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Feb. 17, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:15
February 17, 2009, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, we had, by the way, welcome, Rush Limbaugh, EIB Network, Limbaugh Institute, and all that.
You know the drill.
800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program.
Yesterday we had the story of the Muslim guy bought a TV network, Buffalo, to enhance the image of Muslims.
He was under arrest for removing his wife's head.
There was a picture of the loving couple in the TV control room in happier times before her head had been removed.
I guess it's sort of, you know, unscrew it, maybe put it back on when you want her head to be.
There's a strange word used, and somebody's been beheaded.
Today, ladies and gentlemen, we have a story.
The New York Post has a story today on Travis the chimpanzee in Stamford, Connecticut, that is just hilarious.
Now, they had to kill Travis because he went berserk yesterday, attacking cops, attacking cars, attacking people.
200-pound chimpanzee.
Now, most people see chimpanzees when they're little babies, when they're young, like in Tarzan movies or on the TV shows.
And they're really cute.
When they get big, I mean, these are aggressive, they can be brutal, aggressive creatures.
We learn in this New York Post story, I'm going to read it to you in great detail in just a minute.
We learn in this story that Travis was a fan of the New York Mets until they fired the manager, Bobby Valentine, at which time Travis the chimp switched his allegiance to the New York Yankees.
Further details on this coming up as the program.
How did he feel about what?
Well, we don't know.
The story does not say how he felt about A-Rod.
He probably withheld his opinion about A-Rod.
A-Rod's press conference on steroids not until 1.30 this afternoon.
Travis is now dead.
And Travis is because he's dead.
He'll never know what A-Rod has to say about this in his press conference.
Before we get to that, let me just set up what's coming.
I got a couple notes from a friend last night that have caused me, ladies and gentlemen, to do some serious recalculating.
And I'm not sure just where I fall in on this now.
A guy, a friend of mine in Kansas City, was out to dinner, and he overheard two people at the table next to him just praising Obama to the hilt on the basis, you know, it's good we finally have somebody in the White House doing something about this, meaning the economy.
And my friend was a little incredulous because they appeared to not care what it was that he was doing, just that he was doing something.
That led me to remember my oft-repeated warning to you people that liberals are never held to account on the results of their proposals only on their good intentions, only on how much they care.
The only Democrat who has really paid a price for messing up the United States economy was Jimmy Carter.
And even he now has been rehabilitated by the Democrat Party and the media.
Another note from another friend expressing exasperation.
His kids, late teens, early 20s, in college.
He has been trying to convince them for years of the fraud and the hoax that his man-made global warming.
He has hit them with statistics.
He has shown them things that they can read.
None of it mattered.
They thought, yeah, dad, come on.
They'd roll their eyes.
You don't understand how serious things are.
What has changed their minds is this cold winter.
His kids now think Al Gore's an idiot because they have had a horrible winter.
It's been bad.
They're mad.
They don't understand how anybody can say global warming is going on out there when it's as cold as they can ever remember in their lives.
So he concludes to me that the actual experience of something has far more persuasive power than does making an argument.
And I said, well, you know, sometimes arguments are not just about winning arguments.
If you have a good connection, you have a good connection with your kids.
Well, my connection with my kids is as good as anybody else's kids.
I mean, they're past the rebellion stage, but they still haven't realized I'm the smartest guy in the family yet.
They think they are.
And I said, well, that led me to think, that got me to start thinking of something else.
We have the stimulus package out there, and theoretically, practically, everything, it's a disaster.
It is an absolute disaster.
But telling people that is not going to change anybody's minds.
They're going to have to see evidence that it didn't work.
Now, here's the thing.
The U.S. economy is a very powerful thing.
The U.S. economy, you would have to say, is larger than what was this, $789 billion?
The U.S. economy is larger than that.
Perhaps one of the reasons for the speed and the haste in getting the stimulus bill passed was because common sense tells you that at some point the U.S. economy is going to recover.
It is.
There's too much ingenuity.
This bill is not enough to stop all the ingenuity.
This bill is not large enough to totally socialize the country.
You know, the stock market is in bad, bad shape, down 270 today on fears of bank nationalization.
I mean, the signs that it's going to get worse are better.
There's a big Nef Brzezinski's out there talking about food riots between rich and poor if something doesn't.
Everybody's still trying to make the case.
It's going to be horrible, rotten, and so forth.
But the reality is the U.S. economy may in fact rebound.
What if it rebounds next year, late this year, next year?
Guess who's going to get the credit?
And the stimulus package will have had nothing to do with it.
The stimulus package, if anything, will actually retard this.
The real danger of the stimulus package, of course, is, and by the way, I mentioned this to you some weeks ago.
What Obama really wants is to raise taxes.
He has not been able to do that because of the status of the economy.
So the economy is going to rebound at some point.
The United States economy, it always does.
We rebounded from the Depression.
We rebounded from the recessions in the late 70s, early 80s.
We rebound from these things.
We rebounded from the recession of the 60s.
We got out of Great Depression.
These things happen.
It'll come back.
And the real long-term effects of this are going to be profound because when it comes back, then the focus is going to be on all the deficits.
And that's when Obama will come and raise everybody's taxes, like two or three years from now, sooner if he can get away with it.
At which time, the real structural damage that Obama's doing to the economy will start to take place.
So it's, you know, these are precarious times.
You know, I sit here and I make no bones about the fact that I hope Obama's plans fail.
And this is exactly why.
And I hope they fail in a way that's noticeable.
It's the only way this kind of disaster is going to be rejected.
But the economy is bigger than this right now.
The economy is bigger.
I have to define the failure, Mr. Why do I have to define the failure?
What's so hard to understand about the failure?
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Stop sternly shelling at me here that I have to define failure because if I don't, nobody else will.
You mean the failure of the policies?
What?
Okay, what does failure of the Obama economic plan mean?
Well, no, see, you can go two ways on this.
The failure of the economic plan would result in the economy boomeranging because the plan didn't work.
That's one definition of failure.
It fails to do what it says it's going to do, revive the U.S. economy, create gazillions of new jobs.
And that's one definition of failure.
If it doesn't work, because you've been telling me, you know, we'll go into your office every top of the hour break and you say, people are going to figure this out, man.
And it's going to come back.
After a while, these people that voted for this guy, they're not going to see their jobs come back.
They're not going to see if prosperity comes back.
And I've been warning you that the average Obama voter, even in the case of Democrat politicians, especially this guy, remember, the Great Society, it was a failure.
The war on poverty was a failure.
$10 trillion we've spent.
It's a failure.
And yet, the people that came up with the plan are lauded to this day as great, compassionate, concerned Americans.
Not because it succeeded or failed, but because they cared, because of their intentions.
Well, Obama's intentions, nobody's going to ever question what his intentions are.
You know, Obama, I've got a little piece on this coming later.
Obama, we think that Obama said that they're lying to people.
He's not really lying.
He just gets away with meaning two things every time he says something.
And I'll give you details of what I'm talking about as the program unfolds before your very eyes today.
Before we take the break, I want to give a lot of attaboys to the Republicans in the California Assembly.
I don't know if you know what's going on out there, but the Democrats are veritably holding the Republicans hostage.
They are one vote short in the California Assembly of being able to raise taxes.
And the Republicans are holding firm out there.
They are putting up with insults, all kinds of efforts to keep them in the Assembly without letting them get out of there.
The Associated Press has a story today in the Washington Post.
After a frustrating holiday weekend that failed to yield the one vote needed to end California's budget stalemate, the state is poised to begin laying off layoff proceedings today for 20,000 government workers.
One member, now the speaker is, well, the Senate leader, the pro tem leader is Darrell Steinberg.
He's from Sacramento.
And he warned lawmakers, bring their toothbrushes.
They're not going to leave until that one vote is secured.
One member, he said, one more member to put the interest of the state ahead of ideology and ahead of any parochial concern.
Like other states, California faces plunging tax revenue that has imperiled state services.
The proposal put before lawmakers this weekend was negotiated by the governator, and the four legislative leaders appeared to have support of the required two-thirds majority in the state assembly.
However, it fell one Republican vote short in the Senate.
A situation that had not changed throughout a weekend marked by long hours and uncertainty over the state's future.
The plan includes $15.1 billion in program cuts, $14.4 billion in temporary tax increases, which are never temporary, and $11.4 billion in borrowing.
And Daryl Steinberg says, you clowns are not leaving here until I get that one vote.
I don't care what.
Bring your toothbrushes, but we're not getting out of here until we get that one vote.
You got to drop your ideology from mine.
There's a great column today.
James Marone, writing in the New York Times, here's a great definition of bipartisanship.
Roosevelt and Reagan reveal the dirty, rotten secret of bipartisanship.
It happens only when one side is cowed, beaten, or frightened.
More competitive elections mean more ardent debates.
And there's a perfect definition of bipartisan.
The Democrat version, we're going to beat you down.
We're going to make you bring your toothbrush in here.
And you're going to go along with us because we're going to frighten you.
We're going to cow you, and you're going to make you think it is hopeless.
And that's bipartisanship.
Bipartisanship only happens when one side caves in.
And that's why we here at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies despise bipartisanship because it involves quitting.
And of course, Winston Churchill, whose statue, whose bust was sent packing by Obama, one of his favorite quotes, never give in, never give in.
Never, never, never, never.
In nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.
Never yield to force.
Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
I myself have received a Churchill Award from the Claremont Institute and also from Hillsdale College.
And I didn't get this reward because I surrendered.
Yes, Churchill was married.
And even despite that, he had that philosophy.
But that is a philosophy for outside the home and in matters of state.
Never giving in, never giving in, never, ever, ever, in nothing great or small at home.
Well, that's a different matter.
I talked to Charlton Heston once.
When I learned he'd been married 50 years, I said, how did you do this?
He said, I learned three words, and they never failed me.
Honey, I was wrong.
Well, if you have a never give in, never, ever, ever, ever give in strategy, you certainly never say, honey, I was wrong.
So Churchill's philosophy is certainly outside the home.
Never, ever give it.
The Republicans in the California Senate are not giving in, and it's frustrated.
They need to be supported.
I'll tell you what they need to do.
I just have a little, this session starts in 40 minutes at 10 o'clock on the left coast.
That's where they got to bring their toothbrushes.
And Democrats are going to offer a bunch of bribes or they're just going to browbeat that one Republican till he caves in.
The Republican position ought to be, they ought to counter.
They ought to counter, not just sit here and resist it, counter it.
Force the Democrats to adopt a majority vote to raise taxes.
A majority vote.
Now, that would probably be declared unconstitutional by the California courts, but at least they could kick this down the can or kick the can down the road, move this down the road a little bit and delay it a little bit.
But I enjoy seeing this.
And I think when I saw about this, and I've been keeping up with it over the weekend, I wanted to take some time here to applaud them.
It's not easy being a Republican in California.
It's especially not easy being a Republican in the legislature out there.
And they're holding fast on the whole concept.
That state, look at the tax increases they're planning.
All of this.
And how about Kansas?
How about Kansas suspending tax refund checks?
California has also done that.
California has issued IOUs.
At any rate, look, I'm a little long here.
I got to take a brief time out.
We'll do that.
We'll come back after this.
Sit tight.
Barack Obama in the air, even as we speak on the way to Denver from Chicago to sign the massive porkulus bill, ladies and gentlemen.
And then tomorrow on the Mesa, Arizona, to make sure that people who can't afford their homes are able to stay in their homes.
In the meantime, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is flirting with minus 300 points down today.
Primary fear, the nationalization of banks.
Where are we headed, folks?
1929.
1929.
That's white comedian Paul Shanklin as Barack Obama, Barney Frank, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore tentative plan to overhaul Massachusetts transportation system, charging you a tax for every quarter mile you drive.
We have an update, ladies and gentlemen, on the shocking story out of Buffalo, in which a Muslim man started a TV network to improve the image of Muslims, removed his wife's head.
Featured a picture of the couple in happier times before her head was removed.
Police now say that the man, Muzamu Hassan, wait till you hear his wife's name.
You want Muzamu Hassan is charged with murdering his wife, Asia Hassan.
It's A-A-S-I-Y-A-N-A-Y-A.
And the pronunciation guide here is A-S-E-E-Ya.
ASIA.
And it just, the story just continues here, ladies and gentlemen, to grow fruit, so to speak.
Police say that Asiya had an order of protection against her husband, and he had been kicked out of the house, they shared in Orchard Park near Buffalo.
The police accused the 44-year-old Hassan of removing his wife's head at the TV station where he launched his TV network to improve the image of Muslims.
In an AP interview, he said he hoped the network would balance negative portrayals of Muslims following 9-11.
The reason for this, the reason it all happened, the reason he removed his wife's Asiya head is because she had filed for divorce.
That is what has been learned.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, an update, if you will, on the havoc caused by Travis the Chimpanzee in Stamford, Connecticut.
The New York Post write-up of this.
Three people wrote this story.
It's just incredible.
The headline, Havoc is Chimp Goes Ape.
By the way, I saw a still picture on the Fox News channel.
Somebody caught a picture of the ape just before he was shot by the cops.
His head is in a huge thing, taller than the car.
Head is inside the passenger window.
And there's a cop car there, and you can't see any people.
But there's a telephone pole, and there's a sign on the telephone pole that says, beware of dog.
Not beware of chimp, a massive chimp who loved flowers.
Phillet Mignon and the Yankees went berserk.
There's a picture of the chimp now, even on Fox, sitting in his cage.
Those things get uglier as they...
I used to work with a guy in Sacramento who looked just like a chimpanzee, but this, I think Terry Bradshaw bears some resemblance to chimpanzees as well.
But that's, I'm getting distracted here.
Captain Richard Conklin of the Stanford Police said that officers had no choice but to open fire on Travis the chimp after he cornered a cop in a cruiser about 3.30 in the afternoon.
Police are not sure what triggered Travis' wild in the jungle rampage, though Conklin said the ape had been acting odd in the home of his owner, 70-year-old Sandra Harold, and neighbors claim that the chimp suffered from Lyme's disease.
He said that the owner gave the chimpanzee Xanax in his tea to quiet him, but the chimp grabbed the keys to open a kitchen door, went outside, started banging on car doors to indicate that he wanted to go for a ride.
It's a very clever chimp, said Captain Richard Conklin of the Stanford Police.
Meanwhile, the owner called family friend Charla Nash, 55, to help round up the chimp.
Just as she arrived at the house and got out of her car, the chimp went up to her, jumped on her, began biting and mauling her.
This is unprecedented with this chimp.
He said, noted that Travis had lived with Harold and her late husband for nearly 13 of his 16 years.
Why, he might have been going berserk because of the stimulus bill.
He might not like what's in it.
There might not be enough in it for him.
I mean, if this guy, this chimp, has got the wherewithal to be a Yankees fan after the Mets fire Bobby Valentine, which enraged him, then clearly he has the wherewithal to understand what's in it for him or not in it for him in the stimulus bill.
So anyway, the owner, to save her friend, now being mauled by the chimp, the owner went and got a large butcher knife and stabbed the chimpanzee numerous times.
Now, Travis was severely injured, seriously injured, but he roamed the property nevertheless as the cops swarmed in.
The wounded Travis zeroed in on one cruiser, running to one side, trying to open a locked door, quickly scooted to the other side, ripped off a side mirror while opening that door.
The trapped cop inside shot Travis several times in self-defense.
The mortally wounded ape then staggered back into his house.
They followed the blood trail in the house.
They found him dead in his cage.
The mayor of Stanford, Danelle Malloy, said that the bizarre attack was not expected.
Wild animals are wild animals, he says.
It's just the power of these animals.
We should never forget that.
Now, Conklin, again, the police captain here, speculated that Nash, who had visited before this, the woman who got mauled, may have confused the chimp by wearing her hair in a different style.
She wore her hair up.
That might have angered the chimp.
Chimp might have, this is what the captain says.
The chimp might not have appreciated the hairstyle being up, didn't recognize the friend, and wanted to show his displeasure for her hairstyle.
Don Mecca, a friend of Harold, the owner, and her late husband, said he was stunned noting that Travis was normally so well-behaved.
The chimpanzee liked watering flowers.
He liked wine, liked expensive steak, liked brushing his teeth.
He even watched baseball games on television.
Neighbors said he liked to pretend to drive his owner's cars, including a pink Cadillac.
He also fed hay.
Well, see, somebody just said to me in the IFB he could surf the internet.
He could.
He could log on to the internet.
It's coming.
If you just let me get to the story, all of this will be revealed.
Travis also fed hay to the horses near his house in his house in a rural part of Stamford.
Now, Travis the Chimp, now deceased, briefly rooted for the Mets when Stamford, Connecticut native Bobby Valentine, was the manager.
Travis the Chimp knew that Bobby Valentine was a native of Stamford, which is where Travis the Chimp lived.
And this made Travis a Mets fan.
But when the Mets fired Bobby Valentine of Stamford, he later then changed his allegiance to the Yankees, according to his owner.
He loves baseball.
He likes anything with action, she said in a 2003 interview.
He dressed himself and could log onto a computer.
Despite being domesticated, Travis had a wild side.
Anyway, it's a tragic story.
A wild animal being treated as a pet finally acts as a wild animal does and goes wild.
And it's only after the fact that we learn how bummed out was he about A-Rod?
I mean, he never really heard A-Rod in his press conference that's afternoon at 1.30, but who knows what could have depressed the chimp?
The stimulus bill.
It seems like he started losing it and went over the edge when the Mets fired Bobby Valentine.
And not even the wine and the filet mignon and the pink Cadillac and the horses, it seems.
And then when the babe shows up with the hair up and a different hair to do that, I think it was just too much stress.
And the chimpanzee just went berserk and it forced the authorities to fire fatal shots.
Do you also remember the story from last week?
Lady, we have an update here on the story where a lot of rich millionaires, moly-millionaires, were having to choose between their jets and their other possessions and their mistresses.
You remember this?
And we found, we learned that four out of five rich people are saying signara to the mistresses to hold on to the jets and so forth.
It was a terrible story, shocking, very, very sad in a human interest sort of way.
And we have a Chinese version of this story.
A married Chinese businessman who could no longer afford his five mistresses held a competition to decide which one to keep.
But the contest took a fatal turn when one of the women, eliminated for her looks, drove the man and the four other competitors off of a cliff.
The spurned mistress died.
The other passengers were injured.
Police initially thought the car had plummeted off a mountain road in eastern China on December 6th by accident.
And they learned of the contest through a letter the dead woman had left behind, the Shanghai Daily Newspaper reported.
So basically, a married Chinese businessman who could no longer afford five mistresses because of downsizing.
It's even hurting the economy down certain and even hurting China rich people.
Held a competition to decide which one to keep, but one of the women who was eliminated because she wasn't pretty as the other four decided to take them all out.
Five Chikom mistresses fall victim to economic downsizing.
Now, let's see.
The women knew of one another, but none elected to break up with the man and give up their rent-free apartment and a $5,730 monthly allowance.
When the economy soured, the businessman apparently decided to let go of all but one mistress.
He staged a private talent show in May without telling the women his intentions.
An instructor from a local modeling agency judged the women on the way they looked, how they sang, and how much alcohol they could hold.
The judge knocked out the woman who killed everybody in the first round based on her looks.
She decided to exact revenge by telling her lover and the four other women to accompany her on a farewell trip and then drove them over to Cliff.
Ladies and gentlemen, an urgent, urgent, urgent historical development here.
A share of one piece of stock, one share, one stock, one share of stock in the New York Times now cost less than a copy of the Sunday newspaper itself.
In the New York City metro area, the New York Times cost four bucks on Sunday.
Elsewhere, the New York Times Sunday edition cost $5.
At around $12.40 this afternoon, a share of the New York Times company cost $3.82.
The share price is down 79% in the past year.
I hope President Obama will urgently address this as he signs the Porculus bill at 2.40 Eastern Time this afternoon in Denver.
And now we go to the phones.
This is Joe in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Great to have you here, sir.
Thank you.
Hi, Rush.
How are you doing?
Just well.
Just fine.
Hey, Rush, I wonder if you remember me from over a year ago.
I called you in 07 complaining about George Bush, and I likened him to our Jimmy Carter in the Republican Party.
I was just really complaining about his support for Spectre.
And now I'm just so angry to see what we have today with Spectre supporting the stimulus bill and everything.
And the only reason I think Bush could have went to be one of the greatest presidents this nation could have ever had, but his association with the Democratic Party or where he brought us has just really outraged me.
And you called me a whiner back then, but it's just that, you know, me, a businessman back here, I see the direction our country's going in, and it just outrages a lot of us out here.
Yeah, Joe, you called back your whining again, and you got to, you got to stop that.
I know that, Rush.
I know that.
But I guess what it is, is when I listen to all of us conservatives out there and everything, we're all frustrated out here.
I know a lot of great businessmen here in the Lehigh Valley, and we're really hurting because of what's happened to our country.
And we're really.
How many of these businessmen voted for Obama?
None of them.
Not a one.
And actually, I worked for one businessman who was a tremendous Obama supporter.
I talked to him about two weeks ago, and he is even changing his tune right now.
Well, I'm hearing individual examples of that.
But I don't put much stock in how much that's happening around the country.
I've heard two or three people tell me that they've had Obama friends of theirs, Obama voting friends of theirs, all of a sudden it's like, wait a minute.
I always, you know, we've got to see evidence of that in far more than just anecdotal ways.
Now, I'm not saying what your friends say is not true.
Don't misunderstand.
Right.
But it's going to be a while.
The media is still propping the guy up.
I mean, he's only been in office a month now, and he's still, I mean, in the honeymoon phase and getting accolades for getting this thing passed faster than anybody.
And by the way, you mentioned Spectre and Snow and Collins.
There's a story today in my stack.
I forget which newspaper it is.
But liberals, if you want to laugh, liberals are angry as hell at Harry Reid.
Oh, it's Stenny Hoyer.
Stenny Hoyer in the House is mad as hell at Harry Reid for letting, get this, Joe, for letting Specter, Snow, and Collins water down the Senate bill.
Right.
It's a $790 billion boondoggle, and the left is mad that they're running stories that Spectre rolled Harry Reid along with Susan Collins and what's her face, Olympia Snow.
And Stenny Hoyer's mad, there was a little bipartisanship in the Senate.
And so while we think they have just robbed the bank, they're mad they didn't get as much as they hoped to.
Right.
And while you're mad at Spectre for joining them, they're mad at Spectre for cutting spending.
Right.
Now figure that.
Right.
Right.
I understand.
Hey, Rush, can I say one other thing?
Yeah.
Hey, you know what?
I guess when we listen to all these conversations that's going on back and forth about our country and everything, but I still am very optimistic as a businessman.
I mean, I started a company with two guys, and now I'm up to about 30, and I feel nothing but opportunity in front of me.
But, you know, one thing I've come to learn, and I know a lot of your listeners think like me and everything, I don't believe the greatness of our nation is our presidency or our government or our military, but I think that the greatness of our nation has always been our God.
And I think as we as a people, when we start dependent on him more than our government, and that's something that has really outraged me about a lot of the ministry and stuff out there in the world who have supported a man just because on the issues of abortion and gay rights, I think it's an outrage.
When you have to have the government say that I am free, you are not really dependent on God.
But I think the greatness of our nation is our God.
And I think more, when people like us start really crying out to our God, I think we will bring change.
I think that's the greatness of our nation more than anything.
Well, John Adams has a famous quote, and I'm going to have to paraphrase it.
He was one of the founding fathers, and I don't have it right in front of me.
But he said, ours is a constitution written for moral and religious people.
It will not work for those who are neither.
Right.
So I think you're on the same page here as one of our most brilliant founding fathers, the second president of the United States, John Adams.
I know.
I watch it all the time.
You know, but this is a great country.
And the economy, you're right.
The economy is going to rebound.
It always does.
Anyway, it's going to manifest itself in different ways, though, this time.
It'll be interesting to chronicle for you.
I got to run.
Be right back after this.
Here is the complete John Adams quote: We have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and true religion.
Religion, our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.
It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
That's John Adams, and that's the full-fledged quote.
And we're coming back.
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