make them even madder.
The Chikoms wouldn't care if you call their people goons and thugs.
You call them the leaders goons and thugs.
Those are fighting words.
In the meantime, CNN probably doesn't even.
When Cafferty said this business about middle-class America and the Rust Belt, comparing them to economic distress in the Middle East, and they turned to al-Qaeda training camps, I'm sure nobody at CNN thought that that was anything strange about it.
And of course, the difference is that nobody in these small towns is going to demand that CNN apologize.
Not that I've heard.
And even if they did, they wouldn't.
Now, here's what Cafferty said that angered the Chikom leaders.
We continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and to poison pet food and export jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we're buying from Walmart.
So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed.
I think they're basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years.
And they had to go out and say, I was talking about the Chinese government, not the Chinese people.
What's also very strange about this, ladies and gentlemen, is when's the last time you heard anybody at CNN, anybody criticize a communist government?
And to show you how unusual that is, look at how quickly CNN snapped to here when the ChiComs expressed their anger and how mad they were about this.
Not enough is being made, ladies and gentlemen, about the victory in Italy of Silvio Berlusconi.
Silvia Berlusconi ran as a conservative.
Sarkozy ran as a conservative.
Angela Merkel in Germany did not run on an anti-American ticket.
Berlusconi's opponent ran as the Italian Obama.
He lost by 11 points.
The point here is that while the liberals and Democrats keep telling you that we're hated around the world, that our image is horrible, all of these pro-American leaders, candidates in Europe are winning elections in landslides.
You know, Jack Cafferty is.
So, Jack Cafferty is a guy wearing the raincoat, the dirty raincoat in his city corner.
He hadn't shaved or showered in three weeks.
He's yelling obscenities at the people who walk by on the street corner.
But in his case, he does it on CNN and is paid for it.
Just amazing.
More audio soundbites here before we get to, well, we've got some light-hearted stuff in the stacks today, as well as a big, big, big debate tonight in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
But first, the drive-by media is now getting in gear, and talk of Operation Chaos is heating up.
This morning on Fox and Friends, Steve Doocy talking to Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online.
Rush Limbaugh on the radio is encouraging Republicans to vote in the Democrat primary.
It calls it Operation Chaos.
Do you think that could actually be a factor come next Tuesday?
I don't know.
Certainly, the margins and the margins are what matter now.
I mean, we're talking about, you know, the question is not whether Hillary Clinton wins or loses, but by what margin and if it looks like a decisive enough victory that she can keep going.
And I think in that sense, it might be possible.
Then we turn to CNBC, the business channel, on their squawk box show, the host Joe Kiernan, talking to Rudy Giuliani, discussing Obama and Hillary.
And Rudy says, you know, from the point of view of a Republican, it's real close.
I mean, it's anybody's guess.
You're probably going to find out the day after the election if you made the right choice on the one that you wanted to run against.
I can never, you know, I read the right limbaugh or whatever, and he seems to be saying, you know, we need to bash Obama to get Hillary in because we can beat Hillary.
But then I look, I think that might be a head fake to really get Obama in.
And I'm not sure.
So they're still stumped here by Operation Chaos, trying to figure out what I am up to, ladies and gentlemen.
Oh, there's Jack Murthy.
Jack Murthy said today that McCain is too old to be president, that the rigors of running in the campaign are just too old.
He's 75, and McCain is 72.
Let's start early on the phones today.
Diane in South San Francisco, I'm glad that you called.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello.
Good morning, Rush.
I wanted you to know that your emotions this morning at the hearing of the Republic Battle Hymn of the Republic were shared by President Abraham Lincoln at the time of his Gettysburg address in 1863.
An Army captain who had been a prisoner of war in the Civil War had gotten together a male chorus and went around singing it at fundraisers.
And when Abraham Lincoln heard it, his eyes welled with tears and he shouted, Sing it again.
Now, that's what I found.
Well, I kept singing it myself over and over here for the rest of the time before.
I mean, I really, I kept, I was just singing the chorus over and over again.
It was, in addition to everything else that it is, it's infectious.
Well, did you know this bit of trivia, and I will let you get on to more important calls.
Julia Ward Howe wrote that in one evening in her hotel room after someone suggested she revise the original poem, John Brown's Body, the abolitionist song.
She wrote all five verses of this beautiful Battle Hymn of the Republic and sold it to the Atlantic Monthly for $5.
$5.
It was printed The Atlantic Monthly for $5.
Well, that is what it is.
There's something poetic even about that.
Yes, it is.
Well, look, Diane, I appreciate the phone call.
You're welcome.
Thank you.
It was, you know, folks, I'm an emotional person, but I don't express it publicly on this program.
It's tough to do.
Not hard, not difficult to do.
I mean, I have no problem doing it.
It's just coming up with the right words to reflect the way this hit me today emotionally as I was watching it.
The timeliness of it, the brilliant performance, the perfection of the voices and the articulation, the musical accompaniment, the shots of the Pope and the president watching in awe, listening in awe.
I mean, the whole package, if you watched it, you couldn't help but be profoundly moved by it, given all that is happening in the country and the world today.
It was powerful, and there were lots of meanings, and some of them subtle and some of them just blaring.
It had it all.
This ceremony day had everything in it, and they moved from one item to the next.
It was not overly long.
Each element was bam, bam, get it, move on to the next.
Exhausted at the end of it, even though there was no frantic energy during it.
It was just brilliant.
It was brilliantly conceived, flawlessly executed from start to finish.
Doug in Seattle, you're next.
Welcome to the program, sir.
Hey, Rud.
I'm an African-American business owner out here.
And actually, I just closed the business today, kind of a sad moment.
But I wanted to say that I'm optimistic about America.
You know, and I'm a black business owner.
I've never wanted the government to do something for me because all I needed is an opportunity.
And there's hurdles out here for everybody here, regardless of color.
And sometimes, I'm not going to lie, it might be a little bit more difficult being black.
But, man, America is so much opportunity abound here.
It's so, you know, I'm optimistic.
Tomorrow, that's the good thing about our country.
Tomorrow, I can start something new.
You know, I mean, it could develop into something bigger and better.
And the other thing I wanted to say is like the problem, I mean, for the most part, I guess I've been a lifelong Democrat, but the problem that I have with what they're saying now is that they want the government to do everything.
The government doesn't have to do anything but give you a fair opportunity.
It's like they need to change the slogans from, yes, we can as the government being weak to yes, you can.
You can achieve if you try hard.
You can achieve if you go off.
That's exactly right.
That's the whole point.
And there's nobody, and I don't care what party you're talking about today.
There is nobody attempting to inspire the American people from the top political leadership.
I mean, families are trying to do it for their children.
Individuals like me are attempting to do it within our audiences.
But in terms of the elected political leadership or the leadership of the country, you don't hear it.
And that's why, you know, Doug, after your call, I guarantee you, I'm going to go to my email.
I'm going to get some email from people who will have said, play that guy again.
That was great.
And what that means is your comments are so rare.
Your comments are so rare these days.
A guy calling up saying, yep, the economy is tough, but I can handle it.
I'm optimistic.
I'm an American.
There are more opportunity here than anybody.
It's so rare for people to hear this these days.
I don't care in the classroom, in the drive-by media, in the context of a presidential campaign.
You don't hear it.
So when somebody calls, it gives people a little bit of a rush, a little bit of excitement.
So I'm glad you took the time.
I appreciate it.
Brian in Kansas City, Missouri, you're next on the EIB network.
Mr. Limbaugh Ditto is from the Rust Belt.
I was listening to your comments.
Wait, Justin.
I wouldn't exactly call Kansas City the Rust Belt.
Well, the flyover country.
I don't know.
I figured that's what they were referring to when they called this the Rust Belt.
All right, well, if that's what it means, Shadow, we'll stick with it for this example.
Well, thank you.
In reference to Mr. Cafferty, I believe, saying that, you know, when people don't have any jobs and nowhere to turn to, they go to camps like they do over in the Middle East and Al-Qaeda.
Well, I think something like that happened back in the beginning of this country where we were taxed too much and had no recourse.
And that's what is found in this country.
And if I beg your pardon, Mr. Salamba, I'm just so nervous.
I've never been able to get away from the people.
I think that happens when you talk to me.
I understand that.
You've done a massively good job for somebody from Kansas City on that score, by the way.
Thank you, sir.
I believe Mr. Jefferson made a comment that the country needs a good revolt every 20 years or so.
And if Mr. Cafferty thinks of the rest of the country as not as equals, but only as himself as elitist and whatnot, this Rust Belt will rise up and wrap the Rust Belt around their necks.
Well, I don't think it's anywhere near.
I understand what you're talking about, what Thomas Jefferson said and all that.
But the real news here is not the people in the small towns.
The circumstances for people in these small towns is not nearly as dire as it's being portrayed, either by Obama or by Jack Cafferty.
This is just the liberal version of America, the view of America.
We're all in soup lines.
We're all but a paycheck away from being homeless.
This is the image they want you to have of your own country.
And the point of this is, folks, when they look out across the country, I don't care, any part of flyover country, the Rust Belt, the South, wherever, they see things that embarrass them.
They think everybody's low educated, uneducated, that they talk funny and at church going and they're just, you know, they're basically shallow.
They look at them with contempt and arrogant condescension.
And they think that people in these small towns have been in economic, dire economic circumstances for 30 years.
And when it gets that bad for that long.
But there's another myth here, too.
And I would be remiss if I didn't point this out.
The idea that Islamic terrorists join Al-Qaeda because they're economically poor is the exact opposite.
Economics has nothing to do with it.
And it's not that they resent our economic prosperity here.
They resent freedom.
We're infidels.
We don't believe in their religion.
It has nothing to do with anything else.
These young men, young boys who are born and raised to be terrorists are in that circumstance from the moment they're born with their mothers.
They go to the mosques, the right mosques with the right radical imams and so forth.
And they're raised this way.
It has nothing to do with the fact that they're lashing out because they're poor.
Bin Laden is a billionaire.
His family was a billionaire.
Zawahiri was a doctor.
These people are not poor, and their recruits are not poor.
And this is not why they're doing it.
So not only is it an insulting reference to the people of the middle part of this country and in small towns, but it's factually inaccurate and represents a total ignorance of who the al-Qaeda movement is, who they are, and why they exist.
Because if you take Cafferty and the rest of the left's theory on why al-Qaeda terrorists become terrorists, because they've got no economic circumstances, no economic hope, no economic future, then you have to then say, why?
Well, because we're taking all the world's resources.
It's our fault.
It's our fault they're so poor.
And yet they're the ones that live in the oil-producing nations.
It's just, these people are senseless.
They are ignorant.
Despite being highly educated and supposedly the best and the brightest networks can find to do news and commentary, their ignorance is striking.
Quick timeout here, folks.
We'll be back and continue right after this.
Do not go away.
You know, folks, I'm sitting here in my prestigious Attila the Hun chair, a chair endowed by me at the distinguished Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, and I'm thinking, what are the Democrats, what are the liberals going to do about the Pope?
I mean, for every reason that I was moved by what happened at the White House today, from the Pope speaking of God and America's greatness and exceptionalism, to the president talking about the reaffirmation of the sanctity and decency of every human life, to the Army Chorus and its incredibly beautiful, moving rendition of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
You know that there were a lot of liberals watching this seething separation, church, and state, getting mad about it.
Now, one thing I've noticed after a lifetime of study of liberals, ladies and gentlemen, is that we know that everything we do have to have an equivalent moment, person, or idea.
For example, after Hurricane Katrina and the botched aftermath or the so-called botched aftermath, liberals are running around proudly declaring that now they had their 9-11.
They had their 9-11.
They had a destruction of one of their cities, and it happened because Bush didn't care and Bush was incompetent.
They had their 9-11.
Now, liberalism is a religion.
Abortion is the sacrament of their faith.
Global warming is one of their gospels.
And in fact, global warming is sold as a matter of faith by liberals.
So the liberals have got to have their own Pope now because a Pope doesn't speak for everybody.
Of course, the Pope's Catholic, and the Pope came over here and violated U.S. separation church and state, despite the fact that Hillary and Obama went to Messiah College and had a compassion love-in earlier this week.
So what will they do?
What will they do to come up with their, you know, in the same way that they demand equal time after the President's State of the Union address, what will liberals do to demand equal time to the statements of the Pope?
Don't laugh.
I mean, it's probably not going to happen, but I won't be surprised if it does.
There's a new poll out.
Eight out of ten people in the Arab world have a negative view of the United States.
It's a recent BBC World Service survey, and they found that the views of the U.S. had started to improve by 4% globally, although they remain negative in the Arab world.
Look, this is important to go back and remind you of the Italian election, Berlusconi winning big against a Democrat, the mayor of Rome, by the way, who is said to be a good mayor, but he ran in the last stages of his campaign as the Italian Obama.
He got creamed by 11 points, running against America.
Berlusconi, a huge conservative, pro-American leader in Italy, same thing with Sarkozy.
All this notion, all this talk that we're hated in the world and our reputation is sunk.
The only place it appears to be sunk is in the Arab world.
Well, fine.
This is something that Obama can deal with.
Obama can unify the peoples of the world, ladies and gentlemen, especially, especially if these Arabs are bitter.
Well, Obama understands bitterness.
He told us about the bitterness in the small towns of America.
Small little problem.
Got to work on the Arabs.
They'll be back.
You think, making this up, here's a story from the AP yesterday out of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania.
And it's a discussion of bitter voters, story about bitter voters, and whether Obama had a point when he talked about it.
And they talked to people, AP did, and they found somebody in Pottsville, Mary Ann Price.
She's undecided about which candidate will get her vote in the primary, but Obama's remarks will not affect her decision.
She said she's more concerned about U.S. standing in the international community.
The world hates us, and with good reason.
Now, Mary Ann Price, 56 years old, I don't know her, but I'm going to wager that Mary Ann Price has not one factual bit of evidence to support her assertion that the whole world hates us.
The whole world hates us, and with good reason.
What is tragic is that she's probably a decent person.
But how does she come to view her own country this way?
Who's been telling her this for the past eight years?
The Democrat Party, the American left, and the drive-by media.
And she's one of these sponges, these poor sponges, sitting out there soaking this stuff up.
And she's just one of millions who have been convinced that her country is rotten to the core.
And the very people telling her this are the people she's planning on voting for.
You heard what Jimmy Carter said?
I mean, lately, when I go to a dictatorship, I only have to talk to one person, and that's a dictator because he speaks for all the people.