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March 23, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:19
March 23, 2009, Monday, Hour #2
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Yes, America's Anchorman is away today, and this is Mark Stein, your undocumented anchor man uh sitting in.
And don't forget Russia'll be here for the rest of the week uh for a full four days of excellence in broadcasting.
Uh we have we've had uh uh the the EIB has outsourced it to a foreigner for some it's kind of uh exotic foreign undercut uh price bargain-wise mediocrity in broadcasting.
So we're we're gonna we're holding our own here, and then Russia's gonna be uh back tomorrow.
Uh last time I was here, by the way, I just want to get this out of the way.
I accidentally walked off with the key to the executive men's room, uh and I took it back to New Hampshire with me.
And uh there's no executive men's room in New Hampshire.
I think the nearest one is at Ted Kennedy's office, and uh believe me, I don't want to go there.
Uh and Mark Belling, who was guest hosting later in the week, was complaining bitterly about this uh fly by night uh riffraff guest host absconding uh with the men's room key.
So today I'm not allowed to use the key to the executive men's room.
Uh so if the commercial breaks seem a little longer than usual, it's because I've got to go all the way down to the uh uh regular men's room in uh sub basement level five uh round the back of the furnace.
So I I feel like an AIG vice president.
Um I believe I saw Barney Frank on TV announcing that in fact an executive men's room key is now a taxable benefit uh that will be taxed at the special rate of ninety percent.
Uh so it may be in your interest to go all the way down to sub basement level five and just use and use the regular uh men's room, because uh you know, but you don't want to find Barney in there uh levying the ninety percent taxable benefit rate when you go in.
Uh we've been talking about uh in the first hour, I posed this question.
Uh there were three options really for uh Obama in November.
Three models for his presidency.
There were those who said he was a bipartisan moderate.
That was what a lot of the Obamacons said.
He took like talked a lot of sense and uh he he surely couldn't be so deranged as to govern to the left.
That's that's gone.
Those guys were wrong.
Those guys were wrong.
And really, this what is uh seriously at issue here is why uh David Brooks and the other smart guys were so smart that they fell for this idea uh that he was uh that Obama was somehow this sophisticated uh bipartisan moderate centrist.
That's gone.
It's clear he's not.
Uh also uh as uh David Warren, who is um uh an old Canadian colleague of mine, he writes for the Ottawa Citizen.
Uh, he's uh he's actually, as is uh so often the case with this uh president, you often uh read sharper critiques in uh the uh foreign press than you do in the U.S. newspapers.
He made the point that when you look at where uh Barack Obama has spent his entire adult life, you know, uh twenty years in the pews of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, in the uh polytechnic Marxist hot house of uh Hyde Park hanging out with Bill Ayers and uh and that kind of crowd.
Or just uh sitting around the kitchen table uh talking with uh Michelle Obama about how uh th she's never been proud of anything that's happened uh in America in her lifetime.
His he has lived in a world of left-wing assumptions.
So even if he were to govern to the center, his idea of where the center is well to the left of where most Americans would place it.
That's simply the reality of his life.
Uh so the so then we get on to the other two options.
Is he just like a doctrinaire leftist who really does want to turn us into Europe?
You know, and we can we can do a lot of damage on that front.
Uh it used to be that uh uh the the percentage of state spending as a proportion of GDP, which is like a critical economic indicator in the United States, was thirty-four percent.
In other words, thirty-four percent of America's GDP was uh state spending, government spending.
Uh in the last few years it's gone up to forty percent.
That's bad.
That's bad.
That number needs to go down.
But if you look at what it is in Sweden, for example, it's fifty-four percent.
Uh fifty-four percent of the economy in Sweden is government spending.
That's what happens when you introduce big government programs.
Everything eventually uh grows to depend on the government in one way or the other.
Uh it's that's simply the reality of uh of of uh uh how life operates in those countries.
Fifty-four percent of uh uh of uh GDP of the economy of the Swedish economy is government spending.
And what that means is that you've got to tax people an awful lot to to pay for it.
Yeah, in uh in in uh Denmark, for example, they've got sixty percent top personal tax rates.
If you look at uh the uh what they call the VAT there, that is like the sale of the national sales tax, that's twenty-five percent, twenty-five percent national sales tax.
You're transferring more money, more money uh from the people to the government until eventually the government becomes an ever bigger part of the economy.
Now then if you look at uh other parts of Europe, in uh Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland, uh government spending counts for between seventy-three and seventy-eight percent of the economy.
Now at that point, you might as well be uh in Soviet Eastern Europe.
There's no point being in private enterprise in those jurisdictions.
Uh that's why people get out.
There's no point.
You're either on welfare or you're running a some kind of business that has a big government contract.
But if you're just like a guy trying to make a living, there's no point trying to make a living in those jurisdictions.
You best to just take a cab to the airport and get the hell out and find somewhere uh where the where the uh setup of society is not one massive transfer uh from the productive, dynamic entrepreneurial portion of society to an ever bigger, ever more bloated, ever more inefficient state.
Uh and I think it's uh I think it's an interesting question.
Everything every time Obama is off the prompter, off the prompter, every time he's not scripted, uh he's betraying.
He he betrays that that is where his inclinations lie, that he thinks it's natural for the state uh essentially to annex an ever larger part of life.
It works to his advantage.
Uh basically, if you turn freeborn citizens into dependents, if you turn them into junkies with government as the pusher, uh that's very good.
That's very good for the permanent governing class.
And you get a sense of that when you watch Barney Frank uh on TV right now.
I mean, who is Barney Frank?
He's like some no-account congressman.
Uh, you know, I don't want to dredge up uh past history, but uh the only uh the only time he's ever intersected with any uh profitable private enterprise, it turned out to be being uh being run without his knowledge from his own uh apartment.
Uh I don't uh uh d that's as far as I know, that's Barney Frank's only experience of private enterprise, and God bless it, God bless it.
At least that particular business that was being run out of his uh accommodation wasn't asking for a government bailout.
They were one of the few uh enterprises that's apparently able to make it uh on its own uh in in in the economy.
Uh but Barney Frank, Barney Frank, why is this legislator for life on TV dictating contract terms to executives in private companies?
Why?
Because he's from Massachusetts.
Massachusetts is no longer a functioning democracy.
It's not just that it's a um a de facto one party state in that it elects uh disproportionately vast numbers of Democrats.
It's that most political races in Massachusetts are no longer even contested.
Uh there's no point running anybody uh against the Democrats.
So it's not it's it's becoming a uh a literal one-party state.
I think it's something like only 17 percent of races uh are ever contested uh in Massachusetts.
It's got a dysfunctional and uncompetitive political environment.
And so we're stuck with this guy, Barney Frank, forever, forever.
He'll be there forever.
Uh and uh and he's the guy uh who decides, who goes on T he goes on TV like some big comfortable Gulf Amir, president for life of a banana republic, uh, and says and starts uh saying, well, you know, uh the public's sick of you guys.
You're gonna have to give up your bonuses.
And if you if you come quietly, if you come out with uh your hands up uh and you're and and your bonuses uh where we can see them and confiscate them, then we're not gonna leak your names to the public uh and give them your street addresses.
I mean, this is a s this is uh this is essentially the w the the direction we're heading.
Uh where the state uh annexes uh such a vast chunk of the economy that there is simply no point in being in any uh kind of enterprise that isn't connected or dependent on government one way or the other.
That's the way a lot of European j jurisdictions are, and it hasn't worked out for them.
Now the other the other alternative view is that he's not a leftist, he's just an incompetent.
And uh you know, I can go either way on this.
I can go either way on this.
Uh Rush uh sent me an email at w at uh one in the morning last uh last night.
He's uh he's away today, but he sent me this thing uh saying that uh uh essentially saying that he thought um you know it's not uh it's not true that uh th this I this idea of him being an incompetent i is a bluff, is a kind of feint, uh because it's uh it doesn't matter.
It advances his agenda.
Uh w whatever happens, however bad it appears he's doing, it actually is in his interests.
Uh that we have a situation where for two months now what's happened is that he's been eviscerating uh American wealth.
And he's been doing this.
He's been doing this very effectively.
Uh basically just uh uh talking down the economy, talking down the private sector, uh talking down the dynamism of the American company uh uh of the American economy, what what keeps things going.
So in the end it doesn't really matter whether he's a hardcore leftist or he's just an incompetent, because it leads us to the same direction.
A sclerotic, bankrupt uh America uh where people just want to flee.
People just want to flee.
They there's no point being in a dynamic, uh uh uh uh uh creative, uh job generating, wealth generating sector, uh, when you you're being subject to retrospective 90 percent taxation and all kinds of other wins from Barney Frank.
Uh so we'll get into that.
1800-282-2882, uh, and lots more uh to talk about, too.
This is very there is no precedent in modern American history for a sixty-day start to a presidency like this.
Uh you you look at uh uh for example the Treasury Department.
They just announced another trillion dollar thing for toxic assets, uh buying up bad and you think it's the Treasury Department.
That sounds big.
There's nobody in there.
There's Tim Geitner and the eighteen positions underneath him.
Nobody but Obama nominated uh one guy for deputy treasury secretary, and it turned out he had some legal problem.
I don't know whether it was just the uh, you know, the uh usual tax thing or whether it was something worse.
I don't know whether he's uh wanted for a series of uh uh unsolved prostitute murders on down by the dock in Amsterdam in the 1970s or whatever.
Who knows for these guys?
But the but the nomination suddenly woo disappeared uh and that was gone.
It was away.
Had a point he hasn't even nominated anyone for the other seventeen positions.
So when it says the Treasury Department, the Treasury, the United States Treasury Department is spending a trillion dollars, it means it's Tim Geitner and uh and forty other people.
Who know we don't even know who these forty people are.
What are they?
Interns?
I don't know.
Uh he's it's uh Tim Geitner and forty interns uh are uh uh deciding how to spend a trillion dollars.
Do you know how big a c a billion dollar company is?
How many people would be deciding how to spend a billion dollars?
Now we've got Tim Gitner and uh a couple of dozen obscure public servants, civil servants spending a trillion dollars.
How can they possibly do that with any efficiency?
I mean, Tim Geitner is saying, well, look, we've got a half a trillion dollars here.
I don't have time to uh deal with this kind of nickel and dime stuff.
Uh so uh so uh Tiffany Sue, the nice little uh intern over in uh down on the third floor, you take care of that half trillion dollars.
Figure out who it's gonna go to.
There's no don't th th you can guarantee that the bulk of this money is gonna be wasted because there is simply no structure on earth that could spend a trillion dollars efficiently, even if it wasn't Tim Gaitner and and three dozen interns in charge of it.
Uh so we'll talk about that.
1-800-282-2882.
This is Mark Stein with lots more straight ahead on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Mark Stein, in for Rush on the EIB network at the uh the the drawing of the age of the Hopi Change.
It hasn't started quite like uh like we all thought it was gonna be.
Let us go to Eric in uh Naperville, Illinois.
Uh Eric, thanks for waiting.
You're on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Mark, mega ditto, you're doing a great job uh filling in for the uh titular head of the Republican Party.
Yeah, ma mega ditto's uh to you too.
And uh and you're right, uh Rush uh disavows this title.
But the fact is uh he was right about this guy Obama back in the fall, and a lot of the smart guys got suckered.
Uh and it's important to bear to bear that in mind.
Now they're telling us uh when the when so when they criticize Rush, uh basically uh that they'd be better off dealing with the moats in their own eyes on some of these issues.
They got succored by this guy back in the fall.
Uh uh Anyway, great to have you on the show, Eric.
Okay, so uh, you know, members of my family uh, you know, have had the questionable pleasure of uh living under uh the uh benevolent rule of uh people like Bismarck, the first socialist of the twenty-first century, uh Roosevelt, Khrushchev, Hitler, and that's just the short list.
They're a listers.
What is that?
Uh Bismarck, Roosevelt, Khrushchev, Hitler.
That's what hell of a dinner party.
Uh so how did that how did that work out?
They so they start in where?
In uh in Germany?
Uh they they your your forebears are German, is that right, Eric?
Eastern Europe in the Baltics.
Oh, right, right.
Oh, well that's uh that is tough territory.
But I tell you I'll tell you something.
I don't know whether you've kept up your uh Latvian or Estonian uh citizenship.
But don't th a couple of those uh Baltic states have the old fourteen percent flat tax now.
They could be looking mighty attractive uh compared to what you're paying in Naperville.
I'm leaving my options open.
That's right.
Well, we're getting to that stage.
You know, I don't believe actually joint citizenship, but I think we're getting to the stage now where it pays to have a couple of spare passports uh sewn into the lining of your coat.
That uh keep keep don't let your Estonian citizenship lapse.
Uh so you're but you're basically your forebears, you they thought, uh Bismarck, wow.
Chancellor Bismarck can't get any worse than this, and then hey, Reichsfuhrer Hitler shows up and they're thinking, woo!
And then uh Stalin uh takes over and they holy c and so eventually they decide uh let's get on the boat to Ellis Island.
That's that's what happened, is it, Eric?
Absolutely.
It went from better to worse.
Right, right.
And so now how do you feel after after finally making it to the promised land uh that uh to find that the president actually uh his promises mean no more than his promise to get a dog?
Absolutely.
Uh but you know what, Mark?
My my question is that uh, you know, Obama uh you know, we know that uh John F. Kerry uh uh if he would have been elected, that uh Soros would have been his puppet master.
Right.
Uh and I'm just wondering uh since Obama, you know, being such a uh Marxist Pollyanna Dolt uh who uh really doesn't understand the consequences.
Just j just a minute, I'm writing that down.
A Marxist poly and adult.
Uh don't that's uh not a lot of bipartisan outreach in there.
You're not exactly reaching across the aisle.
Okay, buy uh by Marxist Polly and adult.
We'll have it on a bumper sticker before the uh afternoon is out.
Carry on, carry on.
Okay, so he doesn't really understand the consequences of his philosophy like um maybe my parents and my grandparents did.
Uh uh I just wonder who his puppet master is, and uh if uh he doesn't have a puppet master, is it just a case of uh be Obama being uh acting as his own lawyer?
No, I think he d uh you said it was George Soros with John Kerry.
I think it's clear it's the you know, it's the teleprompter here.
I think it's like that.
What what was that machine in uh 2001 a space odyssey?
The computer in 2001 and space How the how the computer in two thousand space odyssey.
Uh it's the teleprompter it's the teleprompter here.
This is uh this is some rogue uh teleprompter that's uh the that's that's actually running the show.
Um but you're right.
I mean uh those of us who've come here from elsewhere, this is nothing new.
We've seen all this stuff and we know where it leads.
Uh and a lot of people uh came to America because they uh lived under this kind of regime in other parts of the world, and they understood that it uh event uh effectively meant uh there was no opportunity.
You were penalized.
If you were someone who worked hard uh and uh generated wealth, you were penalized for doing that.
You were penalized uh the way that Obama talks when he's off the prompter and he starts talking about confiscating profits of pharmaceutical companies or starts talking about how ExxonMobil aren't gonna give up their profits that easily.
He's got this uh schoolboy view of economics that uh that rich people that uh when you talk about ExxonMobil, uh that they make money and then they stick it in a big mattress under the bed.
It's like uh Uncle Scrooge McDuck, uh Donald Duck's uncle.
If you remember, he used to drive around uh with uh the the uh the big tractor uh and he had a warehouse that was piled with dollar bills, and he just used to drive and he'd take a big pile of dollar bills and drive it over and stick it in the other part of the that is how Obama thinks what people do with their money.
They don't.
They don't.
They spend their money.
Uh If you got a restaurant, uh it's people with money to spend who eat out.
Uh if you don't have money to spend, you don't eat out.
Uh and he's uh uh and he's the guy who thinks uh in this way has this uh a pathetic uh deformed view of uh of economic reality that rich people just hoard their money.
That's not what it's about.
Uh so is he a leftist or is he just an incompetent?
We'll carry on with this discussion uh a little later.
Mark Stein sitting in for Rush Limbaugh on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, and we have lots more straight ahead at the start of another great week on the ERB network.
Yeah, great to be with you at the start of another week of excellence in broadcasting.
This is Mark Stein, your toxic asset, and no amount of bailout money is gonna change that.
Uh Rush will be back tomorrow, the last the last non-toxic asset in the United States.
Russia's gonna be uh Russia's gonna be here tomorrow, take you through the uh end of the week.
Uh when everything else is bailed out, when everything else has been uh submitted to rule by Barney Frank and 90% punitive tax, there will still be Rush, the last non-toxic asset, this show in the United States.
I was out in Palm Springs a couple of days ago.
This is really the goes back to the point that Eric uh was making.
You know, Eric's family came here, they were in the Baltic States, which had a hellish twentieth century.
Uh just uh, you know, one one bad turn after another just got uh uh from from Bismarck, as he was saying, from the German Empire, uh to the Third Reich, uh to the Soviet Union, uh and now actually uh uh very pleasant places with these uh twelve, fourteen percent uh flat tax uh rates, uh and that's great.
And uh I mean the flat tax, by the way, because uh that's Eastern Europe that's got the flat tax.
In Western Europe they have the uh flatulence tax.
Uh they have announced plans, the European Union.
This is Al Gore's doing, by the way.
You know, you can blame Al Gore for everything, and uh I see no reason not to do that.
So Al Gore, let's blame Al Gore for the flatulence tax.
What it is is that if you own a cow in uh in uh Ireland, you will be levied thirteen euros to pay for the flatulence emissions of each cow you have.
And that sounds pretty stiffy, you've got like a big herd of cow.
That is an awful lot of taxable uh flatulence uh that's coming out there.
But if uh if you're in Denmark, it's eighty euros per cow.
Eighty euros per cow for your flatulence uh emissions.
And the reason is apparently that bovine flatulence uh was not factored into the carbon offset trade.
Apparently it's the one thing you can't trade.
You know, if you go on a plane, if you like take a flight to Europe, you can uh if you take a flight to Europe, you can say uh you can buy an offset.
That's what Al Gore does.
He fli when he flies across the world to give a speech warning against global warming, his flight in carbon neutr is carbon neutral because he's uh traded some carbon credits to, say, a terrorist mastermind who lives in a cave in the Pakistani tribal lands and who can't fly anyway, uh because of the way things are at the moment.
So they trade off uh and so Al Gore's flight is carbon neutral.
But apparently the one thing that isn't covered by these carbon trading things is bovine flatulence.
So they have uh they've they've uh uh they're taxing proposing to tax cow emissions in uh in Europe.
Uh and yet at the same time, uh this is again where big government gets you.
The European Union has decreed that while Ireland and Denmark have to decrease their bovine flatulence, uh Hungary and Romania can increase their bovine flatulence by twenty percent.
I don't even understand that.
That's bureaucracy for you.
Some guy in Brussels has decided that uh the Balkans is not flatulent enough.
Uh the North Sea, uh the flatulence, uh apparently the like the cloud of flatulence over the North Sea has got to be directed over the Balkans uh because the Balkans is insufficiently flatulent.
So some flatulent Irishman uh he and because there's no trading in it, the flatulent Irish guy cannot trade his uh emissions to the the guy in Romania.
Anyway, that's big government, that's big government for you.
Uh and that is where we're headed.
Now you go back to medieval times.
You go back to medieval times.
Uh if you if you if if you were some gnarled old peasant living in a hut in the middle of nowhere, uh, and uh the uh some guy in the full doublet and hose rides up on a horse, and he says, uh I s I uh uh hey, uh hither, get thee hence uh peasant.
I'm here to collect the bovine flatulence tax of three groats per cow.
Hurry up and uh be on my way.
Even in medieval times, even medieval times.
The uh gnarled old peasant would have said, Oh, I don't know.
Uh that don't sound right to me.
Uh the king is uh taxing me for the flatulence of my cows.
Uh yeah, you're pulling my leg on you.
That's like the medieval peasant medieval peasant in primitive society, he gets it.
Now, twenty-first century, you say to a you say to a guy in Denmark, he's standing in his field with a bunch of Holsteins, and you say, Hey, we're here to collect the flatulence tax of eighty euros per cow, and he says, Oh, sure, why not?
If it helps the environment, here, here's you know, uh we're in danger of forgetting why uh this country rebelled against uh King George the Third.
Uh and it's important all these tea parties over the car.
I like to think if you'd gone back to 1776, and uh King George the Third had announced that he was uh taxing uh colonial cattle on their flatulence, uh that he in Boston they would have had a big old Boston baked bean party in Boston Harbor.
They would have the had had the Boston Bean Party and they would have told the king where to get off.
Uh that at some point, at some point, uh we have to remember, we have to remember that we are free-born citizens, and every crazy idea does not suddenly become legitimate uh because Barney Frank or Nancy Pelosi or some other figure like that is on TV uh announcing it as if it's perfectly normal.
And that's what's wrong with this that's what's wrong with this present thing.
When they say you don't like AIG's bonus.
Barney when Barney Frank is on TV uh uh and they're saying, Well, this is unacceptable, we're gonna tax them at ninety percent.
That's worse.
That is worse than anything King George the Third attempted to do uh to colonial settlers in colonial New England in the eighteenth century.
People have got to get real about this.
Uh otherwise we're gonna be uh wafted into Lala land on clouds of bovine flatulence.
That is what is at issue here.
Uh it is time to reclaim the principles of citizenship uh and liberty and not simply accede uh to the absurd encroachments of big government uh every day.
Uh this is Mark Stein sitting in for rush, lots more your calls straight ahead at the start of another week of excellence in broadcasting.
Mark Stein in for Rush on the EIB network.
Let us go to Jim in Shager Heights, Ohio.
Jim, you're on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Uh thanks for waiting.
Great to talk with you.
Mark Stein, dog musher, eh?
Yeah, that's right.
Does dog flatulence count?
It'll be it'll be next, I'm sure.
Barney Frank, 90% tax on uh on on uh dog flatulence in the Northeast.
That is coming.
And we all know what that can be.
Anyway.
You want to win well ventilated uh house, Jim.
I don't think Obama really wanted to be president.
I think he just wants to play one on television.
Every time he has a job, he farms it out to somebody else.
For instance, he turned the stimulus package over to Congress to become the porculus.
Right.
And uh then he demanded it be passed right away.
Get it done.
Yeah on my desk.
Friday it was on his desk and he didn't sign it till Monday.
He took the trip to Denver to do that.
Yeah, he went off on a long weekend and uh and came back and got to it eventually.
You're right, he's like a kind of uh I I think of him like a kind of showbiz impresario.
He wants to be there as the as the kind of front man getting the credit, uh, but he he he doesn't basically want to be on top of any of these issues.
When you look at when you look at him actually uh trying to talk about toxic assets uh or credit default swaps, you can see him thinking credit default swaps.
It's C D S. It's not default swap credits, it's because he he's messed up when he's trying to remember some of these terms uh in in uh in these technical terms and get them in the right order.
So you're you you're right on that, that I think essentially he he wants to be president, he's happy being president.
Uh he likes going on TV.
I don't understand, by the way, why would a guy think it's his priority to be on Jay Leno?
Uh I don't understand it.
Now you say to him, uh you say he likes playing one on TV.
I think it's more than that.
I think it's when you see him with Henrietta Hughes at these pseudo-town meetings.
I don't think of them as real town meetings, by the way, because if you live in New Hampshire, a town meeting is where some cranky old Cootin plaid uh gets up because the town wants to spend five hundred dollars on a fence for the town dump and you talk about it for three hours uh until the cranky old cootin plaid gets everyone to vote it down to you know three twenty-five dollars.
That's what a town meeting is.
He likes these pseudo-town meetings where Henrietta Hughes uh says, Oh, you know uh uh what I really need I'm hurting for a new house, and I need uh we need a fitted kitchen and we need a bathroom, and he says, uh, hey, don't worry about it, sweetie.
Uh call 1 eight hundred Obama and we'll take care of it.
I think he enjoys that's by the way, not the si the relationship between a citizen and uh and an elected leader.
That is the relationship uh between a subject and a monarch.
And so I'm not so sure he enjoys playing president.
I think he actually enjoys playing Emperor Barack.
It's a little more than that.
Yeah, I think this this Gertner problem.
He has fifteen empty offices that haven't been filled.
That's right, seventeen.
Obama's got a filldose.
Gertner's a techie.
Yeah.
And Obama is just dropping that ball like a rock.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't even understand this because the Republicans in uh late January were basically of a mood to confirm anybody.
Uh they they'd checked the no publicity box, they didn't want to be bothered.
Uh and essentially this guy uh could have nominated anyone and they could all be in position now.
You know the G twenty summit is uh in London in a couple of weeks, and uh Sir Gus O'Donnell, who is the senior British civil servant, uh gave this uh uh interview, uh actually gave a speech in which he said the problem with the United States Treasury is that you call and nobody answers the phone.
It's literally that there's nobody there.
There's nobody to talk to.
We're two months into the administration, and uh the the global superpower has nobody in key positions.
So so when we were talking about he enjoys playing a president on TV, it's not even as if he feels the need to have a full supporting cast.
He's happy for uh you know, he's happy to leave those positions empty for another couple of months.
I have a terrible feeling that Sarah Palin would have done a lot better job.
Jimmy uh Bobby Gindal.
Yeah.
They're they're into staffing, they're into getting things done, not into palming things off on somebody else.
No, you're uh you're absolutely right, uh Jim.
Uh th thanks for your call.
You make a good point there.
Governor Palin was the one with the executive experience.
There were three senators on the ticket in November and one person with executive experience.
She runs a state.
Geographically it would be one of the biggest countries in the world if it was a uh a country.
It's uh it's a difficult place to run.
It's got kind of uh all kinds of special things going on, and people mocked her for it.
They said, this this this is again the absurdity.
The people who told us that Obama was the smart guy who could get things done.
A guy, by the way, who has never who has never done this is like his first full-time job in his life.
This is the first job he's done where he has to turn up at eight in the morning and make decisions.
Uh and they told us uh Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin, she's now what is she?
She was mayor of Wazilla and uh and then governor of Alaska.
That's nothing.
That's not experienced enough to run for president.
She knows nothing about foreign policy.
Not like uh Barack Obama, the one who sends uh Hillary Clinton off to Moscow with the staples easy button, uh supposedly they've got one word on it, and the bur the geniuses in the Obama administration are the most sophisticated, smartest administration uh ever, they're all the Ivy League guys.
They can't translate one word into Russian.
They can't buy uh the British Prime Minister a DVD which works on a British DVD player.
But no, no, no, it was Sarah Palin, who was the ditz who was the m the moose hunting ditz who knew nothing about foreign policy.
Sarah Palin, remember her joke at the convention in her convention speech?
Uh she said she was uh mayor of Wazilla, uh and she said, uh that's kind of like being a community organizer, except with, you know, actual responsibilities.
Uh whatever you think of Sarah Palin, she would have gotten to j uh uh into office on January the twentieth, uh and uh and she would have begun governing like an executive.
Uh and it wouldn't have been about flying out to Burbank uh to Kibitz uh and do your uh special Olympics shtick with Jay Leno on the on the tonight show.
Let's go to Bob uh who is in uh Port Charlotte, Florida.
Bob, you're on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Megadoddles, Mark, and thanks for taking my call.
My pleasure, Bob.
Uh quick comment on the AIG fiasco, and then perhaps a question you could answer for me.
Uh I find it incredulous that the Democrats created the seven hundred and eighty seven dollar or billion dollar porculus bill.
They passed it without any Republican participation.
Crammed it down the voters' throat in a rush.
And now and then Obama signs it, and now what they're all playing stupid like they didn't know what was in it.
Yeah.
You know?
This is this is fantastic.
Everyone you're you're right.
This is two stages.
Uh the guys go, Well, you know, we need to sign this bill.
Uh now, 24 hours.
Got no down away.
You've got to pass this bill.
Pass this bill.
So they all pass this bill.
The none of them have read.
The none of them are read.
Uh and they and they pass it and they sign it, and uh a couple of weeks go by and uh suddenly there's a big fuss because some guys get bonuses for it, and the bonuses are specifically provided for in the legislation, and they say, Well, I can't have been expected to know anything about that.
Oh, you what do you think?
I'm the kind of guy who uh reads legislation before I vote on it.
And what's what's even more pathetic is the the uh y you point out that the guy who uh one of the guys going on cable TV and huffing and a puffing about how outrageous these bonuses are, is the guy who actually introduced the clause that uh specifically provides for these bonuses.
And he's saying, Well, I can't be expected to know every rinky-ding little bit of trillion dollar legislation that's introduced in my name.
You know, uh Obama's people call my people and some intern down on the third floor uh introduces some boilerplate lingo in my name, and uh the bill passes, and you can't expect a big time uh l congressman or senator like me to have read that bill or gone anything near it.
This is the death of Republican government, uh, Bob.
You should you should you should uh you should be ashamed of this is the death of the American idea being played out live twenty-four-seven on TV.
It's scary.
What's worse is the Fed uh said last week they're gonna buy up to a trillion dollars worth of treasury notes.
Right.
I mean, this is basically printing money.
Just like what the re Weimer Republic of 1920s Germany did, till he got to the point uh that a wheelbarrow of money took a wheelbarrow money to buy a loaf of bread.
That's right.
That's right.
I mean, how does the Fed get to uh spend a trillion dollars without congressional approval yeah, I know it's the same way.
I'm like I write for a living.
So it's like me publishing a book and then uh buying a million copies myself, and then I'll have a million seller.
Yeah, fantastic.
I think why didn't I?
Thanks a lot.
What a terrific idea, Bob.
That's brilliant.
I must do it.
Uh thanks for your call.
This is Mark Snyder of the EIB network, and we got lots more uh straight ahead, so we get for Rush.
1800-282-2882.
That's the number on the Rush Limbaugh show.
1-800-282-2882.
Mark Stein, your toxic acid in today, and then Rush uh comes in uh tomorrow take through uh the rest of the uh the week.
Uh this uh congressional budget office story is interesting.
Uh the CBO is predicting that the deficits now these are like government bureaucrats.
They got uh no uh they they got no dog in this fight.
Uh they th the CBO is predicting that deficits could be two point three trillion dollars higher than the White House has admitted so far.
Uh there is no there is no precedent uh for this scale of spending and this level of expansion of government.
That's what I was talking about, by the way, when I said I was in Palm Springs a couple of days ago.
I was I was just driving uh through the California desert.
Yeah, it'd be beautiful part of the world.
You you come down Dinosaur Drive, turn on a Bob Hope Drive, turn on a Frank Sinatra drive, turn on to Ginger Rogers Drive.
Lovely part of the world.
Uh it's very reasonable.
There's a lot of foreclosed property there.
Very easy to buy a nice house then uh these days.
It's not uh out of the reach of a lot of Americans.
But it's gonna be out of the reach of our children and grandchildren.
They are gonna live in what uh Peggy Noonan calls post-prosperity America if we stay on this present track.
They're gonna be like Germany.
Uh when people say the Europeans have got all the right answers, you go to Europe and uh they live in smaller apartments, uh, they have smaller cars, uh, they do not live the kind of life that the American middle class do.
And that is the kind of life that our children and grandchildren are gonna be having uh to get used to.
Uh they're not gonna live in those uh uh those they won't have the possibility of dreaming of living uh in those houses.
So we won't have the American dream as we've known it these past couple of centuries.
We'll have something closer to the Belgian dream.
And if you're thinking, hey, the Belgian dream, that doesn't sound quite right.
That's because there isn't one, folks.
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