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March 11, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:05
March 11, 2009, Wednesday, Hour #2
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Greetings, my friends, and welcome back.
It's Rush Limbaugh, this, the EIB Network, and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Telephone number, you want to call us, 800-282-2882.
And the email address, lrushbo at EIBNet.com.
You know, the local paper here, the Palm Beach Post, they've got, let me find it.
They've got a story here.
They're preoccupied here with two things.
They're preoccupied with the Democrat National Committee's billboard campaign.
The Democrat National Committee is now finalized.
They've gotten into five potential winners of the slogan that they're going to put on the billboard in West Palm Beach aimed at me that they somehow want me to see.
And these five slogans, I don't have them in front of me, but they are weak.
I could have come up with something better making fun of my own self than they have come up with.
It's just, it's hilarious.
The second story that they're obsessed with, it may be months for stimulus cash to spur Florida road jobs.
Thousands of jobless Floridians hope the $1.3 billion in stimulus money coming to Florida for road projects might help get them out of the unemployment line and back to work, and it will, but just how quickly, nobody knows.
The most optimistic guessed is mid to late summer, but that could be unlikely.
Given the bureaucratic labyrinth that locals that, whoa, whoa, folks, do you realize how many Obama voters, and I'm not exaggerating here, and I mean this, and it's sad.
If I might be quite honest, it is sad.
Do you know how many people are really hurting because of this economy?
Who are really out there?
Their arms are extended, their hands are open, and they're wondering where the stuff Obama promised them.
Where's the money?
Where's the kitchen?
Where are the McNuggets?
Where is it?
Where are the jobs?
And the Democrat National Committee is doing a contest on a billboard on me.
If you people at DNC haven't decided yet, let me, can I throw in my own suggestion here?
You got a billboard that's going to have my name on it, right?
Here's the slogan.
Now, granted, it's more than 10 words.
They had a 10-word limit.
Your government spent $3 trillion to help you.
You got a $13 raise.
Everybody happy?
Shut up.
And that's just off the top of my head.
Ladies and gentlemen, a teachable moment.
I'm going to get to the war and the economy and all that here in just a second.
But a teachable moment comes from a town I lived in for 10 years, Kansas City, Missouri.
Well, I actually lived in Overland Park, but it's all part of the same metro area.
I had a great time there.
By the way, anybody who knew me in Kansas City for those 10 years would say I was an abject failure.
I failed.
But those 10 years of failure were among the most valuable that conditioned me, prepared me for what was to come later when I left Kansas City.
And I still stay in touch with the Kansas City media, and I have a lot of friends that are still living in Kansas City that I'm in regular contact with, golf buddies and so forth.
And occasionally, I still read the Kansas City media, the local newspapers, the Kansas City Star.
And they have a columnist who has written things in the past that we've quoted favorably on this program.
Other things he's not been so favorably quoted on, but I like this man.
And I think he's really brilliant at times.
And I think he's very creative.
And in a clouded, clogged, overrun media community, Jason Winlock still manages to write pieces that stand out.
And he's fearless.
And he has been fired from places like ESPN.
which to me is a badge of honor.
He has been fired for his outspokenness.
Jason Whitlock has also taken his hand at hosting talk radio and sports.
Jason Whitlock has a column that ran Saturday in the Kansas City Star.
Now it's about the Kansas City Chiefs.
For those of you in Port St. Lucie and Riolinda, that's the football team there.
They just hired a new general manager.
They got rid of King Carl Peterson.
And they just hired Scott Peoli from the New England Patriots.
And they just hired a new head coach from the Arizona Cardinals, the offensive coordinator Todd Haley.
Jason Whitlock.
Now stick with me on this because it's a teachable moment.
You'll be amazed at what I am going to read to you from Jason's piece.
The title, the colour, the headline to Jason's piece is, It's okay to question Peoli and the Chiefs.
Now keep in mind as I go through this and read excerpts, this is a column about football.
Football does not determine your tax rate.
Football has nothing to do with your individual liberty or freedom.
It might have a little to do with your pursuit of happiness, if your team wins, or if you like to root them on, this sort of thing.
But there's no football team that can unilaterally enact a policy that will change your life, make you poorer, raise your taxes, or infringe upon your freedom.
Jason Whitlock begins his piece.
Wednesday afternoon on my drive on I-70 to watch a basketball game, I passed the time listening to Sports Talk Radio.
I find one of our local stations unlistenable, so you can assume which station and which show entertained me along the highway, and you can guess which host nearly made me drive off the highway.
The new Don Fortune, Don Fortune is still there.
Don Fortune, a sports guy, sports TV anchor when I was in Kansas City in the mid-70s.
He's still there.
Don Fortune expressed his disinterest in needing access and information from Chiefs general manager Scott Peoli.
Don Fortune and his trusty sidekick, Mad Jack Harry.
Jack Harry's still there.
I knew Jack Harry is at Channel 5 in Kansas City when I was there.
Fortune, I think, was at Channel 9, if I'm not mistaken.
Anyway, these two guys, Fortune and Jack Harry, they do a duo show.
And Jason was listening to them.
And he wasn't liking what he was hearing because Fortune and Mad Jack Harry spent several minutes telling their listeners that we just have to trust the new general manager, Scott Peoli, implicitly.
We don't need to waste emotion or energy worrying whether Peoli, the new general manager, the chief, reveals himself or his plans or his players to the media.
Having worked in sports talk radio, I'm aware that discipline requires a dramatic and healthy loosening of journalistic standards, but basic common sense and backbone are allowed and occasionally encouraged when hosting a radio show.
Supporting the new regime does not equate to rejecting the primary role of the media.
Now, folks, Jason Whitlock is talking about a football team.
He's talking about a football general manager and two media people who said, I don't need to question him.
I trust them.
I think I know what they're doing.
I don't need to have access to them.
I believe in what they're doing.
Whitlock saying, You trust them.
You're a journalist.
You got to get in there and ask them questions.
You got to hold them accountable.
It's a football team.
It's our job, Jason Whitlock writes, to acquire information and pass it along to you.
Based on what we've seen from the Bill Belichick era in New England and our first two months with Paoli, gathering pertinent and enlightening information about the Chiefs is going to be rather difficult.
Do you see where I'm going with this, Snurtle?
Do you have any, folks?
The rest of you, do you see where I'm heading with this?
Jason Whitlock is aghast that the media is laying down, has no interest, is not curious, is blindly accepting whatever comes out of the Chiefs' front office.
He wants to dig and find out what they're trying to hide.
He's writing this about a football team.
A football team which cannot raise your taxes, a football team which cannot take away your freedom, a football team which cannot tell you what kind of car to drive.
I mean, they can rape you financially with ticket prices, but that's up to you if you want to pay it.
You at least get something value back.
Overall, we attempt to be a watchdog of those with power, writes Mr. Whitlock.
When we fail to play that role, generally speaking, terrible things happen.
The Iraq war is a worst-case scenario.
We trusted our president implicitly.
We led the cheers when he declared war on Iraq.
And we declined to demand answers to difficult questions.
Hundreds of billions of dollars later, and with our economy in collapse, we now blame poor minority homeowners for the fall of our society.
He's talking about football.
Jason, you laid down, led the cheers.
Have you forgotten the Democrat Party's role in trying to secure the defeat of the U.S. military in Iraq?
The media laid down for George W. Bush?
Jason, the media is laying down and has checked its professionalism at the door with Barack Obama.
The very demand, Jason, that you are making that local media hold a football team, general manager, accountable.
You don't even think to reference the national media holding a president accountable?
There's no curiosity.
There is blind acceptance of Barack Obama, Jason, right in front of your eyes.
They are stenographers.
From Jonathan Alter to Chris Matthews to whoever, they're taking dictation from the White House, Jason.
They're taking dictation from Rahm Emanuel.
They're taking dictation from James Carville.
They're taking dictation from Robert Gibbs.
They're taking dictation from Stan Greenberg.
They're taking dictation from the President of the United States.
And you're upset that the general manager of football team won't tell you what's going on with the draft?
I mean, I can understand, Jason, you're right about sports, but you brought the Iraq War into this.
Unchallenged leaders, he says, are dictators and quickly turn unethical.
He's writing about football.
He's writing about Scott Peoli because Scott Peoli comes from a dictatorial regime, the New England Patriots.
And the dictator is Mad Bill Bilichik.
And Jason's all worried that Peoli is in the mad dictator image of Belichick.
Unchallenged leaders are dictators and quickly turned unethical.
talking about a football team.
It column amused me because King Obama, King Obama is in danger or engaging in behavior that makes Scott Pioli and the dictatorial New England Patriot.
I can't believe this.
The New England Patriots.
Jason, are you afraid the Chiefs might win and you won't know how they did it?
Because Peoli won't tell you?
Or, Jason, do you want Peoli to fail?
Because he won't open up with you guys.
And he won't tell you how he's doing what he's doing.
And then he concludes the piece, writing now to the fans who read his piece, Nickans City Star, it's in your best interest to demand better from us, meaning journalists.
Don't be fooled into believing we should go away or act as a propaganda machine for some newly elected popular in comparison general manager of a football team.
Now, by the way, he does throw Bush in in that last sentence.
Let me reread this sentence.
I missed this because it's parentheses.
It's in your best interest to demand better from us to his readers, he says here.
Don't be fooled into believing we should go away or act as a propaganda machine for some newly elected popular in comparison to Peterson, former general manager, or George Bush, leader.
Jason, you're better than this.
To say that George W. Bush had a lap dog media to ignore a media that's not a lap.
I don't know how you would describe this media other than to say they are stenographers covering for Barack Obama.
But here's the point.
The bottom line of this.
Now, I know Jason Whitlock is in sports, but he is, can you get how angry he is?
He's irritated at two of his brethren in Sports Talk Radio said, we don't need to question the Chiefs.
And that sets him off on 750 words.
We damn well going to question the Chiefs.
He is exercised over a potential dictatorship in a football team.
But a similar scenario playing out in his country escapes him.
I'm just here to help Jason because you know I love you.
And by the way, Jason supported me in the Monday Night Football gig.
He really did.
Because he thought it would help fat guys everywhere, and he's bigger than I am.
Back after this.
No, I'm just, I'm just, I can't stop laughing here to be worried about the dictatorial regime of the New England Patriots.
Well, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.
El Rushbow, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
People have been waiting patiently to be on this program, so we'll start in Naperville, Illinois.
This is Bill.
It's great to have you here, sir.
Hello.
Ditto's Rush.
Thank you.
All this discussion about you wanting the Obama policies to fail brought to mind a lecture that I heard many years ago.
I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Milton Friedman in either 1974 or 1975.
He came to speak at Wabash College.
And I always have remembered this lecture, and I thought it was kind of appropriate.
And the theme of the lecture was, all current government programs were bad, and all future ones are good.
And I thought, well, isn't that ironic?
Because all we're hearing from the Obama administration is everything out there is bad, but we're going to make it good.
And you look at all the programs and policies that they're putting forth have been tried before, either domestically or in Europe.
And people like Jim Kramer and Warren Buffett and Jack Welch all know this.
And I just find it incredibly ironic that they've now come, you know, they've known this for some time.
In fact, Kramer, I just sent you an email that I got a few minutes, a few months ago.
He started November the 7th about Geithner.
And for him to somehow have this revelation.
Wait, wait, wait.
He was all for Geithner on November 7th?
Oh, no, He started complaining about Geithner November the 7th of last year.
Mad Jim Kramer did?
Yes.
Oh, wow.
I think it's in your inbox.
I sent it to you.
I know you get a gazillion emails, but it'll say Jim Kramer.
No, yours is flagged.
It stands out.
What's that?
Yeah.
And for these people to come along now and sit there and say, you know, if I know these programs failed 50 years ago or 30 years ago, you know, what makes them think that Barack Obama is somehow going to make them right?
This is a fascinating question.
But you're asking, I think your question is actually two-pronged.
Because the first question I would have is, if every, and Friedman's right, every current government program doesn't work, well, whose are they?
Sure.
Whose are they?
Now, we can say, well, they're the United States Congress.
But the vast majority of the programs we're talking about that have failed are programs that were written by Democrats, the war on poverty, the great society, all of these things, welfare, abject failures.
But you see, we're not allowed to look at them that way.
Just as back during the falling days of the Soviet Union, the American left said, now, you can't look at it as a failure.
We just haven't given it.
It hadn't had its full shot.
It hadn't had a full chance.
Just like War on Poverty, you can't say it's a failure.
And besides, our good intentions are what matter here, not the results.
That's why the question about why new programs, you ask about Buffett and these guys.
I don't think they're that smart.
They are skilled and talented in making money, but they don't evidence common sense or else their motivations are something other than what you and I understand.
Back to the phones, the breakdown and analysis of the theme started at the White House, picked up now by the slaves in the media that the economy is a wall and that Obama's the general and we have to support the general.
That's coming up in mere moments.
Steve in Long Island, great to have you here on the EIB network.
Hi.
Hey, hey, Rush, second time caller.
Love your show.
Thank you.
How are you doing?
I just wanted to talk to you about the business travel industry.
Steve, can I ask you a question?
I just thought of this.
It will not take away from that which you wanted to speak about.
Oh.
You said the second time you've called the program.
Yes.
You like the program.
I love it.
Steve, why do you not hate me after the past week and a half?
Because I believe you to be always correct.
For most of the time, 99%.
You mean the smear campaign has had no impact on you?
Absolutely not.
Thank you.
I would think everybody would hate me by now, like they did Bush.
All right, go ahead.
Thank you.
Okay.
Like I said, I want to talk to you about the business travel industry.
And there's a letter the executives of 10 major hotel chains sent to members of Congress.
I saw that letter.
Yeah, I actually have it right in front of me.
But the letter is basically scolding Congress for putting negative connotations on business travel and portraying it as excess.
And they're basically asking the government to tone down the rhetoric in the letter.
And I think it's kind of sad that it's taken a letter like this to inform these people that they're kind of destroying the travel industry intentionally or not.
It's sad that it's taken a letter like this to inform.
Do you think members of Congress are unaware that they're destroying the travel industry?
Well, I mean, they might be aware of it.
Some of them might be.
Damn well they are.
How else do you explain this?
How else do you explain John Kerry standing up there and ridiculing any corporation which does traditional travel and entertainment to reward, thank, and build a customer base?
How do you say Barney Frank is ignorant, does not know what he's doing when Barack Obama stands up there and says, the days are taking a corporate jet in Las Vegas, those are over.
How do you, how do you, where is the benefit of the doubt on this?
They know exactly what they're doing.
This is class envy.
This is showing the little guy who's going to get nothing that the people they have been told to hate at the top of the ladder are going to get creamed.
And so the little guys who are going to get nothing but $13 a week are supposed to be satisfied that Joe Rich, CEO, can't fly his jet to Vegas anymore.
Yeah, well.
Damn well, you know what's sad about this letter?
Yeah.
What's that?
What's sad about, and I saw this letter, these hotel execs, Bill Marriott's on there, somebody from Hyatt's on there, which is amazing because Hyatt is Penny Pritzker, which, you know, you can't tell when she's there and when Obama's not because they're joined at the hip.
But Starwood, all these hotel chains.
What's sad?
What is sad is these guys write a letter and publish it in a paper begging the people who work for them to stop harming their business.
Dear Congress, we think you're really hurting what we're doing here.
We really like you to roll back here.
Thomas is going to say, What we need is the Cessna guy all over the place, the guy runs Cessna, who ran full-page ads to the business community saying, man up.
Don't let these people talk you and tell you out of your way of life.
All these letters of cowardice.
This is what bugs me.
The day we've got so many people, big business people, supposed titans of industry, scared of people like Barney Frank.
That tells me Barney Frank's got way too much power.
John Kerry's got way too much power.
That these people are wielding their power to intimidate citizens.
This is not how the Constitution was set up.
This is not how the framers envisioned this country.
Citizens, we're not supposed to write letters, sheepish letters, begging, begging relief from the paymasters in Washington.
This is not how we're supposed to exist here.
I mean, it's sort of upside down, Land, but I just, I mean, I basically want to know when is Congress or Obama going to experience their own collective, you know, Dukakis in the tank moment.
That's going to happen when, you know, what now.
See, I'm a literalist.
When I hear you say, when is Congress or Obama going to experience their Dukakis in the Tank moment?
Understand, Dukakis had no clue he looked like an idiot.
He did, and the Republican Party is the one that made him look like an idiot and putting a picture out.
So these guys are getting exactly what they want, and until somebody is willing to make them look like Dukakis in the tank, the American people are not going to see them that way because they don't.
You know, we can't sit here.
Pardon me for getting worked up on this, but when is Congress going to realize it's doing X?
They know what is this about?
Who are liberals?
This is what they do.
This is why I don't want them to succeed.
When are they going to figure out their mistakes?
They're going to get away with as much as they can until they are defeated and in the minority.
But their objective is to see to it they're never defeated again.
Why do you think Acorn's getting all this money?
Why do you think Obama's reelection machine is getting all this money starting in 2010?
Federal money going to campaign coffers for Democrats in the guise of a stimulus bill.
When is Congress going to realize?
When's Obama going to realize?
That's the mockery.
That's the joke of Warren Buffett and Andy Grove and Jack Welch.
Gee, I hope the president backs off.
Gee, I hope the president understands.
Gee, I hope the president understands.
We hope you will wake up and understand who it is you elected.
We hope the president will change.
Yeah, I wonder how many Venezuelans are hoping Hugo Chavez changes.
Well, you know, it's not that many.
You know what his approval numbers are around 60, 70%?
You know why he controls the media?
He's approaching Saddam levels.
There are food shortages, energy shortages, a typical socialist country, more and more people living in poverty.
He's taking from the producers and distributing it, keeping a lot for himself.
But he controls the media.
Every day, the media message is how great Chavez is, how compassionate and how wonderful, how he wants the best for everybody.
He's the protector.
He's the guardian.
People's lives are ruined.
His approvals are in the 70s.
He owns the media.
And we ask, when's Obama going to realize that policies are hurting the travel business?
When's Obama going to realize that he's hurting the investor class?
When's Obama going to realize that he's choking off an economic recovery by raising taxes?
When's Obama going to realize?
People need to come to grips with the fact that long before Barack Obama announced his run for the presidency, he had formulated plans to do exactly what the hell he is doing right now.
Ladies and gentlemen, I, as you know, have dabbled in the stock market in my life, not nearly to the degree today that I have in the past.
One of the things that I was told when I first got into the market was don't play emotions.
Like, don't choose a football team because you like the uniform.
Don't choose a stock because you like the logo.
Try to be as dispassionate about investing as you can.
Any investment, the more emotional you get, the bigger problem you're going to have getting out of it when it tanks.
If you start personalizing a stock or a company, then you're going to be in trouble.
It's good advice.
Because when that thing that you have this emotional investment in goes on a downward trend, you have to be able to have no feelings to easily let it go and do the right thing.
Well, these business people, the Buffetts and the Andy Groves and the Jack Welches, I don't know what their political persuasions are.
I'm assuming that they've been lifelong Democrats.
I'm also assuming that in the cases of people I'm talking about, the really hyper-wealthy, that they are equivalent to the Kennedy family.
You'll note the Kennedy family is never criticized as being greedy or wealthy or unfairly rich because the Kennedy family spends all of its public time spouting liberalism, talking about compassion, and they spread a lot of compassion around with other people's money.
And so the Kennedy family gets away with, or they are exempt.
They are excused from the normal characterizations of the rich.
And I would presume that that's the motivation of people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and other hyper-rich.
They're already targets.
So they cultivate a public image of, well, we're Democrats.
We support Democrats.
Of course, Buffet was out there with Schwarzenegger when Schwarzenegger was sounding good at the beginning of his campaign to fix California when he was running for governor.
But regardless, I think, regardless of their political persuasions, I think these business titans have made an emotional investment in Obama.
I think a lot of Obama's voters have made an emotional investment, not an intellectually based investment.
And they have no clue when to dump him.
You make an emotional investment and it's tough to let go of it.
Because an emotional investment, you are investing yourself, not just your expertise.
You're giving whoever you're emotionally investing with part of yourself.
And it's hard to break up.
Plus, the guy's the president.
It's access to power.
It's, I mean, how do you just, how do you, you just, oh, God, he's destroying the economy.
It's a great-looking family.
Oh, he's a guy.
He looks so good, an occasional cigarette, but still.
Oh, he sounds so smart.
He's wrecking the economy, but I can't let go because I love the guy.
So they have to tiptoe around it and write these little pieces.
Gee, I hope the president realizes.
Gee, I hope the president can realize that we need to end this chaos.
Gee, I hope some of the president's advisors will.
So, whatever their charts are telling them, their personal wealth charts, their own portfolios, whatever their head's telling them, their heart is saying, I can't let go of the guy.
He's a president.
I supported him.
I had high hopes.
Gee, maybe he'll change.
They sound like disgruntled women in relationships.
Why won't the guy change?
Gee, I hope.
Can you imagine Wilma Flintstone saying, gee, I hope Fred learns someday to stop drinking too much.
Just leaving it alone.
You know, Wilma Flintstone's going to be hiding the booze or whatever.
So this is what we're doing.
They're so deeply, emotionally invested in Obama.
It's going to take something big to shake them out of their love and devotion to that investment and to get them to start having what they know is happening to become the dominant thought guiding their behavior.
And at some point, a stimulus to that, there are, I had a story right here, and I haven't had a chance to print this out.
I just got it.
I don't even know where it's from.
If somebody can tell me where KHQ-TV is, I can tell you where this is from.
You ever heard of it be Port St. Lucie?
I know they don't have a TV station up there.
Anyway, the headline: A Backlash Against Obama's budget.
Business is marshaling its forces.
The target is the aggressive domestic agenda laid out in the first budget.
Private health insurance are mobilizing.
Real estate agents want to quash it.
Multinationals are up in arms.
Small business owners, and they are.
I've got a small business owners are putting out some statistics about the devastating, the trade group that represents them.
Putting out some Spokane, Washington.
Thank you.
The story is from Spokane, Washington.
The small business guys, their trade group is putting out statistics today of just townhouse damage.
Now, there are these undercurrents.
There is this effervescence out there.
And in addition to these professional, large and small businesses, independent of Jack Welch and Andy Grove and Warren Buffett, in addition to the mom-and-pop small business people that make the country work, you've got individuals who voted for the guy who, folks, we know this to be true, who literally expected their gasoline tanks to never be empty by now.
And they expected whatever.
I mean, Obama was going to make sure there were two pickles on the Big Mac, not one.
They painted their own, and Obama encouraged this.
They painted their own canvas.
It was a blank slate.
So there's a whole underneath the surface.
The bubbles are starting to reach the surface now.
And we can roll this back.
We can stop some of this.
I know, got the Porculus bill, and that's big, but some of it doesn't go into effect for a couple years or longer.
And I got this omnibus budget.
And I know that welfare reform is gone.
That was part of the stimulus package, by the way.
Welfare reform is gone.
The states now get more money for welfare per case they sign up.
I'm not saying what hasn't happened is devastating, but it doesn't have to be permanent.
So, and I'll tell you another reason I'm positive, folks.
For all this attempt to demonize me that the Democrats are engaging in, with all these ads they're running, they are spreading my message to new areas and pockets of America.
And since I am happy with everything I say, and since I mean everything I say, and since I believe everything I say to be accurate and correct, I'm happy that it's being heard by an increasingly large percentage of Americans.
There's opportunity there.
So, yeah, I'm frustrated by, when's Obama going to change?
When's he going to realize?
There's a lot of emotional investment here, the historical nature of his presidency, candidacy, and all that.
But at some point, all this is going to fail.
And before the failure, there are going to be a lot of smart people who realize we're failing, and it's going to be big unless something's done about it.
Got to take a timeout.
We'll be back and to continue after this.
By the way, folks, there was a monologue that I did in the second hour yesterday on the separation of powers, why we do not have a king, how the founding fathers put together a system of checks and balances, separation of powers, that saw to it that a president would fail if he deserved to.
That monologue has been requested to be repeated.
We're going to repeat it tomorrow and Friday at the top of the second hour both days, Jason Lewis guest hosting the next two days, out of popular demand.
So if you missed it, you'll be able to hear it tomorrow and Friday both.
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