And greetings to you music lovers, thrill seekers, and conversationalists all across the fruited plane.
Rush Limboff live from the office of America's Anchorman, 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program.
And the email address, lrushbo at eibnet.com.
Yes, I saw that, Mr. Snerdley.
Another drive-by media organization has gone bankrupt.
That would be the Tribune Company.
The drive-bys are dropping like flies.
I mean, central planning is going to have some problems here.
All these Obama campaign staff members, they're going to have to be brought into the government as official propagandists working out of the government since their outside of government jobs are being eliminated.
Tribune, that's the Chicago Tribune.
That's the Los Angeles Times.
I heard the Miami Herald, you know, part of the McClatchy Empire, up for sale.
Have you heard about the New York Times?
The New York...
No.
Why would I buy a newspaper?
Why?
What in the world would I buy a newspaper?
If I bought the Miami Herald, it'd be for the real estate, and I'd tear down the building.
I'd send the printing presses down to Fidel Castro.
I say, have at it, buddy.
It's your paper anyway.
No, that's what makes a Miami Herald.
We've got some great waterfront property down there.
As you drive there across the causeway across to Star Island and Fisher Island and so forth where all the cruise ships are.
Anyway, the drive-bys are in heap big trouble.
The New York Times is broke.
That little pinch had to mortgage.
He took $225 million of equity out of their new building they didn't need to keep the newspaper going.
If he hadn't done it, the newspaper would be bankrupt or broke in July of next year.
So the drive-bys are having all kinds of problems out there.
We here, of course, at the EIB Network report know such problems.
In fact, anytime they have a recession, we just don't participate, ladies and gentlemen, and we have yet to have a down year in gross revenue.
Well, any kind of revenue since we started 20 years ago.
All right, let's, oh, I've got to read you this email.
I got this email.
This is the last night.
It was about 20 minutes after 8, and I was, Snerdly, I was savoring the Steelers win over the Catboys and getting ready for the Redskins and the Ravens.
I was hoping the Redskins would prevail there, but they didn't.
So I'm doing a little show prep.
And the subject line of this email is, I lost her because of you.
Dear Rush, I'm 43.
I have listened to you since 1988.
You've changed my life.
You have shaped my views.
You have given me hope amongst lots of challenges.
I met a girl I never thought I would meet.
I fell in love with her and her family and her with me and mine.
We discussed a few political issues, and I knew we were opposite, but I supported everything her and her family presented to me.
She kept all to herself, I guess, until she spent three days caring for me after a double hernia surgery.
She came in one afternoon and heard that I had you on the radio.
She left the next day without saying anything.
She called three days later to break it off, saying that if I listened to you, I was too right-wing and she could not ever be with me.
I loved this girl and her family no matter what their issues were.
Despite my core beliefs, I loved her and them.
I supported them.
And I still was judged by an intolerant person.
I have never and will never preach or impose my beliefs on someone.
Of course, not someone I've accepted and their family.
I did nothing but support them and yet was judged and shunned.
My heart breaks, Rush.
Why do people with our beliefs who don't judge but try to influence with support and love and guidance and teaching, why do we pay such a price?
I will never change my core beliefs.
I have never personally judged a loved one for theirs.
I wonder how you have kept a stiff upper lip.
Just needed to vent, Rush.
You are my inspiration, and I will keep you on my radio no matter what.
Signed Christopher.
Christopher, I have been where you are numerous times.
Well, not because of ideological differences, but we all have experienced broken hearts.
I have found, Christopher, that each and every time my heart was broken, it turned out to be for a damn good reason.
And I would suggest to you that you do not know how lucky you are.
Your heart may be broken.
You may be in pain you have never felt before, because love is one of these emotions that we cannot control.
We can't go out and decide on the spot, hey, I want to be in love and do it.
And as you are now learning, when you're in love, you can't just, oh, I don't want to be in love anymore, and not be.
So it has this real love has this control over us.
But you, sir, you are fortunate that this happened before you made any further commitments beyond where you were.
Imagine this happening after you had been married.
This girl could have been even worse than you imagine her to be.
She could have been purely deceitful.
She could have said, aha.
She could have waited until you proposed and then married you and then after marrying you, then discovering how horrible you were, demand half of what you have for deceiving her a month or so after you were married.
Could have happened.
You never know.
Regardless, consider yourself fortunate.
You found out who she and her family are prior to any real commitment that you made.
You have to try to find this good that happens in everything.
And sometimes it doesn't reveal itself for quite a while.
Sometimes it reveals itself instantly.
In your case, the good here is easily spottable.
But imagine this.
We all know the power of love, and this guy has willingly hung in here, the EIB network.
He will not have his core beliefs compromised.
And don't try, you know, Christopher, one of the things here, you're trying to figure these people out.
You're trying to figure out their intolerance.
You're trying to figure, there's no rational explanation for it.
You will go nuts trying to explain it.
The best that you can do is to understand they have a false sense of superiority.
They think they're smarter and better than everybody else.
And it's good that you didn't even get into an argument with her.
Well, have you ever listened to Limbaugh?
Do you know what happens on his radio?
It's a good thing you didn't even do that.
And it's an even better thing that you didn't chase her.
Because If, and I know this is a quaint old thing, but if this is supposed to be for you, it will happen.
You can't force it.
You can't speed it up.
And if it's meant to be, you can't stop it either.
So I would suggest here that you realize that you have received a very big break.
You don't know how lucky you are.
But imagine that.
It doesn't say how old he is.
But I can, you know, he did everything he could to support this woman and her family and didn't argue with them ever.
And they know him.
They know who he is.
He's been around long enough for them to have accepted him.
And all of a sudden, his stupid BIH fiancé finds out he listens to me.
And that is enough to turn this family totally against him.
This is why I say, in addition to she's being a stupid BIH fiancé, he's lucky.
Back after this.
Remember, my friends, love is fickle.
Conservatism is forever.
El Rushbo talent on a loan from God.
Unbelievable story from yesterday's Sunday UK Times.
It's about an alternative in Britain since times are tough for turkey at Christmastime.
Pigeon.
Pigeons, a great source of protein.
And there is a picture.
I'll show it here to you on the Ditto Cam, ladies and gentlemen.
A delicacy of pigeon right there to be served at Thanksgiving in case you cannot afford a turkey.
If you can't afford a turkey, one thing you might do is head to Chicago.
Jesse Jackson's passing them out at the window company, the window factory.
One thing I can assure you, ladies and gentlemen, Allen Brothers will never ever serve pigeon.
I cannot believe it.
Would you ever walk into a place and eat pigeon?
Who would ever think of doing some of this?
I mean, maybe if you, maybe a dove.
You know, a white dove gets baked over the Olympic flame might be somewhat tasty, but not a gray pigeon that you see out there on the fleet.
You just wouldn't do it.
Unbelievable.
And try to present it as a delicacy.
The Allen Brothers turkey was delicious.
I had Allen Brothers turkey at Thanksgiving.
We had a prime rib.
It was just, it was just fabulous.
It was better than any turkey.
And I don't, I don't know how they do this.
They get better everything than you can get in a grocery store.
That's one of the things that appeals to me.
I mean, I've always had that characteristic about me.
I like getting things nobody else can get.
And I've liked that ever since I was in the first, second grade.
Back then, I liked getting out of things nobody else could get out of, like school.
And I found creative ways to do it.
But the Allen Brothers guys, they come in here every now and then when they have something new that they're going to add.
Todd and Bobby, and they come in and we sit around and we chat about things and their business.
They're small business people, just like a lot of you are.
And they have brought back veal as it used to be.
Strauss Meadow Reserve Veal.
Veal 30 years ago was not the force-fed veal that exists today.
And they made a contract with some veal farmers.
They get veal as it was.
They're coming out soon with veal dogs.
And now I, as a powerful, influential member of the media, have already tasted these things.
And I think the Strauss Metal Reserve veal is available now.
I'm not sure about the veal dogs.
And I had one of these veal chops.
I could not tell a difference in that in a steak.
Not much.
It was just delicious.
You can see all this at their website, ABSea.com.
Here's Don in Rockford, Illinois.
Thank you for the call, sir.
Great to have you with us.
Hey, Rush, good to talk to you.
Thank you, sir.
Hey, I was going to steal if Jesse Jackson.
I can understand going to these people.
I can't understand our congressmen and Barack Obama not telling those people to leave that building and go through their grief procedure with their union.
You know, here these guys are taking over a company, complaining that the bank didn't borrow money.
Is our activist, the president, going to go and tell them to give them a loan without any $20?
That's essentially what the pressure being brought to bear is.
Here's the story.
There's window company goes, well, they didn't go belly up.
Their line of credit was refused from Bank of America for some reason.
I guess Bank of America banks are not lending.
Don't know what the status of the window company in Chicago was, whether we're doing well or not.
So they shut down.
They couldn't meet payroll.
The workers at the window company said, hell, we're not leaving.
We're not leaving until we get our wages and we're not getting where to leave until we get our benefits.
One woman who works for the window company, I read her profile today.
She has an $1,800 mortgage.
She does not speak English.
She has enough money saved to pay two months on the mortgage, and she's in there refusing to leave, accepting one of the Reverend Jackson's turkeys that he's passing out.
Now, $1,800 mortgage.
At prevailing interest rates, what does that house cost?
What is that, a $300,000, $350,000 house?
$200,000 to $300 house for a woman who cannot speak English.
And this is the sob story we're getting about who these people are.
Okay, so B of A does not extend the line of credit.
The window company says, okay, we've got to close down.
I can't pay the employees.
The governor, Rod Blagojevich, was on television this morning saying the state of Illinois will no longer do business with Bank of America.
I don't know how much business they were doing with Bank of America, but whatever it was, they're going to do none until Bank of America ponies up on the line of credit.
Blagojevich is saying, hey, B of A, you got some of that bailout money for the purposes of lending it.
We'll lend it to my window company here.
And then Obama chimed in and he said, yeah, those employees ought to stay there.
They ought to stay there till they get their wages and benefits that are rightfully theirs.
So, yeah, to answer your question, Don, yes.
You got the federal government.
Well, you have the office of the president-elect, and you have the governor, Blagojevich.
And then, of course, you have the old standby, the Reverend Jackson passing out his turkeys, urging the Bank of America or threatening or whatever, pressuring them to extend the line of credit.
Bank of America says, their payroll is not our responsibility.
Bank of America, yes, it is.
You just took a bailout.
See, this is the thing.
General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, you're going to have to make these little putt-putts nobody wants because that's the price that you're going to pay for hanging around with your hands out.
And you people at the banks, some of you didn't want the bailout money, like Wills Fargo didn't want it.
They were brought in there with Don Corleone and Fredo when he was still alive and Michael.
Sonny was out banging some waitress someplace.
And Treasury Secretary said, you will sign this paper before you get out of here.
You will take part of this bailout money.
So they had to take it.
So Bank of America had to take the bailout money, even though they didn't want.
Maybe they were the ones who did.
So now they have to become a welfare agency.
Well, when you've got the office of the president-elect and the governor of Chicago of Illinois suggesting here that we're going to freeze you out, look at folks.
This is anytime you pony up with your handout and you ask somebody for money.
I don't care who puts the money in your hand.
They're going to want something for it.
You do not.
Snerdley is shouting in my ear and as a highly trained broadcast specialist.
It is not distracting me.
His question is, what was the question?
This is a stupid question.
What was the company is not going to be solvent.
Snerdley says the company is not going to be solvent even if the line of credit is renewed.
How do you fix the problem if the company isn't solvent?
Well, easily.
What's the problem here?
No, that's not the problem.
That's not the problem.
The problem is not that the company isn't solvent.
The problem is you have union employees who aren't being paid.
The solution is the union employees will be paid.
Your correct question would be: well, what if they aren't working?
When did that stop union people from being paid?
Remember, we support the workers, but we don't support the unions.
That's our new philosophy.
So the solution to the problem, you've got to identify the problem.
The problem is you've got some people who have $200,000, $300,000 houses whose company has line of credit with B of A that's not being extended.
They're union workers, and that can't stand.
We're not going to have union workers not get paid.
Unions, how many billions, millions do they spend on Obama's campaign?
Millions, $450,000, $500 million they were responsible for generating, raising, and so forth.
They will be paid, whether they are working or not, by whoever it takes to get the money from.
Welcome back.
El Rushbow here behind the Golden EIB microphone, the prestigious and distinguished Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Here's Obama.
He was on Meet the Press yesterday.
Tom Brokaw, who said, remember on the Friday before the election with Charlie Jones, excuse me, he had no idea who Obama was.
He didn't know what books he'd read.
He'd just written a couple of books, made some speeches.
And I'd love to know.
Obama's now spent about an hour with Brokaw on Meet the Press.
I wonder if Brokaw knows him any better.
So get this question now.
Here's Tom Brokaw.
He's just a reporter, just an anchor, just, you know, just a guy.
Should the current automobile management be allowed to stay in their jobs was the question.
We have to put an end to the head-in-the-sand approach to the auto industry that has been prevalent for decades now.
What we still see are executive compensation packages for the auto industry that are out of line compared to their competitors, their Japanese competitors, who are doing a lot better.
Stop the tape a minute.
So are the UAW workers being paid.
Their compensation is, what did he say?
Out of line compared to the compensation being paid workers in a successful auto industry in southern states.
What I'm hoping to introduce as the next president is a new ethic of responsibility where we say that if you're laying off workers, the least you can do when you're making $25 million a year is give up some of your compensation and some of your bonuses.
That kind of notion of shared benefits and burdens is something that I think has been lost for too long, and it's something that I'd like to see restored.
Well, see, this is the thing.
This sounds very fair.
So the premise, no, no, no, to look at most people are not CEOs, snurdy.
And to people who aren't CEOs, this sounds extremely fair.
There should be shared sacrifice.
The benefits and the burdens should be shared.
Of course, the problem in the real world is even if you take the bonuses and the so-called high salaries away from the CEOs, it doesn't mean that these schlubs are going to get it.
So there is no sharing of anything.
It means government's going to take it.
But here's a guy, it's a community organizer, sitting there with Tom Brokaw, these two lugs acting and pretending like they know how to fix the automobile business.
I had the perfect plan earlier today.
If you're going to spend $15 billion to bail them out, buy $15 billion worth of cars from them.
That's the problem here.
They're not selling cars, right?
So have Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and Obama, whoever else he wants to assign this, go out and buy $15 billion worth of cars, million or two, whatever it would be, and then Congress sell them.
Congress has all the answers.
Congress can go sell the cars that they buy.
See the USA, the Obama way.
Oh, I can see the jingle now.
Put Obama's face and likeness on the hubcaps.
All kinds of incentives to sell these cars.
Congress can do it.
Just throwing money.
I mean, he's got Obama had the audacity to say they have to restructure.
They have to change the way they've been doing it.
But he doesn't know the first thing about the way they've been doing business.
They're doing business abroad just fine, by the way.
In 3,300 countries, they're showing profits all over the place.
Profits almost as big as their losses here.
It makes you wonder what the difference is.
But it all doesn't matter.
It's a fait accompli anyway because General Motors ran a print ad apologizing.
Did you see this?
They have run a print ad apologizing to the American people for letting them down for designing bad cars.
Now, thirdly, do not overreact.
I predicted this last week.
This is 10 and up saying, I'm sorry.
That's how you get the money.
I'm sorry.
You apologize to everybody.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
And lo and behold, the administration and Congress working on $15 billion today, plus the establishment of a car czar to oversee the bailout.
Now, get, I don't know what business the car c are is going to come from, probably from agriculture, ethanol, who knows.
Brokaw's next question: why not take this opportunity to put a tax on gasoline, bump it back up to $4 a gallon, where people were prepared to pay for that and use that revenue for alternative energy and as a signal to the consumers that the days of cheap gasoline are gone.
We're not going to have gasoline.
You can just fill up your tank for 20 bucks anymore.
Tom Brokaw on the side of who?
So here we've got a dollar.
You can buy gasoline in certain parts of the country for $1.60.
You can buy it for $1.40.
Brokaw wants it to go back up to $4.
Of this originally with Charles Krauthammer's idea.
Keep it up to four because that was the tipping point.
That would cause people to drive less.
That would cause savings and less consumption and all this sort of stuff.
But it's this notion that we have to suffer.
We Americans, we have to suffer.
Things in the world aren't going to be right until we suffer.
Brokaw's not going to suffer because he can afford $4 a gallon gasoline.
But we're supposed to suffer.
This is, among many things, what's wrong with liberalism.
They don't see the best.
They don't see optimism.
They see pessimism and they want pessimism to eventuate.
They want it to be realized.
So what did Obama say?
Here's Broco saying we need gasoline up to $4 a gallon to raise the tax so it's always at four bucks a gallon.
They got to get rid of this notion of cheap gas.
They've got to get rid of that.
Got to get rid of it.
Obama's answer.
Yes, gas prices have gone down.
But in the meantime, maybe somebody in the family's lost their job.
In the meantime, their housing values have plummeted.
In the meantime, maybe their hours have been cut back.
Or if they're a small business owner, their sales have gone down 50, 60, 70%.
So putting additional burdens on American families right now, I think, is a mistake.
Now, yeah, did you hear that right now?
I'm going to wait to put the additional burdens.
Putting additional burdens right now.
Tom, it's a great idea, buddy old pal, but a little too soon.
We'll wait to put those burdens on when it's not as noticeable that we're putting burdens on them.
That's what it means.
Fran In Arena, nice to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
First off, I want to wish you a very Merry Christmas because I know I won't talk to you again before Christmas.
Thank you very much, Ephraim.
Same to you.
Thank you.
Also, you know, sitting here listening, waiting to talk to you, there's 101 things that a person could talk to you about.
The best bet is to stick with the original thing you called about.
That's what I'm going to do, and that's about our kids nowadays.
The problem with our kids nowadays is the parents because the parents feel they've got to give them everything that they didn't have before.
And like when it comes to Christmas, you ask them for a Christmas list, and they want iPods, they want weeds, they want laptops.
What happened to the old Christmas list of, oh, I'd like to have a doll or a car or a truck, you know?
Yeah, I know.
I think this is a sign of American prosperity.
We had a story earlier, in case you missed this, folks, one of the reasons here that Fran is calling.
We had a story earlier.
Did I leave it on top of this?
Yes, here it is.
Get this.
This is just.
It's a tough economy out there, even for a kid.
Many parents are wondering how to broach the subject of the tough economy.
Should they shield their children from the hard times and spend like there's no tomorrow on their gifts and so forth?
Or is it better to share the reality that more families, often their own, simply cannot have it all, even at Christmas?
It can be a real dilemma.
I read that and I knew there are parts of this country that I am indeed proudly.
I will admit I'm out of touch.
Excuse me, I do not have children.
I have five nephews and nieces.
And sometimes they suffer.
So their parents tell them no sometimes.
They all love coming down to see Uncle Rush.
They all love Uncle Rush's arcade room.
And they love Uncle Rush's swimming pool.
Love Uncle Rush's cook.
They love Uncle Rush's macaroni and cheese and chicken strips and Uncle Rush's 55 televisions.
And last one day this past summer, it was asked of me if the two eldest could come down for a weekend.
I said, sure, bring them in.
The other three wanted to come.
Parents said, nope, can't go.
Two of them threw a fit.
There was agony because the parents don't like to see their parents suffer.
The kids suffer.
But the original answer was stuck to.
And the two kids, this is interesting.
The two kids that were allowed to come did not lobby for the other three to be able to join them.
They went and patted them on the head.
It'll be okay.
You'll get to go next time.
You'll be able to go Thanksgiving.
I just think there's a lot of, don't people don't want to see their kids suffer.
Look at this headline.
This is from, well, hell.
I don't know where it's from.
ABC News.
For more students nationwide, the grading alphabet now ends at D as school districts eliminate policies that allow children to be given Fs.
Public schools in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Here we go.
Michigan again.
Haskerel students will no longer receive Fs.
Instead, they will learn the letter H when their work falls woefully short.
H stands for held.
Now, first we got rid of the red pencil.
Remember, it wasn't long ago you couldn't, the teachers couldn't use a red pencil in grading papers because that was too threatening.
Too intimidating to the students.
Now Fs.
And the headline of this story, are students coddled?
Yeah, they are.
It's just different.
It's not just trying to give them things that you didn't have as a kid when you were growing up.
It's the idea they shouldn't suffer.
And that's not good because they're going to suffer.
I mean, everybody suffers.
The worst kind of suffering is self-inflicted, and everybody does that to themselves.
Everybody makes themselves suffer.
You know it and I know it, but there are things that happen in your life that you don't do to yourself that are still going to cause you pain.
It's impossible to go through life not feeling emotional pain, physical pain, or whatever.
And this effort to shield young kids from this, who's been going on a long, long, long, long time, is not good because reality is going to hit them as adults and they're not going to know what to deal with it, how to deal with it when it happens.
I have been rethinking this H business.
The H instead of an F. When this stupid idiot kid flunks, instead of saying it's an F, they get an H.
The grade is held.
This actually could be great preparation for when your kid gets a mortgage and then is unable to pay for it and expects the bank to not foreclose on him.
It's an excellent way to prepare him for his future or hers as a future homeowner who has no business owning one.
Democrats will see to it that somebody will pay for your house.
That's what this is all about.
I keep getting people, I've had my hacking cough, I keep getting people sending me snide comments about Zycam.
Whoa, Rush, Zycam didn't work, huh?
This isn't a cold.
I wish it had been a cold.
I would be over it by now.
This was some kind of infection that I still got.
I mean, the weekend was worthless.
You people don't know.
I came in Thursday and Friday against the advice of major medical authorities out of a commitment to you and a commitment to make a speech in Washington on Thursday.
And yet, yesterday it was to the point I couldn't walk 50 feet.
It's almost like asthma.
Today, it is getting better.
If this had been Zycam, I wouldn't have had any problem.
I've been knocked it out in two or three days, or if I probably wouldn't have gotten it at all, because I recognized when something was happening.
In fact, I saw something the other day.
And this is really pointless.
But some outfit in the UK has come up with a cotton swab that will determine whether your immune system is lowered or weak.
And if it shows that your immune system is worried or lowered or weak, then you are susceptible to getting a cold.
And then they say, well, okay, what do you do then?
Well, you're supposed to stay at home, not go to restaurants, do not talk to anybody, not see a lot of people until your immune system shows itself as being restored on the swab test.
That's not going to help anybody because you just can't tune out of life.
Anyway, the Zycams, if you're coming down with a cold, then the first moment you think you're getting one is when you have to do this.
Swab your nose with these cotton swabs, and it does work.
That's the best thing about it.
We'll either retard the onset, slow it down so that you won't suffer the symptoms quite as long as you otherwise would.
We're getting requests for this song just blowing them out since Friday.
So our buddy Paul Shanklin as President Clinton.
Dummy.
That's intended for Obama.
That's Bill Clinton.
Oh, it's actually Paul Shanklin portraying Bill Clinton singing of his wife Hillary about the things Obama faces with her heading over to the State Department.
Be right back.
Well, another exciting excursion into broadcast excellence in the can and ready for the Limbaugh Broadcast Museum.
Folks, have a wonderful evening.
We'll be back in 21 hours to do it all over again.