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May 29, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:11
May 29, 2008, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
I know, I know, I know, I know.
And it's time to start the program.
I'm I'm I'm ready to start the program here, folks.
I how are you, Don?
I am Rush Limboy, your official anchor man, real anchor man, doctor of democracy, and America's truth detector.
And I was psychoanalyzed last night on CNN.
They actually went out and got a psychiatrist.
The reporter at Infobabe, Carol Costello, who I think they've assigned her permanently to me.
I feel like I'm being stalked by this woman.
We'll have that coming up.
Lots of stuff on the uh on the on the fun program today.
It's a thrill and a delight to have you with us.
Telephone number if you'd like to join us, 800-282-2882.
The email address is L Rushbo at EIBNet.com.
As many of you people know, I am singularly and solely responsible for placing into the public domain the name of Bobby Gindle, the governor of Louisiana, as a high-ranking vice presidential nominee and choice for Senator McCain to look at.
H.R., what was this?
Esquire magazine wants to talk to me about this.
I just remembered this.
Esquire Mag for their October issue.
Seventy-five most influential people.
And I I'm not one of the seventy-five.
It's Jindle that's one of the seventy-five, and they want my thoughts on Jindal.
Well, by Oct.
Yeah, I did.
I know I put him out there in a national sphere, but but uh in this way, but October, I mean, the vice presidential nominee will have been chosen.
By then there's an interesting piece today by the Prowler at the American Spectator.
Um, I'm sorry.
Word out of the Sedona auditions for Republican vice presidential nominee is that Bobby Gindle, the Louisiana governor, at the very least wowed other guests over the weekend with his grasp of policy and a need for change inside the Republican Party.
Quote, he was all he was the only one who seemed to understand that we have to get back to innovative public policies that do not stray far from our conservative values.
Says a source with knowledge of the weekend.
He was the star of the weekend without really trying.
Now, something about this is just overwhelmingly confusing to me.
I don't understand.
None of the it doesn't make sense.
This is because McCain is not projecting himself in this manner.
McCain is not projecting himself as somebody who can uh change inside the Republican Party and take it back to a more conservative entity.
McCain's doing just the exact opposite.
And yet Jindal goes out there according to this report and causes everybody to do backflips.
I would think it would scare them.
I would think it was, oh no, this is not what we're looking for.
Because the McCain campaign's doing everything it can to get away from conservatism, at least of the kind that Bobby Jindle uh represents.
In the run-up to the Memorial Weekend getaway, McCain campaign aides insisted that while Jindle is under heavy consideration, the party might be better served to have him as a highly visible governor for the next several years, but Jindal apparently saw the opportunity and made the most of it.
Now he's publicly saying he doesn't want it.
He's got too much work to do in Louisiana.
He's pretty young, he's 36 years old.
But I read this and it just stunned me.
We've got some insider knowledge of the weekend, somebody at McCain's place.
He was the only one, presumably includes McCain, who seemed to understand that we have to get back to innovative public policies that don't stray far from conservative values.
Would that not be a great thing for the nominee to try?
Of course, I'm sure, ladies and gentlemen, that you've heard all about the uh the contratomb going on between McCain and Obama over the visit to Iraq.
The Republican National Committee on its website making a big deal out of this, McCain making a big deal out Of this.
Last night in Beverly Hills, before heading to a fundraiser, McCain spoke to reporters about the news that Obama's considering a trip to Iraq now.
Here's what McCain said.
I certainly was just uh short time ago glad to hear that Senator Obama is now, quote, considering a trip to Iraq.
It's long overdue.
It's been 871 days since he was there.
Last night on an airplane, reporters then confronted Obama.
I was asked about the Republicans trying to make the issue of frequency of this new rock.
And what I said was that the Republicans don't have a strong position to argue when it comes to substance.
The hell is he talking about?
This man is vacant.
This man is vapid, ladies and gentlemen.
Well, I mean, one of the stories coming out of Iraq is the overwhelming success that has taken place there, particularly in the uh in the last year.
So they think at the Republican Party they've scored some big points here by causing Obama to flip-flop and say to go, but it was Lindsay Gramnesty's idea, if you remember for Obama to go with McCain.
There was no way Obama was going to do that, but he has flip-flop said he not he might now go.
Now, in the Washington Post today, this story for McCain, a switch on telecom immunity.
Recent statements signaled deeper privacy concerns.
A top lawyer for Senator McCain's presidential campaign said that telecom companies should be forced to explain their role in the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program as a condition for legal immunity for past wiretapping.
A statement that stands in marked contrast to positions taken by President Bush, McCain, and other Republicans in Congress.
There would need to be hearings, real hearings to find out what actually happened, what harms actually occurred, rather than some sort of sweeping of things under the rug, said Chuck Fish, who was a former vice president chief patent counsel at Time Warner, uh said last week at the computer's freedom and pre- Well, look at me cut to the chase on this.
The uh administration reached out to these telecommunications companies in time of war for the FISA program, looking for phone calls overseas into the United States that might be related to future terrorist attacks.
The telecoms, in an act of patriotism, said, okay, here you go.
Here's what you want.
Everybody started raising hell about this because it was always miscast as Bush spying on the American people with the telecoms assisting.
There is so much revisionist history and so much lying going on about this.
Now all of a sudden McCain, one of his top lawyers, said that these telecom companies ought to be forced to explain their role.
Let me tell you who ought to be forced to explain their role.
Once again, members of Congress get to sit here as bystanders and spectators as though they had nothing to do with this.
And then they get to get into the bottom of it and find out what really went on.
This is this is this is classic.
I'll tell you, Senator McCain.
I I you know, instead, instead of asking Obama to accompany you to Iraq to see the progress we're making, I've got another idea.
Why don't you, Senator McCain, take a tour of all the great businesses in this country?
The businesses that make this country work and learn how they do it.
Take a visit to Exxon Mobile, go visit General Motors, go visit Merck, see how people are trying to destroy them.
On and on.
What is this constant or frequent need to attack private industry?
It's almost as severe on occasion as Obama.
I mean, what did McCain say recently?
He said something about, oh, he's he's against obscene profits, excess profits.
He's gonna go out and do whatever he can to stop them.
I don't know if he's ever made a profit.
I don't know if he's ever run a business.
But this indicates to me a lack of appreciation for what the vast majority of Americans do.
Who is it that works at these corporations for crying out loud?
I really, folks, I get I mean, we all get sick and tired of a lot of things.
I am getting sick and tired of these never-ending attacks on our private sector.
Today, the telecoms over the stupid warrantless wiretap business.
I just show a little respect for the civilians in this country, the citizens of this country.
They work very hard every day.
The people who make this country work are not in Washington.
They're out in flyover country.
They are everywhere.
And they're working hard every day to create wealth and opportunity, societal stability.
And if you go see what they do, you would understand how this country works.
But instead, you end up having to trash the private sector.
Trade and socialist catchphrases about profiteering and conspiracies and so forth.
Massive big government ideas like cap and trade to deal with global warming are proposed, which represent a total ignorance of economics and how it works.
This cap and trade business to stop a hoax.
By the way, have you heard this?
La Scala, the great opera house in Italy, is going to produce Gore's movie as an opera.
An inconvenient truth, who's going to sing the aria?
What is the aria going to be?
Can't you wait to see the stage sets for this?
Hope the ice they get melts and floods the whole opera house.
But this cap and trade business that Obama's supporting and McCain's supporting is a terrible assault on every business and worker in this country.
And people who are behind this kind of thing cannot possibly understand or have any concept of free markets.
So I guess it's easier for Obama and McCain to both go out and attack corporate executives.
But the problem is this is right out of the left's playbook.
You don't attack free enterprise because you disagree with what an executive or 100 executives are earning.
Who cares?
It's none of your business anyway.
It's none of government's business what anybody earns in this country.
And just because some people earn more than you think they should to go out and attack the whole concept of the free market and say we're going to stop excess profits.
I don't like them any more than anybody else does.
It's none of government's business.
But they go out and propose policies that would destroy industries in the name of punishing these executives, or attacking excess profits, or ending pollution and climate change or whatever.
I mean, that this just it reveals a terrible lack of comprehension about how this country works.
I mean, at least Obama, as dumb as he is, is smart enough to know that he's advancing an ideological agenda.
But what Obama's doing makes total sense.
He's a liberal and he's advancing a liberal's agenda.
But Senator McCain doesn't seem capable of defending our agenda, or I'm sorry to say this, even understanding it.
Says he's a Reagan Republican.
I this is so hard.
His substance on policy, you know, substance on policy is not judged by who endorses you or who you claim to be.
What you say about our society, our economy, individual liberty.
Senator McCain says he's against earmarks.
Which, I mean, fine and dandy, they're a symbol.
Truth be told, earmarks represent a small fraction of government spending.
But he is for government takeover of private industry through global warming.
That's exactly what it is.
Government takeover, government management of private industry.
That's what a cap and trade program is.
Because all these 535 people, you realize 535 people who get re-elected 90% of the time are the ones that are screwing this country up.
535 people.
100 of them in the Senate, 435 of them in the House.
And we might also take some of the blame ourselves because we keep re-electing these dingleberries.
Anyways.
And every time they screw something up, like this cap and trade thing is going to screw things up, and I can go I can go through a list of things.
Charlie Reese has a great column about this today.
I can go through a list of things that they've done, and we've done it here repeatedly.
The war on poverty, the great society.
All of these things have just ruined people's lives.
They have ruined aspects of life that they were trying to help, and they get to sit around as spectators when all goes to hell.
Well, what happened?
We got to have an investigation to throw more money at it.
Well, I gotta take a break here, folks, a little long.
we'll come back.
We'll continue.
Lots of audio sound bites today, including the CNN's psychoanalysis of me by a real psychiatrist back after this.
Hi, welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, Newsweek magazine, the new cover.
The cover is of Obama, and they put another halo on his head.
The original picture did not have a halo, but the editor's wife, John Meachum, walked in and saw it didn't like it.
So Newsweek changed the cover photo of Obama with a halo and a bright light behind him because the editor's wife didn't like the original.
Well, buddy, some Z top.
You know, I've got an idea.
We keep talking about language and persuasive language to use, ladies and gentlemen.
And it has been brought to my attention that when I use terms like, why do these politicians, including Senator McCain, want to continue to attack the private sector?
Uh it has been brought to my attention that that might not be the most effective term, even though it's quite accurate.
Public sector being the government, the private sector being everybody else, but to substitute the word the economy for the private sector, so as to say, why does Obama want to attack the U.S. economy?
Why does Senator McCain want to attack the U.S. economy with cap and trade stuff?
Look at it this way.
Just forget a hypothetical, just a little hypothetical.
Let's say for we accept the premise of man-made global warming.
Let's say we accept the premise.
And then we say, okay, now we got to fix this.
But we've got to do no nobody wants to have the economy contract in the process.
So just what in hell are we going to do to cause the economy to grow while we're doing all this?
Because the principles and the ideas proposed by both presidential candidates would wreck the economy, would harm it greatly, would attack it.
Just where do you think the innovation's gonna come from?
If we accept, and I don't, this is hypothetical, but if we accept the premise of man-made global warming, and we got to come up with all kinds of substitutes in terms of energies, where the hell these things are gonna come from.
535 dingbats in the U.S. House and Senate are not going to do it.
And they can bring all these oil company execs all they want up there, and they can ream them up one wall and down the other, and it's not gonna do one thing, it's not going to accomplish anything.
Like I say, it's time for big oil execs to have their own hearings with 535 members of Congress.
What the hell are you doing standing in the way of us doing our business?
Now here's the CNN piece, Carol Costello.
Uh, and uh it's a report on McClellan's book.
And there's a there's a psychoanalysis of me here.
Rush Limbaugh called him another Republican turncoat.
They'll throw anybody under the bus, even their own grandmothers to have a seat of power with the libs, get their approval.
Not just Scott McClellan is the worst example of it lately.
Unflattering kiss and tells about the Bush administration are a dime a dozen.
From a psychological standpoint, that's not surprising.
Analysts say the Bush administration demanded loyalty and suppressed dissent.
A perfect recipe for rebellion.
When you see someone commit what appears to be an act of revenge and do it in a potentially very self-destructive way.
You have to wonder about the guilt that they feel.
Right?
Because they're asking for punishment in a sense.
And Scott McClellan is certainly feeling a backlash.
But ethicists look at it another way.
There is no statute of limitations on telling the truth.
And he may be uh alienating people, but he may very well feel that uh, and perhaps justifiably so, that it's more important to be truthful and to let the American people know what was actually happening.
Book is a you know, you you know what this book is?
Every anti-Bush speech by Ariana Huffington and every anti-Bush monologue by Chris Matthews.
Put them in a book, and you've got what Scott McClellan wrote.
We'll be back.
Lots more on this.
Sit tight.
As usual, half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
While meeting and surpassing all audience expectations on a daily basis.
couple of interesting polls.
First off, Gallup poll.
It's an energy poll.
It's out today on gasoline prices, has some interesting findings.
Americans want increased domestic production, even if it means opening areas that are now off limits.
The Gallup poll found that a majority of 57 to 41% of Americans support drilling in U.S. coastal and wilderness areas, which are now off limits.
By comparison, by the way, in a more specific Gallup poll taken in March three years ago, a majority of Americans, 53%, was opposed to opening and war for oil production.
So there has been a big shift.
Despite the onslaught from the drive-by media and both presidential candidates.
An overwhelming majority of Americans oppose rationing.
A slight majority, 53%, support price controls on gasoline, but an overwhelming majority, 79%, oppose the rationing of gasoline that would result from price controls.
And unlike some in Congress, most Americans don't blame big oil.
Despite recent high-profile hearings with all company executives, the percentage of Americans blaming the oil companies for skyrocketing gas prices fell from 34% to 20%.
That's the Gallup poll.
Now here's another one.
This is uh this poll is the National Center for Policy Analysis.
Their poll found that an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose Warner Lieberman, the cap and trade bill that attacks the U.S. economy when they learned about the impact on gasoline and electric electricity prices.
65% of Americans reject spending even a penny more for gasoline in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Thank you.
Does this jibe with what you think?
That this kind of surprises me.
65% of Americans, and this is the uh National Center for Policy Analysis poll.
Sixty-five percent of Americans reject spending even a penny more for gasoline in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
71% of Americans reject spending more for electricity, with 16% opposing spending any more than 12% extra for electricity.
When gasoline and electricity prices uh increases are taken together, 90% of the American people reject Lieberman Warner's plan and its costs, even the low range of the projected cost.
Now, this poll actually went out.
This is this is I I think this poll is different than most other standard drive-by media polls, because what the National Center for Policy Analysis did went out and said, okay, here's what Warner Lieberman will do.
And here's what it's going to cost you.
Then ask the question do you support paying higher gasoline prices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?
71%, 65% of the American people said no.
The Gallup poll uh, you know, I don't know, I don't know how this one uh was conducted.
I mean, I've got the full poll.
I just haven't clicked on the link to uh to get the questions.
But both polls surprise me because the public perception is like Vaslav Klaus said yesterday, uh a couple days ago uh when he was at the National Press Club doing his speech, the Czech Republic president.
He said we've lost them in the facts don't matter.
Facts do not matter now in the global warming debate.
Well, maybe they do.
Maybe they do.
I'm under the impression that over half the American people have bought into this.
But I don't think that's true.
I think all of the media has bought into it when we played those sound bites of poor old Juan Williams, who had no clue, no clue that environmentalism is an ideological advancement, that it's liberal, he had no clue that it was about an expansion of government and a huge attack on individual liberty.
And he said he Vaslav Klaus raised his consciousness on this.
Well, that's good.
You know, any time that happens.
Rupert Murdoch, the chief executive officer of News Corp.
By the way, Senator McCain, he makes tons of money.
As by the way, Senator McCain, so does your wife.
Your wife runs that beer distributorship out there.
She makes a lot of money.
Clinton's excess profits on their books and who knows what the hell else.
Let's go attack them.
I'm sorry, for that I'm just fuming.
I can't, I I just do not deal.
I can understand Obama attacking the private sector.
He's a liberal socialist.
I can understand Nancy Pelosi doing it.
I can understand those idiots like Ed Maki and all these others doing it.
I cannot abide my own party doing it.
I just about lose my temper.
Especially with liberal lingo.
Obscene profits, excess profits.
Winfall profits checks.
Yes, I'm for it.
Get to punish those people.
The whole notion of government punishing a bunch of people who do things that none of these 535 doofuses could do if their lives depended on it, plus these endless nameless bureaucrats putting up all the roadblocks here without any votes on their ideas happening in Congress.
Anyway, Rupert Murdoch yesterday predicted a Democrat landslide in the presidential election against a gloomy economic backdrop over the next year and a half.
Murdoch's not endorsed anybody yet, but he thinks Obama is very promising.
This was in an interview with two Wall Street Journal reporters at an annual conference for high-tech industry insiders.
He said, What do you say about McCain?
He's McCain's going to be hurt by his party and it's close ties to Washington.
Race will be an issue for Obama, but it looks like he overcomes that, overcomes that totally.
You know, I hate disagreeing with Rupert Murdoch, but this line here that the McCain candidacy will be hurt by his party, isn't it the other way around?
Oh, geez.
All right.
Let me grab a couple of phone calls here before we uh navigate into the Scott McClellan sound bites.
I don't want to do too many of them, but there are a couple things here that need to be shot down.
Uh John in Houston, you're up first today.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Me, John.
Hello?
Yes, sir.
Hello.
Oh, okay.
Um excuse me.
I'm first time caller, so I'm a little nervous.
Uh I'm 18, and I'm a conservative, of course.
Uh, I just had a quick question and comment about your La Scala opera uh comment.
Where where did you where'd you hear that?
Where'd I hear it?
I didn't hear it.
I read it.
Where'd you read it?
Well, I've got it's on the Drudge Report.
Let me print out the link here for you.
Okay.
Hang on a minute.
I just hang on.
Print out the link.
It's uh it's AP, and it's from Milan.
First it was the film and the book, now the next stop for Al Gore's movie is opera, La Scala officials.
Um say that the composer Giorgio Batistelli has been commissioned to produce an opera on Gore's stupid lying sack of garbage movie.
Right.
Okay.
Yeah, uh, I I understand where you're coming from.
I think it's pretty hilarious myself.
Uh, but I was just I'm just a little worried that you have a bias against any sort of sophisticated music.
I know I I'm not much into opera because, you know, it's uh I'm I'm a religious person, a lot of opera is very immoral.
But I love classical music, and I really think the old composers were far superior than anything nowadays, and uh I think uh You mean the Well, wait, wait, wait, wait a second, John.
I'd love to talk about this subject with you, uh, because clan I've I am very familiar with and have a great appreciation for and love of classical music.
And so much so that that over the course of my uh many years trotting the soil of the planet, I have wondered why we attach the term classical to it.
Uh it was the music of its time.
It was the music of its era.
I don't disagree with you that it is beautiful and it's distinguished and unique and so forth.
But do you think it's possible?
I know you're only eighteen, but do you think it's possible a couple centuries from now that the people who are alive then, if they're still allowed to play music and record it, do you think that they'll look back at rap and hip hop as Classical.
Uh no, I really think it is very it's it's primitive.
Uh I think there's so little sophistication in it that it's not going to last.
I mean, rap is there's a beat to it, you know, there's there's not much more, but you know, the but I'm gonna tell you something, you know this it's it but if you watch this stuff performed, if you s if you separate yourself from the lyrics, and if you separate yourself from some of the message and the anger and the rage, I mean some of the stuff that these classical composers is very, very dark.
It is very, very dark, and you know it as a as a classical fan, but the talent that these people have today, I mean you can't deny their talent.
They all have just you can't deny the Beatles talent.
Now you might not like the like the output of their work, and I don't, but you can't deny that they have talent.
It's not something anybody could do.
I'm not suggesting it's going to be classical.
I'm just I'm I'm discussing with you the notion that we what we call classical music, I think is time relevant in in a sense.
It comes to a specific age.
You use the word sophisticated to describe it.
I totally understand what you mean.
But I mean John, I I have I have even a bump of uh of uh a bumper rotation song that's uh that is from Puccini.
Oh, really?
Have you have you heard it?
No, I haven't.
No, I guess we listen to you more.
Well, here, here, listen up, turn your radio on and listen to this.
Okay.
Starting right now, it's Barbara Chenault Law from Dallas.
The EIB network, El Rushbo, a quarter to the hour back after this.
Going back to the archives here, ladies and gentlemen, I remember.
We take a day a week sometimes back in the late eighties, early nineties.
When I saw something happening in the culture I thought was bad, we'd do a day of nothing but classical music bumps, trying to raise the cultural awareness of our comfort.
Quick snartly.
Name the composer.
Wagner, Richard Wagner.
Okay, that's it.
Thanks very much.
We have a whole roster of uh of classical bumps from the uh from the grooveyard of forgotten favorites, Colleen in O'Cala, Florida.
Hello and welcome to the EIB network.
Hi, Rush.
Hi.
Uh, great music.
Thank you.
Rush, I just want to say I am fit to be tied about this word change in America.
Every time I see it, we came to this country in 1979, specifically because of what um America stood for and what it is.
You are from South Africa.
How did you know?
Accent.
I know the South African accent.
I know it.
Yeah.
You are from what part of South Africa are you from?
Johannesburg.
Johannesburg.
Yep.
Well, welcome to America.
Well, thank you.
I've been here a quite a while, being a and we're very proud American citizens, so I've got my vote and all that.
And so you don't like the you don't like you think this political concept of change is a bunch of rot gut.
I think it's a bunch of hooey.
Why do we want to change this country?
You know, if when we left South Africa, if we wanted to live in a country that Obama wants foresees, I would have gone to to uh Holland.
My husband's Dutch.
We could have moved in there and been taken care of from the cradle to the grave.
Oh, you could have gone up to Zimbabwe.
Exactly.
Yep.
The old bread basket of the officer.
Right, you're gonna have Mugabe take everything you own.
Exactly.
Believe me, Rush, I've got cousins there.
And uh he's done exactly that.
Well, you know, it's it is an interesting thing.
You're exactly right.
It's it's on a par with Obama uh saying that he's gonna unify everybody.
Obama can't unify his family.
He can't he can't unify the Democrat Party.
They're talking look at I gotta there's a headline today in uh a lot of newspapers about this upcoming meeting of the rules committee, uh the Democrat National Committee on on Saturday to try to figure out this Florida Michigan mess, and the word chaos is in the headlines, it's in the stories.
The Democrat Party is in utter chaos.
This is what's so frustrating about us not being able to get manage of this.
Exactly.
There is no unity, and when they talk about change, it's a code word, it means get rid of Bush.
Their whole thing, their whole effort is based still on as though George Bush was going to be on the ballot.
But you're exactly why change things.
What in the world do we want to do the kind of change they're gonna bring about's not what I want.
No.
I don't want socialism.
Yes, I didn't bring them up in a part eight exactly for what this country stood for.
Yeah, but let me tell you who it appeals to.
I'm glad you call let me tell you who it appeals to.
You go you you take a uh gander, if you will, at any Obama rally, and you look at the people in that rally who react the way they do when he mentions change and hope and the future, and they swoon, and some of them faint, but they all cheer like crazy.
You know what they think?
They think these are people that don't have much.
Yeah.
These are people that allow things have nothing to do with them to determine whether or not they're happy.
They think that Obama is going to give them what they want or see to it that they get it.
That's the change they want.
These are people that do not want to work for themselves.
These are people that do not want to have to go out and acquire things themselves.
Most of them are baby boomers or the kids of baby boomers.
And so they hear change as something consistent or similar to Obama and the government are going to make their lives.
They're going to make sure they get health care, make sure they get this, that they're not going to have to do it themselves.
And in that way, it's hideous because that's how those people are interpreting change.
Great to hear from you, Colleen.
Thanks much.
We got a break.
Be right back after this.
First hour is in the can, ladies and gentlemen.
Another classical bump from our classical rotation as we attempt to up the cultural content and understanding of the American people.
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