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Aug. 26, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:25
August 26, 2008, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Greetings and welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.
You are tuned to the most listened-to radio talk show in America in history, hosted by me, your guiding light, Rush Limbaugh, a highly trained broadcast specialist, demonstrating how it's done.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882.
Email address, lrushbow at EIBNet.com.
Folks, have to be.
I want to be totally forthcoming with you here.
I just went back to Snerdley's office here at the top of the hour, and he said, boy, you are just nailing it today.
And I said, I don't know.
I feel off target.
I feel like I'm missing the target here just a little, but enough to make me think that it could be much better.
No, no, no, this is riveting.
I said, I don't know.
I mean, the Democrats are so disorganized.
I think that's one of the reasons I am.
I mean, when you try to keep up with a bunch of people who don't know what they're doing, you might sound like you don't know what you're doing.
And so if this program has not been up to snuff, I apologize.
And I want you to know that even in the midst of the program, I am working on that.
I would go home feeling profound guilt if I concluded that I had not met or exceeded your expectations on a daily basis.
I'm just, I'm, I think this is what it is.
Even I, and I have full armor protecting myself from a drive-by media.
Drive-by media BS bounces right off of me.
But over the passage of time and months, even I, ladies and gentlemen, sometimes am affected by the never-ending onslaught.
And so I will be honest and admit to you that in recent months, I have thought that we are going to get skunked for a host of reasons.
A, they got a candidate who can successfully get away with saying nothing better than anybody I've ever heard say nothing.
They got the media promulgating this guy's nothingness as though it's substantive.
And then I look at our side.
I look to the heavens and I say, dear Lord, we have such an opportunity.
This could be a landslide of Reagan proportions, if only.
And then I say to myself, but if is for children.
And we have to deal with the reality.
Well, here's the reality.
The reality is the Democrat Party is not a juggernaut.
It is a party that is imploding.
And the truth is it has been imploding for a long time.
It's just ours.
But they are imploding.
They are not a juggernaut.
They are not a party that never makes a mistake.
They are not a party that perfectly strategizes everything.
This Democrat Party has the biggest fools as leaders I can remember leading the Democrat Party in my lifetime.
I remember the old days of the Democrat Party.
I mean, they may have been liberals and they may have been Democrats, but at least you respected them for their political acumen and so forth.
Harry Reed, Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, and we think this is a juggernaut.
This party is a bunch of fools.
And it is a party led by a bunch of fools.
And it is typified by people who think that they are loved, adored, and idolized by the American people.
They lie to themselves pathologically, have themselves convinced that all of Americans agree with them, that all Americans hate Bush, that all Americans want to lose the Iraq war, that all Americans want to lose the war on terror.
That all Americans think that all we do is torture and rape and murder innocent terrorist suspects.
And that's not the United States of America.
They want it to be the United States of America, but they are unable to pull it off because of the basic goodness and decency of the American people.
Now, look what's happened to them.
They show up for their convention.
This was supposed to be, you talk about juggernauts, this was supposed to be a well-oiled machine that was going to hand-bump Obama by 15 points coming out of there.
He's down by two.
He didn't get a bump out of Biden.
He didn't get a bump out of Michelle last night.
Didn't get a bump out of Teddy last night down two.
So Pelosi has to go reassure Democrats this morning in Denver, hey, hey, don't worry about it.
He's underperforming in the polls.
No, Nancy, he is, if anything, his poll representation right now is overstated.
Dare I say it, the Wilder effect?
Dare I say it?
The Bradley effect.
Pst.
Listen to me.
If he's not up 10, 15 points a week before the election, they're toast.
If he's down two now in electoral terms, based on history, he's down 10.
At least five.
Look what's happened.
They have nominated somebody based on identity politics, not on resume, not on experience, not on qualification.
They've nominated somebody for two reasons because they didn't stand at Clintons anymore.
And they think this guy can, they thought that this guy could sweep to victory over anybody without even having any competition to speak of.
They show up in Denver.
Hillary Clinton supporters, the women, are still rip roaring mad.
They're angry as they can be.
The Democrats are having to play games now with the roll call.
The last thing they can do is have a roll call that goes through all the states on Wednesday night because it'll be shown and seen by the whole country how damn close this was.
So the Democrats are now toying with the idea of a roll call from hotel rooms tomorrow morning.
Bill Clinton is upset.
The what would you call Clinton?
I mean, he's the figurative, I mean, he's, it wasn't that long ago, just a year ago, that Bill Clinton was God in the Democrat Party.
Today, he is a pariah.
They begrudgingly let him speak.
They wanted to speak on foreign policy, and why would he?
What happened during his watch?
93 World Trade Center bombing, the USS Coal, the run-up to 9-11, the bombing of the embassies in Saudi Arabia, the Rwanda situation, which was a genocide.
Not to mention the goof up that was Kosovo, which led to the Russians going into Georgia.
It had nothing to do with Iraq.
No wonder we didn't want to talk about foreign policy.
Let's talk about his great economic achievements.
The Clintons want to blow this convention up.
They want everybody at this convention to walk out of there tonight, tomorrow night thinking, oh my gosh, what did we do?
What mistake have we made here?
And they're going to have, let's see, August, let's see, September, October.
They're going to have two months to put this mess back together.
Let me read something to you here.
This typifies the problem.
And I heard Howard Wolfson last night say the same thing on Fox News.
This is from the new Republic blog called A Plank, and it's written by a guy named Jonathan Cohn.
MSNBC's panel seems convinced, as I guess some of my colleagues are, that last night was a missed opportunity.
Democrats could have attacked McCain and didn't.
I understand that reaction.
I've been agitating for the Obama campaign to get tougher too, but listen to this.
Tonight's strategery seems sensible enough.
Last night's, the campaign had to introduce America to Michelle Obama and make swing voters, that is, older, working and middle-class white voters, make sure they were comfortable with her and Obama generally.
Parentheses, I can't begin to tell you how much it makes me cringe just to have to write that sentence.
Well, now, how can this even be?
How in the world, if you are this juggernaut and if this guy is the Messiah and his wife is Mrs. Messiah, how in the world do you have to introduce them?
Why do you have to introduce them?
Why don't they just have to show up?
You people in the drive-bys have not questioned who these people are once.
You have just embraced them and accepted them on the basis of what?
Total personality, total acquisition of power.
All these reports about media people getting tingling up their legs when they listen to Obama speak.
What the hell kind of professionalism is that?
And now you admit it's all a fraud.
Now you admit that the Obamas have to be introduced?
And how?
They have to be introduced, as I said earlier in the program, to white people.
They have to be introduced so as not to be threatening to white people.
This is the Messiah.
He was going to run a post-racial campaign.
None of this was going to matter what has happened.
Well, what's happened is that it was never what they said it was.
It was never a messianic campaign.
It was never 30,000, 40,000 people fainting.
It was never the country that was in awe and been taken in by this.
To the extent that Obama did have a 15-point poll lead some time ago, it's gone.
And it's gone for a reason because people started paying attention to who Obama is before last night.
What last night was, was not an introduction.
Last night was a repackaging.
And that's what grates on the drive-bys.
That's what bothers them.
That the Obamas have to be repackaged.
You don't have to repackage saviors.
You don't have to repackage anointed ones.
You don't have to repackage messiahs.
And what is there to repackage?
What is there to repackage?
What was there to package?
There's nothing here other than these past associations.
Sorry, current associations.
Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, that fruitcake flagger.
Here is a man who is going to unify the world around the concept that once again America is worthy of being loved and respected.
And it's going to be a beautiful thing.
Here is a man by virtue of his presence.
He's going to get Ahmed Dinizad to stop developing nukes.
It's going to get Putin to stop expanding the Russian Empire again.
By his very presence, he's going to turn all of the hate in the world into love.
And yet, his party, his party is as roiled and split as it could possibly be.
The people in his immediate orbit are angry and outraged at everything, and he can't seem to do anything to stop that.
This has been one giant illusion.
It has been one false impression after another, and it has been facilitated by former professional journalists who are now nothing other than undisguised party hacks advancing a campaign for their own desires, their own reasons, their own purposes, while being uninterested at all in whether or not campaign they are pushing.
is even competent.
And we continue on, ladies and gentlemen.
By the way, Democrats, Democrats, as they always do, are painting the bleakest picture of life in America that they can drum up.
This is nothing new, but they continue to do so.
We have an unemployment rate of 5.7%.
Most of the world would crave, does crave, an employment rate as high as ours.
And yet, our liberals want us to emulate those who envy us.
But look at this from the New York Times, which, by the way, that little pinch is in trouble.
That stock price, New York Times, is down 42% in a year.
And their losses, I don't have this in front of me.
Let me.
What is the losses?
July revenue down 10.1%.
Ad revenue down over 16% at the New York Times.
And by the way, that's happening throughout the Drive-By Media, but it is not happening here at the EIB network.
But here's a story from the New York Times: average income rises above 2,000 level.
How can this be?
George Bush assumed office in 2001.
Americans enjoyed higher average income in 2006.
For the first time since 2000, when the last economic expansion ended, adjusTedros income reported on tax returns in 06, averaged $58,029.
In $2006, that was an increase of $739.
Look what he inherited in 2000, a mini recession, then 9-11 hit, and America's average income is up, and yet Democrats of the drive-by media want everybody to believe that we are soup line America, one paycheck away from being devastated and wiped out.
Home prices are at a low, and first-time buyers are going to town.
Getting into the American dream, Democrats see this as a problem.
Don't ask me how.
It's just that they see everything positive as a problem.
And the way they've structured themselves, it is a problem when things go well.
What kind of fools run a party that requires devastation, depression, and damage in order to succeed?
But that's what the modern era of foolish leaders of the Democrat Party have done.
That is how they have structured the Democrat Party.
They can only gain if the U.S. military loses.
They can only gain if they can successfully portray the U.S. military as a bunch of rapist, torturing thugs.
They can only gain if people lose their homes.
They can only gain if people lose their jobs.
They can only gain if people can't fill their tanks.
What kind of party would structure itself that way and then try to present itself as the party of the little guy with a video on the first night of the convention showing the Kennedy family wealth?
Go figure.
This is what we're up against.
This ought not even be a contest.
This ought to be like one of these little league games, little league football games, where our team scores 70 points a game and the other team gets 35 to start while we have nothing just to make it fair.
That's what this ought to be.
Hell, I've got a story in the stack here someplace.
Some, some, I think it's Connecticut, but it doesn't matter where it is.
There's some nine-year-old, is it Connecticut?
New Haven, Connecticut, home of Yale University, some nine-year-old little league baseball pitcher.
They've told you you go can't pitch.
The kid throws strikes.
He throws aspirin tablets.
He throws the ball too fast and too hard for the other nine-year-olds.
It's not fair, and they're not enjoying the game, so he can't pitch anymore.
Democrat.
What?
Jericho Scott.
Jericho Scott, that's a nine-year-old.
So we got to punish the achiever in liberal New Haven, Connecticut.
All right, let's go to Fort Worth, Texas next.
Ryan, glad you called, sir.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello.
Mega Ditto's Rush.
Thank you.
Love the bumper music, and you've got to get down to see the new Cowboy Stadium as much as it might pain you to do that.
It is going to be the new wonder of the world.
You know, I can't figure out.
I know all about stadium.
What I can't figure out is why anybody would ever leave when they got there.
It seems like something you'd want to move into and live there.
I can't imagine that stadium existing for a three or four hour experience for a football game.
Oh, it is unbelievable just going to the Rangers games already and taking a look at that thing.
It's watching it develop has been.
Oh, I know.
I know.
And I'm not putting it down.
I'm just saying it's more than a stadium.
This is the place you'd go to spend a whole day.
As one local radio host would say, Jerry Jones is building a monument to himself, but that's fine.
We'll go and enjoy the ballgame.
All right, well, just call it Jerry's Last of Records.
That's right.
Well, anyway, yeah, the reason I called is because Tom Broko laid down the gauntlet last night saying that we couldn't challenge Ted Kennedy and that Republicans have been running against Ted Kennedy for all these years.
And that, you know, due to his condition, you know, they don't really have that.
But I say if he didn't want to be run against, then they shouldn't have put him up on that stage last night.
So I will give you my comments and why I had a problem with his speech last night.
As moving as it was for him to come out of that surgery, and as amazing as that is, a marvel of science, you know, he comes out and he has to go with this comment.
And this has to do directly with Barack Obama.
This is my first problem.
And it says, Barack will close the book on the old politics of race, gender, group against group, and straight against gay.
Now, does he want to apply that to himself and his Democrat Party and how they attacked Clarence Thomas?
You know, I mean, you have common sense.
You're analyzing this all wrong.
I mean, that's a great point, but you're analyzing it all wrong.
First place, Ted Kennedy of New Rights Speech, the Obama people wrote the speech.
Ted read it off teleprompter.
Oh, well, so I thought I had a minute.
We'll continue here in just a second.
My friends, I'm holding here in my formerly nicotine-strained fingers a preview of tomorrow's New York Times story on what the Democrats hope to do to save Obama.
They hope to save Barack Obama.
Now, think of where we are here now.
They hope to save Barack Obama with a common man story.
Now, we are going from Messiah to common man inside of two days at the Democrat convention where he has lost the lead.
Here is just a sample from tomorrow's New York Times story.
In 1996, Barack Obama attended the Democrat convention in Chicago as a would-be politician about to launch his first race.
I will add he had just met William Ayers the year before.
In 2000, Barack Obama went to Los Angeles, where he failed to secure a floor pass and had his credit card rejected at the car rental counter, leading him to head home early.
In 2004, he became a national star.
And now the remarkable progression of Barack Obama as seen through his experiences at his party's convention.
He had his credit card rejected at the car rental counter in Los Angeles in 2000.
Friends, you can't see this, but I'm getting teary-eyed at the tough knocks, at the overwhelming obstacles that Barack Obama had overcome or had to overcome on his way to becoming a Messiah.
Why, you could draw a parallel to no room at the end with that credit card being unaccepted.
Because you could say that Joseph simply forgot to guarantee the reservation on his credit card.
Oh, that's just the lead, ladies and gentlemen.
This is going to be...
People are going to be crying so much reading this, the paper's ink will stain and they'll not be able to finish the whole story because the words will run together in a pool of black.
Well, some from crying, some from laughing.
Hoping to save Obama with common man story.
Now, if he got his credit card rejected at the credit card, at the rental car counter, how the hell did he get back to Chicago?
Hitchhike?
Probably had a round-trip ticket purchased with the credit card.
And why was he rejected?
Why was he rejected at the credit card counter in Los Angeles in 2000?
How could that have happened?
Could it be anything to do with race?
I don't know.
I haven't seen the entire story.
Audio soundbites, drive-bys.
Now, we've got a montage.
We have here, this is MSNBC, Chris Matthews, Nora O'Donnell, Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, Rachel Maddow, Reverend Eugene Rivers, all talking about Obama and his family.
This is the Bill Cosby family.
This is the family Bill Cosby talks about.
Michelle Obama has to make this the Huxtables.
Present the Huxtable image of the Obamas.
Making the Obama family into the Huxtables.
Here you have the classic example of the Huxtables.
It's embarrassing.
They get on this thing and it never, the Huxtables.
Well, Bill Cosby, for you people who drive-bys don't know it, Bill Cosby's being destroyed for going out there and advocating that black families live like the Obamas apparently do, according to Michelle Meybell's speech last night.
Black civil rights leadership is trying to destroy Bill Cosby.
And so now the drive-bys, they got to go out to be like, why?
Why be like the Huxtables?
If you have to be like the Huxtables, it means you're not the Huxtables.
And that's what we have properly, correctly analyzed earlier in the program.
This was a speech that she made last night to show, but hey, we're just like you.
You got to hear this one again.
You got to hear this one again.
You thought it was odd when Chris Collinsworth of NBC Sports asked Kobe Bryant of the Olympic Dream Team, wait a minute, you sure it's okay these days to be patriotic, believe in the red, white, and blue?
You sure you can do that?
Listen to this question from the perky Katie Couric to the analyst at CBS News, Jeff Greenfield.
Do you think the voters really want to see a couple who is faithful to one another?
Yes, and I believe in the primary tape.
Hey, Katie, we have a couple in the White House who are faithful to each other.
We also had a couple in the White House who were faithful to each other in the 80s.
Where does this question come from?
Who in the Democrats is cheating on her spouse that we don't know about?
Do you think voters really want to see a couple who are faithful?
Meaning, Jeff, can the Obamas overcome the notion that they haven't cheated on each other?
Because what is this, a resume enhancement in the Democrat Party?
Poor old John Edwards.
Mrs. Clinton goes out and personally destroys the women who are trying to get her husband in trouble in order to save their presidency.
And the drive-bys go, oh, isn't this wonderful why she loves her husband?
But Clinton was already president.
They like the power.
John Edwards, he blew it.
He's irrelevant.
He's toast.
He's compost.
And so now the drive-bys are writing a story.
It's an AP story today on how Elizabeth, she's responsible too for making this happen.
She knew it and she lied.
So did Hillary.
As far as I know, Elizabeth Edwards didn't try to destroy any of these women that John Edwards was messing around with.
As I mentioned last night, the Democrats in the media were just beside themselves over the stupidity of the formatting of this convention.
You want to know how unified this party is?
You want to know where the Clintons are?
Listen to James Carver.
This is on CNN's America panel discussion about the first night of the convention.
Well, if this party has a message, it's done a hell of a job of hiding it tonight.
I promise you that.
Maybe we're going to look better, you know, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
But right now, like I say, we're playing hard to message.
I'm about to jump out the chair and say, I'm just saying, you got four nights.
There's no message coming out of here.
There's no sense that the party has a sense of urgency, any of that.
And, you know, this is only got four nights.
This is 25% of the whole thing.
Now, he's clearly distressed here, but also know this.
He's not out campaigning for Obama.
He is a Clinton loyalist.
David Rodham Gergen was asked if he agreed.
I do.
I think Jake Carvell has put it as succinctly and as he always does, as colorfully as anyone might.
And I thought, Anderson, listen, I thought that they lost the first two hours of this with almost nothing going on on the stage.
This is a television show with a message that if you lose the first 25% of it, you've just frittered something away.
They were all worried.
They were all worried.
Well, because they came on the air at 10 o'clock when the networks joined them with Jim Leach, a Republican from Iowa who's supporting Obama.
I mean, if it weren't for his varicose veins, this guy would be totally colorless.
He is about, he's a cadaver standing up there.
They brought an old wrinkly white guy up there.
This guy could not.
The word excitement, I don't think he even knows how to spell.
And that's what they came on the air with.
Now, Jeffrey Toobin, who is their CNN legal analyst, was asked to comment on Michelle Mybel's speech.
There is one big missing piece tonight, I think, which is why the American people should throw the bums out.
We haven't heard one word about that.
We have the most unpopular president in American history, and he's barely been mentioned tonight.
I just think that is an extraordinary gap.
Democrats have never shown, at least in recent history, that they are good at negative campaigning.
Republicans are terrific at it.
And Democrats have been lousy at it.
And I don't think they were any good at it tonight.
You know, this is beyond belief.
This is just impossible to accept and keep your sanity.
Democrats don't know negative campaigning.
How about Bush equals Hitler?
How about all the lies about Bush and Cheney for the last seven years of the Iraq War, Jeffrey?
You need to stick to analyzing judges and legal decisions.
Democrats don't know how to negatively campaign.
How about Carville turning Ken Starr into a sex pervert in people's minds?
This is they're just so mad.
The drive-bys hate.
They couldn't understand it.
They had no hatred of Bush in there last night.
And here is the forehead who is with Wolf Blitzer during a discussion of the convention speakers.
Who cares what Jim Leach says?
I don't have no disrespect.
Well, some disrespect to him.
I don't really care what he says or thinks.
He's a moderate Republican who supports Barack Obama.
They can have him.
I can't stand him.
And he's unimportant and unworthy of being at this convention.
Now, contrast that.
Here's poor old Jim Leach.
He's just Chuck Hagel with white hair.
And they're trying to show these Democrats how much they're loved.
They're trying to show those Democrats how much they respect them, that they're not typical conservative Republicans.
And Carville says, I don't give a rich rear ran about Jim Leach.
I don't care how.
Well, I do have a problem.
He had no right to be in here.
They're not interested in moderates.
The Democrats don't want moderates.
They don't want.
They were framing at the mouth last night, folks.
They were so dissatisfied with what they were seeing.
We have the ratings, ladies and gentlemen, for the networks last night, the coverage at 10 o'clock.
NBC, 4.85 million, ABC, 3.78 million.
CBS, 3.52 million.
So basically, it is 5 and 9.
You give them the benefit of the doubt that 12 million people watched last night.
In the old days, 12 million people would watch each network.
I don't know what the cables did.
I haven't seen those.
But I just saw some video, too.
Biden was speaking this morning to delegates and broke down in tears.
I mean, it wasn't just, he broke down in tears thanking them for all of their support for him.
It was either that or he had just gotten off the phone with Hillary.
I'm not sure which.
Jimmy Carter.
Ladies and gentlemen, last night on PBS special coverage, the anchor Jim Lara said, and do you think that if it happens that Obama is elected, or even just being nominated, will send positive ripple effects throughout the country on the race issue?
It already has sent a wave of approbation and admiration in many countries around the world, just knowing that this black boy who grew up with just a loving mother and grandparents, and that was about all he had to start with, has now had a chance to become the nominee of the Democratic Party for president.
And we've seen a disillusionment about our country in the last eight years with a lot of things happening like torturing of prisoners and that sort of thing.
If Obama is elected, which I think he is going to be, then I think that will be the transforming grace for the end of racism and prejudice and hatred between races in this country.
That's quite a statement, but I brave it's true.
He's another fool.
Jimmy Carter is another one of the fools in the top of the feed chain here at the Democratic Party.
The black civil rights leadership has said, Jimmy, it's not going to end the race business.
Nothing's going to end the race business.
They're not going to go out of business.
They're saying he doesn't have any slave blood, Jimmy.
He doesn't come from the struggle.
His election doesn't do anything.
It doesn't change anything, Jimmy.
Wonder how long it would take me referring to Obama as that little black boy.
I mean, how many times before there was an outrage from the drive-by media?
I ought to give this a run, test run.
Every time I intend to say Obama, I say this black boy.
And to see how long it takes him.
Even no, even clue in the audience in how folks are going to play a little game here.
I'm going to do a Jimmy Carter impersonation.
I'm going to see how long it takes her people to excoriate me for doing this.
Staff is advising me not to make this move, ladies and gentlemen, not to take this step.
I just want you to know, I, of course, listen to the staff, but I take my own counsel.
Here's Eric in Greenville, South Carolina.
Eric, nice to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hello, Rush.
I'd like to talk to you about why Michelle Abella did not wear a pantsuit.
Yeah, you know, I hadn't considered that.
Why didn't she wear a pantsuit?
It's because the criticizer was right.
Mrs. Obama played the partridge because the Seminazis have lost, and the Democrats know the image of happiness is a woman in a dress.
You know, I haven't thought of that, but when you do think of these nag leaders, they all are wearing pantsuits, aren't they?
Symbolizing anger.
So you're saying a woman in a dress is a woman who feels happy?
Yes, the pantsuit sends a message, but a dress is conservative.
All right, help me out here.
What's the message?
I'll bite.
What's the message pants suits or pantsuits send?
It sends the message of loss.
The message of loss.
What has been lost by wearing pantsuits?
They've lost their way.
You mean their identity?
Or is it just, is it just, is it just, couldn't it just be simple?
Like it looks much, much, much better than a dress.
No, it's like.
Don't doubt me on this.
Okay.
It's true it does look better than a dress, but they've turned it into a symbol.
No, no.
The dress always looks better than pantsuits.
The pantsuits are a compromise.
Okay.
I thought you were saying the seams of the pants looks better than a dress.
Well, there are limits.
I mean, if the dress looks like a tent, then you've got a problem there, too.
But, I mean, all things being equal, the pantsuit is a, and I know this from my life's experience, the pantsuit is a compromise.
It's a conscious decision.
Be right back.
All right.
Well, we have another exciting.
We have another night of the Democrat National Convention coming up tonight with Chelsea Clinton introing the video of Hillary Clinton and Hillary Clinton coming out and telling these delegates in her own inimitable fashion just how royally they have screwed up.
Be talking all about it tomorrow.
See you then.
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