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March 17, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:32
March 17, 2009, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
And don't you just love the new tone, the new civility that has been brought to Washington via Obama's teleprompter and the new administration, folks.
Yes, AIG employees are now getting death threats from outraged Americans over these retention bonuses.
Now, I have to warn you people, we're going to spend some more time on these bonuses today because there's some things that you don't know about all this that you need to know.
Sit tight, Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, three hours straight ahead.
It's a thrill and a delight to be with you.
The telephone number, if you want to be on the program today, is 800-282-2882 and the email address, lrushbo at EIBnet.com as a tease.
Ladies and gentlemen, one salient point about the AIG retention bonuses.
I want to read a little short little blurb here from the San Jose Mercury News.
Quote, AIG disclosed its retention payment program, the bonuses, more than a year ago.
And the amount of the bonuses had been widely reported.
But as the payments were coming due only in recent days, the White House began to express its indignation.
All of this is phony baloney, plastic banana, good time rock and roll, trumped up.
Every bit of this is an act.
Everybody involved in these bonuses and the outrage knew they were coming.
They have been part of the plan at AIG for over a year.
So why was Obama angry?
Why was his teleprompter angry yesterday?
This appears to be a coordinated distraction.
AIG now being targeted and pummeled by Andrew Cuomo, the Attorney General in New York, with subpoenas.
The bonuses were well known.
The amounts, the payment schedule, everything was known.
And you want to hear something funny?
Chris Dodd last night floated the idea of taxing AIG bonus recipients at 90% so the government could recoup the $450 million the company is paying to employees in its financial products unit within hours.
Dodd's 90% tax rates spread to both houses of Congress with lawmakers proposing an AIG bonus tax.
While the Senate constructed the $787 billion stimulus last month, now listen to this.
Look at me, folks.
During the stimulus bill discussions, Chris Dodd unexpectedly added an executive compensation restriction to the bill.
Remember that?
That amendment provides, quote, this is just, this is too rich.
That amendment, Dodd's amendment that is in the stimulus, provides an quote exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before February 11, 2009.
Dodd's own amendment exempts the very AIG bonuses that he and others are seeking to tax.
The amendment is in the final version and it is law because the president signed it.
This is a comedy of errors.
This is the Keystone Cops.
Once again, we have the real architects of this disaster sitting around as spectators.
Innocent bystanders, they had no idea this was coming when they knew everything about it.
Dodd even puts an amendment in the bill to exempt bonus payments such as these at AIG.
And now he is demanding that all these bonus payments be taxed.
Folks, we are being played for the biggest suckers on earth with all of this.
It's even worse than this.
Not only did they know a year ago about the retention bonuses, they knew the amounts.
They knew that the date of payout was approaching.
And only then did they start acting surprised as though they've been caught short.
They had no clue.
The White House, members of Congress, are acting like they had no idea AIG had done this.
Those snakes, AIG, under the cover of darkness, misusing taxpayer money.
Everybody that's expressing outrage about this new months ago, ladies and gentlemen, that this was happening.
We'll have more on these bailouts.
And I must admit, I got a couple emails from people yesterday.
Did you have to spend two hours on it?
Well, we get it.
We get it.
No, you don't get, folks.
I had to spend two hours on it because this is the only place, other than some guy named Sorkin in the New York Times, by the way, who is also trying to tell the truth about all this.
And he got beat up on the Today Show today.
We deal in truth here.
We attempt to ascertain truth.
As you know, I am who I am because of many things.
One of those things is I resist the tug of popular sentiment.
I'm not part of the conventional wisdom.
I don't go.
I'm not even wearing green today on St. Patrick's Day.
I refuse to follow group behavior.
I refuse to do it.
I celebrate Valentine's Day on February 15th, not the 14th, as an example.
Folks, we're being played like suckers here.
This is 100% total manipulation by the Obama administration, the Democrats in Congress, with the assistance of their accomplices in the drive-by media.
I, ladies and gentlemen, am the only national figure not going along with the lynch mob mentality here.
An entire government is lined up against one company that they bailed out.
They own 80% of this company, and they are acting like they have nothing to do with what's going on.
They installed the CEO, Ed Liddy, and they act, as always, as innocent bystanders with no culpability whatsoever.
And I'm not going to sit around and let a lynch mob mentality rule the day, at least in the hearts and minds of those of you in this audience.
You deserve the truth.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what you will have and what you'll get when you tune to this program.
A story I had in a stack of stuff when I was out last week during the charity golf outing.
It is from a blog at the TampaBay.com, some newspaper over there.
And the headline here, bestiality, animal husbands, and Billard.
Yes, I'll give you the details here in just a second, but I think I have to probably define bestiality.
I mean, people in Rio Linda know what it is, and probably some in Port St. Lucie know what it is, but outside of those two areas, some people may not know.
In fact, a member of the Florida legislature had no clue.
Bestiality is pronounced.
If you look at the word, it looks like bestiality.
It is having sex with animals.
You can do that in Washington.
A guy had sex with a horse up there, and as long as the horse doesn't mind, you're okay.
Seriously, I don't know how we determine whether a horse is okay with it, but that's the law.
The act of bestiality is a step closer to becoming illegal in Florida.
Did you know it's legal here?
It's the same thing, Snurdley.
Bestiality, bestiality.
You pronounce bestiality bestiality.
It's legal in Florida, but the act is a step closer to becoming illegal now that a Senate committee voted to slap a third-degree felony charge on anybody who has sex with animals.
Florida is one of only 16 states that still permit bestiality.
Why do you think I said they know what it is in Port St. Lucie?
One of only 16 states that still permit bestiality.
It's the fact that animal rights activists and Sunrise Senator Nan Rich learned to her horror when a Florida panhandle guy three years ago was suspected of accidentally asphyxiating a family goat with which he was copulating.
Now, look, this is not the story.
This is not the funny part of this.
The Sunrise Democrat Rich, Nan Rich, said there's a tremendous correlation here between sexually deviant behavior and crimes against children and crimes against animals.
This is long overdue.
These are heinous crimes.
People belong in jail.
We've got to make this illegal.
The guy who was suspected of assaulting Meg the goat, by the way, is from Mossyhead, Florida.
Yes.
Mossyhead, Florida, the man suspected of assaulting Meg the goat, was never charged because law enforcement officials could never link him to the crime scene.
The suspect was arrested in a separate goat abducting months later, and they got him that way.
Now, Nan Rich's proposal was amended to target only those who derived or helped others derive sexual gratification from an animal.
The amendment specified, this is where this gets really funny now.
The amendment specified that conventional dog judging contests and animal husbandry practices are permissible.
Oh, haven't you ever seen a dog show judged?
Haven't you ever watched the Westminster Dog Show?
Oh, well, if you, I'm not going to describe it, but I mean, they had to exempt that.
I'm telling you, they had to exempt that, and they had to exempt animal husbandry practices.
So there's a Florida senator, state senator from Miami by the name of Larsenia Bullard, or Bullard.
I'm not sure how she pronounces it.
And when she heard that dog judging contests and animal husbandry practices would be exempt from the new law, she said people are taking these animals as their husbands.
What's husbandry?
Everybody in the room started laughing.
A state senator, a Florida state senator from Miami, thought animal husbandry was people becoming husbands of animals.
This is, this is, folks, We have genuine idiots, uneducated ignoramuses throughout every level of government we have.
What do you mean, what's husbandry?
Don't do that to me, Dawn.
You don't know what husbandry?
No.
I'm stunned.
No, no, no, no.
Animal husbandry is raising chickens to eat them.
Animal husbandry is raising.
It's the whole notion of cattle and beef.
It's culling your herd.
I mean, you don't marry them.
And even if you do, you don't need a preacher.
You just play soft music, and that's what the guy up in the state of Washington did.
She didn't know what animal husbandry is.
And by the way, now people are going to say, well, is that the root word for husband as in husband and wife?
No, it's about the care and feeding and protection.
The eating comes later, but it is about the care and the feeding.
But the point is, we have a state senator from Miami who had no clue, thought that this was a piece of legislation that was going to allow people to marry animals.
Back in just a second.
Rush Limbaugh, the only national figure not going with the lynch mob mentality, resisting the tug of popular sentiment.
The bonuses at AIG are retention bonuses.
I have a question.
How many of you actually know what a retention bonus is?
You know what a retention bonus is?
You know what a retention bonus is?
Do you know what a retention bonus is?
You do.
Okay.
Three of the four on the staff that responded to my challenge claim to know what a retention bonus is.
I will bet you that the vast majority of the people in this audience probably do too, but most of the people in the lynch mob out there have no clue what a retention bonus is and what kind of bonus we're talking about here.
I will explain as the program unfolds before your very eyes.
Barney Frank, Elmer Fudd, Sylvester the Cat.
Hard to tell the difference in the three.
Back in the news, ladies and gentlemen, all upset over the bonuses at AIG to set this up.
I want to go back to a Barney Frank greatest hit.
January 11th, 2007, on the House floor.
This is right after the Democrats had retaken the House for the first time since 1994.
This is after the 2006 elections.
Barney Frank is acting as Speaker.
The Speaker never goes to the Speaker's chair.
She always stays back in her office and twists arms and does things.
They have rotating members who go up there and act as the president of the House that day.
Senate does the same thing.
And this is during the time when it was been discovered that Nancy Pelosi had an exemption in some piece of bill for the Starkist tuna people, exempting them from some latest piece of legislation that was going to hamper other businesses.
A Republican member of the House stood up, tried to make a point about Pelosi's Starkist giveaway by attempting to insert an exemption for Samoa into the stem cell bill, and Barney Frank did not want any part of it.
Yes, the gentleman may state the inquiry.
So the chair is saying that I may not offer an amendment exempting American Samoa.
The gentleman is making a speech and will suspend.
The chair is not saying anything.
The chair will let me finish my question.
The gentleman will suspend.
The chair has answered the gentleman's question.
The gentleman will state the point of order.
How many times did actually?
The gentleman, how many times could not conceivably be a point of order?
The chair will not answer my question.
The gentleman will not interrupt.
Is exempted from this legislation.
Well, the chair is presiding.
The gentleman will not make speeches in the guise of a parliament inquiry.
Comments.
No, the gentleman will suspend.
Gentlemen from Jack Ford.
The gentleman couldn't.
Barney Frank gaveling down a Republican who just wants to ask him a question, ladies and gentlemen.
January 11th, 2007.
The gentleman will, we did not repeat one gavel.
We did not repeat one thing.
Barney Frank said.
He is the banking queen.
Barney Frank, the banking queen, exclusively on the EIB network with Rush Limbaugh.
Yes, the gentleman may state the inquiry.
So the chair is saying that I may not offer an amendment exempting American Samoa.
The chair is not saying anything.
Mr. Chair, let me finish my question.
The gentleman will suspend.
The chair has answered the gentleman's question.
The gentleman will state the point of order.
How many times did I suspend?
The gentleman, how many times could not conceivably be a point of order?
The chair will not answer my question.
The gentleman will not interrupt.
Is exempted from this legislation.
Well, the chair is presiding.
The gentleman will not make speeches in the guise of a parliament inquiry.
Comments.
No, the gentleman will suspend.
Gentlemen from Jack Ford.
Barty Frank January 11th, 2007.
Refusing to let a Republican make a point about Nancy Pelosi's sweetheart Starkist giveaway, wanting the same thing for American Samoa.
Brief timeout.
We'll come back.
Lots more straight ahead, including Caterpillar and thousands more layoffs.
A lynch mob is expanding.
Peasants with their pitchforks surrounding the corporate headquarters of AIG, demanding heads.
Death threats are pouring in.
All of this being ginned up by the Obama administration.
And remember, ladies and gentlemen, AIG disclosed its retention payment program more than a year ago.
And the amount of the bonuses has been widely reported.
None of this that you started hearing about over the weekend is in any way new.
It caught no one by surprise.
What happened was that the payments of these bonuses are coming due very soon, recent days, and the White House needing another diversion from Obama's plummeting poll numbers.
His approval numbers are plummeting.
He needed another diversion from what his real plans are to grow this government and spend us into oblivion and debt.
He needed another diversion, hence this populist assault on the people at AIG receiving these retention bonuses.
Everybody knew, folks, we're being played for suckers.
You're being played like Stradivariuses.
Everybody involved, including the people who engineered the bailout, knew this was going to happen.
And the very people who engineered it, and you know who oversaw this?
Timothy Geithner, when he ran the New York Federal Reserve.
He was the guy largely responsible for devising individual bailout plans for individual banks.
They all knew this was coming.
They just timed it for this weekend as a distraction.
And then they get to sit around and act outraged and surprised and shocked.
And then further, they try to slough this off on Bush.
But this isn't Bush.
Obama owns this bailout, folks.
He owns the porculus bill.
He owns it all.
And the approval numbers in three different polls show his numbers are beginning to fall.
It's getting so ridiculous.
Yesterday on radio station WMT in Cedar Rapids, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley.
The first thing that would make me feel a little bit better towards them if they'd followed the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I'm sorry, and then either do one of two things, resign or go commit suicide.
Did you hear that?
He wants the AIG bonus recipients to go commit suicide.
Now, I know he said later, we're just talking about honor here.
Honor, these bonuses were exempted by Chris Dodd in the Porculus bill.
Dodd's own amendment, just to remind you, provides an exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before February 11th, 2009.
And these are, meaning exemption from any limits on them.
The Porculus bill has an executive compensation pay limit, as you know.
We're limiting executive pay.
Chris Dodd put in his own bill, his own amendment that exempts bonuses from this limitation.
And he's out there now saying tax them at 90%.
These people are the biggest frauds, artists of deceit.
They all are acting.
Every damned one of them knew that this was coming.
They are the architects of this.
And so now Grassley goes out there and says these guys ought to commit Harikari.
It reminds me, June 26, 1996, we have audio here from Rush the TV show.
The late Congressman Tom Lantos from California conducting hearings in his committee of the White House Offanel Office of Personnel Security, Craig Livingstone.
I must say, Mr. Livingstone, that I am pleased you submitted your resignation.
I am pleased that you finally saw that this was the minimum, the minimum you should do in accepting a modicum of responsibility with an infinitely more distinguished public record than yours.
Admiral Burda committed suicide when he may have committed a minor mistake.
So the fact is, it's a good thing you did it.
You should have done this a long time ago.
You should have seen Livingstone's face.
Here's this Patsy up there put it.
He was in charge of the 900 FBI files that the Clintons had, and nobody would admit to knowing who hired him.
It turned out later that Hillary finally had to admit it.
But he caused the Democrat Party all this embarrassment.
So they finally got a chance at him up on Capitol Hill.
And Tom Lantos, remember, Admiral Burda was a Navy admiral who had been outed by the late journalist and the most decorated war hero ever in America, David Hackworth.
That's right.
David Hackworth wrote a piece for Newsweek that basically said that Admiral Burda's medals were all frauds.
That a couple of the big medals were frauds, that Burda had never actually earned them.
So Admiral Burda went out and committed suicide.
Lantos sitting here saying to Livingstone, at least Burda with a distinguished record far greater than yours, at least he committed suicide.
And Livingston's, what is it about members of Congress looking at these people saying, you ought to kill yourself?
Let's go out and commit Harikari.
By the way, we want to honor somebody on the EIB network today.
His name is Hubert Hubb Schlafly.
Hubert Hubb Schlafly was very quietly inducted into the cable Hall of Fame in 2008.
He was part of the 2008 class.
He was born Herbert Hubb Schlafly, was born August 1919.
He graduated from Notre Dame in 1941.
He then later enrolled in graduate studies at Syracuse University.
He joined General Electric, was soon assigned to the MIT Radiation Laboratory as a gunfire control radar project engineer.
1947, he became director of television research for 20th Century Fox.
Projects included large-screen television projection, TV broadcasting, and experiments in cross-polarization microwave transition.
Herbert, sorry, Hubert Hub Schlafly was enrolled as a fellow in the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers in 1951 and is a senior member of the distinguished IEEE and the prestigious SCTE.
Herbert Hubb Schlafly, being honored today by me on the EIB network, is a co-founder, director, and vice president of the Teleprompter Corporation.
He invented it, folks.
Herbert Hub Schlafly, honored today as the inventor of the teleprompter, thereby enabling the presidential election in Barack Obama.
We'll be right back.
Welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, talent on loan from God.
Can't say this too much.
Christopher Dodd last night floated the idea of taxing these retention bonuses paid to AIG executives at the rate of 90%.
Here is Christopher Dodd last night talking about this.
As I gather, we own about 79% of the company, so we'll be taxing ourselves in a sense.
So I don't know if I'd still like to pursue that avenue, but I don't know whether or not it was a practical matter.
It would produce the kind of results we're looking for.
We're all searching for a way to get this money back, and one way or another, we're going to figure out how to do it.
This is just outrageous.
It is outrageous.
Chris Dodd, again, trying to look for a way to get the money back.
Doesn't know if we'd be taxing ourselves.
Notice if he says, or notice when he says, I don't know, we'd be taxing ourselves.
I don't know if I want to do that.
Yeah, tax us.
Tax everybody else.
But don't tax yourselves.
Oh, no.
Just remember the stimulus package.
Dodd unexpectedly added an executive compensation restriction to the bill.
That's his idea.
Limit executive pay.
That amendment provides an exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed to before February 11th.
The law of the land is these bonuses are not subject to any limitation on their amounts.
That's the law of the land.
Doesn't matter.
Chris Dodd and the boys want to pretend they even forgot to put that in there, forgot that they did put it in there, and now join this popular.
I mean, you know, the villagers and their pitchforks are circling out there, and everybody wants to lead them.
Which takes me back to Chuck Grassley.
These Republicans, this is really frustrating.
Their first goal when they look at news ought to be advance conservatism, or if not conservatism, advance the Republican Party and go after Democrats.
Okay, maybe Grassley doesn't have the guts to defend the bonuses because they're unpopular.
And nobody in elected office has the will to try to explain this to all these angry villagers, the peasants with their pitchforks.
But why not go after Democrats on this?
Why not go after the Chuck, instead of going after these bonuses and so forth, take the occasion to go after the Democrats here?
This is just it's it I say it's frustrating.
It's actually not frustrating because I don't have any expectations that these Republicans are going to behave in that way.
So why get it?
Why get it?
Why get all depressed when you know something's not going to happen?
Why get all bent out of shape about it?
Let's grab some phone calls quickly.
Todd in Newark, Delaware, you're up first.
Great to have you here, sir.
Thank you.
Mr. Limbaugh, thank you for taking my call.
Yes, sir.
You're a real role model to me.
I've been listening to you for 19 years, and you've really impacted my life greatly.
But that's not why I called.
And I know you hate to hear this kind of comment, so I'll just make my point.
I get so aggravated when I'm listening to these congressmen raise a fit about these bonuses when they had complete control over whether or not they would be given out when they wrote the bill.
And when you listen to the administration talk about how the earmarks in his porculus bill were such a small percentage of the total spending, but yet you look at the percentage of these $2 million in bonuses, you would think that it's half the money that they were given.
That's an excellent point.
And I want to expand on this point because these bonuses are less than one-tenth of 1%.
1 tenth of 1% of the actual bailout money AIG got.
You could look at these bonuses as the equivalent of earmarks.
Essentially, they're earmarks.
And of course, Congress defends their earmarks and the same basis.
It's such a small percentage of the whole budget.
The omnibus is such a small percentage.
It doesn't really matter.
We've got to pay our specs to our constituents, blah, blah, blah.
These people, you know, what's good for them is not good for you.
You're not going to have the kind of freedom and leeway they have.
Look, folks, the dirty little secret about all of this is not only are you being played for suckers, not only is all of this that supposedly happened and caught everybody's surprise this past weekend, it's been known for months.
The real down and dirty here, if you want the down low, the real down low is that of the $173 billion that has been given to AIG, over half of it AIG has given to other banks.
It appears that the real purpose of AIG was to act as a laundry or as a clearinghouse.
Goldman Sachs got $13 billion when they said they didn't want any money.
So they technically didn't get the money from the government.
They got it from AIG.
AIG gave a bunch of European banks a bunch of money, including Deutsche Bank and other things.
And the Wall Street Journal editorializes about this today.
And I must say, they publish, post their editorials late at night the night before the newspapers to be published.
And I saw it last night.
I got a bunch of emails.
I really didn't people.
Do you think they heard your monologue today and copied what?
Because I made the point yesterday.
Everybody, folks, this is the biggest misdirection play that has ever been run.
While you're all upset about these bonuses, the real interesting thing here is $93 billion out of $173 was actually given to other banks through AIG, and nobody's talking about that.
Nobody's worried about that.
And it still hasn't helped.
All this money hadn't helped AIG.
It hasn't helped all these other banks.
It hasn't worked whatsoever.
And now, Chris Dodd, well, they've got to figure out a way to get the money back.
Get the money back.
Senator Dodd, I speak for millions of American citizens when I say, I would love the money back that you people have wasted on the war on poverty.
I would love the money back that you have wasted on this stimulus bill.
I would love the money back that you have wasted on the great society.
I would love, you people in Congress and in the Senate, you are far worse.
You have created more boondoggles, created more problems, have been more irresponsible than all of these executives on Wall Street that are in your crosshairs combined.
And the audacity of these people sitting up there as innocent bystanders who had no role in this, as though they are the epitome of perfection, that they do their jobs flawlessly.
They have the right to singularly sit in judgment of any citizen when these are some of the biggest flops that this country has ever produced.
And I, folks, I am not peasant and I'm not with a pitchfork and I'm not an angry villager and not upset about these bonuses.
Because you know what?
It's like I said yesterday, once you make the decision to bail them out, then you're stuck.
Once you bail them out, you can't complain that they do what they do.
And don't forget, these bonuses, these bonuses were exempted by Senator Dodd himself from any limitation on their amounts.
These bonuses were known a year ago.
The amounts were known a year ago.
Months ago, the payout date was known.
It's only when the payout date neared that a false, phony, my gosh, we're shocked.
Look what AIG did with the money.
Controversy was created by Obama's teleprompter and willing accomplices in the Congress, the Democrat Party, and the media.
And you're falling for it.
Well, I don't know how many of you are, but you're falling for it, hook, line, and sinker.
What must it feel like?
I've often wondered what it feels like to be a mob member, part of a mob, not crime mob, but I mean, just a mindless, brainless twit following along and whatever emotion that has been created.
I've wondered what it's like to not have any individuality whatsoever.
I wonder what life would be like to have no sense of self.
And it's shocking to see so many Americans that can get so spun and so caught up in this.
It's actually not their fault.
They've had the whole White House, which is loved and adored.
And the drive-by media, the Democrat Party spinning all this and such.
It's just, it's outrageous.
It's indescribably outrageous.
We will be back.
Stay with us.
I tell you, this is starting to border on the semi-criminals, folks.
CNBC just reported, because Barney Frank's saying so.
Barney Frank just now found out the details of these AIG bonuses.
He got a letter this morning from Andrew Cuomo, the Attorney General of New York, and he's conducting a press conference about how shocked he is to learn that they've known about this for a year.
This is the biggest dog and pony show, the biggest script.
This is a giant act.
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