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Dec. 5, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:37
December 5, 2008, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Folks, I've finally figured it out here.
We're all in a sitcom.
This is a sitcom.
It's a giant sitcom.
God is writing this sitcom.
And we are going to be laughing our way all the way through the Obama-Reed-Pelosi depression.
And that's all we can do.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
And great to be with you, ladies and gentlemen, Open Mind Friday, the rules.
By the way, still battling the ravages of this yucky virus and a virus that is, well, some kind of infection virus.
I don't know what it is.
Antibiotics.
Don't touch it.
Nothing touches it.
Other than the passage of time and patience.
Anyway, Open Mind Friday, whatever you wish to talk about, that's the rule.
We go to the phones and the program is yours.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882.
The email address, lrushbow at EIBNet.com.
Folks, I am not kidding you.
I have got every story in the stack.
Every story makes me laugh.
The problem is I can't laugh because I go into coughing spasms, but I want to laugh.
I mean, there's even a story.
I don't know.
A poor guy takes his girlfriend out to propose.
They got some place in Oregon called Proposal Rock.
And this poor guy takes his girlfriend out there to propose to her.
She's a tiny little Filipino, 410 or 411.
Let me just read the story.
I mean, it doesn't make any sense.
Oh, and Putin.
Putin says he wants to hang this Shashkashvili guy, the Georgian, by the testicles.
The French magazine, La Nouveau Observature, reported last month that Vladimir Putin of the KGB told the French president Sarkozy that he would hang the Georgian leader Mikhail Sakashvili by the testicles.
The remark came following a conversation with Jesse Jackson, who wanted to do the same thing to Barack Obama.
Here it is from Niskowan, Oregon.
A romantic marriage proposal on the left coast turned deadly for the bride to be.
Sorry, when a wave swept her out to sea.
Now, picture this.
See, they're laughing in there.
It's a horrible story.
It's tragic.
And everybody's laughing.
It's a sitcom today.
Scott Knapper had taken the 22-year-old lethal Alfork to Proposal Rock near some beach who popped a question at a place that got its name from couples ready to marry.
Love Perry.
A lot of people go to Proposal Rock.
What do you say?
No, no, lethal, not lethal.
L C not cold, whatever this is, not a cold.
You know, I wish it was a cold.
Everybody has been ragging on me.
Everybody, I guess Dyke Ham didn't work, Rush.
Guys, if this were a cold, I would not have missed because the first, when I, when I first got the slightest bit of discomfort on this, which was Saturday, with a whole family in town, I started swabbing with the Zycam stuff.
And I figured, I got this, and it just kept getting worse and then it actually is an infection.
There's a way you can tell.
I won't gross you out, but there's a way I said to get some antibiotics.
Zycam, not going to touch this stuff because it's not a cold.
This is flu, bronchitis, or what have you.
Zycam works.
I just, all these people.
Hey, Russ.
Even my friends, Zycam didn't work.
And I go, you forget to take the nope.
I didn't forget to take it.
It's just Zycam doesn't work against the flu.
Anyway, what's oh, yeah.
Her name is not lethal.
It's Lee Phil.
You can take down the sign, Brian.
Lee Phil, L-E-A-F-I-L.
Don't forget now, she's the woman swept out to sea.
So this Lee Phil Alfork and Scott Naper have been dating since they met on the internet in 2005.
But Alfork had arrived in Oregon on a visa from the Philippines just three days before the fateful trip to Proposal Rock.
Napper said that the tide had receded around Proposal Rock on Saturday when the couple began to walk toward Proposal Rock.
The tide began to recede.
Okay.
He planned to propose and give her the ring that he carried in his pocket about 10 feet from the rock.
A three-foot wave suddenly came toward them.
And this guy says, I turned into it to keep from getting pulled under it.
By the time a three-foot, how does a three-foot wave drag you under?
I turned into it to keep from getting pulled under it.
By the time he turned to find Al Fork, who's only 411 and 93 pounds, she'd been caught by the receding water.
She was 30 feet away, being swept away by this receding wave.
The 45-year-old guy tore off his jacket to get rid of any extra weight.
And when he looked up again, she was gone.
He said, that's the last I saw of her.
That's a tragic story.
But I'm trying to picture this.
I live on a beach.
I see waves like this all the time.
It do not drag people.
Well, I'm sure she couldn't swim.
Obviously, she couldn't swim.
I'm talking about, I do not know.
I cannot envision how you're on the shore and a three-foot wave comes up, ma'am, and takes you if you can see it coming.
Also, ladies, we have a lot of sound bites today to get me through the remaining days of the hanking cough here.
But the president of Gulf Oil, the president of Gulf Oil came out yesterday and said he sees possibility in 2009 gasoline being $1 a gallon.
And so, what is happening on Capitol Hill?
Our brilliant central planners who are now taking over the auto industry are conditioning the bailout bridge loan or what have you on how many electric cars these people are going to build while we're looking at $1 a gallon gasoline.
Central planning is dictating these little three car makers what they can sell.
The markets are telling them something completely different.
But because the car makers are broke, they go along with the plan, even though they all know this is a sure loser.
And I've got a great story.
It just cleared the printer.
America's other auto industry.
It's a story for the Christian Science Monitor.
The U.S. auto industry is throwing bolts, but here in Georgia's Chattahoochee Valley, a South Korean car company is building a massive new manufacturing plant along the new Kia Parkway, replacing abandoned textile mills.
The recently opened Korean barbecue house now vis for customers with Rogers Pitt Cooked Barbecue.
And in an indication of just how welcome Kia's non-union jobs are, some 43,000 people applied for 2,600 positions with starting wages at $17 an hour as the plant gears up to turn down its first car next November.
The expansion of this other auto industry, one that's foreign-owned, non-union, and based largely in the South, stands in stark contrast to this week's dire reports from America's own big three whose CEOs laid out plans for a dramatic downsizing before traveling to Washington to please.
Oh, this is another thing.
I could not stop laughing.
I'm going to go up to Washington last night to do a speech for the Hillsdale College people.
And I was flying up there, and I did not know this.
But until I read about it today, I saw Carl Levin and Sander Levin.
They are Michigan senator and congressman, respectively, riding in the back seat of a Volt, a Chevrolet Volt.
Now, what happened?
Rick Wagoner, who is the CEO of General Motors, drove there in a Malibu rather than fly on the corporate jet.
Now, while people weren't looking, he had a Volt shipped in because a Volt is not ready yet.
A Volt could not make the trip.
They haven't got a battery big enough yet, I don't think.
It's not Doodle 210.
The Volt.
It's not Doodle.
It's a plug-in electric car.
So he had it shipped in because he wanted to arrive at the hearing in the Volt because that's, you know, it's a PR show, PR play.
And I saw these two Congress and the senator in the back seat, and it just made me laugh.
Everything's a sitcom.
These two old buffoons, socialist libs, in the back seat of a Chevrolet Volt, driving about 10 feet.
They drove it, and they're smiling like little kids at the Dodge car display at the county fair.
And I thought, what is this?
What have we come to here?
We've got everything's PR.
Everything is image.
And these guys show up, drive 10 feet in the back seat of the Volt.
By the way, I wish General Motors all look in the world with the Vault.
Don't misunderstand.
I'm just, I just, everything is just amusing me here.
Anyway, let me finish this story, Christian Science Monitor.
Two-thirds of foreign imports are, in fact, built in the U.S. in non-union shops where it costs at least $2,000 less in labor to build every car.
The point of the story is there is a thriving automobile industry in this country right now, and it's taking place in the South.
It's happening in Georgia.
It's happening to Alabama, Mississippi, and all of these companies are owned by foreigners.
But they employ Americans.
I mean, two-thirds of the foreign imports are built in the United States.
And they're doing it.
And the answer and the secret is one of the big secrets is right out in the open.
And the drive-bys are now writing about it.
Unions.
Here's the deal.
$17 an hour is what these people are going to work for at the Kia factory here in the Chattahoochee Valley.
$28 is what your average UAW worker makes.
So you get $28 an hour if the average UAW worker for the big three or the big two and a half and $17 to $18 an hour for the non-union people.
Now, as Charles Krauthammer pointed out yesterday, what's happening here, because I don't care what you've heard from, what's this guy's name, Weddelfinger?
Gettlefinger, the UAW guy.
He's up there with the big three.
He's up there.
Whatever you've heard about concessions, there aren't any.
Oh, and the big question was asked this morning by some Lib Gwynn something or a member of Congress.
She said the big three, asked the big three, hey, wouldn't it really help you all if the government took over your legacy health care costs?
Okay, there it is, folks.
Finally, it was right out in the open out there where we all know this is headed anyway.
But Krauthammer pointed out: look, the people in this country who are making $17, $18 an hour on average are being asked to bail out the people making $28 an hour.
The union people that work the United Auto Workers.
It's all about, you know, being able to competitively stay in the business.
And Chris Dodge, I mean, you got to give him credit, got credit where credit's due.
He asked a smart question yesterday.
He says, regardless of what we do here, everything hinges on getting people into dealerships and buying your product, right?
It does.
No matter what these clowns do up there.
Anyway, I got to take a brief time out here later.
Oh, unemployment benefits.
The president came out today, and we're going to extend unemployment benefits.
He officially used the recession word, big job losses, unexpected.
They said, why are these unexpected?
Obama told us.
Obama told us not long ago we're going to lose millions of jobs before we create millions more or save millions more, what have you.
Anyway, understand the need for this unemployment compensation extension.
I do.
But folks, a little tough love here.
It is this kind of thing that is going to, over time, destroy a lot of people's initiative.
It's a delicate balance here.
But a lot of times in dire circumstances, people get creative, get ambitious because of need.
And I keep hearing people say, well, the Great Depression, it can't happen again.
I mean, we've got the safeguards built in there.
It can't happen again.
And then that got me to think, well, why did the Great Depression happen?
If we can prevent a Great Depression by simply expanding unemployment benefits and bailing out banks and printing money here and do it, why didn't we do that in the Great Depression?
Why didn't FDR just do that?
Why do we go through all those years of pain and some ingenuine 25% unemployment?
Why did we do that?
I mean, the safeguards are obviously very easy.
So we're not going to have another Great Depression, eh?
We're just, well, if the more people that lose jobs that we continue to pay, the fewer people, I guarantee you, down the road are going to be inspired to want to go back to work.
And that's the downside of all this.
And that, sadly, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the hoped-for results by many liberal Democrats in Washington today.
We'll be right back.
Folks, do you remember back in the mid 90s, they had a newspaper story from the Associated Press, which said that lying was actually quite healthy for us.
Lying spared people's feelings being hurt.
Lying kept our social fabric intact because telling the truth too often to too many people would just cause civil unrest.
And we couldn't have that.
This was in the midst of perhaps the most dishonest president we've ever had, Bill Clinton.
Well, live science.
Our research suggests that people may not need to worry too much about power corrupting Barack Obama.
His newfound power might enable the change he desires rather than that power changing him.
So in 1995, lying was healthy.
In 2008, all of a sudden, power does not corrupt.
Barney Frank, ladies and gentlemen, not happy that the Messiah is not asserting himself.
And frankly, I can see that Barney may have a point because if Obama had already asserted himself and told Bush, get out of the way, we got problems here to fix, the poor woman may not have drowned at Proposal Rock because he might have been able to already lower the sea level enough so that the riptides would not have been so severe.
Here's Barney Frank yesterday in Washington at a consumer advocates event.
Here's the problem.
Secretary of Treasury is waiting to hear from the Obama people and the Obama people are waiting.
And again, I'm a great fan of the President, but I think it's probably the case that he's going to have to be more assertive than he's been.
And I know what he says is, well, we only have one president at a time.
My problem is, at a time of great crisis with mortgage foreclosures and autos, he says we only have one president at a time.
I am afraid that overstates the number of presidents we have at the present time.
And I think we have got to, he's got to remedy that situation somehow.
So you can look at this one of two ways.
The Democrats are already starting to crack up here.
But you can't deny the fact here that Barney just ripped Obama and demanded that the Messiah end up being more assertive.
Now, also, point that I made last night in my speech, all this bipartisan stuff, look where it got us.
All this talk about, I can work with Democrats, I can cross the aisle, I can get deals done with them.
I never hear Democrats talk about wanting to work with us.
I never hear them run for re-election and say, boy, I can really work with those Republicans.
Listen to Barney Frank yesterday at the same event talk about this.
I know people tell us in principle to be nonpartisan, but the fact is on a lot of these issues, regulation, et cetera, there are big differences between the parties.
It is a great mistake to assume that parties are irrelevant to this process.
And that's why my one difference with the President Durrette, about whom I am very enthusiastic, is when he talked about being post-partisan.
And having lived with this very right-wing Republican group that runs the House most of the time, the notion of trying to deal with them as if we could be post-partisan gives me post-partisan depression.
Now, the guy comes up some funny lines, but he's telling the truth.
He doesn't want any bipartisanship.
He's out to defeat Republicans.
We're the ones that seem to want to get along and look where it gets us.
We'll be back after this.
Stay with us.
It is Open Line Friday, and I don't want to keep people waiting as long as we normally do, Monday through Thursday, and go to the phone.
So we'll start in Halbridge, or is it Walbridge?
Is that W or an H?
Walbridge, Ohio.
Yvonne, great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
You bet.
I saw your interview last night with Barbara Walters.
And I tell you, you did prove that you were a tolerant person when she asked the question about the recession and you choose not to be.
That was brilliant.
I think you put her in her place on that.
And she thought she was really going to get you with this aging Hillary.
And I just thought you handled yourself very well.
And I wish it could have been a longer one.
Well, I appreciate that.
One of the reasons that I took your call first is that a lot of people have been emailing about the Barbara Walters special last night and the people have, you know, what did they leave on the floor?
What did they edit out?
You know, that kind of thing.
It's, you know, one of the reasons that I, and by the way, Yvonne, thanks much for the call.
One of the reasons, ladies and gentlemen, I am not enthusiastic about television is that it drives me nuts getting feedback every time I'm on television.
When I had my own show, I would go home, I'd check the email, whatever, and nobody was ever satisfied.
Everybody always had a complaint.
I never get complaints about this radio show.
I never have people say, what you should have said was, and why did you let them ask that?
You should have thrown it right back in their face.
I kept, I, and I just said, what's the point?
What's the point?
Because nobody is ever satisfied with television.
Because all it matters is how you look.
It doesn't, and nothing else matters.
Nobody remembers what anybody ever says on television.
I give you Obama.
It's how you look.
It's how you come off.
Now, this little thing with Barbara Walters, we did this at the Ritz Carlton Hotel on a, it was a Wednesday afternoon after the program and walked in there.
HR, how long?
We were over there about an hour and a half.
We were an hour and a half of taping.
Well, there was some downtime.
Sat in the chair for an hour and a half.
And we knew this.
We knew that it was going to be edited down to a two and a half to three minute segment.
There was one comment that I remember getting was checking some of the emails on the airplane last night coming home.
And one person said, well, it looks like you weren't ready when she started.
And that was a correct comment.
This is the first time that this has ever happened to me in an interview.
We were sitting there and they were doing the lighting and just chatting.
And you just know because the way she was conducting herself that cameras weren't rolling.
I mean, a TV professional like Barbara Walters is not doing the things she was doing when the cameras are rolling.
Plus the idle chit chat was about personal lives.
Last time we'd see this stuff.
And out of the blue, after sitting there for 10 minutes, out of the blue came this question about my contract.
With no, no, usually what you hear is a cameraman say, speed, we're ready to go.
And they asked the guy, are you ready?
Ready to start now?
Right out of blue.
Here came this question about the contract.
Now, I, a highly trained broadcast specialist, was momentarily caught off guard by it, but I got right up to speed and realized what had happened in a flash.
And no, I have no regrets.
What they edited out of that answer was, I think, I don't remember what actually aired last night, but she asked me, are you worth it?
Did that air last night?
Was that part?
Okay, and I said, yeah.
In a recession?
Was that one of the promos?
I said, she said, in a recession?
And I said, yes.
I said, I just choose not to participate.
I said, and then this, I know this didn't air.
I said, all it is, is a percentage of what I generate.
And I went on to describe how it works in a very brief manner.
Then the next question, which they didn't use any of because the whole premise was wrong, was about my addiction to painkillers.
They had to totally scrub all of that because the question was wrong.
And I don't want to, you know, she, you know, I just, it's on the floor, so let's leave it on the floor.
But it was, the premise of the question was just dead wrong.
And somebody sent me a note today, what do you wish would have aired that didn't that?
I would have, because the way I dealt with the faulty premise question was the highlight.
It caused them to stop tape.
It was the highlight of the interview.
And I knew it would never air because, you know, she doesn't want to be wrong.
And whoever researched it for her used one source to research the question.
She went with it.
And they eventually had to stop tape because there wasn't one aspect of the question, premise of the question that had any accuracy to it at all.
So it would have made no sense for her to air.
But aside from that, folks, it was friendly.
We were yucking it up and having a good time.
And I thought the way they edited it last night was superb.
I watched some of the other parts of the show, and I didn't see, correct me if I'm wrong here because I might have missed somebody, but I didn't see very many of these other so-called fascinating people laughing big time with Barbara Walters like I was.
I mean, I was a couple times, she just cracked me up, and the question cracked me up or whatever.
I thought, all told, the way it was edited, it was fine.
I had a good time doing it.
There was nothing really confrontational about it.
When I'm known as I am in the media for who I am, and you accept an invitation to go on a show like this, you know what you're getting into.
And I know that I'm going to get into a place where I'm going to have to defend my existence.
And I was, you know, were or was not, did you say?
Yeah, I was challenged.
The whole thing was a challenge.
The whole thing was, okay, prove why you're this.
Prove why you're not that.
And everybody, how come you do these things if people going to treat you this?
Well, I don't know, folks.
Roll the dice, decide to do them on a case-by-case basis.
Most of the time, I choose not to do it.
But I've been on her show before, been on this show 1993.
She invited me to her home in the mid-90s to have dinner with Margaret Thatcher and asked me to do the toast.
So there's no real animosity between us and walked out of there.
I enjoyed it and had a good time.
I even enjoyed the premise of some of her questions being wrong.
Because they were just, I mean, it was smack down.
Now, what are you grimacing at, Snurdly?
What are you...
Well, see, I don't know that she did it on purpose.
Snurdly.
Snerdley's upset how I can tolerate these people doing these faulty premise questions.
I anchor research people.
You know, she's doing 10 of these.
You, myself, it's ultimately her responsibility.
She's got people she trusts, just like I trust you guys.
Well, I know you don't get it wrong, but we know that they do.
I walked in there knowing, fully well expecting for this stuff to be asked and having it to be wrong because of the stuff that's been set.
Snerdley's yelling, they've had it, she's had it, they've had it in for you for 10 years.
They've all got it in for me.
Whenever you're at the top, everybody's gunning for you.
1993 all over again, Snerdley.
We got Obama in there.
Why do you think she made me one of the top 10 most fascinating?
I finally saw a promo.
She thinks I'm set up for a career resurgence.
She thinks I went away and had nothing happen to me for the last eight years because Bush has been in the White House.
Now I'm ready for a career resurgence because Obama's there.
You know, plus the new contract, which she was fascinated by.
You know, I could have thrown back at her.
Well, wait a minute, Barbara, you want to talk about how much you make?
I could have done that, but that's not, that's, it just, it didn't occur to me at the time.
You know, I was, I walk in there, be a nice guy, be who I am, and so forth.
And the bottom line is, folks, that it was harmless.
She ended up being charmed.
And I don't think there was anybody more fascinating on that show last night than me anyway.
So what?
Everything is a sitcom.
We are living in a sitcom.
A Reuters story from Seattle.
Real estate agent Jeffrey Dolefinger was making a routine occupancy check in a foreclosed home near Poughkeepsie, New York.
Why is this dateline Seattle?
Ah, hell, who cares?
This guy was checking on a home, a foreclosed home in Poughkeepsie.
I challenge you, Obama voters, to spell Poughkeepsie.
At any rate, he made a heart-wrenching discovery while checking on his foreclosed home.
Two bedraggled cockatiels nearly starved to death.
Exotic birds are falling prey to the foreclosure crisis as well.
It's a little-known side effect of the foreclosure crisis.
Exotic birds abandoned or dropped at shelters because their owners cannot move into an apartment or a relative's home with the sometimes noisy creatures.
It's just you just hate it when this stuff happens.
And this, cameras and cell phones, yes.
Backpack, no.
If you're planning on going to the inaugural ceremony of the Messiah, be forewarned.
You cannot take a backpack.
You cannot carry a sign.
Umbrellas, strollers, and thermoses are forbidden.
I will be praying for rain that day since umbrellas have been banned.
Barney Frick, I'm watching TV this morning.
I'm doing show prep, and I see Barney up there.
So what's he doing now?
And this is what he said.
All of us remember in school, the teachers we hated most were the teachers who said if one person misbehaved, the whole class would get extra homework.
I don't want to give the whole country extra homework because automobile executives in the past misbehaved.
Yeah, a lot of mistakes were made.
The auto companies made mistakes.
Unions made mistakes.
Politicians made mistakes.
Really?
The media hasn't always distinguished itself, although you're not supposed to say that.
The consequence of all those mistakes is that the country is to some extent held hostage.
We need to free the country.
The focal point is not to punish those who made the mistakes.
It is to prevent further damage to the country.
And it's in that context that this committee will proceed.
Talking to the auto execs this morning, Barney Frank.
Our old buddy Paul Shanklin there with the vocal portrayal of Barney Frank and banking queen.
Tom Brokaw, not happy, by the way, with Barney Frank.
Early in the program, Barney Frank expressed exasperation with Obama for not being more assertive.
On the Today Show today, Meredith Vieira asked Brokaw about what Barney Frank had said.
Well, Barney Frank's not the president, and Barack Obama is, and this is something that he feels very strongly about.
And you see in his appointments already in keeping Bob Gates as the defense secretary, putting Jim Jones in as the national security advisor, that he does want to give the country not just the impression, but the reality that he is determined to try to close this polarized gap that we've had in Washington.
Which Barney Frank does not want closed.
And little trade secret here, folks, don't tell anybody.
It's just keep this between us.
Obama doesn't want to close it either.
This is going to be, we are being stealthed with these appointments.
We're putting out all these so-called moderate Clinton people.
But I'm telling you, hard leftists are going to run this country for Barack Obama.
Let's not forget, Tom Brokaw is not sure himself even about Barack Obama.
I don't know what Barack Obama's worldview is.
No, I don't know.
I don't know how he really sees where China is.
We don't know a lot about Barack Obama and the universe of his thinking about foreign policy.
I don't really know.
And do we know anything about the people who are advising them?
You know, it's an interesting question.
He is principally known through his autobiography and through very aspirational speeches.
I don't know what books he's read.
What do we know about the heroes of Barack Obama?
There's a lot about him we don't know.
Right.
But now I guess Brokaw knows everything he needs to know because of the appointments.
But I'm going to tell you, he's got Hillary Clinton over there, so she's going to become the face of whatever happens in the Iraq War.
But this administration is going to be exactly what we told you.
It's going to be as extreme leftist in the things that they do and try to do behind the scenes as we've ever had.
First hour, Open Line Friday, in the can.
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