Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Hey, great to be with you, America.
America's anchorman is away, and this is your undocumented anchor man, Mark Stein, sitting in.
It's an all-mark week while Rush is away.
Mark Belling is going to be in on Thursday and Friday.
It's an affirmative action program for Marks.
Mark Belling will be here on Thursday.
I think on Monday, Mark Rich is going to be here, and Mark Foley wrapping up the week.
So it's an affirmative action program for Marx here on the EIB network.
And this is Mark Stein from the Foreign Exchange student wing of the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies.
Terrific exchange program.
Guys like me get to come and study here while in return a nice young conservative American gets to go and study at the Jacques Chirac Institute of Gaelic Charm, Double Digit Unemployment and Confiscatory Taxation.
So it's good training for the way things are going over here in the United States.
Glad to be here on an historic day.
As you may have seen, President Obama's approval ratings have tumbled, tumbled to 66% according to Gallup, 55% in another poll.
Just a couple of weeks ago, he was up there in the stratosphere somewhere between Jesus and Gandhi, but obviously, you know, they've got far lower name recognition than he has.
And there was talk, you know, pollsters were going to have to recalibrate the scale because he was getting approval ratings of 123%, but he's not anymore.
He's come down to kind of Mount Rushmore level.
He's sort of around Washington and Lincoln now, but a couple more weeks like this.
If he continues at this rate, by the end of the month, he could be down there in the George W. Bush basement of approval ratings somewhere between Robert Mugabe and the Ebola virus.
So we'll be taking a look at why these last two weeks have not gone quite as smoothly as they should have for our new president.
It may be time for him to take his clothes off again and frolic in the Hawaii surf and get his numbers back up there.
It's the growing questions, obviously, over the stimulus package, political fallout from that.
The media are not happy.
The media are not happy.
You may have noticed that they've turned their coverage down just a notch from abject sycophantic prostration mode down to doting moonstruck bobby sockser mode.
So that's a sign that things he could be in some difficulty here.
Chris Matthews' leg tingle apparently isn't what it used to be.
He may be going to see the specialist for tingle dysfunction.
So it hasn't been an easy two weeks for President Obama.
So we'll be looking into that later.
As you just heard, I live in New Hampshire, flew down to do the show.
Very touched.
I arrived at the airport and found that Tom Daschell had sent his limo and driver to meet me.
But don't worry, it means that he can then claim me as a dependent.
So it should be tax neutral as far as he's concerned.
The bad news is that the Senator Daschell is having to pay all the back taxes on his limo and driver.
The good news is that he's now eligible for the Obama administration's new tax credit for environmentally responsible multi-occupancy vehicle use.
You know, I really think this is a teaching moment for America.
I mean, Tom Daschell's driver, when you think about it, think about it like this.
Tom Daschell's driver has to be at the same place that Tom Daschell does every morning.
So why not Carpool?
It makes perfect sense from their point of view.
This is the kind of responsible green driving, you know, we want to encourage all Americans to adopt.
And unfortunately, unfortunately, I see that the New York Times, the New York Times this morning, has called on Senator Daschell to withdraw his nomination as Secretary of Health and Human Services, presumably on the grounds that his accounts are almost as big a mess as theirs.
Quote, we believe that Mr. Daschell ought to step aside and let the president choose a less blemished successor.
Unquote.
It's a very strong editorial headline, The Travails of Tom Daschell.
That's travails, by the way, not travels.
The travels of Tom Daschell are no problem.
He's got a car, driver, use of a private jet, everything's taken care of.
But it's the travails of Tom Daschell that are bothering the Times.
You know, the New York Times accepts that driving is a legitimate business expense.
Pinch Sulzberger, the guy who runs the New York Times, has been driving his business over the cliff for years now, but he doesn't need a chauffeur to do it.
So anyway, Senator Daschell has said that the reason he didn't declare that he'd been provided with a limo and driver by Leo Hindery, a wealthy Democratic Party donor.
Actually, the first time I saw that name, I read it as Leona Helmsley, but apparently it's Leo Hindery.
Anyway, Daschell says the reason he didn't declare that he'd been provided with a limo and a driver by Leo Hindery, Leona Helmsley, whoever, is that he'd, quote, grown used to having a car and driver as Senate majority leader, unquote.
Never occurred to him that there were people out there who didn't have a car and driver.
You know, when he was being driven around, he must occasionally have glanced out the window and seen these fellows, these cars, you know, with just one guy in them, a guy behind the front wheel and no one in the back.
And it never occurred to Tom to wonder why.
I mean, presumably they were just chauffeurs en route to pick up the big guy and chauffeur him to something.
You know, perhaps back in the old days when he was just their humble senator from South Dakota, he heard from his constituents about the long lines when you went to the Department of Motor Vehicles, and he assumed that these lines were just the chauffeurs of DMV clerks lining up to drive them home at the end of a hard shift.
You know, if instead of, when you look at the Tom Daschell limousine liberal driving mess that he's gotten into, you know, if instead of being the towering genius indispensable to solving America's healthcare crisis, Tom Daschell were a French philosopher, he might have found himself pondering the conundrum, but if everybody has a driver, who is my driver's driver?
Ever thought about that?
It's like the old novelty song, who takes care of the caretaker's daughter while the caretaker's busy taking care?
Who drives the car for Tom Daschell's driver when Tom's driver isn't busy driving Tom?
I mean, this is one of the questions that Tom Daschell never asked himself all these years until suddenly he finds himself having to enter, re-enter public service, do the decent thing and save American healthcare.
And suddenly people are hurling all these questions at him.
Now, some people are saying, look, well, look, Tom Daschell, Tom isn't actually indispensable to solving the healthcare crisis.
He's not like this Treasury Secretary guy who didn't pay his taxes, but we all confirmed him because he's apparently the only fellow on the planet who can avert total economic Armageddon.
Tom is apparently not quite that totally indispensable.
You know, a lot of critics say, well, you know, Tom Daschell doesn't really know that much about healthcare.
I mean, he's earned a quarter million bucks from giving speeches to health industry lobby groups, but that's about it.
And, you know, let's stop right there.
Is this a great country or what?
There are people out there willing to pay six-figure sums to hear a speech by Tom Daschell.
And they say there's a recession on?
I don't think so.
There's no other society in human history, human history, has ever expressed the slightest desire to pay a six-figure sum for a speech by Tom Daschell.
God bless him.
There is nothing that America can't do if it puts its mind to it.
But aside from cleaning up big time on the healthcare public speaking circuit, is Tom so uniquely qualified, so uniquely expert on health issues, that there's no one else out there qualified to be Secretary of Health and Human Services.
And people are making this argument now.
I think it's mean-spirited.
I think it's partisan.
I deeply regret the New York Times introducing politics into what ought to be a bipartisan confirmation process.
You know, okay, so maybe Tom Daschell doesn't know a lot about health.
But when it comes to, you know, human services, very few humans have enjoyed quite so many services and almost all of them tax-free.
It's amazing.
So I think he is entirely qualified for the job.
We'll be talking about this tax stuff a little later because Republicans and Conservatives need to think about what's the end game in all this.
What is the end game?
You know, what do you want things to look like when we've all finished having fun with a cabinet of people who don't pay their taxes?
On the other hand, the Obama team is getting a little lighter.
Breaking news, by the way, Nancy Killifer.
This is from the Associated Press.
This very morning, Nancy Killifer, who failed for a year and a half to pay employment taxes on household help, has withdrawn her candidacy to be the first chief performance officer for the federal government.
The White House said Tuesday.
I love this term, by the way.
The chief performance officer for the federal government.
But apparently her own performance hasn't been good enough, so she's out.
She's withdrawn over these tax problems.
What I found interesting about this, though, is that the tax problems she's withdrawing over, when her selection was announced by Obama on January the 7th, the Associated Press disclosed that in 2005, the District of Columbia government had filed a $946.69 tax lien on her home for failure to pay unemployment compensation tax on household help.
$946.69.
Is this why she's been forced to withdraw?
She's just some nickel and dime Joe the Plumber size tax lien gal who simply has no credibility when you're sitting around the table with the big-time players like Tom Dashell.
It's a tragedy for her.
The oddest thing, the oddest thing in this story, by the way, about why she's withdrawn.
This is America Today, folks.
She didn't pay the employment taxes on two nannies.
And you think to yourself, wow, two nannies.
Is she like that gal over in California who's had the six kids and just then had the in vitro treatment and has just given birth to another eight kids?
Is that why she's got two nannies?
No, she's got a teenage boy and a teenage girl.
And she's got two daddies.
This is exactly.
I mean, you know, when people talk about the daddy state, this is what it actually boils down to in reality.
The chief performance officer for the federal government has two daddies for a teenage boy and a teenage girl.
So she's gone retired to private life now, gone back to oversee the chief performance in her own household.
We'll be talking about that.
All lots of excitement today.
You know, as I said, I'm from New Hampshire.
New Hampshire is in the news this morning.
It doesn't often happen between primaries.
But my senator, Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, has agreed to serve as the new administration's commerce secretary.
You know, President Obama wanted a bipartisan cabinet composed of senators who don't pay their taxes and senators who do.
So he's tapped Judd Gregg to succeed, well, you know, whoever it was who's been doing the job of Commerce Secretary these last few decades.
I can't personally see myself why a big-time senior senator would want to give all that up to become Commerce Secretary.
It's a bit like Rush announcing he's given up this show to play soft and easy favorites on the top-rated Moonlight Matine show every other Tuesday between 2 and 4 a.m. in Swift Cohen, Saskatchewan.
I mean, I wish Senator Greg well, but it doesn't seem like much of a promotion to me and more of a bleak comment on Republican electoral prospects in 2010.
But we will get into all that straight ahead on the full free hours, the most stimulating package in radio.
Mark Stein sitting in for Rush on the EIB network, 1-800-282-2882.
Mark Stein in for Rush on the EIB network.
I'll be with you today and tomorrow.
And then Mark Belling, as I said, as we wrap up an all-mark week here at the EIB network.
Rush will be back when will.
Well, after we run out of marks, Russia's going to be back.
Now, this business with Tom Daschell and the taxes and all the rest of it, the question is, how is this going to impact just regular Democratic voters, the ones who voted for all this hope and change?
And there is a change.
Change is in the air.
If you go back to early January, the tail end of the Bush era, when they said how many people think that America is moving in the right direction, only 13% thought America was moving in the right direction.
Now it's up.
After two weeks of hope and change, it's up to 17%.
17% of people in Obama's America think we're moving in the right direction.
Only 80% of Americans are unhappy with the way things are going.
We will soon be back up to suicidal levels of contentment.
So that's the good news.
The question is, you know, how do regular Democrats think of this tax thing?
You know, H.R. and I were talking before the show, and he was saying about some of his liberal friends had expressed concern, concern about this.
And it's not like the sex business with Clinton.
You know, on the whole, if you're going to get in trouble, if you're a Democrat, it's better to get in trouble over sex than taxes.
Because the sex thing, guys, my liberal friends used to say to me, you can't know what it's like.
You can't know what it's like to be president of the United States.
You're the most powerful man in the world.
Women are throwing themselves at you.
It's not just interns, it's secretaries, it's movie stars, it's supermodels.
Every woman in the world wants to get into bed with you and enjoy the pleasures of your body.
And I never quite believe this over Bill Clinton.
But, you know, this is what the Democrats were saying.
They're saying, this is it.
You're the president.
Women are throwing themselves at you.
Remember what they used to say?
Everybody does it.
And by everybody, they didn't mean just you.
You, you little nickel and dime loser guy.
You don't understand what this problem is.
You cannot comprehend the scale of this problem.
But, you know, Bill Clinton did it, and JFK did it, and Ike did it, and Grover Cleveland did it, and Chester Arthur did it.
Because if you're the most powerful man in the world, you cannot know what it's like to have women throwing themselves at you.
He will never know what it's like to be confronted by that situation, to feel what it's like to be in that crisis where you're just sitting there, you're on the phone to Yasser Arafat trying to bring peace to the Middle East and some curvacious intern comes in offering you pizza and her body.
You, what is the likelihood that you're ever going to be in that situation?
So that's what worked for Bill Clinton 10 years ago.
The question now is, we all know what it's like to be in the tax situation.
We're all, you know, this is tax season in America.
Well, what they call, and actually that's part of the problem, that there is a, quote, so-called tax season, unquote.
In genuine free societies, tax would not command a season.
But this is the time of year when we're all thinking about, oh, you know, I've got to find the receipt for this and I've got to get the 1099 for that because I've got to file my taxes in a couple of weeks.
Unless you're being under consideration for a position in the cabinet of the United States, then, you know, the tax thing isn't a big deal.
Tax thing isn't a problem.
If you want to run the IRS, you don't have to pay the IRS.
That's a completely different scale of things.
And I think this is actually causing serious problems for the Democratic voter base because it isn't like the sex scandal.
Very few people have enjoyed the opportunities on quite such an industrial scale as Bill Clinton did in the 1990s.
But all of us know what it's like to have to pay taxes and to be in the situation where we've got to think about whether this is a deductible, whether this is a taxable benefit and all the rest of it.
That's what every, some salesman earning very little amount of money, driving around the Midwest, he has to account for the difference between business use of his vehicle and personal use of his vehicle.
But if you're Tom Daschell, if you're Tom Daschell, you don't have to worry about that.
You may remember, what was it, six or seven years ago now, the anthrax thing, just after 9-11, the anthrax thing.
And there was a report in the papers that said 63 members of Tom Daschell's staff had come down with anthrax poisoning.
And I was shocked by this.
I wasn't shocked that 63 of them had come down with anthrax poisoning.
I was shocked that Tom Daschell had 63 staffers.
I mean, this is not the citizen legislator of the Republican ideal.
This is not the way the United States was set up.
The idea that these guys would be swanning around in perpetuity with these kind of Gulf Emir-sized retinues.
You get used to that.
You get used to that.
And what the Tom Daschell situation illustrates is the difference between a permanent political elite, oblivious even to things like getting turfed out by your own voters in South Dakota, and a genuine republic of citizen legislators.
And that's why it's resonating with the American public.
This is a big thing for Democratic voters, and we'll be talking about that straight ahead on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Hey, Mark Stein in for us on the EIB network.
You may remember President Obama signed an executive order closing Club Gitmo eventually in full compliance with his campaign promise to set up a commission to look into the possibility of perhaps one day closing it eventually.
So rather than whine and cry and fly in his private jet all the way to Washington to beg for a bailout because of what they've done to clobber his thriving merchandise business, El Rushbo did what capitalists do.
He adapted.
So if you go to the EIB store now, you'll find on sale a new t-shirt, Club Gitmo, When America Was Safe.
They've added a swimming pool and a diving board to the Club Gitmo logo, along with the labels water and board to identify the pool and the diving board.
So it's a Club Gitmo When America Was Safe t-shirt with the attractive water board logo, and those shirts are available now for purchase at the EIB store at rushlimboard.com, where you'll find not just the Club Gitmo merchandise, but also all the other great stuff from Rush, including today's stack of stuff.
In the meantime, we're talking about these tax problems that some of President Obama's cabinet choices have run into, and also the new pick of Senator Gregg, my senator, Judd Gregg from Republican of New Hampshire, to be the Commerce Secretary in his impeccably bipartisan administration.
Bob is on the line from Inverness, Illinois.
And, Bob, you want to talk about, amazingly, you want to talk about the Judd Gregg pick.
It's lighting up the...
This is a first for Judd Gregg.
I mean, no disrespect.
He's been a great governor of New Hampshire, terrific senator, but he's never, he's never, not the kind of guy you think to light up America the way he has.
But Bob.
When I heard you report that he accepted, I'm screaming in the kitchen.
Doesn't anybody, we're the silent GOP these days.
All Obama is doing is decimating the GOP senators so that he is going to win the war about the—oh, shoot, what's the word I want?
The filibuster-proof, right?
Yes, I have my notes here, and I have to refer to them.
And this fellow was reported to be a really staunch conservative, and then he's going to take this job at one point once he's out of the Senate, then Obama is going to call in this automatic letter of resignation, and we're going to lose a senator in that numbers process, let alone having to worry about Al Franken.
Well, hang on a minute.
What's happening is this.
Governor Lynch, who is a Democratic governor of New Hampshire, because sadly a once reliable, the last red state in the Northeast has, alas, been trending sadly blue, blue Hampshire, as it's becoming.
And obviously, Judd Gregg was concerned that the Democratic governor would put a Democrat in there to replace him.
What he's done, in fact, is put in a former staffer for Judd Gregg, Bonnie Newman, who is what they call a centrist Republican, which, and if you're already getting sort of alarm bells at that and thinking she might be over there in the Olympia Snow Susan Collins mold, you might not be, might not be wrong about that.
But the seat is actually going to stay Republican, at least for the next couple of years until the election in 2010.
Does that reassure you, Bob?
No, unless this thing is etched in stone.
I mean, we live in Illinois here, and we've had this embarrassing debacle with Obama's seat, and it just seems to me that it's happening all over.
And I just wonder why the GOP is so darn silent about this.
No, Michael.
With respect, Bob, you know, New Hampshire, even in its pitiful trending Democrat state, is not quite in the state of Illinois.
And it is true that your senatorial nomination process with Governor Blago using the F word every six or eight seconds is in fact not what goes on in New Hampshire.
By the way, actually, I just want to say one thing about that Blago guy who's been impeached and been kicked out of office now.
All his Democratic pals, by the way, turned against him.
When they decided he was going to be the designated full guy, they threw him overboard.
That's it.
The whole thing is to say, you know, so that when there are news reports about this, he's no longer Blagojevich, the Democratic governor of Illinois.
He's just some ex-has-been governor and by implication, an ex-has-been Democrat.
But, you know, he was the only thing, as far as I can see, is that Blagojevich was rather crasser and cruder about it, about the whole pay-to-play nature of Democratic machine politics than Jesse Jackson and Obama and the rest of those Chicago machine polls are.
That was his only mistake.
He was too upfront about it.
You've got to be subtler about it.
I mean, if you think about this cabinet is a pay-to-play thing, isn't it?
It's like, how much in back taxes are you willing to pay to be in the Obama cabinet?
You know, I mean, I could say, well, you know, Obama, he's reaching across the aisle and he's offered me the post of deputy assistant, associate, deputy, assistant secretary of the Department of the Interior, but, you know, I couldn't afford the settlement in $2.6 million of back taxes.
You know, that essentially is a pay-for-play model.
When you look at the checks that Dashall and Geithner are writing to be in the Obama cabinet, you know, that's a pay-for-play model, in a sense.
How much are you willing to pay?
You know, they would never have paid this thing.
Do you think Tom Dashel would have discovered his driver and car and driver problem if it weren't for this?
He's essentially paying, he's paying his taxes for the privilege of being in the Obama cabinet.
Now, most of us pay our taxes because when we get to the end of our driveway, it'd be nice if there was a road for us to drive on.
And when we drop our kids off at school, we'd like there to be a school down there for us to drop the kids off of.
Tom Dash has got no interest in that.
He doesn't want to pay money for roads and military defense and national security and all that nonsense.
You know, that's for the little people to pay.
That's for you schmucks out there.
But, you know, to pay money, pay money to be, you know, 140,000.
When you look at what Blago was wanting to auction off that Senate seat for, you know, getting $140,000, paying $140,000 to be a cabinet secretary, that's not such a bad deal, is it?
You know, that's simply the newest form for pay-for-play.
So, Bob, thank you for your point.
You know, New Hampshire is trending Democrat, and I regret that, but we've got a ways to go, even with a Democratic governor, before we're in the depauched and decadent state of Illinois.
You know, there is a deal of ruin in a nation, and it will take New Hampshire quite a deal of ruin to get to the same ruined state as Illinois and Michigan and some of those other ones.
By the way, actually, in fairness to Governor Lynch, he is a Democrat.
That's certainly the case.
But, you know, a New Hampshire Democrat is still well to the right of the average Massachusetts Republican.
So these are comparative distinctions.
Let's take a quick call from Pam in Duncan, Oklahoma.
Pam is on the EIB network.
Pam, you're on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Good to talk with you.
Oh, thank you.
Thanks for taking my call.
I appreciate it.
I've been enjoying your show.
Thanks.
I'm sorry.
You wanted to talk about Tom Daschell?
Yes, yes.
I was listening to you and thinking about it, and it dawned on me.
I was thinking about Geithner being the head of the IRS and not paying his taxes.
And what occurred to me as you were talking about Daschell is, wasn't it the Medicare or Medicaid taxes that he didn't pay on his driver?
Yeah, that is right.
He didn't pay the whatever it is, the 2.9% Medicare payment.
I'm not sure whether it was on the driver or on the limousine.
The American tax code is now so complicated.
I'm not sure that if you receive a limousine as a limousine service as a taxable benefit, you may be obligated to pay Medicare costs associated with that limousine.
Is that how it works, HR?
He's throwing his hand.
You know, if you think about it, it makes sense.
You may have a limousine service, and you know, your limousine, there may be some like little Dickensian urchin crossing the street on his crutch, some seven-year-old chimney sweep from the Lower East Side that the Daschell limousine happens to glance against as he's being whisked off to one of these $100,000 healthcare speeches.
And you would want in that situation, you would want in that situation for him to have paid his share of the Medicare benefit so that poor little Dickensian urchin chimney sweep from the Lower East Side with his crutch can be taken to the welfare hospital on where, where is he?
They still live at the welfare hospital on Rikers Island in New York.
To the, you know, wherever it is, the poorhouse, wherever these people go, you know, who knows?
It can't be Tom Daschell's problem.
Just because his limousine glances, strikes the urchin, knocks the crutch out from under him.
You want him to have paid the Medicare taxes so that that urchin can be treated at the unfortunate public welfare hospital he's going to be taken to while Tom just sails on to give his indispensable speech on healthcare reform.
So, you know, clearly there are issues to talk about here for Tom Daschell and taxes, and we'll be pursuing them straight ahead here on the Rush Limbaugh Show on the EIB network.
Hey, Mark Stein, in for us behind the golden EIB microphone on the Rush Limbaugh show.
We've been talking about Tom Daschell, Tom Daschell.
I love the way Tom Dashell, we haven't heard from him since 2004.
He's apparently made, he's been making, what is it, $5 million a year?
Amazing.
He was getting $83,000 for consulting a month.
$83,000 a month for, quote, consulting.
I don't know what he, when people tell you they're a consultant, it's never kind of clear what they do.
But no one likes to say, well, what is it you actually consult on?
But anyway, Tom Daschell was getting $83,000 a month for consulting.
And, you know, one month of that, he accidentally forgot to declare to the IRS.
Because if you're getting 83,000 a month just for consulting, I mean, that isn't even what you do.
I mean, whatever it is Tom Daschell does, the consulting is just a little bit of light consulting he does.
It's just the kind of icing on the Tom Daschell income cake.
So you can understand why, you know, you get this check for $83,000.
I don't know.
Maybe it's not a big deal to him.
Maybe it took him a while to, you know, stick it in the bank.
It fell, it slipped down behind the back of the sofa.
Didn't pay it in for a few months.
Whatever.
You know, it's easy to just kind of let that slide.
And so he wound up not declaring it to the IRS.
What tone should Republicans adopt?
You know, I used to love the way when Tom Dasher was in the Senate, he always had that kind of funereal undertaker mode about him.
He always had concerns.
He had grave concerns.
He had questions.
Do you remember the run-up to the Iraq war?
He didn't actually come out and oppose it.
He just would stand there and doing that sort of undertaker act of his saying, oh, he was sorrowful.
He looked sorrowful.
He had concerns.
Some of his concerns were grave concerns.
Some of them didn't quite yet rise to the level of grave concerns.
If Republicans didn't address them, then these minor concerns could soon become grave concerns.
And then where would we be?
And that is why, and he also had questions.
He kept saying, every time the president kept answering his questions, he actually didn't have any questions.
He had three questions, and he'd asked them about a year and a half before we actually went to war with Iraq.
But for the next 18 months, he kept saying that he still had questions.
And then the president would go out and say something about Iraq.
And then he said, but he still had questions and he still had these grave concerns.
In fact, some of his questions were quite grave.
So I think Republicans should adopt that approach to the Tom Daschell, the more in sorrow than in anger thing.
You know, they're all pals with Tom.
They're senators too.
They've got 60, 100, whatever it is now, 300 staffers all riding around with them with cars and drivers.
And, you know, obviously they sympathize.
I mean, what I find odd is, you know, Tom was getting $83,000 a month for consulting, for consulting.
And it's clear, you know, that the consulting industry is absolutely essential to America.
And yet I've been through that stimulus package.
There's nothing in there about stimulating the consulting industry.
There is nothing for the consulting industry in there.
I think that there should be at least, you know, not a trillion-dollar stimulus, but let's say a half-trillion dollar stimulus for the consulting industry.
I would like to see people consulting on the stimulus.
You know, this is really what America could, you know, Obama has promised to create 4 million new jobs.
And I think if we just had 4 million new consultants consulting him about the 4 million new jobs he ought to create, that in itself would be enough to get the American economy jump-started, as easily jump-started in the morning as Tom Daschell's limousine is.
This is what we need.
This is what we need to get the American economy growing.
Let's go to Mel in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Mel, you're on the EIB network with Mark Stein in for Rush.
Good to talk with you, Mel.
Thank you, Mark.
I have a different take on the tone the GOP should take.
The tax chiefs in the Democrat Party, we got Dashel and we got Geithner and we got Wrangell and I don't know who else we got.
I've got a list.
But they all say that, you know, I didn't know, I made a mistake, you know, all that.
Well, I think, you know, if we take them at face value, which is debatable, but if we do take them at face value, to me, that means they are stupid and incompetent.
So we either got a crook or we got an incompetent, and therefore they're disprovided.
Yeah, you have a very good point there about taking them at face value.
What does it say about the American tax code when the Treasury Secretary claims it's all way too complicated over his head?
Here's a guy who can afford the best ever advisors, and he still can't figure out how to pay his taxes properly.
So you're right, we should take him at face value.
And what's the lesson we draw from that?
It's that this tax code is an abomination in a free society.
It's an abomination.
And I don't really care.
I mean, I think Tom Daschell, incidentally, breaking news, by the way, Tom Daschell has just withdrawn his nomination as health and human services secretary.
So unfortunately, when not, I don't know whether he did it because of me.
No, I'd say, oh, what a spoiler spot.
I was planning on riffing on Tom's limousine for the rest of the week.
The guy's got it.
You know, scandals aren't what they scandals just aren't what they used to be.
You know, this is why Tom Daschell shouldn't be Health and Human Services Secretary.
What a wimp.
You know, if this was Clinton, if this was Clinton, he'd be saying, I need to get back to work for the American people.
This is a distraction.
Tom Daschell didn't even use the distraction line.
He's just withdrawn.
He's flounced out.
He flounced out at such short notice.
His driver was still in the men's room and had to hurry up and zip up and get out there to be waiting in the car with his cap on to drive him off to give whatever speech he's going to give.
Tom Daschell has withdrawn as health and humans.
We're not going to have Tom Daschell to kick around anymore.
We're not going to have Tom Daschell's driver to kick around anymore.
This is a tragedy.
I'm out of material now for the rest of the show.
This is Mark Stein on the EIB network, sitting in for Rush on the Rush Lipmore Show.
More straight ahead.
Mark Stein in for Rush.
Breaking news, as you just heard, Tom Daschell has withdrawn his nomination.
Other breaking news I just happen to see.
Zimbabwe has removed 12 zeros from its currency.
Zimbabwe has the highest rate of inflation in the world.
It's removed 12 zeros from its currency.
I don't know about you, but I think that is what we need to do to the stimulus package.