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Jan. 1, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:26
January 1, 2009, Thursday, Hour #3
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Snerdly, quick question.
Somebody just sent me a note saying, you're doing okay today.
Content sounds stellar, but your brakes sound funky.
What in hell does that mean?
Breaks sound funky.
Well, they all have a look of exasperated shock and surprise and wonderment on their faces, as did I. When I read that's why you have to be immune to any criticism, folks.
It could drive you nuts.
Greetings and welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, The Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882.
Let me practice going to a break.
Affiliates, we are not going to go to a break.
I'm just going to pretend to go to a break here.
Mike, grab the stinger, the five-second ear splitting tone, and I'm just going to practice here.
I'm going to say, figure out what sounds funky about this.
Okay, folks, that's it.
Got to take a brief time.
I'll be back right after this.
Don't go away.
How'd that sound?
Sound okay?
Was that, oh, the Wise Acre engineer says he's, that's what it is.
Why didn't you chime in and tell me that?
He says that the brakes sound funky because I'm continuing to talk when the breaks happen.
Well, that's not my fault.
That's the engineer screwing up, hitting the brake tone before I'm ready for it.
That's why, that's why it sounds funky.
Okay, that here, let's, I want, I want you to grab, grab Barney Frank.
Real quick here, grab Barney Frank, and we're going to play the whole thing.
We just grab Banking Queen, and we're going to practice going into a break again.
I'm going to illustrate what the broadcast engineer says I'm doing that makes the breaks sound funky.
So at the end of the ear splitting tone, Mike, you start the Barney Frank thing as though it's a commercial, okay?
All right, here we go.
This is a sample, I guess, of a funky sounding break.
And that's it, folks.
Got to take a brief time out.
A little long in this second be right back.
Do not go away.
Rush Limbaugh and have you heard about Caroline Kenneve, by the way?
Wait a minute.
I was.
Is that what you were talking about, sounding funky?
Oh, okay.
Still, do you see how we hit the post?
We hit the post on that, even screwing around.
That's professionalism.
I should ask the vice president if he has heard this.
Let it run a little bit here.
You heard this one, Rachel?
Oh, this is cool.
Banking queen.
God, Jason.
All right, that's Paul Shanklin as Barney Frank and the banking queen.
A lot of people have asked me to put a transcript of that up on the website because they can't understand the words.
There is no transcript.
It's Barney Frank.
You cannot understand what he's saying anyway.
That is the whole point.
Ladies and gentlemen.
Did you see what Saturday Night Live did with their skit on the blind governor of New York?
They are really taking a lot of heat on this.
But they portrayed David Patterson with his wandering blind eye, and they had him hold up a state deficit or income chart upside down to show that the money was increasing rather than going in the tank.
They really are taking heat.
Notice they didn't take any heat over what they did to Sarah Palin or when they made fun of Chelsea Clinton being not attractive.
They didn't take any heat over that, but they're taking big heat over this.
Folks, we had a great weekend in Dallas.
Went down on Saturday, flew down there Saturday for dinner with a good friend Albino Michaels.
His wife, Linda, was along for the trip.
And we had dinner at this place called Nick and Sam's.
And I have a good friend who lives in Dallas.
He's a retired Goldman Sachs.
He's named Dan Cook.
And when I guess we'd set, Al and I had set this weekend up.
This has been the fourth or fifth Sunday night game we've been to this year.
They're just a blast.
You know, I love football anyway.
And it's great going with Al and with the NBC crew.
And so I called Dan.
I said, look, I'm not familiar with restaurants in Dallas.
He was in Belize.
He was fishing down there, Caribbean superpower, Belize.
He was down there fishing.
And I said, can you give me a suggestion for a place?
No coat and tie.
Gave him all the requirements.
He came back and said, probably the best place.
He says, it's not Allen Brothers, but Nick and Sam's.
Great place to go.
Not Allen Bro.
So what do you mean it's not Allen Brothers?
Well, Dan's been to my house many, many times and has partaken of my serving of Allen Brothers prime rib, veal, fillet, strips, and so forth.
But he suggests Nick and Sam's place.
And I said, Al, this is the best recommendation I got.
And he said, look, I don't want to drive 30 minutes to go eat dinner.
We could just have dinner in the hotel.
No, I said, I'm suggesting this is, the bin suggests this place is fabulous.
So Al arranges a car.
We get in a limousine.
We're on the way down there.
And I guess we've been in the car about 20 minutes.
And he says, who again is your friend that recommended this place?
I says, Dan Cook.
He's a good friend.
He's down fishing in Belize.
And Al says, I feel like we're driving to Belize.
When are we going to get there?
We got there, and the place was fabulous.
It was fabulous.
And there are a lot of people from the New York Giants in there.
Howard Cross, who used to be a great tight end, who ran into him in Pittsburgh when the Giants were in town to play the Steelers.
But the place was just fabulous.
The people that run this joint couldn't have been nicer.
Food was outstanding.
And then Sunday, we got to Texas Stadium about, I don't know, 6 o'clock.
Went down on the field, spent about 25 minutes with Jerry Jones.
He introduced me to Pac-Man Jones.
Ted Nugent sang the national anthem.
And I saw the nuge on the sideline, and he didn't know that I was there versus Visa.
And he's posing with people for pictures.
So as he's posing with people, I walked up and inserted myself in the picture at one point and started singing Cat Scratch Fever.
And he turned around and looked at me.
He said, whoa, and he was decked out in his camouflage garb and the camouflage cowboy hat and his wife was there.
But it was just a great time.
And the people down in Dallas were just superb.
And I wanted to make sure and thank everybody here publicly for making it a memorable weekend.
It was just fabulous weekend.
Snerdley shouting into my ear when I mentioned how glad I was the Cowboys once.
I was conflicted here.
I was conflicted on this game.
Some of my real good friends own the Giants.
And in fact, I was standing on the sideline and Gray Rugamer, one of the offensive linemen for the Giants, came in.
I saw this big Hulk running to the sideline where we were standing.
And I said, he's got to be hidden.
I was looking around where he said, where's he headed?
And he came up to me and he stuck out his hand.
He said, you keep doing what you're doing.
And I shook his hand.
And I didn't know who it was because the helmet was on.
I didn't know it was Gray Rugamer until he turned around and walked back to the warm-ups and could read his name on the jersey.
A lot of the cowboys were looking at me suspiciously.
I mean, we were on their sideline during the pregame warm-ups.
And we're literally three or four feet from some of them.
But it was the Cowboys needed the game more than the Giants did.
Snurdley's a big Cowboys fan, but it was a great experience.
And everybody down there was just superb.
And I just, I was sitting there thinking, you know, what a charmed, blessed life that I have to be able to do this.
I mean, football, you people know I love football.
It is a passion.
And to be able to be that close to it, meet the people who play and run that business and so forth.
It was just a great thrill.
And you meet these people and they're everything you want them to be.
You know, they're nice, they're outgoing and so forth.
Jerry Jones was just, went out of his way to must have spent 20 minutes with us.
And Al was down there with his wife Lyndon, all kinds of, they assigned a couple people to make sure we got where we were going.
It was just, it was just tremendous.
And the fans, you know, we own Dallas.
I mean, we literally own Dallas.
I mean, the only place that I've been a football stadium where I have been treated rudely is at the University of Nebraska when Missouri, my home state, the only football stadium I have ever been disrespected.
I mean, I've had people flip me the bird.
I've had people shout insults at me and follow me all around the field from the stands.
And it was, what was that?
Nobody's thrown a shoe at me.
Nobody threw a shoe.
No, just, you know, meaningless words and so forth.
One guy in Nebraska, the cops had to get him and take him out.
He's some student following around.
And I, you know, I can't hear this stuff because of my cochlear implant.
But I was with Catherine and she got all worried.
I'm going, let's keep moving.
Let's keep moving.
There's some nutcase following you around.
And I said, I'm not going to look.
I don't want this guy to even know I hear who he is because I didn't hear him.
And finally, we got to one of the corners of the end zone and the ruckus got to be so bad that I saw a couple cops come and drag the guy away.
And some people in our group were yelling up at him.
Apparently he was saying, I'm responsible for the country falling into the abyss.
The worst thing that ever happened to America.
He's a Missouri fan.
And then I got around to the other corner, and that's where a bunch of other Missouri fans flipped me the bird.
The Nebraska student section is all standing up and applauding.
So the only football stadium I've been where I have been treated rudely has been the University of Nebraska when Missouri fans, my home state.
My home state.
It didn't hurt my feelings, my friends.
It is what it is.
In fact, I'll be honest about something.
When I'm walking around, oh, and I've got a picture.
I should put this picture on the website.
We're walking, or this isn't Nebraska, and it's the night they played Missouri.
And we're walking around to the, we got one, we got two corners to go.
We've walked both sidelines, and we're coming down to one corner, and they had a bunch of media people there, and they make the media people wear these bright green vests that say media on the back.
So I saw this one babe that had the jacket on media, and I grabbed her.
And I turned her around, and I put my arm around her so that her back was to the camera.
And we took a picture of this babe, media, plain as day, on her jacket with me with a funny expression pointing at her.
And her supervisor came up, and I think he was with ESPN or something.
All right, what's going on here?
What's going on?
Nothing, nothing, nothing at all.
So just having a little fun.
Oh, okay.
Well, move on.
Move on.
She was just playful as she could be and went along with it fine.
Then I got to the final corner before we hit the tunnel to leave.
And I look up at the Missouri student section or some guy flips me the bird.
So I flipped him back.
I did.
I just put a big smile in my face.
I flipped him back.
And a state trooper from Nebraska came up and said, I saw it.
I saw it.
He started it.
You are in the clear.
But nothing like that happened in Dallas.
I mean, it was just, it was, and it never does anywhere else.
Only when Missouri fans are in the crowd do I get dissed.
And we're back, Rush Limbaugh here on the cutting edge of societal evolution, Seth Borinstein today, AP Obama.
Obama left with little time to curb global warming.
Stanford University biologist Terry Root in this story says, we are out of time.
Things are going extinct.
I interrupt the AP story for a story from the UK Telegraph.
Spider as big as a plate among scores of new species found in Greater Mekong.
A spider as big as a dinner plate's been found living in one of the world's last scientifically unexplored regions.
The Greater Mekong, made up of 600,000 square kilometers of wetlands and rainforest along the Mekong River in Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, and China, also home to striped rabbits, bright pink millipedes laced with cyanide, and a rat that was believed to have become extinct 11 million years ago.
80 new species of frogs were discovered alone.
At least 1,068 new species identified in the Greater Mekong from 1997 to 2007, along with several thousand tiny invertebrates, according to the Times.
Yet, biologist Terry Root says we're out of time.
Things are going extinct.
And here at the very end of the story, writes Mr. Borins, the inn.
Mother Nature, of course, is oblivious to the federal government's machinations.
Ironically, 2008 is on a pace to be slightly cooler, ironically, to be slightly cooler in a steadily rising temperature trend line, which is not true.
The trend line is down.
This is just BS.
It just isn't true.
Nevertheless, experts say that this year's cooling trend is thanks to La Niña, a La Niña weather variation.
While skeptics are already using it as evidence of some kind of cooling trend, it actually illustrates how fast the world is warming.
Now, you should not be surprised because the way the environmentalist wackos have this set up is that any weather abnormality is now assigned to the concept of global warming, even unusual cooling.
Unusual cooling now illustrates how fast the world is warming.
Robin Las Cruces, New Mexico, great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hello.
Hi.
Hi.
When I called, I was so furious at Colin Powell's remarks, and I've calmed down a little.
But my response is, how dare he tell you what he thinks when I remember his public statement when he was keeping us twisting in the wind about whether he would run for president, that he had decided not to because of his wife's concern for his personal safety.
Right.
And I believe Saturday Night Live calls this pee-whipped.
And the very idea that he would tell you what you should do or the Republican Party what it should do just flew all over me.
Well, I appreciate your loyal support.
He can tell the Republican Party what they should do.
The thing is, they're not.
Well, he can't tell you.
No, he can't.
But look, Colin Powell is a Washingtonian, and his happiness derives from how much he's loved and respected by fellow Washingtonians.
I'll never forget back in the days when the Republicans wanted him to run for president, he would not admit what party he was a member of, and he wouldn't tell us what he thought about anything because he was worried that his approval numbers, which were pretty high, would plummet.
All right, now, this is somewhat interesting.
As you know, General Colin Powell on CNN yesterday ripped into me and Sarah Palin.
Of me, General Powell said that I appeal to the lesser instincts of people, and we need people who appeal to the higher instincts.
I don't know that that means that he does not and has not listened to this program.
This is one of the most inspiring, uplifting programs that you will find out there consistently.
So he also said of me that the Republican Party needs to stop listening to me when in fact they have not listened to me in many, many years, to their detriment.
But I am not doing and I never have done what I do for the Republican Party, which also illustrates a profound ignorance and lack of understanding on the part of General Powell about what I do here and why I do it and what my actual job is.
But, nevertheless, he said what he said.
Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, I hold here my formerly nicotine-stained fingers, a piece from National Public Radio.
And it is by Matthew Continettin.
C-O-N-T-I-N-E-T-T-I-N.
I do not know how to pronounce that.
But nevertheless, Matthew C says in his headline, Why Conservatives Should Not Be Cheery.
The only age group that went for McCain was 65 and older.
That's not what you would call a good sign for the Republicans' long-term future.
Now, get this: the Republican Party's problem is that it obstinately refuses to address the problems facing those Americans who do not listen to conservative talk radio.
Whatever the hell that means, I don't even care what it means.
But the interpretation here is that who and who are on the same page?
Colin Powell and National Public Radio are on the same page advising the Republican Party.
And this is classic what's going on amongst Washingtonians.
The Republican Party is being told what to do by liberal Democrats, including General Powell, who is a moderate liberal Republican.
I just, I just, I find all this fascinating.
I have nothing to do with what the Republican Party does.
I have nothing to say about it.
And what?
The Republican Party nominated McCain.
I thought all these people, NPR and Colin Powell, used to love McCain.
They got the candidate.
They got the campaign they wanted.
Didn't they abandon the very candidate?
And does the candidate get mad about it?
Hell no.
Nothing about this makes any sense in the real world.
Back to the phones.
John in Cleveland.
Great to have you, sir, on the EIV network.
Hello.
Oh, ho.
So nice to talk to you, Rush.
I wanted to ask you, you said that you love football, and I wanted to know since you came up and kind of in your career in baseball, what do you like better, baseball or football?
Oh, football.
Because I used to be the biggest baseball fan on earth.
When you work for a baseball team or any sports team, and I did for five years, it becomes your job.
And there were things about the job that I didn't like.
I understand.
So I've just lost some of the ingredients necessary to be a fan.
Okay.
The other thing I was going to ask you, you may not even know they're playing tonight.
And I believe that I know the Browns are playing.
I believe they're playing the Iggles.
And I want to know who you're going to root for, the Iggles or the Browns tonight.
Well, this is not a game where you root.
I mean, I don't root.
I mean, this game means nothing to my team.
Right.
That's true.
My team's the Steelers.
This game to me is just, I love football.
I'm going to watch it.
First thing I'm going to do, I'm going to watch it.
I've got to watch the fourth quarter of the Steelers game from yesterday.
I didn't get a chance to see that because I had to leave for the Giants Cowboys.
But I'm just going to watch this with the interest of a fan who loves the game.
And there's interesting things to watch about both teams.
The Iggles, they still have a glimmer of a chance for the playoffs where they've got to win out, which means they have to win tonight and they have to win next week against the Redskins.
They also are having big problems internally with what are they going to do with their quarterback situation next year?
Is their head coach going to be back?
All these things because of the dismal season they've had up to the last couple of weeks.
They generally play well in December.
The Browns have their own problems.
They don't have a quarterback playing tonight that they think is going to be playing at all next year.
They've got big, big problems there, but they're playing for nothing, and that's when you get lay loosey-goosey and just go out and have fun.
So it's going to be interesting to see.
One more comment, if I may.
Yeah.
Relative to Colin Powell, I certainly would not diminish the service that he's given to the country.
But there just always has been to me and always will be.
And also Barack Obama, there's a certain elitism in both of them that I just always detect.
A certain what?
A certain elitism.
Elitism.
Yes.
And I think it kind of shows in some of his comments and how he carries himself.
But again, that's just my opinion.
Well, I think it's a valid one.
It's something that makes a lot of sense.
Remember, they're both, again, they're both Washingtonians, and they define their success by how loved they are and how respected they are by the power brokers within that circle.
And they both are.
They're both highly respected.
They're very much adored.
They both are considered to have irreproachable ethics and reputations and so forth, despite the bloggo thing for Obama.
And so that's what they feed off of.
And that's, you know, there's all kinds of people in the world.
Some seek the love and adoration of others as a means of feeling good about themselves.
Others don't give a rat's rear end what other people think of them.
Some people are obsessed with the media loving them and do whatever they can to do that.
There's all kinds of, and I think in the Washingtonian crowd, it's an incestuous, symbiotic relation where they're all of the same stripe, regardless whether they call themselves Republicans or Democrats.
There are very few, if any, genuine conservatives who are in the power structure of Washingtonians.
They're all moderates or liberals and mostly Democrats.
And conservatives are quite effective in having people around the country look disapprovingly at Washingtonians.
So they'd want to silence any of the critics and criticism that gets the so-called rabble, people like you, all worked up about what's going on in Washington.
That's what animates them and motivates them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, really appreciate talking to you, Rush.
John, the pleasure is my good luck tonight against the Iggles.
Riverside, California.
This is Jim.
You're next on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
It's a pleasure, Rush.
Thank you.
Only you can answer this problem that I have with Schwarzenegger.
You only have one problem with him?
Well, we'll just combine them all up in the one problem.
How come he's not getting the blame for the rotten economy we got here in California?
Oh, I mean, this is very simple to explain.
Do you have a theory?
I always prefer people to answer their own questions themselves if they can because it's a very valuable learning experience.
Do you have a theory yourself as to why he escapes any criticism for the woeful state of the California economy?
Because Ms. Schriver is probably helping him out.
No.
Well, I'm sure that's true.
But what's happened is that Governor Schwarzenegger has become one of the people who has destroyed the state.
He has become essentially a liberal.
He has abandoned conservatism.
He has abandoned the conservatism that got him elected.
He has fought against Washington.
He has fought against George W. Bush.
He is pushing all of the cliched defining issues of modern wacko-liberals today, global warming, climate change, all of these things.
Plus, he's spending a lot of money.
Liberals love deficit spending.
They love it.
Arnold has become one of them.
And so others will now be criticized, if there is criticism, to be meted out for the status of California.
It'll focus on Republicans in the Assembly, Republicans in the Senate, George W. Bush, the Bush administration, and so forth.
And Arnold will be treated as a valiant warrior doing what he can to protect the state that he so dearly loves, California.
It's all because he's become one of them.
Very simple.
Interesting story in Newsweek.
It's not in the magazine because they want people to see it.
It's on their website.
It's by Anna Kuchman.
And here's the headline.
Despite all their promise, green companies are awash in red ink.
First, there was the dot-com bust of the late 90s.
Then came the real estate bubble that's deflating before our eyes.
Next up, the green bubble.
Alternative energy ventures have received a lot of press, heavy investment, and lip service from politicians in the last couple of years, but many of the green industry's balance sheets are beginning to bleed red.
Among the hardest hit, T-Boone Pickens and his alternative energy hedge fund, BP Capital, which has reportedly lost some $2 billion.
The Oklahoma oil tycoon, who leased hundreds of thousands of acres in West Texas for a giant wind farm, has put that project on hold because he says he's got to wait for fossil fuel prices to rise again in order to make the project economically viable.
Oil was at $48 a barrel.
What is it?
Now I get $45.
Let me check here real quick, folks.
I happen to have the website where I can get this price almost immediately.
Let's see.
It is at $44.56 a barrel right now, down from $48 last week.
It's been fluctuating a little bit.
But this, you know, Nancy Pelosi and her husband invested $100,000 with T-Boon's company.
And what was an incumbent, well, this is a little bit of a conflict because gasoline oil prices have to stay high for any alternative energy program to work, unless, of course, somebody trying to help us from the government just forces it on us.
And among the industries really being hurt, the electric car.
The electric car is in huge trouble in Europe.
It is losing big time, and there are people very much concerned.
Nicholas Sarkozy is trying to downplay how badly it is, but we had the stats and the numbers for you in the UK.
They've sold something 153 electric cars this year.
No, the Europeans don't want it either.
People don't want it.
They don't.
We're not there yet.
We simply aren't there yet.
Italy is bailing out big Parmesan, and Big Buffalo Mozzarella is upset about it.
I'm not making this up.
Parmesan cheese is in trouble, and they're bailing it out to the tune of, let's see, what is $48 million.
They're bailing out Parmesan Cheese, a big $45 million, and it's the most shoplifted product there is in Italy.
The Parmesan bailout has not met with universal approval.
Producers of Buffalo mozzarella are looking on enviously after suffering an 18% drop in sales in the last year.
Yeah, we've asked for help too out there, said Vincenzo Alviero, the head of Italy's mozzarella producers association, which has yet to receive an injection of state aid.
So this is not fair, no matter who you're bailing out.
Big Parmesan gets bailed out.
Big Buffalo mozzarella does not.
At 3.55 Eastern on Saturday afternoon, CNN ran a piece on whether First Ladies should get a paycheck because Michelle Obama was making a lot of money before the election.
She just got to give it up.
She has to give up the paycheck.
Why should Michelle Obama have to work for free, is what CNN asked.
I'm just telling you, folks, that there will be new pressure brought to bear for a host of reasons here.
I don't even want to go there.
I just don't have the energy to deal with it, but it has nothing to do that she had to give up her job.
It has nothing to do with that.
Now, come on, figure it out.
Don't make me say everything on this program.
Here's Bert, Burton, Detroit.
Nice to have you on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Hi, thank you, Rush.
You don't have to explain everything because you have a smart audience.
You know, didn't you have some statistics that showed that your audience are a little better educated, they're more thoughtful, they're actively.
Yeah, good point.
Annenberg, Kathleen Hall Jameson's done some studies and found it, and so has Pew, the Pew Research Center for People in the Press, have found that the people that listen to this program are more informed than people that watch television news shows or read papers.
Yes, the most informed media audience out there.
Exactly right.
Good memory you have there, sir.
Well, I'm just thinking, you know, they showed that Hillary Clinton's voting demographics were less educated and so on.
Is that what Colin Powell wants for the Republican Party?
He wants to sort of dumb down the Republican Party and move the demographics down?
Look, Spindle.
No, that's not what.
They don't want any opposition.
There has been a resentment of conservatives and conservatism in the Washingtonian class of the Republican Party for a long time.
This criticism of General Powell's is truly mindless.
I mean, when you look at it just on its face, Republican Party should stop listening to me.
They haven't.
For the longest time, this attempt to impugn the audience of this program and others like it is typical Washingtonian.
Look at average people, of people who make the country work with contempt.
The things he said about Sarah Palin, say he felt personally insulted that she kept talking about people in small town and their values.
Everybody knows what she meant.
Everybody knew what she meant by that.
But he had to make him go and take it personally about he thought he was being insulted because he wasn't from the South Bronx and that his values weren't any good because he didn't come from a small town.
I think it's all BS.
I think that I don't even know that he really believes that stuff.
I can't.
Frankly, I'm surprised he gets this upset about this stuff.
I mean, he's not even a Republican.
He says he is, but he's endorsing Obama.
This is all it's all crazy to spend a whole lot of time on, folks, because it's so easily explicable.
And it doesn't have anything to do with what it sounds like it has to do with when these people start talking as he does.
You're going to be mad at me, folks.
I forgot to mention this earlier.
I will not be here tomorrow.
Taking a day off, Jason Lewis will be guest hosting the program tomorrow.
And we will be back with you on Wednesday from high atop the EIB building in Midtown Manhattan.
Look forward to seeing you then.
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