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March 23, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:26
March 23, 2009, Monday, Hour #3
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Hey, great to be with you.
Yes, America's Hank Man is away, and this is your undocumented anchor man, no supporting paperwork whatsoever sitting in for Rush today.
Rush will be back uh tomorrow.
1-800-282-2882.
You know, we've been uh we've been talking about uh Barack Obama, the terrific job he's doing uh creating a more equal society.
If in the sense of an equal society, you mean uh a society that's getting more equal to like a third world banana republic economic basket case.
Uh we've had the latest of these toxic asset bailouts today, uh trillion dollar uh tr trillion dollar bailout for tax uh nobody even cares now.
Twelve zeros on the air.
Does anybody I can't even people don't even remember the number less than a trillion now.
It's just uh it's like if you're uh if you're proposing government expenditure and it's not a trillion dollars, you just sound like some cheapskate.
No one takes you seriously.
It's got to be a trillion.
Trillion is now the new minimum, the new baseline for government, trillion dollars.
And as we heard the CBO estimated uh that his uh that his calculations of deficits are off by over two trillion dollars.
We're gonna be paying the bill uh for these last couple of months for a long, long time.
How bad's it gonna get?
In uh the Associated Press has a story out just now.
More women going from jobless to topless.
Uh this is what it's come to.
Uh there's so few there's uh there's uh they've got a picture here of an attractive lady, Eva Stone.
She's got a bachelor's degree in graphic design, and she's now working as a stripper at Chicago's Pink Monkey Gentleman's Club.
By the way, I don't want to sound like one of these elitist conservatives like uh uh Christopher Buckley or David Brooks at the New York Times.
I'm not sure myself, speaking as a gentleman, whether I'd uh be uh inclined to belong to a gentleman's club uh with a name like the Pink Monkey.
It doesn't sound quite uh it doesn't sound quite like a gentleman's club, does it?
It's not like uh what is it, what is it here, the Princeton Club, the Knickerbock Club?
Pink Monkey doesn't have quite the gentlemanly ring to it.
But maybe that's just maybe I'm just being an East Coast elitist about this stuff.
Anyway, uh these uh women are going from uh jobless to topless.
They're now being driven into taking their clothes off uh for money and uh uh revealing their non-toxic assets.
Uh it's the only way they can uh uh make a living in uh in this economy.
What is the best way to deal with what is happening around the world?
I mean, I mentioned last hour that the so-called United States Treasury Department right now is one guy, Tim Guyton, who's not the most impressive guy.
Uh he was the one, if you recall, uh he tried to claim his kid summer camp as legitimate business expense.
So is he the kind of guy you would want to put trillions of dollars in charge of?
He his excuse for this, by the way, you couldn't figure out turbo tax.
Couldn't figure out turbo.
Turbo tax is one of these things you you buy uh you stick the C D in your computer and it says, if yes, click here, if no, click there.
Anyone can do turbo tax, except the Treasury Secretary of the United States.
But not to worry, we're giving him trillions of dollars.
And he's got a full staff there.
All the offices are empty, but he's got like forty low-level civil service uh interns who are who we're gonna parcel it out, they'll each spend about half a trillion dollars apiece, and uh at the end of that we'll have spent all the money wisely.
This is lunacy.
This is lunacy.
Do you have any idea of how many billions of dollars are just gonna disappear?
No one will ever know what happened to them.
No one will you might as well they'd be better to open up the windows of uh the Treasury Department and hurl three point seven trillion dollars out the window in dollar bills, because there's at least a chance that the wind might change direction and blow some of them back into circulation, uh, even though, you know, 2.3 trillion dollars of them would land in the Potomac and be uh get soaked and wafted out into the Atlantic Ocean, never to be seen again.
This is this is simply uh not possible.
It's not possible for civil servants to calibrate uh and align the global economy and make it all start functioning again.
Now, weda Caller, he uh didn't stick with us, uh, but he's typical of a lot of people who say, well, you know, you're g uh going on about uh uh Obama and you're going on about Barney Frank, and you're going on about Tim Gaidner, but the Republicans were all for this too.
Yeah, I d I got no objection to that.
I d uh I objected and Rush objected back in September when Henry Paulson started doing all this stuff.
Uh The point is you cannot re-inflate a global credit bubble, which is what uh we're trying to do.
Uh when overvalued assets are declining to their real value, the best thing you can do is get the hell out of the way uh and let them settle where their real value is.
But there's no point, just uh no point trying to pump trillions of dollars in uh just in effect uh to try and uh reinflate a uh a global credit bubble uh that's subject to all kinds of factors, you have nothing to say in.
Now AIG is uh is a great example of a distraction.
Uh n there's a lot of Republicans demagoguing on this too.
John McCain, one of the reasons John McCain was such a ridiculous presidential candidate uh for the Republican Party is because he essentially signed on to Obama's view of this uh in the fall.
You know, he uh uh McCain talked more about greedy Wall Street flat cats than Obama did.
Obama just stood there looking cool uh like a male mannequin in those debates because he didn't have his teleprompter, so he was being kind of cautious about what words he said.
But McCain was uh demonizing Wall Street fat cats at uh at every opportunity.
You know, in the last two years, uh the United States banking sector has declined to twenty-five percent, below twenty-five percent of what its value was two years ago.
They're not fat cats.
They're emaciated cadaverous uh cats.
They've got that what what's that thing, that uh cat version of AIDS that the cats get, the feline immunodeficiency virus.
They're these are em emaciated skeletal cats.
They're the only ones left.
They're scavenging for fish bones in the garbage cans of Wall Street, and we're still going, oh, Wall Street flat cats with their bonuses.
There's no these AIG units, these AIG units, are uh nothing to do with anything that went wrong.
Now look, I don't support the AIG bailout.
I'd be happy to let AIG fail.
I think it I think trying to save AIG is ridiculous, and I don't think it's an appropriate use of taxpayers' money uh to fund the uh Manchester United soccer team in England, for example.
They're the England's biggest soccer team.
Uh their shirts are sponsored by AIG, which means they're sponsored by you.
So if you're a United States taxpayer, uh you might want to next time you fly over, take a trip to England if you can afford it.
Uh make sure you go and see Manchester United play, uh, because when they come out on the pitch with those red shirts and kick the ball around in that sort of cutesy uh sort of semi-effeminate way that these uh British types play soccer.
That is that is your money that is paying for that red soccer shirt.
That's what it's come to.
That's what it's come to.
Uh the United States government is now sponsoring England's number one soccer team.
I wasn't in favor of any of this.
But the reality is that one unit of AIG went down, uh and as H.R. reminded me, it was one unit in London.
So in effect it was one bunch of sinister foreigners that uh that caused this beltdown.
If you want to demagogue people, why can't we just be straightforwardly xenophobic and demagogue these sinister foreigners?
Uh but instead what we're doing is we're identifying people who work for units that had nothing to do, absolutely nothing to do uh with anything that went wrong at AIG and saying, no, no, no, you gonna have your bonus.
You're part of the company that's working well, that's doing good, that's generating profits, uh, and we're gonna well not only are we gonna deny you your bonus and tax it at 90%, uh, but we're gonna we're gonna get Acorn to hire a big bus and drive around to your house uh with uh twenty camera crews in tow uh to put you up on national TV as a disgrace.
This is Acorn, by the way, uh who were behind this protest over the weekend where they organized a bus.
Only thirty people turned up.
Uh it's not like the Tea Parties.
They've got tea parties, these so-called Tea Parties around the nation now, they're getting three thousand, five thousand people at some of these tea parties.
Uh but even the smallest Tea Party doesn't get thirty people turning up for it, which is which is what happened on this stupid bus trip.
Yet all the all the newspapers, all the uh news shows cover the stupid bus trip of the 30 acorn workers who are being paid to be outraged.
And incidentally, uh look at these acorn bus crew when they're on TV.
They're the guys who are going to be running the census if Obama has his way.
Uh this has got nothing to do with what is wrong with the U.S. economy.
Uh i You deserve, if you think there's anything serious at stake in a hundred and sixty-five million dollars worth of bonuses, uh, when uh when when the United States government is wasting trillions and doesn't even know where they're going, uh then you you frankly deserve to have your wealth vaporized.
And that's the way it's going to be.
You can own a very modest home, you can have a very modest saving accounts, you can have a very modest pension provision for your retirement, and you're going to be poorer in a couple of years because you're not you're not staying focused.
You're getting you're getting hung up on all this drivel about uh some blameless no-name vice president in an irrelevant operating unit of AIG and not staying focused on the massive expansion of government and massive transfer of wealth from the productive sector of the economy uh to the non-productive, sclerotic government sector uh that is going to ensure that you end your days in a poorer America.
This is a choice.
This is a choice that free-born Americans can face.
Do you want to do you want to go down the route of Barney Frank mandated poverty?
Uh you want him to get the hell out of the way, let these toxic assets settle at whatever price they settle at, uh, and then get back in the game and start America growing again.
That's the choice.
Uh 1-800-282-2882, uh in Mark Stein sitting in uh for a rush on the uh Rush Limbaugh Show.
El Rushbow is just off for the day.
He is going to be back uh tomorrow and take you through uh the end of the week and uh cracking lineup uh because this is like there's been no start to a presidency like this.
This is I d well, I don't know.
I wasn't around for uh I don't remember how Chester Arthur started.
He had a valet.
I think he was the first president with a valet in the White House.
Uh but other than that, I'm not up on the Chester Arthur Presidency.
But certainly there's been no start to any presidency like this in modern times.
Uh we'll talk about that and take your calls and lots more straight ahead on the EIB network.
Mark Stein sitting in for Rush on the Rush Limbaugh Show from the EIB Network.
1-800-282-2882.
Uh here's a story out of Randolph, Utah that gets uh to the heart of what is so ridiculous about this.
Uh quote, Dale Lamborn, the superintendent of a somewhat threadbare rural school district feels the pain of Utah's economic crisis every day as he tinkers with his shrinking budget, struggling to afford laying off teachers or cutting classes like welding or calculus.
Just across the border in Wyoming, a state awash in oil and gas money, James Bailey runs a wealthier district, which has a new elementary school and gives every child an Apple laptop.
But under the Obama administration's stimulus package, Mr. Lamborn, who needs every penny he can get, will receive hundreds of dollars less per student than will Dr. Bailey, who says he doesn't need the extra money.
For us, this is just a windfall, Dr. Bailey said.
All right, you got this?
Uh we're supposed this it was the core of uh the President's big speech, his uh pseudo State of the Union thing.
Uh if you if you recall, he uh talked about that uh fourteen-year-old schoolgirl from Dillon, South Carolina, uh, who wrote to him uh saying the ceilings leak and the paint peels off the walls and uh they have to stop teaching six times a day because the uh the train comes barreling by their classroom.
This is what the president said.
Uh and he's basically saying, not to worry school districts, I'll send you the money.
The federal government is not in a position to do that.
He's sending the money to school districts that don't need it uh and not to and not to those that do.
And incidentally, by the way, uh you know, what is what is wrong with the idea of a school district in South Carolina that's got peeling paint on its walls, uh looking to Washington to fix it.
That that is something that uh Tocqueville, when he was uh traveling around America in 1830 would have thought was completely nuts.
Tocqueville, when he was here two hundred years ago said the difference between an American and a European is that when something goes wrong, a European waits for his uh masters, his lord and masters, the king, the Lord of the Manor, whoever to come and fix it for him, uh the American just gets on and does it himself.
The point about a school district That's got peeling paint on its walls in a town of six thousand, is that they should be able to correct the peeling paint situation themselves.
They should be able to can uh correct the dripping ceiling situation themselves.
Even if the federal government were capable of uh fixing their peeling paint and dripping ceilings, the level of uh bureaucracy you would require to facilitate that in an effective way, as opposed to the way it is now, uh, where they're sending money to the wealthy school district in Wyoming that doesn't need it, but not to the impoverished school district in Utah that does.
The the level of government, the scale of government that would be required to fix peeling paint in uh grade schools across this country would be so huge that this would no longer be a free society.
Uh Tockville thought the township was the heart of American democracy, and it used to be.
Why can't a school house in South Carolina correct the problem of peeling paint in a town of six thousand?
Why do why does everyone think it normal to ask uh the the the great King Barack the Mighty uh way up in Washington uh t that that to to solve that problem.
You know, this idea called 1800 Obama, I'll solve all your needs.
He can't do it, folks.
He can't do it.
And if he could do it, you would no longer be living in a free society.
Let's go to Elma in Birch Run, Michigan.
Uh Elma, you're on the EIB network.
Good to talk with you.
Good document, you too.
I uh first of all, I'm a you're a conservative, and I believe in about ninety-five percent of what you say.
Oh, that's good.
That's uh we were you were just talking about the AIG and and they shouldn't give back the bonuses and like that kind of stuff.
And uh but earlier on, not on your when you were there, but Rush and them, they they said that the unions should renegotiate their can't contracts, and we should as a union worker uh which I am, I should give back some money to help GM out.
Well, the well you c you don't have to.
Nobody nobody's saying you have to uh give that back that money, but GM is not gonna be around uh if you don't.
Basically, GM has a model where in good times when it essentially was part of a an all-American cartel 35, 40 years ago, uh negotiated contracts that it cannot uh that it cannot afford to honor and stay in business.
You you work for GM, do you, Elma?
I'm retired now, yeah.
Right.
Well, the the the you know the basic reality of GM is that it employs ninety-six thousand people, but it provides health and retirement benefits to over a million people.
So it's basically a uh retirement home that has this extremely small loss-making auto subsidiary.
That's the reality of G that's the reality of GM.
It loses money on every car it makes.
Uh how how how do you expect that situation to continue, Elma?
Well, I I would I would say something right now.
We have just recently they on our your health insurance we you call our health insurance, we have to pay out of our check every month towards our health insurance as a retiree.
Yeah.
As a retiree.
I don't get it for free.
No, that's that uh that may be the case, but the point the point is that uh that GM loses money.
It it th it doesn't make any difference whether GM sells five cars or five million cars.
Because they lose money on every one.
They lose something like between one and eight thousand dollars in every model.
Uh let's call it five thousand dollars, uh whatever.
Let's call it three thousand dollar model.
So if they sell if they sell ten cars, they lose thirty uh uh thousand uh dollars.
Uh if they lose uh if they sell a million cars, they lose three billion uh dollars.
So selling cars is no longer the answer for General Motors, because that's not the business they're in, Elma.
And the reality is that I don't blame the unions.
The unions are there to represent the workers, but the stupid management at GM, which is there to represent the owners of the company uh and the investors in the company negotiated deals uh that w that that presuppose that cloud cuckoo land would uh continue forever.
And that's the tragedy of uh General Motors, uh Elma.
You would that was it was a negotiated thing that they didn't have to negotiate, but they they negotiated in like I said, every three years our our contract's up for new renegotiation.
Yeah.
They can renegotiate it different any time they want to.
I w well I wish you I wish you well with uh w with that Elma.
But I've seen what it's like.
I was uh in Michigan a couple of weeks ago.
I think they've stopped the third shift now at Chrysler.
These are tough times if you're in the if you're in the auto industry.
But the but the the thing is Detroit and the big three did this to themselves.
Nobody else was involved.
No nobody else was involved.
Detroit was the industrial powerhouse of the world fifty years ago.
Now it's a basket case from which uh from from which uh people have fled.
Uh and and in fact as I understand it there are more American uh automobiles made in the province of Ontario now uh than made in the state of Michigan.
Detroit and the big three uh did this to themselves.
More straight ahead on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Great to be with you.
Rush will be in uh to take care of business for the rest of the week.
Uh Fox News uh is just reporting that uh President Obama is now calling for more oversight of executive pay.
That's great isn't it that's great.
It's uh not just on uh it's not just on the AIG vice presidents now not just tormenting them.
That's what he meant when he said he didn't think it was right to use the tax code to target a small number of individuals.
It makes much sense to use the tax code to target everybody.
So we're gonna have more oversight of executive pay.
That that is uh I think at one point in Britain by the way the top marginal tax rates were ninety-eight per cent.
So in other words for every pound you earned uh you kept tuppence.
Uh you kept tuppence and the government got ninety eight.
Uh the go the government got the rest of it you got you got to feed the birds tuppence a bag as uh Mary Poppin's that's all anyone could afford to do uh ninety eight percent marginal tax rate.
One of these celebrities will figure it out and re-record a cover version of the Beatles'Taxman.
You know, let me tell you how it's going to be.
19, what is it?
One for you, 19 for me.
That is the way we're headed.
Because no matter how much you tax people, you cannot tax them enough to generate enough revenue to pay for the level of spending here.
So it's great news.
Now he's saying we're not going to target these small group of individuals.
you all that's terrific wonderful let's go to Fred in Houston uh Fred uh you are on the EIB network calling us from the great state of Texas.
Well yeah Mark I'm being kidding up that head out of the bank off meagle mine I wanna I want to spend some stimulus that's uh that's uh that's that's excellent you sounded uh you sounded like you were in need of some stimulus there that was terrific I definitely do I'm a small businessman and I tell you I'm scared to death well you should be because you're gonna be getting smaller that's his plan for small business.
That seems to be the plan.
Mark I I I assume you're a fore foreign born because you have a funny action.
No no no I was like I do.
No, no, no, no, no.
I was born in the general vicinity of Hawaii.
I'm planning to run for president on the basis of my Hawaiian birth certificate circa 2012.
And I don't see you.
Why don't you join me?
You could be vice president, Fred.
You sound like you were born in Hawaii, too.
Maybe I could do one day.
I'm next Cuba.
Right.
I'm a Cuban descent.
I was 13 when I came to this country.
Right.
On December 31st, 1960, to live a new life in a new country.
And I became a citizen as quickly as I could.
Any regrets about that, by the way?
Because you by coming to the hellhole of America you lost out on all that great Cuban health care.
Well next to my family the greatest reward that I've ever had was that American citizenship.
That's the thing that I value the most and I'm beginning to question its value.
Well that's uh that's that's a tra that's a tragedy.
I mean Cecil Rhodes a century ago that uh said that if you were born an Englishman uh you had won first prize in the lottery of life.
Uh i it used to be at the end of the 20th century if you were born an American you had won first prize in the lottery of life and it's very sad to to hear you saying that uh that may not be the case anymore.
You know I spent thirty three years in international telecom traveling the entire world every time I would come back to this country I fell up kissing the ground that I lived in on because there's no country like this country anywhere on the face of the Paris.
That's true.
And it's pathetic that this man this rock star who got elected and I don't call him precedent because he's not presidential.
He thinks thinks he's the press you know a rock star.
He nominates um a a tax evading man to run the treasury and then we go on a Q thirteen other companies who are behind the taxes, and he is the man who's supposed to enforce it.
Right.
That's kind of a joke, isn't it?
Yeah, there is.
There ought to be a Geitner box.
Uh, you know, we're coming up to we're in what they call tax season.
That's incidentally one of the problems of America that you've now got uh uh spring, summer, autumn, winter, and tax season.
There shouldn't tax shouldn't require an entire season.
And and and you're right, there should be a Geitner box on the form that says, hey, yep, uh you're right.
I'm uh there's uh there's uh twenty-five grand, uh seventy grand that I'm not paying on this uh I'm not sending you the check for, but I'd like to check the Tim Gitney.
We should put in every box, right?
Yeah, I'd like the deal he's got.
What what's the line from when Harry met Sally?
I'll have what he's having.
That's when it well, on April the 15th, I'll have what he's having.
Uh and that's the way Americans should be.
That's uh what is it?
No no taxation without uh what was it?
Uh no uh taxation without representation.
Uh the the the there should be uh no confiscation from people who don't pay their taxation.
That's what that's that's the the the Geitner issue is serious, and we should all be on the Geitner on the Geitner plan.
Uh thank you very much, uh Fred for your call.
And you know, I'm not as I have faith in the uh in the American people, but this is a serious business.
Americans need to need to get serious about this unless they want to end up uh in the same sinkhole uh as Europe did.
Uh you will live worse lives.
You will live uh you will live lives that will simply not generate uh the wealth uh that makes this the land of the American dream.
And there's something else too.
It's very nice when you go um Sarkozy was at some s I think it was a NATO summit in Eastern Europe, and he and he posed the question does Europe want peace or does Europe just want to be left in peace?
And in a way to ask the question is to answer it.
You know, Europeans don't want to have to think about.
They don't want to be in there in difficult wars, they don't mind sending in a couple of peacekeepers.
You know, in Afghanistan, half the so-called NATO armies that are supporting us aren't actually doing anything.
They don't have any combat troops.
The Norwegians are there, and God bless them.
They're basically manning the photocopier back at barracks, and uh they're you know, and it's nice.
So, like the Americans go out and kill all the bad guys.
By the way, the it's not just the Americans, the Americans, the British, Canadians, uh uh uh a couple of serious allies, but mostly it's other people.
The Germans have a thing, they won't fly in certain provinces.
Some countries won't go out in snow.
Won't go out in snow.
I mean, that's what kind of army is that?
Or is it Joe Biden?
Joe Biden.
He's boasting about how I'm one tough hombre, you know, I flew, I know where Osama bin Laden lives.
I was flying to get him when my plane came down in snow.
His plane wouldn't have been up there if he'd been flying with whatever it was, the Luftwaffe or uh which uh whichever Air Force it was.
These things they won't go out in snow, uh they won't go out combat missions, they won't go out after anybody except like one of a hundred and seventy-three people who are on a UN approved list.
These people don't want to shoulder the burdens of the world.
And the lesson of this is a simple one.
Norway can be Norway, and Sweden can be Sweden, and Belgium can be Belgium, and Germany can be Germany, but only because America's America.
So if America decides, hey, we'd like to be Belgium too, the whole system will fall apart uh and we will uh end our days in darkness, plunged into a new dark ages in which our children will live in bondage on a primitive uh planet where we'll all be living in caves, and uh it'll be great for Al Gore and his polar bears and hell for everybody else.
So if you want to go down that route, that is uh that is uh a good way to go.
The whole thing, uh Belgium can be Belgium, Germany can be Germany, only because America's America.
Uh there has to be some adult oversight, even in the decline of uh Western uh civilization.
Uh one eight hundred uh two eight two uh two eight eight two.
This is my That was that was That wasn't exactly Little Mary Sunshine, was it What was it uh what was it Bob uh was calling uh uh calling uh President Obama the uh polyad adult.
I could use a bit more of the old polyad adult routine.
Uh uh yeah, okay.
Well I by the way, last time I was doing my whole apocalyptic end of the world shtick, sell up now, uh head for the hills.
People wanted to uh uh name the date.
I think actually it's May the twenty-third.
I I think we figured that.
May the twenty-third.
Anyway, we'll see how that uh works out.
Uh Mark Snyder sitting in for Rush of the EIB network will have bore straight ahead.
Mark Stein uh in for Rush.
Uh happy to start the week with you.
Uh a one-man toxic asset that'll uh bring down the whole system.
That's uh that's me.
Uh my own Senator Judd Gregg uh has uh just uh said that he doesn't think these spending plans will uh uh leave America with a debt ratio uh equivalent to eighty percent of GDP.
Uh and there are countries in the world that have that and they're banana republics.
Uh so we will have the United States of America will have the same eighty percent of GDP debt ratio our children will have.
Uh the same uh they'll be in banana republic territory.
This is a terrible, terrible thing uh that we're doing to the economic uh e economic engine uh uh of the world.
Uh it's uh it's it's a it's a tragedy to see it.
Let's go to Josh in uh Scottsborough, uh, Alabama.
And you're on uh you're on the rush uh Limbaugh show, Josh.
Hey, sir, it's a pleasure talking with you.
I appreciate you taking my call.
Um I was uh gonna call with a comment, maybe a a question rather about uh Mr. Geitner.
It it seems to me like now um i it looks like Geithner was more or less appointed uh by Obama to be uh a scapegoat uh as uh this economic crisis continues to uh go for a downward spiral.
It looks to me like uh Obama has got a scapegoat now in Geitner to uh more or less point his finger at and say, hey, it it's his fault.
Uh even though I appointed him, i it's his fault now.
And uh Yeah.
And and he's just enough of a bipartisan figure that uh that he can uh when he scapegoats him, he can sort of stick it in a semi-way to Bush and the Republicans, because he's got some connection with them.
You know, Tim Geitner has the air of the schnook mob accountant when you see him when you see him on TV.
Uh the the the Schnook mob accountant who winds up doing thirty years when the b when the big uh mafioso skates.
And uh and uh uh and I don't know whether that's something that uh Barack Obama learned from Chicago politics, just cook county business as usual.
But it it he does give off that air that he's being lined he's being lined up.
And I think certainly he's the one nearest the uh the exit door.
Uh but I mean at some point Obama will earn this crisis.
I mean, if you look at his numbers, people are saying, well, look, Bush is history, Bush is gone.
Uh the did Dick Cheney's history, uh Rumsfeld's history.
You can't just go on about all this stuff anymore.
It's your presidency.
Right.
It it was easy for him the other day, uh, when I was listening to him on TV saying that uh and it's been played on this broadcast several times, uh, that Obama was gonna take the blame.
Uh, you know, hey, you take the blame.
And then it immediately went from uh take the blame to uh come talk to me.
It it seems like with uh each scenario he kind of changes.
It's a different face from uh when he was in his campaign throwing out those uh promises that he's yet to uh deliver on and that I think that he's not ever gonna be able to deliver on.
Uh it just seems like uh, you know, with Geitner, he's got an easy uh scapegoat now.
He can point his finger at him and uh walk away, and it'd be the same as uh as what it's been since he's been in the presidency.
So Hillary Clinton, uh God bless her, uh actually got it right when uh she was asked about Obama's accomplishments, and she said, Well, he gave a good speech.
And that's right.
He gave a good speech, and uh and uh but he isn't actually someone who's used to uh executive authority making decisions.
And this whole this coldness that Rush was talking about, which I think is true, uh and is fascinating really.
It's like he doesn't seem engaged by the issues in any way.
It's uh you you would think Clinton uh Clinton said something wacky uh and classically egocentric after September eleventh.
Uh he expressed a sort of wistful yearning that something like this had happened on his watch, uh so that he could be, you know, a consequential president instead of being uh the sort of uh Janet Jackson Super Bowl entertainment between the Cold War and the new uh and and the new conflict.
He w he was the sort of uh novelty act with wardrobe malfunction.
So it was a s trivial eight years.
And he expressed this sort of pining for the for the fact that he never got the opportunity to deal with a nine-eleven.
Well, you know, Obama has come into office uh at the time of the first shrinking of the global economy since 1945.
This is unprecedented, what he's dealing with.
It's the first crisis of globalization.
And yet he doesn't seem engaged by it.
It doesn't seem like boring to him.
You know, uh man, I gotta who can think about that stuff.
I gotta I gotta get my makeup on for the Jay Leno show.
I mean, this is uh this is weird.
He just doesn't seem engaged by it.
And I think this is what is beginning to s kind of slightly freak people out.
Uh that he is so uh his cool, his cool is uh which which uh people thought meant rock star cool, is now like uh going into something like Frosty the Snowman cool.
I mean, this is guy is like in the icebox.
He does he seems untouched by this stuff.
Uh uh as I said at the beginning of the show, it's the big difference with Clinton.
You know, i the basically the message you get from Obama is I don't feel your pain, and I don't care if you know it.
And this there is nothing like the start of this presidency.
It's weird and unsettling, and it has elements of tragedy about it.
But now I'm being married that's like my little Barry Sunshine routine again.
Uh I don't know.
Uh the Mark Stein sitting in for rush on the I gotta stop, I gotta stop working up to these big apocalyptic doommongering things.
It's not tragedy.
It's we'll we'll we'll recover from it.
We'll crawl out from the rubble.
Some things will survive.
Cockroaches and Celine Dion albums.
There'll be something there underneath the rubble.
Don't worry about it.
More uh in a moment on the EIB network.
Mark Stein on the uh EIB network, a rollocking start to the week.
Another trillion dollars down the hole.
That's grand news.
We can always use what's the what's the thing after a trillion?
We've got to get it's like we got used to the twelve zeros on the end now.
We've got to find the number that comes.
Is a uh bazillion, is it a gazillion?
Uh didn't we have this before uh Caroline Kennedy's thing?
It's a cotillion, isn't it?
I think that's something uh isn't that what isn't whatever it is.
Anyway, uh it's a huge number, and we need to spend more.
You can have you can never have enough zeros on uh on the end.
Look, I've been uh I've been uh yeah, I've been reasonably semi-apocalyptic and uh actually often full-blown apocalyptic this last half hour.
And I don't want to want to leave on a kind of down note.
Uh so I think it's important.
Let's get back to first principles.
This is what uh uh uh every citizen should remember.
You know, as President Reagan said, we are a nation that has a government, not the other way round.
Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosianko behave as if it's the other way round.
And so does President Obama.
It's not.
It's not the other way around.
We are a nation that has a government, not the other way around.
The nation pays for the government, not the other way round.
Uh when when uh uh I pay for Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd, not the other way around.
So I would appreciate it if these people uh would take a less destructive attitude to the wealth-creating class of this country.
Uh and I would also I would also say that the best way to get value for money uh is not to circulate these programs through Washington.
Uh that that South Carolina grade school actually teaches an important lesson.
There's no point uh if you've got peeling paint in your classrooms, don't uh turn to Washington.
You can imagine the cost of that paint job by the time it's been cycled through six government agencies and and they've all taken the various markup for the bureaucrats involved.
The best way is to do it yourself.
That's the American way.
That's what Tocqueville saw when he came here two hundred years ago.
Rush will be back tomorrow.
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