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 ready to start the program here, folks.
I, how are you doing?
I am Rush Limbaugh, your official anchorman, real anchorman, 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 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 LRushbo 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 Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, as a high-ranking vice presidential nominee and choice for Senator McCain to look at.
HR, what was this?
Esquire Magazine wants to talk to me about this.
I just remembered this.
Esquire for their October issue?
75 most influential people.
And I'm not one of the 75.
It's Jindal that's one of the 75, 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 in this way, but October, I mean, the vice presidential nominee will have been chosen.
There's an interesting piece today by the prowler at theamericanspector.com, spectator.org, I'm sorry.
Word out of the Sedona auditions for Republican vice presidential nominee is that Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana governor, at the very least wowed other guests over the weekend with his grasp of policy and the need for change inside the Republican Party.
Quote, 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.
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 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 is doing everything it can to get away from conservatism, at least of the kind that Bobby Jindal represents.
In the run-up to the Memorial Weekend getaway, McCain campaign aides insisted that while Jindal 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?
And of course, I'm sure, ladies and gentlemen, that you've heard all about the contretemme 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 a 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 visiting Iraq.
And what I said was that the Republicans don't have a strong position to argue when it comes to substance.
The foreign policy has been a failure over the last eight years.
What the hell is he talking about?
This man is vacant.
This man is vapid, ladies and gentlemen.
I mean, one of the stories coming out of Iraq is the overwhelming success that has taken place there, particularly in the last year.
So they think that the Republican Party, they've scored some big points here by causing Obama to flip-flop and say to go, but it was Lindsey 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-flopped, said he might now go.
Now, in the Washington Post today, this story, for McCain, a switch on telecom immunity.
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, said last week at the Computers Freedom and Press.
Look, let me cut to the chase on this.
The 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 classic.
I'll tell you, Senator McCain, you know, 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 ExxonMobil.
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 against obscene profits, excess profits.
He's going to 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 this stupid, warrantless wiretap business.
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.
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 in 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.
And 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 were 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, this just 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.
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.
He says he's a Reagan Republican.
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, but what you say about our society, our economy, individual liberty.
And 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's 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 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.
And every time they screw something up, like this cap and trade thing is going to screw things up.
And 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 it all goes to hell.
Say, well, what happened?
We've got to have an investigation to throw more money at it.
I've got to take a break here, folks, a little long.
We'll come back.
We'll continue.
Lots of audio soundbites today, including the CNN 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 Meacham, walked in, 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.
Buddy, some ZZ 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?
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 it hypothetical, just a little hypothetical.
Let's say we accept the premise of man-made global warming.
Let's say we accept the premise.
And then we say, okay, now we've got to fix this, but we've got to do, 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 is going to 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 energy, it's where the hell these things are going to come from.
535 ding bats 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 going to 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, and it's a report on McClellan's book.
And 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.
He's 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 alienating people, but he may very well feel that, 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 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, a 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 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 learn about the impact on gasoline and electricity prices.
65% of Americans reject spending even a penny more for gasoline in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Does this jibe with what you think?
This kind of surprises me.
65% of Americans, and this is the National Center for Policy Analysis poll.
65% 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 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.
I think this poll is a bit 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 asked 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, you know, I don't know how this one was conducted.
I mean, I've got the full poll.
I just haven't clicked on the link to get the questions.
But both polls surprise me because the public perception is, it's like Vaslav Klaus said yesterday, a couple days ago when he was at the National Press Club doing his speech, the Czech Republic president.
He said, we've lost them.
I mean, 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.
We played those soundbites 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, Vaslav Klaus raised his consciousness on this.
Well, that's good.
You know, anytime that happens, Rupert Murdoch, the chief executive officer of News Corp, by the way, Senator McCain, he makes tons of money.
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.
I'm just fuming.
I can't, 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 Machi and all these others doing it.
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 even 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 did he say about McCain?
McCain's going to be hurt by his party and his 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 navigate into the Scott McClellan soundbites.
I don't want to do too many of them, but there are a couple things here that need to be shot down.
John in Houston, you're up first today.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Me, John?
Hello?
Yes, sir.
Hello.
Oh, okay.
Excuse me.
I'm a first-time caller, so I'm a little nervous.
I'm 18, and I'm a conservative, of course.
I just had a quick question about your La Scala opera comment.
Where'd you hear that?
Where'd I hear it?
I didn't hear it.
I read it.
Where did you read it?
Well, I've got it on the Drudge Report.
Let me print out the link here.
Okay.
Hang on a minute.
I'll just hang on.
Let me print out the link.
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 say that the composer Giorgio Battistetti has been commissioned to produce an opera on Gore's stupid lying sack of garbage movie.
Right.
Okay.
Yeah, I understand where you're coming from.
I think it's pretty hilarious myself.
But I'm just a little worried that you have a bias against any sort of sophisticated music.
I'm not much into opera because 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 I think wait a second or John.
I'd love to talk about this subject with you because I am very familiar with and have a great appreciation for and love of classical music.
And so much so that over the course of my many years trotting the soil of the planet, I have wondered why we attach the term classical to it.
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 18, but do you think it's possible a couple centuries from now that the people who were 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?
No, I really think it is very, it's primitive.
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 not much more.
But, you know, the...
I'm going to tell you something.
You know, But if you watch this stuff performed, 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 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 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 discussing with you the notion that what we call classical music, I think, is time-relevant 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 have even a bump of a bumper rotation song that is from Puccini.
Oh, really?
Have you heard it?
No, I haven't.
No, I guess I need to listen to you more.
Well, here, here, listen up.
Turn your radio on and listen to this.
Okay.
Starting right now.
It's Barbara Chennault Law from Dallas.
The EIB network, El Rushbo, a quarterly hour back after this.
Going back to the archives here, ladies and gentlemen, I remember we'd take a day a week sometimes back in the late 80s, early 90s.
When I saw something happening in the culture I thought was bad, we'd do a day of nothing but classical music bumps, try to raise the cultural awareness of our country.
Quick, snirdly.
Name the composer.
Wagner.
Richard Wagner.
Okay, that's it.
Thanks very much.
We have a whole roster of classical bumps from the Grooveyard of Forgotten Favorites.
Colleen in O'Calla, Florida.
Hello, and welcome to the EIB Network.
Hi, Rush.
Hi.
Great music.
Thank you.
Rush, I just want to say I am fit to be tired about this word change in America.
Every time I see it, we came to this country in 1979, specifically because of what America stood for and what it is.
You are from South Africa.
How did you know?
Accent.
I know the South African accent.
know it.
What part of South Africa are you from?
Johannesburg.
Johannesburg.
Yep.
Well, welcome to America.
Well, thank you.
I've been here quite a while, and we're a very proud American citizen, so I've got my vote and all that.
So 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, when we left South Africa, if we wanted to live in a country that Obama wants four seas, I would have gone to Holland, my husband's Dutch.
We could have moved in there and been taken care of from the cradle to the grave.
Well, you could have gone up to Zimbabwe.
Exactly.
The old bread basket of the Mugabe take everything you own.
It's on a par with Obama saying that he's going to unify everybody.
Obama can't unify his family.
He can't unify the Democrat Party.
They're talking, look, there's a headline today in a lot of newspapers about this upcoming meeting of the Rules Committee, the Democrat National Committee, 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 take advantage of this.
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?
The kind of change they're going to bring about is not what I want.
No.
I don't want socialism.
I'm not going to have children here, so I didn't bring them up in apart eight exactly for what this country stood for.
Yeah, but let me tell you who it appeals to.
Let me tell you who it appeals to.
You take a 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.
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.