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Jan. 1, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:04
January 1, 2009, Thursday, Hour #2
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And greetings to you once again, music lovers, thrill seekers, conversationalists all across the fruited plane.
Time for the award-winning thrill-packed, ever-exciting, increasingly popular, growing by leaps and bounds, rush limbaugh program here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Telephone number, if you would like to join us, is 800-282-2882.
The email address, lrushbow at EIBNet.com.
A story from Reuters.
Single mother Kelly Dukes has lost her house, her car, and her salary.
But rather than curse the U.S. recession, the Cincinnati mom said that she's grateful to have learned a whole new way to live.
Now I understand the difference between want and need, said Kelly Dukes, as she shopped for a pared-down Christmas for her three-year-old daughter at discount retailer Target.
I used to go shopping every other day, but now I know I don't need the same pair of shoes in three different colors, said Dukes, who worked at a non-profit organization helping children until it lost funding and could not pay her salary.
Even though a recession is hard on people, I think maybe it'll shake a lot of people up and force them to think and educate their kids.
Even if you want something, you can't always have it.
And it's not important anyway.
I again, I am sitting here in utter dismay that there are people just figuring this out.
Can I ask a question?
We've had story after story like this of people who just now are learning that they can't have everything.
That story from a couple of days ago with the mom who was agonizing over whether to tell her kids that there's a recession out there or to go spend money like there is no recession to shield them from the pain.
Why in the world does anybody telling the people of this country that the economy's in the tank work?
I'm going to look at politicians.
Do you understand the people of this country, some of them, have this view of life in America of a giant sense of entitlement that you can have whatever you want whenever you want it because they have grown up in the richest, most prosperous country on the face of the earth, and yet these same people seem susceptible when people like Harry Reid and Pelosi and Bill Clinton and all the rest come along and start berating this country as best days are behind us.
We have no chance of being any good in the future.
It's just stunning.
So we have here a 27-year-old single mother who finally learned what you and I learned at age five.
I can remember at age five, mom, can I have a Coke?
No.
Cokes are not for kids your age.
How about a cup of coffee?
No, you can't have any coffee.
I mean, I it was no, I didn't ask for a cigar.
I didn't answer any of that, but I mean, I we were told no all the time.
I mean, it was, it was, I got my first job when I was 12 or 13 shining shoes in a barber shop.
And I made 50 bucks in three months.
And I was ecstatic and my parents were beaming with pride and so forth.
They're so happy they went out and bought me a record player so I could continue pretending I was a disc jockey at home.
Oh, is that so?
In the olden days, 50 bucks was real.
Well, to a 13-year-old, it's real money.
Yeah, when it only takes a quarter to play a pinball machine, 50 bucks was real money.
It was real money.
But that's not the point.
I'm not fuddy-duddying it here.
I am just, I'm genuinely amazed at the number.
27 years old and she's just figuring out she can't have everything.
And she thinks she's learned a great lesson, which she has.
And what is it that's taught her this?
The recession, getting fired later on from a non-profit.
Little Johnny, what do you want to do when you grow up?
I want to go work at a non-profit, mom.
I want to go work at a non-profit area.
Why do you want to work at a non-profit?
Why do you want to work at a place that doesn't make a profit?
Because I want to help people, mom.
I want to help people.
Well, then, why do you want to get paid for it?
Well, Mom, Dad, I want you great for people.
Why are you going to get paid at a nonprofit?
Why don't you give the money you would make it a nonprofit to the people you want to help?
Now, get this, though.
This is still not the point of the story.
Even though a recessionist, repeat this single mother Kelly Dukes.
Kelly, I'm not picking on you here.
The Reuters already did that.
Even though a recession's hard on people, I think maybe it'll shake a lot of people up, force them to think and educate their kids.
And even if you want something, you can't always have it.
Good God, folks.
Lord.
Anyway, here's the next paragraph from Al Reuters.
Spending less, saving more, eschewing consumerism were out of fashion just a year ago in America, where more often means better.
But the loss of 1.3 million jobs in three months, foreclosures, and the prospect of a deep recession has made thrift the new mainstream.
However, the story goes on to then worry that once the economy comes back, people will stop saving.
So the ultimate, here's the headline of the story: Americans cut back, but permanent thrift elusive.
Now, you know that the drive-bys and everybody have been berating us for not saving enough money because the past book savings accounts, and they don't count the 401ks and all these other programs that people have and they put money away.
We weren't saving enough.
We're so horrible.
We're not saving.
All of a sudden, we're saving now, but still, Reuters has to turn it into a negative because we're not going to save permanently.
Because when the recession is over, we are going to go really spend like Banshees.
In fact, economists, too, have mixed feelings about whether the dramatic drop in consumer spending and increase in the nation's savings rate are temporary or permanent.
So we've got to find bad news.
You people are schlubs no matter what.
In a depression, you're schlubs.
In a recession, you're slubs.
In a roaring economy, you're schlubs.
You never do anything right, according to the drive-bys.
By the way, the economy is hard-hitting in a lot of areas.
The number of executions in the U.S. fell to a 14-year low of 37 this year as social concerns about the death penalty and its financial costs rise, said the death penalty information center today.
The report said that by one estimate, each of the five executions in Maryland in the past 30 years cost about $37 million.
Now, you might say, $37 million?
How does an execution cost $37 million?
Well, how long are these people on death row?
How many years do they have to be fed?
What are their legal bills for the 15 or 20,000 appeals that they go through?
That's why it costs that much.
Both New York and New Jersey recently abandoned the death penalty after weighing the merits of a system in which tens of millions of dollars are being spent with virtually nothing to show for it.
Other than the dead bad person, there was nothing to show for all the money spent on the death penalty.
What?
The death penalty was an investment?
And all of a sudden, the investment in the death penalty has turned south.
No offense, southern states.
You know, I don't mean to imply anything there.
Brief timeout, ladies and gentlemen, as the EIB network takes a brief, obscene profit break back after this.
Our national sitcom continues, ladies and gentlemen, in the midst of global warming.
And don't forget, Al Gore was in Chicago this week.
And President-select Obama endorsed his whole plan to deal with global warming.
It's time to get on with this.
The time for debate is passed.
There is no doubt we've got to stop man-made global warming today.
It is snowing in New Orleans.
An inch has been forecast.
I just saw a picture of the weather conditions in New Orleans, and it looks like already an inch or two of snow is collected on top of a streetcar as it's barreling through town.
Yesterday, we had snow in Houston.
In the middle of global warming.
Ed Morrissey writing at hotair.com, is China now more capitalist than the United States?
In response to the financial crisis of 2008, the United States has responded by nationalizing industries and electing a president who promised to raise taxes on entrepreneurial efforts.
China, the nominally communist nation, has responded to its economic crisis by cutting business taxes to stimulate growth.
Remind me, which nation supposedly supports capitalism and free enterprise.
Here's the story.
China may soon cut business tax as part of its efforts to prop up the slowing economy amid the global financial crisis.
According to state media, on Tuesday, the government is very likely to soon cut the business tax for enterprises by one percentage point, said the China Daily, citing an unnamed source close to policymakers.
China's current business tax varies from 3 to 20 percent, boosting government revenue by 600 billion watts, $131 billion.
Last year, the news follows other state press reports last week that Beijing was planning to cut business tax for commercial banks, possibly to 3% from the current 5%, to help improve their capital adequacy.
So while China is improving its business climate by lowering the burden of state confiscation, the ChiComs are cutting taxes.
Barack Obama plans to increase the burden of state confiscation, and in some cases by a significant amount.
Meanwhile, the House last night voted 237 to 170 to sink $15 billion into the American auto industry with government officially owning part of three private automakers in order to dictate to management how to run their businesses.
And in a shocking, saddening reality, management welcomed the move and in fact wanted Congress to buy an even bigger stake in these companies.
So which nation is capitalist and which nation is socialist?
And which party is more of one than the other?
Well, I don't know.
32 Republicans voted for partial nationalization.
The Republican president is for it.
20 Democrats voted against it.
Perhaps Senate Republicans can make the distinction a little more clear with a filibuster to block this new direction on American economics.
Mr. Morris, he concludes, he's exactly right.
When we have to look to the CHICOMs for rational tax policies, well, it's just a sad day for Americans, even if it does pretend a brighter future for China.
Now, given all of this, here is what China should do to finish us off.
You heard me right.
Here is what China should do to finish us off.
China should say to Barack Obama, if you, United States, will sign a strong Kyoto Treaty, and if you will pass a cap and trade system to help these emissions and save the planet, then we, the CHICOMs, will too.
The CHICOMs could solemnly declare that global warming is the world's number one and only problem and promise its commitment to the issue.
Forget India.
If the United States will do these two simple things, the CHICOMs could say, then so will we, the Chinese.
And of course, Obama has been pointing to China and during the Olympics.
Well, I really think we all want to learn China.
See all that infrastructure.
Really, really good infrastructure.
He looks at China, he sees the wrong things.
I'm serious.
If the Chikoms want to bury us, if they want to end us once and for all, they can do two things.
They can come out as the biggest supporters of cap and trade and the Kyoto Accords and tell Barack Obama that if he'll go along with it and get this treaty signed and so forth and get it ratified in the Senate, that the CHICOMs will do the same thing.
And we all know one thing.
United States would then go belly up.
CHICOMS would not.
Chikoms will not live up to the treaty.
We will because Obama can't wait to do it anyway.
Obama can't wait to do all this stuff.
If the Chinese really want to finish us off, all they got to do is play right into Obama's stated desires when it comes to the environment.
Then after they do that, they can call all the treasury debt that they own.
And if you think the CHICOMs would not like to take us out, particularly without firing a shot, if you think the rest of the world would not like to take out what they think is the lone remaining superpower.
But Rush, but Rush, don't they need our economy?
In the state it's in now?
You don't think the CHICOMs would like to become the economy we are?
You don't think a lot of other countries would like to become the economy we are.
Back to the phones.
This is Jim in Chicago.
Nice to have you on the EIB network.
Jim, hello.
How are you doing, Rush?
Good, sir.
Thank you.
You know, I've been listening for the last couple of days, and the media has been saying, you know, Obama wouldn't give him anything.
And it's kind of funny to me that the media all skipped this part of the transcript where Rob Glovich said that the consultants are telling him that he has to suck it up for two years and do nothing.
Well, you have to learn how to speak Chicago and you have to learn how to speak Chicago politics.
What they're telling him is, you're drawing too much heat.
You've got to wait yourself for two years, and in two years, when you're done, we'll take care of you.
What he's saying is he wants it up front.
But the funny thing is, who told him he has to wait for two years?
Who was the consultant that told him that?
If Obama hadn't talked to him and Ram Emanuel didn't talk to him, who was the one who told him he had to wait for two years?
I don't know, but I am convinced that it wasn't Obama or any of his associates.
We have no evidence that Obama has been corrupt in his political life.
We have no evidence that Obama has engaged in these kinds of sneaky deals.
Quite the contrary.
Well, I heard him today in his press conference, Rush.
He said some people go into politics to self-aggrandize themselves, and some people go in for sacrifice.
If I remember when I met him a couple years ago, when he was a state senator, his credit cards were maxed out, and he couldn't get on a plane to Hawaii.
Now he's a millionaire, and thank God he's doing this all for the forest of the American people.
No, wait a minute.
You're absolutely right about that, but why are you casting aspersions on our president-elect?
Everybody knows he wrote a couple books, or Bill Ayers did, and they sold millions of copies, and that's well, hundreds of thousands of copies, and that's where he got the money.
There's a saying here in Chicago that says, cut me in or cut it out.
And all you got to do is learn how to speak Chicago.
I really think this is getting out of hand, this effort to try to link Obama to all this.
I know that he came out of this primordial scum, but now he walks on it.
He walks above it.
He's trying to walk a straight line in a crooked world.
Anybody can see this.
You know, the problem here we have, Rush, is we have one king, it's Mayor Daly, and then you got another king that's the Speaker of the House, that's Mike Mannigan, and then you have another king who's the governor, all three Democrats, and then all of a sudden we elected another Democrat for president.
There's four kings walking around here in Illinois.
Someone's got to go.
No, no, no.
See, they got rid of one of them.
I'm convinced that Daly did not want Obama running for governor.
He didn't want to deal with the Messiahs.
They get him out of the state by having him run for president.
Lo and behold, he wins.
You know, now they've got a whole different set of problems to deal with.
Look, Jim, I understand you come from Chicago, and I'm not trying to tell you you don't know what you're talking about because you are obviously more informed about the intricacies of Chicago politics than I. You live there and I don't.
But I think it's very, very risky.
I think it is very, very unfair to start making these wanton assumptions that our president-elect is tainted by this just because he knows all these people and they helped him get elected and helped him buy his house.
I think it's very unfair of you to start making these giant leaps.
The man who promised to lower sea levels and all that to fix everything is somehow corrupt.
You couldn't get away with saying that about Jesus.
Ladies and gentlemen, quick question here.
You know, Ayn Rand and Rand wrote the book called Atlas Shrugged.
And I'm wondering if we are living the sequel, Atlas puked or Atlas laughed his butt off.
The sitcom that we are living through is funny.
The consequences, though, are not amusing at all.
The CHICOMs are showing the world how to get an economy going.
It used to be us that did that.
When a liberal president, liberal president's elect, and a liberal senate and a liberal House of Representatives, with them unchecked by a liberal media, is there any hope for reality in our culture?
Is it possible that the one voice of reality, too modest to say who that is, could be hushed?
Stop and think.
Stop and think of where we are.
I know I'm not helping.
We're laughing at this, but sometimes that's all you can do.
People who have proved that they can produce tens of millions of cars are going to be led, managed, and directed by people who never manufactured a single car in their entire lives.
People who have produced all of the energy our nation needs to survive and to grow are now going to be led by people who have never found an ounce of oil, drilled for an ounce of oil, refined a single ounce of oil.
In fact, I think they're going to be led by people who have no idea where money comes from.
Liberal Barbara Streisand on one hand in the real world, and America chose liberal Barbara Streisand.
We are living according to the way the brain of Barbara Streisand works.
We're about to be governed by the brain of Barbara Streisand.
And so, my friends, even as we see the consequences of home loans to those who couldn't afford them, as we see the consequences of unfettered bailouts of one industry leading to dittos for all industries, all we can do, my friends, is press on, knowing that this sitcom, like all sitcoms, will eventually be canceled and our nation can return to its original intent, which is greatness, greatness through freedom, greatness through individual real effort,
real work, real achievement.
Not alternate effort, not alternate work, not alternate achievement.
People who warned about the dangers of unfettered bailouts, people who have no idea of the consequences of wholesale subprime mortgages, had no idea what it would lead to.
And people who voted for bailouts had no idea what that's leading to.
Ann Rand, she wrote Atlas Shrugged, the sequel, Atlas Puked.
We're in the middle of an Earl in Angola, Indiana.
Nice to have you on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Yes, Rush.
Good to talk to you.
Same here, sir.
After almost 20 years trying to get through.
But anyways, I have a comment and then a question follows.
Yes, sir.
What would that be?
My comment is, if you recall, when they were trying to, the prosecutor was trying to prosecute Scooter Libby, he went to great lengths to do it, knowing that he was the guy that was the leaker and he knew who the leaker was.
But now he asked the, I believe it was the Chicago Tribune, to suppress this stuff about the governor of Illinois for two months.
And two months might have made the difference in the outcome of the presidential election.
I'll hang up and listen to your comment.
Okay, feel free.
If you want to hang up, that is an interesting thought.
I myself, ladies and gentlemen, I myself have been curious about this.
My curiosity was first aroused when the thing was shut down.
The investigation was shut down.
Remember, it was I, El Rushbo, Mr. Reality, who asked the question, why shut it down?
Why shut it down?
The whole purpose of the investigation is allowed so as many people, you shut it down before a felony was committed.
Shut it down before a felony was committed.
I mean, Blogojevich may not have committed a felony yet.
There may not really be anything he can be convicted of here in a court of law.
Obviously, the Democrat Party can do with him what they want.
And then Fitzgerald went out, and with that one-hour-long press conference and announcing every item and detail about this, some defense attorney down the road could say the jury pool's been tainted.
Who knows?
So why stop it?
Then after I started speculating on why stop it, then I said, how long has this been going on?
How long have they been taping Blagojevich?
I mean, if he's trying to sell a Senate seat, I guarantee you this is not the first bit of corruption he's been involved in.
It's Illinois.
It's Chicago.
And so as our callers suggest, why wait till at this particular time to announce and shut down the investigation at the same time?
If there were indictable offenses involving Blagojevich prior to the election, why were they not brought forth at that time?
People are going to start asking these kind of questions.
The people asking will, of course, be ignored, and the drive-by media will try to impugn those who are asking the questions.
So it is an interesting aspect of this.
And might it be, and as our callers suggested, might it be that this investigation was prolonged and delayed, any knowledge of it, till after the election so as to have no deleterious effect on the campaign of Barack Obama?
And then was it shut down overnight before a step could be taken by the governor that would cause a problem for Obama after the election?
I swear, folks, I was thinking about this the other night.
I was asking some people, do you know any president-elects who have had scandals during the transition?
I must admit, my friends, I have been expecting things like this, but not till February.
And we're getting this stuff here in December.
We've got a scandal during the transition.
Hell, look at this.
It's not all sweetness and light out there, either.
NASA is bucking Obama.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, before I get to the NASA thing, this, this is classic.
USA Today.
North Dakota tops analysis of corruption.
Its largest city is legendary for machine-style politics.
Its elected leaders have been under investigation for years.
But by one measure, Illinois is not even close to the nation's most corrupt state.
North Dakota, it turns out, may hold that distinction instead.
Federal authorities arrested Blago, blah, Robert Grant, head of the FBI Chicago office, said, if it isn't the most corrupt state in the United States, it's certainly one hell of a competitor.
But on a per capita basis, however, Illinois ranks 18th for the number of public corruption convictions that the federal government has won from 98 through 2007, according to a USA Today analysis of Department of Justice statistics.
So you see, ladies and gentlemen, just like in the 90s, lying was good, spared people's feelings.
Now, Illinois, this is number 18, and no big deal.
No corruption in Illinois compared to what's going on in North Dakota.
I know, Snerdley, I know that convictions have nothing to do with this.
This is my point.
The media is circling the wagons for Obama, for Blugoyovich, for Rahm Emanuel, for everybody comes out of there by saying, hey, everybody's focused on Illinois.
We need to be looking at North Dakota.
This is why I say, ladies and gentlemen, in the midst of a huge sitcom now, from Cape Canaveral, this is from the Orlando Sentinel.
NASA Administrator Mike Griffin is not cooperating with Obama's transition team.
He is obstructing the transition team's efforts to get information and has told Obama's transition team leader she's not qualified to judge his rocket program.
In a heated 40-minute conversation last week with Laurie Garver, former NASA Associate Administrator who heads the space transition team, a red-faced Mike Griffin demanded to speak directly to Obama.
In addition, Griffin is scripting NASA employees and civilian contractors on what they can tell the transition team and has warned aerospace executives not to criticize the agency's moon program.
Griffin's resistance is part of a no-holds-barred effort to preserve the Constellation program, the delayed and overbudget moon rocket that is his signature project.
So, once again, there's dissension in the ranks.
Obama's got these insertion teams.
He's got these transition insertion teams.
If you want to talk about why this thing was shut down in Chicago, you might take a look at the insertion team at the Department of Justice.
They do.
We had the story last week.
Obama's got these teams going into all these federal agencies and getting a lowdown on what's happening there.
And these people are demanding to be brought up to speed on everything that's happening from State Department, CIA, you name it.
And they're over at Department of Justice.
And I can just see Eric Holder's boy is in there.
And they say, okay, what's going on here?
Well, we got this thing going on in Chicago.
You what?
What is that?
Well, yeah, Fitzgerald here.
They're monitoring some things the governor's doing.
They're trying to sell.
He's trying to sell Obama's.
Shut that down.
Yet get shut down right now.
These Obama insertion teams, who knows how these things happen?
It was shut down.
And Patrick Fitzgerald is not known for shutting down.
Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi were probably counting on Mitch McConnell to make sure that the House passed auto bailout bill would make it through the Senate.
McConnell said that he will not vote for the House auto bailout bill.
McConnell says that the Senate Republicans just can't, which means that the bill is dead.
Interesting question, therefore, how do you suppose the 32 Republicans who voted for the House bill feel right now with their biting of the bullet having gone for naught as it's being asked at hotair.com?
Now, my friends, I just want to hit you with a dose of reality.
Remember the first $700 billion bailout bill failed, and they went back in there, and they got it.
It passed the second time.
And there are people from the White House on down who want this to happen.
So the Senate Republicans are standing firm for now.
We'll see what happens.
Give me some more test votes on this, but I mean, it looks like with McConnell's stand that the auto bailout bill, as written in the House, is dead.
Earlier, ladies and gentlemen, we played you a media montage.
In fact, grab number 15, too, because it'd be nice to illustrate that again.
I don't know that people listening in the first hour may still be with us.
Some of them listening now may not have been.
But the media, the drive-by media, remember that Obama's too big to fail.
And this scandal, we gotta make sure this doesn't taint Obama.
He's not even been inaugurated yet.
We're in the transition.
So Blagojevich is insane.
He's delusional.
He's a psychopath.
He's a sociopath.
This is a media montage.
Hometown folks use words like sociopath, delusional, and compulsive to describe their governor.
There's a delusional aspect, clearly, to Blagojevich.
He's delusional.
The delusional nature of Blagojevich.
The governor was delusional.
I've been told by people for some years that he was a little on the touch side.
He has a long reputation for being a little weird.
These quotes from him do not suggest mental balance.
Brigovich just seems to have been obsessed through this crazy money.
Literally crazy governor.
The notion that the governor Blogoevich thought he might get appointed to bastardship is just, you know, it's like smoking glue or something.
This is the act of a madman.
This is what you call insanity.
How off his rocker he was to be talking the way he was.
Obviously, this guy, Blagoevich, is crazy.
He ought to plead not guilty by reason of insanity.
That's Bob Schrum there, the last voice.
So you see how this is shaping up.
Now, the Clintons called this the nuts and sluts defense.
That was the nuts defense.
Here's the sluts montage as they are now going after Blagojevich's wife.
The first lady with a mouth like a sailor.
She's got a mouth like a trucker, and I have to apologize to truckers for that one.
An unflattering and sometimes foul-mouthed style.
The governor's wife is also heard off the tapes at times unleashing profanities.
Big time.
She was egging her husband on like Lady Macbeth.
Her wife is also involved.
Every third word out of both of their mouths begins with an F.
It's F this and F that and F this.
Officially, the Barney and Clyde of Chicago politics.
So, once again, another woman comes under attack, viciously so, by the drive-by media and the Democrat Party.
They are leaving no stone unturned.
They are leaving nothing to chance here.
Blagojevich is insane, is delusional, is a psychopath, is a sociopath, and his wife is a reprobate and a slut and a foul-mouthed whore.
She cusses and she's in real estate deals.
And for that, we got to dispatch her too.
She's a first lady.
She cusses.
She cusses.
She's in real estate deals.
And she's a first lady.
Does she throw ashtrays?
Does she hate the military?
Does she believe in health care?
Does she fire the travel office people in the Chicago governor's office?
We don't know the answers to these questions, but there are enough similarities here.
Now, also, Blagojevich's wife, what is her name?
I don't even know her.
But, yeah, Patty.
Patty Blago.
Patty's the daughter of some big-time Chicago alderman, politician, or some such thing.
And they also cuss.
And we know that Chicago people are involved in real estate.
Resco.
Isn't it amazing what Democrats will do to a woman when they don't like her?
Or when they want to get rid of her husband?
Slut, whore, cusses.
Worse than sailors, no offense to sailors.
Worse than truckers, no offense to truckers.
And her husband's insane, a lunatic, deranged, psychopath.
In just two days.
Okay, I just, I got to look something up.
I just got a note from somebody who says that we reported some time ago that Blago's wife, after he was elected governor, was in charge of condom flavor.
She was a condom flavor and style or something for college chicks.
So, Coco, do a website search on Patty Blagojevich and condoms, and we'll see if we can.
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