Do you know what preceded all this news about Blagojevich trying to sell Obama's Senate seat?
Al Gore flew into town.
Al Gore flew into town.
Chicago blows up.
Al Gore flew into town for a meeting with Obama.
Why would Al Gore do that?
Because Obama's far-fringe kook leftist supporters are upset.
Mindlessly so, by the way.
They're just being paranoid.
They're upset that Obama has named a bunch of Clinton people to cabinet.
The kook fringe thinks he's nothing.
These Clinton people are nothing but centrists and so forth.
I don't know what you leftists that support Obama expect.
He's only nationalizing the auto industry for crying out loud.
I mean, that's as extreme leftist as we want to go in this country.
We don't even want to go there.
I mean, these people, I don't think, could be happy.
They cannot be made to be happy no matter what they're given.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network, 800-282-2882 is the phone number if you want to be on the program.
The sitcom continues from the Ventura County, California star.
A rare 50-year Arctic blast sets its sights on Southern California.
Zany global cooling hits the liberal heartland of California.
With a week away and a sure sign of things to come, theweather.com is making preparations on the server to handle the traffic from this next event.
It's in line with the majority, if not all other models in keeping a near historic Arctic air mass into the Southern California region.
And obviously, Gore is going to be out in California.
It's called the Gore effect.
Wherever he goes, cold weather shows up.
Now, this just is mind-boggling.
Several Democrat operatives from Illinois say that the Illinois state legislature will likely move as quickly as possible to hold impeachment hearings against Governor Blago in attempts to prevent him from appointing Obama's successor in the Senate.
Now, you might be wondering, how can that happen?
Well, it's very simple.
Illinois law allows Blagojevich to make the appointment while he is in jail.
Legislators in Illinois thought of everything.
They left nothing to chance.
They know their guys are going to go in jail.
Every Illinois governor in the last 25 years has been in jail, seems like.
Three of them are Republicans.
We'll admit.
Well, Blagojevich, anyway, is the first Democrat governor there in, I think, 25 years.
While the decision would be a disaster for Democrats politically, nobody's ruling out the prospect of Blagojevich making the appointment from jail.
Any candidate appointed by the jailed governor would be immediately tainted and would face immense hurdles winning on their own in 2010.
Blagojevich could also appoint a caretaker to the seat, but that would not bode well for Democrats politically.
Having a sitting Democrat senator from Illinois appointed by a jailed governor would hurt the party's chances of holding the seat in 2010.
Who says?
Why would that make any difference?
I mean, there's another state that's pretty comparable to Illinois in this regard, and that's New Jersey.
And no matter what the Democrats do there, they keep getting reelected even from jail.
So I don't know why they're all worried in Chicago about what this is going to mean.
I can understand Them not wanting Blago to make the appointment of Obama's Senate seat while he's in jail, not because of how it would make him look, by the way, but because of how it would taint the appointee given all of this.
First question he appointee would be asked, well, what did you give Governor Blagojevich in exchange for the nomination?
And then there would be a little bit of a media investigation.
By the way, you have to look long and hard in the news today and on television to find that Blago's a Democrat.
It's fascinating, but it's very difficult in the national media to find out his party affiliation.
By the way, one leading member of the local media in Chicago is calling on the Illinois legislature to impeach Blago.
His name is Mike Flannery.
He's CBS2, Eyeball News.
He said, this is disgraceful.
I'm going to tell you there's every reason for the Illinois House of Representatives to convene.
And if he doesn't have the decency to resign, then the House ought to impeach him.
The state senate ought to hold a trial quickly.
And I hope the governor does not move to make an appointment at this point.
Now, I would remind Democrats, you're not handling this the way you usually have in the past.
You're really not.
I mean, this kind of corruption was, well, not this exact kind of corruption is going on during the Clinton years, but back then, all those things that were said that were these are resume enhancements or that didn't keep him from doing his job.
None of this kept him from doing his job.
You Democrats, I mean, you're not even willing to give poor old Blago here the benefit of the doubt as the U.S. Constitution does.
He's innocent until proven guilty.
And look at this kind of backyard old West railroad justice that even the media wants to engage in now.
Get Blago out of there real quick.
I am stunned that the Democrat Party has the capacity to be this embarrassed.
Because this is nothing new.
From Carol, go down to the list here.
Half of the Ford family in Tennessee is in jail, right?
Carol, mostly fraud.
What did she do?
She sold influence to a boyfriend or something.
Trip in Africa or some such thing.
You've got, help me out.
Kwame Kilpatrick in Detroit.
Is he still in jail?
He's a Democrat.
You've got, oh, yeah, Jim McGreevy, oh, in New Jersey.
You got Torres Selley.
You got the three ex-Chicago governors.
They happen to be Republicans.
It's all part of the same machine in that state.
They couldn't catch Corzine.
Even the SUV tried to get him, but the SUV failed.
SUV did its best when the law wouldn't.
Go up.
Elliot Spitzer, William Jefferson, Congressman Democrat, Louisiana, William Jefferson.
I mean, why are they, why are they so embarrassed over this?
I mean, look at Franklin Reigns at Fannie Mae, Jim Johnson at Fannie Mae.
Why are they embarrassed?
This is, in the old days, I mean, this kind of thing was Dan Rosti Rostenkowski.
Charles Wrangell.
Charles on the ethics committee in the House investigating Wrangell.
Wrangel says he didn't do anything wrong.
Pelosi said we'll have an answer on this very soon, and it will be official.
He didn't do anything wrong.
His Democrats, Democrats cannot make ethics violations.
They can't commit them.
There's no such thing as an ethical violation if you're a Democrat.
Only Republicans are capable of that because Republicans publicly state that they have standards.
They have morals.
They have this or that, and they think people ought to live by them.
Democrats say, hell with all that.
And so they can't be accused of hypocrisy.
See, hypocrisy is the real crime.
And there's no hypocrisy here, and nobody's surprised.
We're just laughing at it.
We're in the middle of a sitcom here.
And you've got Fitzgerald saying the governor of Illinois, he actually said this: the governor of Illinois has taken us to a new low.
The governor of Illinois, he said, Lincoln's turning over in his grave.
And how about Jim McDermott?
Remember that old grandfather and grandmother couple that were driving along in their Cadillac on a turnpike in Florida, and just like all the rest of us, they had their little radio where they could monitor cell phone calls.
So they turned on the radio to listen to people's cell phone calls, just like you can do in your car.
And they overheard a phone call between John Boehner and Newt Gingrich.
They said, wow, this is American history being made.
What do we do with this?
So they thought, let's send it to Jim McDermott, Democrat state of Washington, Baghdad Jim.
They sent it to McDermott.
McDermott gave it to the New York Times.
New York Times published a transcript.
Boehner sued and eventually prevailed over McDermott to the tune of $700, some odd thousand dollars.
What was the name of that grandfather and grandmother couple?
The Martins.
Yeah, the good old Martins.
They're just going to the mall to get some Christmas presents for the grandkids, monitoring the cell phone calls.
I happen to have a tape recorder.
Well, the cell phone radio is an automatic tape recorder as well.
I've got one in my car.
Don't you, Don?
Everybody has cell phone recorders in there.
They just happen to tap into American history there as they're heading to the mall to buy Christmas presents.
So what's the big deal?
It's not change.
Don't tell me it's change.
This is not change we can believe in.
This is the same old, same old that we've always known is going on.
Here is something interesting from page 60 of the indictment against Governor Blagojevich, known as Governor Blago in Illinois.
On November 7th, 2008, this is just 32 days ago.
November 7th, 2008, Rod Blagojevich discussed the open Senate seat in a three-way call with John Harris.
That's his chief of staff, who's also indicted, by the way, and Advisor B, a Washington, D.C.-based consultant.
Blagojevich indicated in the call that if he was appointed as Secretary of Health and Human Services by the president-elect, then Blagojevich would appoint Senate candidate one to the open Senate seat.
I don't know who Senate Candidate One is, but I do know that one of the people that was in the running for this who took herself out of the running is this Valerie Jarrett babe.
She's 56 or she's born in 56, so she's maybe 52 years old.
She's a big-time advisor to Obama during his campaign and now.
And in a previous bite that we had from Pat Fitzgerald, he said his choice pulled herself out of the running.
And that is what allows Obama to say he had nothing to do with this.
Now, that's my interpretation.
That's not what Pat Fitzgerald says.
I don't know who Senate candidate one is, but Obama wanted somebody.
This is another thing that Fitzgerald said.
Blogojevich indicated in one of the tapes that an advisor told him that Obama had somebody in mind for this seat, but that Obama wasn't willing to pay for it.
And that's when Bogojevich started calling him, well, dropping the F-bomb and the mother F-bomb and all of that all over the tape.
So, Blagojevich discussed the open Senate seat in a three-way call with John Harris and Advisor B, a Washington, D.C.-based consultant.
Blagojevich indicated in the call that if he was appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services by Obama, then Blagojevich would appoint Senate candidate one to the open Senate seat.
Harris, chief of staff, stated, we wanted our ask to be reasonable and rather than make it look like some sort of selfish grab for a quid pro quo, quote unquote.
Rod Blagojevich stated that he needs to consider his family and he is financially hurting.
Harris said that they are considering what will help the financial security of the Blagojevich family and what will keep Blogojevich politically viable.
Blagojevich stated, I want to make money, quote unquote.
During the call, Blagojevich, Harris, and Advisor B discussed the prospect of working a three-way deal for the open Senate seat.
Harris, the chief of staff, noted that Blagojevich is interested in taking a high-paying position with an organization called Change to Win, which is connected to the service employees international union.
Harris suggested that the service employees international union official make Blavojevich the head of Change to Win.
And in exchange, the president-elect could help Change to Win with its legislative agenda on a national level.
So they were all kinds of maneuvering was going on here to help still got this bug, folks.
We'll have to bear with me on the coughing space.
I can't laugh.
I'm still, I cannot laugh without erupting.
And this whole show has been nothing but one giant laugh, and it remains a giant laugh, and I can't laugh.
It makes me sad.
It's very sad.
At any rate, all kinds of maneuvering was going on here.
Blogoevich trying to get himself a union gig, then the health and human services, which, of course, he's not going to get now because the puffster got that one.
Yes, Mr. Snerdley.
No, I have, he might have considered appointing himself.
I have not.
Have you seen something official on that?
Well, there's so much that's just coming out here.
This is from page 60 of the indictment, and there's so much coming out now here that it's going to take some time to keep up with this.
But like I said, I'm just, I'm shocked that anybody's surprised at this.
This is standard operating procedure, particularly for Chicago.
Not to mention Illinois.
Back to the phones we go.
Dan in Pittsburgh, you're next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Nice to have you, sir.
Hey, how's it going, Rush?
It's an honor and a privilege to speak to you.
Thank you very much.
Oh, boy.
Where do I begin with this one?
You stole half of my thunder there earlier about this.
Now, this is kind of a mess that we're all in here.
If this is the change and the hope we can all expect, oh, my goodness, what have we gotten into?
I mean, come on.
This is phenomenal.
I mean, this has been nothing but 60 years of affirmative action realized, and it's coming back and it's blowing up in our faces.
I mean, this is unbelievable.
It's phenomenal.
Blatant crimes being committed.
I must stop you here.
I understand your incredulity, and I understand your shock.
I understand your awe.
You have to understand That not one person who voted for Obama cares a whit about this.
Not one person who voted Obama will associate Obama with this because they don't want to.
President-elect Obama will become President Obama in what, 40 some-odd days, 50 days, whatever it is.
And he will lead the nation for the next four years or eight years, and maybe the next 12 or 16 years as he attempts to emulate FDR.
FDR had four terms, and he wasn't a Messiah.
Obama is a Messiah, and if he wants 16 years and four terms, who's to stop him now?
I am your host, as you know, ladies and gentlemen, the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-caring, all-feeling, all-concerned Maharashi.
And thus it falls on my shoulders to explain the Obama phenomenon, the presidency, the president-electancy, to help you understand it, to evaluate it, and to coexist with it.
It is really quite simple.
All you need to understand about Barack Obama is it's not what he says, it is how he says what he says.
Barack Obama can say anything, and it will not matter to those who voted for him because of how he says what he says.
Not even his base, the kook fringe left, understand this.
This is something only I, a highly trained observer and broadcast specialist, have made it possible for others to understand.
It's not that Obama promised change, he didn't specify much change, it's that he said change.
He said change in a way that resonated with people.
He didn't have to tell people what kind of change, he just said change.
Even Tom Broko doesn't get it yet, folks.
On Sunday, he asked Obama questions about one or two of his past statements.
Tom, it doesn't matter what Obama said in the past.
It's not what Obama says.
It's how he says it.
And this is the single greatest piece of advice I can offer you in helping you maintain your sanity as this sitcom rolls on for the next four, eight, twelve, or sixteen years.
It doesn't matter what he says.
And if you get caught up in analyzing and parsing what he says, you are going to sound to an Obama voter like an absolute fool and an idiot.
You want some proof?
Shall I illustrate this?
I'll be glad to do so.
24 months ago, Obama said he wanted us out of Iraq in 16 months.
24 months ago.
12 months ago.
Obama also said in sonorous tones that he wanted us out of Iraq in 16 months.
Last month, before the election, he once again said in sonorous tones, he wants us out of Iraq in 16 months.
No one cares that 16 months have come and gone and we're still in Iraq.
No one cares that he has said, oops, might be there a little longer than that, three years, maybe, maybe 100 years, might build a base.
They don't care.
Don't care what he says.
What they care about is how he says it.
I'll give you another example shortly after this obscene prophet timeout.
Don't go away.
Remember, my friends, it's not what Obama says.
It's how he says it.
He was going to lower the seas.
He was going to put people back to work.
He was going to create all these jobs and blah, And then on Sunday he says it's going to get worse.
But he said it with compassion and understanding, and he cares about us.
He's warning us.
It's not what he says.
It's how he says it.
And if you're going to get caught up in what he says, trying to make him out to be a hypocrite or whatever, isn't going to matter.
Not to the people who elected him, not to the people who love him.
It's how he says what he says.
He's a co-figure.
Now, I checked the email during the break.
I get a lot of people who want me to address, they say, Rush, you're treating this with a little humor.
We appreciate that.
But come on, Rush, do you really think Obama was not involved?
Let me give you my take on this because my take on Obama's involvement here is multifaceted.
Now, Rick Moran, in fact, the American thinker has opined on this as well.
He says, if you think Obama was stupid enough to get involved in these kinds of dealings with Blagojevich, you can forget about it.
Obama likely already knew of Blagojevich's incredible corruption because of his own relationship with Redzco, the convicted Chicago political fixer who was a valuable associate of both Obama and Blago.
In fact, it came out at Resco's trial that Obama was present during a couple of meetings where Redzco alluded to his pay-for-play scheme that has now ensnared the governor.
Obama no doubt gave Blagojevich a wide berth after learning about how interested the prosecutors were in the governor's wheeling and dealing and took his own choice for the Senate seat out of the running.
Now, this stuff against Blogoevich, people are beginning to speculate now that he may be genuinely insane or not mentally stable, because he knew all this was going on and yet he continued to offer the seat first to the union.
Or was it talking of and, by the way all these people are intimately involved with with Obama a union that helped get him elected, an offshoot of the union that takes Obama's favorite word and makes it a title-y organization change to win, or whatever it is Blagojevich thinking and, by the way, Mr. Snerdley, you were right, I did check this Blagojevich did say that he was willing to appoint himself.
Quote, if I don't get what I want and I'm not satisfied with it, I'll just take the Senate seat myself.
This was said in recorded conversations, according to the prosecutors.
And then, of course, he tries to withhold illegally withhold some state funding for the Tribune Company in an effort to get them to fire the editorial board at the paper.
Now, that's just silly To think that that was going to happen.
What must your mental state be?
Not that we wouldn't love to see it, don't misunderstand, but what does your mental state have to be to think that you're going to be able to pull that kind of thing off?
And then you're out there selling a Senate seat to anybody who will talk to you about it while you know that they're investigating you.
Now, I find it hard to believe that once Obama found out this was going on, he had anything to do with it.
I think he backed off.
I think he tried to keep his distance and he pulled his pick out of the running.
And we think that's Valerie Jarrett.
But I want to go back to something that's to me quite interesting.
I want to go back to a Pat Fitzgerald bite, ladies and gentlemen, from this morning in Chicago at his press conference.
Listen carefully to these remarks.
We have a Senate seat that seemed to be, as recently as days ago, auctioned off to the you know, to the highest bidder for campaign contributions.
And Governor Blagojevich's own words on the tape or the bug that set forth in the complaint talked about selling this like a sports agent.
So we stepped in for a number of reasons.
Basically, as I said before, we're in the middle of a corruption crime spree and we wanted to stop it.
All right.
We are in the middle of a corruption crime spree and I want it to stop.
Now, I, my friends, am not in law enforcement, but I have a question about this.
If you see crimes being committed, if you are in the middle of a crime spree, and these are non-violent crimes, we're talking white-collar corruption here.
You know for a fact, because of what you already know, that more people will be drawn into the crime spree, especially the white-collar area.
Why do you blow the whistle and shut it down?
Why do you shut it down when you, and you're Pat Fitzgerald, man?
I mean, you, you're Elliot Ness, and there's a crime spree going on, and you shut it down.
Now, this causes little neurons to start firing in my fertile frontal lobe.
I don't know.
I mean, it seems this was done to stop one thing, and that is Blagojevich making this Senate appointment.
It seems like they moved in to stop this Senate appointment scandal.
And why would they do that?
Why would they stop the investigation?
Why would they, there's a crime spree going on.
Why would Fitzgerald or whoever's running him move in and shut this thing down now?
Just because they didn't want this corrupt individual, like we've never had one before, in Chicago naming Obama's replacement?
Well, why would that be?
Why would they want to stop this guy when there's a crime spree going on?
Fitzgerald's words, we are in the middle of a corruption crime spree.
We want it to stop.
What's the rest of that sentence?
We want it to stop before it ensnares X, Y, and Z, and who the hell knows who else?
It's Obama's Senate seat we're talking about here being put up for auction.
And we know that Obama had somebody in mind for the seat.
And that person took themselves out of the running, suspiciously, just hours or days prior to the crime spree being shut down with the indictment today.
One thing it seems certain to me, and that is that somebody in Chicago did not want Obama stepping into this mess after the first attempted arrangement fell through because he had somebody in mind.
And I remember a couple weeks ago, maybe a little longer than that, maybe not quite as long, Obama was asked, do you have anybody in mind?
Because that's when Jesse Jackson's name was surfacing, and there was pressure being brought to bear on Blago to keep the seat black.
And they were saying Jesse Jackson Jr. might be, and Obama said, that's the governor's job, and I'm not involved.
I'm not in any way, shape, manner, or form.
I'm above that now.
I'm the president-elect.
That's the governor's job.
I have no say in that and so forth and so on.
Now, I know I'm the one who just said it doesn't matter what Obama says, it's how he says it.
But he did say that.
And I was, didn't think much about it at the time, obviously, because I've known all along it doesn't matter what he says.
This is a guy who's never going to get in trouble for what he says.
That's my bottom line.
So you just better get used to that.
Yes, Mr. Sterdley, a question from the program observer.
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Oh, yeah.
An investigation like this, the higher-ups, the Justice Department, of course, know what's going on.
Now, he is the U.S. Attorney for Chicago.
Mike Garcia is the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Manhattan.
I'm sure he's the Northern Illinois U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald.
Yeah, the Justice Department knows what's going on here.
They do.
I don't know why that would have anything to do with it.
Snurdy, what are you trying to say?
And back to the phones.
We go to Flowery Branch, Georgia.
This is close to the training headquarters of the Atlanta Falcons.
Doug, great to have you with us on the EIB network.
Hello.
Rush, I am more than honored.
You are my God.
But I speak for many of us.
You brought up another brilliant point early today, and that was how this helping out people in foreclosure is going to have them start making their payments.
And having been thrown into a collection effort in a business of mine that's struggling, I'm finding out there are two things, intent and ability.
And with everything you've been saying the last half an hour or so, this really kind of ties in with the whole Obama mentality.
His intent is great.
People are all tied into intent, but what's the ability?
Whatever happened to, let's see something get done.
Well, look, you're expressing the frustration of multitudes because if you look at pretty much any liberal social program in the last 50 years, you'd have to say that on balance they have A, failed, B, cost far, far, far more than ever we were told.
Of course.
And yet we're not allowed to examine the results.
We are told to examine the good intentions of the designers.
Because you see, they are liberals and they are compassionate.
They have hearts and we don't.
You and I are cold-hearted, mean-spirited extremists.
So goes the tale.
And Democrats, at least, see, they are trying to help.
You and I want people to starve.
You and I want people to freeze.
You and I want all this to happen.
You and I want all these horrible things to happen to people because we're mean, but they care.
So when you ask, where's the action behind Obama's intent?
There won't be any required.
And the same thing with so many of these people were being fooled into this foreclosure.
The lawmakers are thinking, well, if we've given them a break, haven't we shown them the good side?
Aren't we really feeling their pain?
And now won't they come around?
I mean, my goodness, look at we've knocked $200 off that $3,000 a month payment.
This guy's got to be good for it now.
Are you kidding me?
We're talking about 5% reductions.
What has changed in their ability?
Nothing.
And their size, this doesn't surprise me at all, Ross.
And again, your brilliance, just the light went on, and I loved it.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
You take care.
You do the same.
Here's the story that he's talking about.
This is from Reuters Obama.
Recent data, I mean, again, folks, the sitcom continues, and I am, I'm really bummed because I cannot laugh.
If you people think today's show is fun, I thank you.
I am unable to participate in the fun by laughing because it causes coughing spasms and it ticks me off.
Because this is just this stuff, you couldn't write this.
A sitcom writer, my friend James Burroughs, prolific director of sitcoms in Hollywood, could not come up with this stuff.
And he is a lib.
Recent data suggests that many borrowers who received help with mortgage modifications earlier this year tended to re-default on their payments, according to a top U.S. banking regulator.
I'm trying not to laugh.
Yes, they are.
They're recidivists.
The results, I confess, excuse me.
The results, I confess, were somewhat surprising and not in a good way, said John Duggan, head of the U.S. Office of the Controller of the Currency, in prepared remarks for a U.S. housing forum.
Put simply, it shows that over half of mortgage modifications seemed not to be working after six months.
However, data which is to be issued by the OCC, that's the Office of the Controller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision, the OTS, not to be confused with the OCC, next week could throw cold water on a push by some policymakers for loan modifications as the key remedy for ailing financial and economic crisis.
Well, you better study this before we do that because if you study what's already been done, you get results that are somewhat surprising.
And what we're learning is that deadbeats don't pay.
Wow!
Dead beats don't pay.
Even when you make it easier for dead beats to pay, they stiff you.
The results are somewhat surprising.
Over half of reworked mortgages seem not to be working after six months.
And Duggan said, quote, we don't know the answer yet.
But these are the types of questions that we have begun asking our servicers in detail.
They weren't paying.
And so we're going to come and we're going to ride it on a white horse.
And we're going to be the good guys.
We care.
We understand affordable housing.
We're going to make it easier for you to pay off what you couldn't pay in the first place.
And we get great credit for being compassionate, loving, and concerned.
And we're going to make it possible for you to stay in that $300,000 house, even if the window company you work for goes bankrupt.
And we make it easier, and you don't pay, and we don't know why when you weren't paying in the first place.
You forget you're into the bargain.
We're here to make ourselves look good, and you're making us look bad by being who you are.
And so now these wizards of smart, ladies and gentlemen, are thinking that maybe this same plan, if applied in a far broader fashion to the financial crisis at large, may not work.
In other words, if you owe just to pick a figure 10 grand on your credit card and they'll say, reduce it to five, they're now figuring you may not pay off the five either.
And these people actually think that these deadbeats are going to be so grateful and so thankful that they're going to start paying their mortgages when they weren't in the first place just to return a kindness.
So you're not paying, and rather than be tossed out of your house, some wizard of smart from the government shows up, okay, okay, okay, okay, you don't like that rate?
Well, fine, we'll cut your payment by $500 a month.
Sign here.
Okay, cool.
I was with $500 a month.
And six months goes by, and they haven't received a payment.
And I don't know why.
Results are surprising.
Got to do a study now to figure this out.
By the way, speaking of Patrick Fitzgerald, the Elliott Ness in Chicago, remember he let the Valerie Plame investigation keep going and going and going and going and going for years after he knew who the leaker was, Richard Armitage.
He needed a process crime.
He needed somebody to lie under oath.
He had to get somebody after starting the investigation after he already had the answer that everybody wanted.
But the Blago investigation shut down in the middle of a crime spree.