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March 31, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:32
March 31, 2009, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
So last night I was reading the Treasury Department's viability report on General Motors.
It's all part of the Obama takeover, which may not be a takeover, but regardless, I was reading the Treasury Department's viability report.
General Motors makes 20 cars that show a profit.
Eleven of them are trucks and SUVs.
And they're going to be canceled in this deal.
Greetings and welcome, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network.
Great to be with you, ladies and gentlemen.
Our telephone number, if you want to be on the program today, 800-282-2882, and the email address, L Rushbaugh at EIBNet.com.
Politics is going to run General Motors, not business.
That's what the Treasury Department's viability report said.
Twenty vehicles that GM makes.
They make more than that.
Of course, but 20 vehicles they make show a profit.
And 11 of those 20 vehicles are trucks and SUVs.
And these models are slated to be dropped.
In the meantime, and I have this story deep down here in the stack of stuff.
You know what the most popular car in Iraq is among the newly free there?
The Hummer.
The Hummer.
They love the Hummer.
They're buying Hummers.
The people in Iraq can afford it are buying Hummers out the Wazoo.
Now I want you to do a side-by-side comparison here.
Iraq, which is just now emerging from the seventh century, thanks to us.
Their citizens are able, those who can afford it, and more and more are, to go out and buy Hummers.
We, in the greatest nation in the history of the earth.
The richest, the most prosperous, are preparing to tell our citizens.
You can't have a Hummer.
You can't have a suburban.
You can't have an SUV.
You gotta go electric.
You gotta go hybrid.
I mean, it does the side-by-side comparison here is just it's stunning.
And then there's this from the Associated Press.
Excuse me, and I have to tell you, this is this is a this this report from the AP, they're giddy.
They're giddy about this.
The headline, Ford, General Motors to cover car payments if buyer loses job.
Ford Motor Company and General Motors are offering payment protection plans to help reassure consumers who may be putting off buying a new car because of worries about losing their job.
The offers come as auto sales have been battered by the recession and tight credit reaching their lowest levels in 27 years.
Ford said yesterday, uh today rather sorry, that it will cover payments of up to 700 a month for up to a year on any new Ford Lincoln or Mercury vehicle if consumers lose their jobs.
The uh program runs until June the first.
Hours later, General Motors said that it'll make a similar offer.
But how can General Motors do this without consulting with the CEO, Barack Obama?
GM's new by the way, Obama left the country today, uh, folks.
How will we cope?
President Obama, the one, the Messiah, boarded Air Force One today with 500 plus staffers heading on a five-nation trip starting with the G-20.
How will America cope today and for the next week with President Obama not on America soil?
You think there's some people here who are gonna have trouble coping?
No doubt.
Anyway, General Motors said it's gonna make a similar offer.
The new CEO Fritz Henderson said that the company will make up to nine car payments of $500.
These companies don't have any money.
This is amazing.
All these institutions spending and guaranteeing all this money, and none of them have any.
We've bailed out General Motors, we've bailed out Chrysler.
They still don't have any money.
They're in debt up to the Wazoo.
Now they're promising to make Car payments if you lose your gig after going out and buying a car.
Why not just give the cars away?
Let's if you're if you don't have any money and you're how many how many people potentially are we talking about here?
I really startly, I know, I know.
I'm I'm on the wrong side of this.
Look, I'm on the wrong side of everything these days.
Because the vast majority of the American people are going, hey, what's wrong with that?
That's a wonderful idea.
Hill, you have to throw cold water on every good idea that comes down the pike in this country.
I mean, I think it's great that they're going to pay for my car if I lose my job.
That's only right.
Yeah.
Okay, well.
With whose money are they going to be paying your car payment?
Mine, Dingleberry, and every other taxpayer's.
So now we're paying people's mortgages when they can't afford their mortgages.
And now we're going to make their car payments when they can't afford their car payments.
I know.
I did predict.
No, I predicted it.
I've I've got I've got a couple things from the archives of the program.
I predicted that we'd be paying people's car payments.
Why stop?
Why stop at mortgages?
I remember what I said.
Oh, I you know, I I'm in a foul mood anyway.
I have been in a foul mood the past couple days, and I'm in a foul, and this just makes me even fouler.
You know, to realize that we're living in a country with citizens who have no concept of what this country's all about or what made it.
It just it's just.
Well, you smile, you smile to make the most of it.
And by the way, my announcement to pull out of New York yesterday is just so predictable.
Half the media throwing parties.
Oh, big fat limbaugh getting out of New York.
Oh, boo-hoo.
No tears here.
Others are wondering if this will start a parade.
I'm not trying to start a parade.
I don't care.
I'm just telling you.
And they they leave out half of what I said yesterday about the final straw here with all this.
I mean, to get audited every year, have to show where I am 14 different ways every day of the year because I pay per diem taxes.
I only pay taxes in New York and New York City when I work there.
So I try to limit those days, and they just come at you every year.
You can make book on it.
Uh and the latest thought has been going on for six months.
Try the legal fees on that.
It's pure harassment.
The only way to end this is to get the hell out of there.
And one of the uh it's just a backup location anyway, as I said yesterday for hurricane relocation.
In fact, let me what's really the story, Oscar Goodman is that's his name, the mayor of uh Vegas.
Oscar Goodman called wants to give me a sales pitch to move to Vegas.
I got people from Nashville, I got people from Houston, I got people from Dallas, saying, hey, relocate here.
We got no state income tax here, and we got great entertainment options, and we'll be sure that you can find a great place to have your studio and so forth.
So it's it's it's funny to watch people.
Yeah, Vegas.
The may the mayor of Vegas himself called the office this morning and wants to wants to talk uh seriously about a um he called our station at KNXT or KXNT and said he was serious, so he wants to talk to HR, uh chief of staff about all this.
I want you people to understand I live year-round in Florida.
I do not live in New York, and I have not lived in New York for seven years, well, nineteen twelve years.
It's only when there are hurricanes threatening here, and that's only because if we lose power down here in a hurricane and we can't do the uh program, so I flee uh to uh to New York because that's where the original studio was, but hell.
It's just it's not worth, it's it's it really just isn't worth the hassle.
Now with these new tax increases coming down the pike is stupid.
Yeah, I know there are people he's not willing to do his civic duty.
Civic duty my you know, I better take a break because I'm on the verge of profanity here over just general principles today.
We'll be back in in I was gonna say my first they came for the executives, and now, according to Byron York, at the DC Examiner.com and a little noticed move, the House Financial Services Committee, which of course is led by the banking queen, Barney Frank, has approved a measure that would go beyond the most draconian features of the original AIG bill.
The new legislation is the Pay for Performance Act of 2009.
It would impose government controls on the pay of all employees, not just top executives of companies that have received a capital investment from the United States government.
It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place, and it would give the Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.
It's in there.
It's the Pay for Performance Act of 2009.
The move has not been talked about much, but it was led by Frank, and this thing has been approved.
They'll be voting on it at uh at some point.
Uh and after we do, the where does this stop?
After we start setting the salaries.
After Tim Geitner sets the salaries of uh employees, not just executives, at companies that took uh TARP money or bailout money, why stop there?
Why not just establish whatever salaries they think are appropriate for everybody that has a job?
Once this stuff gets started and there's nobody to stand up and say stop, there's no reason these people should stop.
Let's go to the audio sound bites, because CNN decided to do a uh an in-depth expose last night to find out if anybody on the Obama auto team has any experience in the automobile business.
They talked to Alston Goolsby, one of these economic advisors, one of these these Ivy League egghead members of the Obama administration.
And blitzer's question was this.
Okay, you have 21 members in your auto industry task force.
None of them have any real auto industry experience.
Five of them are cabinet secretaries.
Nearly half of your members hold economic posts.
Seven have ties to energy and the environment.
Even the Treasury's senior advisor on auto issues, Ron Bloom, has no direct auto industry background.
One member of the auto industry task force is joining us now, Austin Goolsby.
Is that fair that none of you has any real direct auto industry experience?
Well, I don't think it's fair.
I believe that Ron Bloom does have a significant amount of auto experience, and that is within the government task force.
The other thing that I'd say is the president made clear in his remarks, the U.S. government is not trying to get into the business of running an automobile company.
The intention here is to create the conditions that will be a bridge, allowing these companies to restructure and become viable enterprises.
Do you know off the top of your head what Ron Bloom's auto industry experience was?
Um I know I don't know exactly.
I believe that it was uh advising the unions and in working in the auto industry, but I not an auto executive, so I that's not my area.
All right, we're gonna double check that.
Claire, way to go, Wolf.
Way to be on the case out there, baby.
Yeah, original premises finding nobody in this task force has the slightest idea how to build a car.
There's nobody on this task force that loves cars.
There's nobody on this task force that is a car guy.
They're all a bunch of brainiac eggheads.
And they're over there to assert control.
So blitzer then says, Well, look, has the White House been involved in uh the compensation package?
Rick Wagner, GM.
I don't know the details on that.
Would that be something logical, though?
Would that be given the enormous amount of taxpayer uh money going into GM?
I I'm not gonna speculate on those matters.
I don't know anything about it.
You're on the task force for crying out loud, Goolsby.
What do you mean you don't know the details of the canning and the firing of Rick Wagner, General Motors.
Later on CNN, we go to Larry King Live, where he had two well-known and documented automobile experts to discuss this.
The actor Ed Begley and the mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom.
Larry King says, What do you make of this whole thing?
I think there are clean technology and jobs out there.
Clean tech is uh growing leaps and bounds every day.
I think they need to make the cleanest cars the most energy efficient cars possible.
And they can do that in Detroit and Flint and Lansing and all those places.
Yeah, to do as much as is uh humanly possible to make those kinds of cars.
I mean, all the auto companies are hurting, but Toad is hurting a lot less, and they made the Prius.
Mr. Begley, have you checked the sales of the Prius?
Toyota is Lexus.
Snerdley, sit down and calm down.
I'm already in a foul enough mood without having to deal with your hysterics in there.
I know where we're headed here.
This is abs he's an auto expert.
This is a CNN auto expert.
And he, by the way, he swerved into what's happening here.
We're gonna have green cars.
Look at go through the statistics again.
General Motors makes 20 cars that make a profit.
Eleven of them are trucks and SUVs.
They are going to be eliminated, and they are going to be replaced with smaller cars since you will not buy a small car on your own.
We know that the tipping point is $4 a gallon.
At $2.50 a gallon gasoline, people are still buying trucks.
They're still buying SUVs.
This does not fit with the plan the Obama administration has.
One way or another, you're going to get out of those trucks.
You're going to be into the clean hybrids or or what have you.
Now, the Wall Street Journal has an interesting take here on what happened with this whole setup to General Motors exec Rick Wagner being canned by Obama on.
I guess it happened Friday or Sunday.
I'm I'm not sure which.
But here's how the journal reports this.
Inside a windowless ornate room Thursday, just across from the oval orifice.
President Obama and a group of senior economic advisors began the job of remaking the American automobile industry.
Many of General Motors' problems didn't start during Wagner's term, and most predate the economic downturn that sent car sales slumping, such as union contracts and the cost of paying for retiree health care.
One person familiar with the situation said this is Obama.
Symbols of change are important.
And it was what we heard yesterday that getting rid of Wagner was simply done to show that Obama's taking action.
This is Obama.
Symbols of change are important.
Wagner told the GM board on Friday evening he was asked to step down.
He informed directors.
Uh, the administration, get this.
This is this is what Wall Street Journal was reporting that Rick Wagner told his board.
The administration wants a majority of them to resign, according to two General Motors officials.
Several volunteered to quit over the weekend.
Other General Motors officials speculated that they would also be asked to resign.
Also expected to be on the chopping block is General Motors Washington office.
That's where the lobbyists worked.
Mr. Summers, Larry Summers told lawmakers the administration was pushing for the Fiat Chrysler deal to include building an energy efficient vehicle in this country, according to Bob Corker.
Senator from Tennessee, Obama made one call himself to some of the Michigan delegation, Carl Levin and his brother Sandra Levin and Senator Debbie Stabenow, and he told them that he planned to put some administration staff into the Detroit companies.
Obama told the Levins and Debbie Stabineau he planned to put some administration staff into the Detroit companies, according to one person familiar with the situation.
Senator Corker said he told Mr. Ratner on Monday that he was alarmed the administration would dictate what kind of vehicles would be constructed.
Alarmed.
Deciding what vehicles and plants will survive is setting industrial policy, said Senator Corker.
He's alarmed.
by the way, ladies and gentlemen, think that this is a charade.
Jennifer Rubin, who uh writes commentary magazine, thinks that this may be an elaborate charade to hide a good old fashioned bankruptcy proceeding.
The Obama administration's leading plan to fix GM and Chrysler would use bankruptcy filings to purge these companies of their biggest problems like bondholder debt and retiree health care costs.
And the clue that she adopted that she thinks this may just be a charade.
And of course, there is this 60-day timetable now, 60 day requirement that they come back once again, General Motors and Chrysler with a new restructuring plan.
But Rubin's point is why offer government backed warranties now.
The reason government backed warranties were offered is because people, it is said, will not go buy a car from a company that is in Chapter 11.
Even Rick Wagner and others have said, well, we don't want to go Chapter 11 because when we're in Chapter 11, uh people don't know that we're going to be around, they don't know that we're going to be here, they won't buy cars, they don't know if they can get them service, they don't know if the warranty will be uh uh uh upheld.
And so Obama comes out, yes, say, we'll back all of these warranties.
The government will do so.
So that's an indication that some of this may just be a charade.
At any rate, folks, I gotta take a brief time out.
We'll get to your phone calls as the afternoon progresses or morning, depending on time zone where you are.
Telephone number again is 800-282-2882.
And you can also go to the email address, Lrushbow at EIB net.com.
Be right back.
So the new uh the new GM CEO says they may have to shut down even more plants.
And of course, you watch the new GM CEO is gonna be tarred and feathered for this, but all he's doing is following orders because yesterday, President Obama, in his address to the nation on the state of the automobile industry, GM and Chrysler announcing his takeover, announcing the creation of Obama Motors, told people, I can't guarantee your job.
I can't tell your job's gonna be there.
I can't tell you that your plant's gonna be there.
It's gonna get worse before it gets better.
And so the new CEO, the interim CEO of Fitz, whatever comes in here today.
Oh, yeah, we have to cut down more plants.
Then there's this story from AP.
Many assembly line workers reacted with skepticism and anger Monday to the Obama administration's tough tactics, which stoked long simmering feelings that the people who put the country on wheels get treated differently than the wizards of Wall Street.
Brian Fredline, the president of UAW Local 602 at a plant near Lansing, said it's the age old Wall Street versus mainstream smackdown again.
You have all kinds of funding available to banks.
They're apparently too big to fail, but they're also too big to be responsible.
When it comes to auto manufacturing and middle class jobs and people that don't matter on Wall Street, there are certainly different standards that we have to meet, higher standards.
And the financials, it's a double standard, it exists, and it's unfair.
Many workers who are not generally known for their affection towards effects uh executives, even sympathize a little bit with Rick Wagner, who was forced to step down.
Uh Jim Graham, the president of a union local in Lordstown, Ohio, this is where GM makes the cobalt and the Pontiac G5.
We knew someone was going to have to take the proverbial bullet, and it would have made it a lot easier to accept have the CEOs of the banks also been required to give up their jobs.
Now stop and think of this for a second.
It's depressing enough to watch the destruction of the country all around us every day.
Now these people, these auto worker union leaders and members who voted for Obama, are upset over the fact that they're paying a bigger cost than the people on Wall Street, that they're going out of their way to prop up the banks, make sure the banks stay open, make sure the banks do this, but that they're uh they're just they're just they're they're fit to be tied here over the lack of similar attention to General Motors, and what would make these union people happy?
We knew someone was gonna have to take the proverbial bullet and would have made it a lot easier to accept had the CEOs of the banks also been required to give up their jobs.
Is this what we've come to?
Yes, it is.
Happiness in the American workforce is when somebody who earns more than you do or gets more from the government than you do gets fired.
That's fairness.
Let's go to audio soundbite number one as I change up in midstream.
Audio soundbite number one is Bob Pisani, who is uh uh an editor at CNBC was on with the street sweetie Aaron Burnett on street signs, and she had a question for him.
Even after the so-called stress test, they're gonna have what, six months to raise more capital.
They could do it by raising more capital, they could do it by selling things.
But now I think we're realizing maybe there isn't a whole lot of demand from buyers.
There aren't a whole lot of people who want to put capital in.
I mean, it it it this is worrying people.
The street basically believes that there are going to be several of them fired at this point.
We don't know who, and it may not necessarily be the biggest ones, you may see smaller ones, but the government has set up everything just like they did with the auto companies to basically start dismissing some CEOs of banks now.
And I think you're going to see that happening.
Okay, Jim Graham, who's the president of a union local in Lordstown, Ohio.
There's your answer.
Bob Passani said yesterday on CNN that's in bank CEOs are going to be canned.
And a lot of people are talking about it, and that it's in the works.
So here we go.
We just fired Rick Wagner, and now some bank CEOs are going to be canned by the government, and nobody says a word.
In fact, the Washington Post comes out with the most ridiculous poll.
Well, it's I don't know how ridiculous it is.
Because the Rasmussen Bowl pretty much says the thing.
Obama's approval numbers through the roop.
Six in ten people love what he's doing with the economy.
Rasmussen says that his approval induct skyrocketed from plus four to plus eleven.
Yet everybody just they're just happy as hell with the way Obama is taking control of the economy and uh dishing things out.
I I th I think maybe we have descended into a nation that sort of loves the concept of soft tyranny.
Maybe we have a majority of Americans that actually like it or are willing to support it.
And now let's go back to audio sound bites from Larry King with his automobile expert Ed Begley Jr.
Uh Larry King said, Do you think Ed Begley and your automobile expertise that the auto industry is ever going to come around to the kind of thinking that you have?
I hope they do.
Not just that I have, but many other people have.
You know, they fought the cafe standards for year, the high mile per gallon, they fought the seat belts, they fought the airbags, they fought the smog control devices.
We have four times the cars in LA right now since 1978.
We have half the smog because of those pollution control devices.
We have 500 at the low end, 700 billion a year, leaves this country, according to me and T-Boone Pickens.
That's leaving this country in imported oil.
We'd have more money now to deal with those problems.
Well, I'll tell you what I think's gonna happen.
I read an in uh investor's business daily editorial today.
I thought I'd put it near the top of the stack, but I didn't.
But it's a fascinating, fascinating little editorial about some of the plans the Obama administration has uh for energy in uh in this country.
And it would when I read this editorial, one of the things that I concluded was uh, and here here, here's here's what it is.
The House of Representatives approved already a Senate-passed omnibus bill.
Now, follow me on this, that puts two million more acres of energy-rich land off limits.
Last Wednesday, the House passed on a 285 to 148 vote, the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, Senate Bill 22, which confirms our theory that no good comes from legislation labeled comprehensive or omnibus.
This bill is a smorgasbord of 160 bills totaling more than 1,300 pages.
And we don't know how many voted for it and actually read it.
Uh Stimulus bill it's not because it locks up an additional two million acres to the 107 million acres of federally owned wilderness areas.
The total is more than the areas of Montana and Wyoming combined that are now off-limits for energy production.
Some of this area that has been placed now off limits is among the most energy rich in this country.
It's being placed off limits.
Now we know that the Democrats are opposed to new drilling offshore.
They're opposed, as is Obama, to the creation and discovery of new domestic energy.
Now stick with me on this.
Because this dovetails with the takeover of General Motors and Chrysler, and the dictates that will result after whatever happens, either they take them over, there's bankruptcy, restructuring, what have you.
Obama knows that the tipping point to get you out of big cars is $4 a gallon gasoline.
Obama said when the price of gasoline last summer got up to $4, he didn't have a problem with it.
He was just upset how quickly the price increases took place.
So Democrats and Obama restrict more of our own natural energy resources, placing discovery and usage off-limits, take over the automobile industry.
Say to General Motors, okay, eleven of your top 20 sales vehicles are showing a profit of SUVs and trucks, but we're going to change that with a political decision, not an economic decision.
It seems to me that what's going to happen here, contrary to Mr. Obama's assertions, is that his administration is going to increase our dependence on foreign oil by eliminating our discovery and usage of our own energy resources.
I'm talking about fossil, like oil, shale oil, natural gas.
As more of these lands are placed off limits, guess what?
We have less of our own.
We need more from elsewhere.
So after this, I'll bet you there's going to be a big push, mark this projection, March 31st, 1243 Eastern Daylight time.
Next will come a total cutoff, maybe happen in stages, a total cutoff of offshore oil, new discoveries in productions.
This will cause the price of gasoline to increase dramatically again, and the cars that Obama wants you driving will thus have a market.
He does want, and he needs $4 a gallon gas or higher.
He wasn't kidding.
Now that he's going to be running the car companies, energy policy just got a lot clearer.
And guys like Ed Begley, noted automobile expert out of Hollywood, are going to be throwing parties and celebrations because every one of you are going to be forced into driving little smart cars, lawnmowers with seats on them, getting rid of your trucks and so forth.
You probably you might even be paid to do so since we're paying people to do everything else these days from the federal government.
Because these things work hand in hand.
Taking over automobiles, denigrating trucks and SUVs, demanding new clean energy, setting natural energy resources off limits, raises the price of energy.
The price of energy forces the American people to make cheaper alternatives, that means smaller cars, yada yada yada.
So we're going to have higher gasoline prices, and it isn't going to be long.
Lock in your bet on that.
And what'll it mean?
Guess who's going to get the blame when the gasoline prices go up?
Big oil is going to get the blame.
More anger and hatred directed at the oil companies, because nobody's going to know about this omnibus land grab bill that came out of the House and Senate last week.
Because the media is derelict in telling people what's going on in their own government.
Only you are going to know about this and the people who read Investors Business Daily.
So, as I predicted yesterday, the next big quote industry that's going to get hit is oil.
And it's coming soon.
Because the price of gasoline, we're getting now into the spring and then close to the summer driving season.
You marked my words.
Prices are going to go up because that's what President Obama wants, because they are a means to an end.
And what does all this mean?
It means more populism.
And that'll lead to further erosion of free market capitalism.
It'll lead to further erosion of your individual liberty and freedom to drive the car you want.
And the public's permission to nationalize.
Healthcare is about to become a huge crisis, too.
Don't be surprised if you see a bunch of horror stories start popping up in the press about that.
Because you see, we can't have this kind of massive change out of villain.
We need a villain.
General Motors a villain.
Rick Wagner's a villain.
SUV's a villain.
I wonder how many of you people remember back in 1997 when I first saw the Sierra Club come out against SUVs.
And I I raised the red flag and I said, This they're going to do their best to demonize this car and get you out of it.
Oh, come on, Russia overreact.
It's just a bunch of environmental.
Look where we are today.
The government has taken over two automobile companies for the express purpose of getting rid of SUVs and trucks.
They have same thing's gonna happen with health care, because you can't have a change without a crisis without a villain.
Obama has to always be portrayed as the hero.
Phony outraged, fueled by all the president's men, the drive-by meeting will turn the country upside down.
We are Venezuela in the early years.
Quick timeout.
We'll be back after this.
Your guiding light through times of trouble, confusion, murkiness, tumult, chaos.
...
Stupidity.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network.
There's a lot in the uh in certain media about Obama's problems coming up of the G twenty.
Angela Merkel put the kibosh on new spending.
She's not gonna go for global new deal.
Sarkozy is threatening to walk out of this.
According to the Times of Lovend London, as it's a high probability that uh Sarkozy will walk out of the G twenty summit since it's unlikely he'll get what he wants, which is a deal to tighten regulation.
We'll be one of the key features of the G twenty, but France wants a global financial regulator.
An idea fiercely opposed by the U.S. and Britain.
Germany and other nations are reported to be against a global regulator.
Sources said that President Sarkozy must know that the proposal would not make progress.
Thankfully it seems also here that Obama and Gordon Brown of Prime of Great Britain will not be getting what they want.
That's what.
Now, excuse me.
But I think we're being set up big time.
You and I both know that these kinds of giant confabs never take place until every dot is odded and error, every I is dotted and every T is crossed.
They're not gonna go over there unless they've already agreed behind the scenes to various things.
They've already put out, I'll guarantee you.
The mission statement of accomplishment has already been written.
And what and then the press, what's gonna happen here when none of this happened, maybe Merkel will hold firm, but when this is all over.
We are going to hear how these European leaders were charmed and how a G twenty summit that threatened to fall apart was saved at the last minute by the arrival of President Obama.
He's not gonna step into a lion's den over there and have this blow up in his face and have the world tell him to go to hell.
He would not go himself.
This is it's just like when we used to have all these arms negotiations treaties with the Soviets, and they'd come over here for the giant signing ceremony.
It was done months in advance.
The negotiations never take place on site.
These guys are gonna meet for four or five hours, a couple days, they're gonna have nice meals.
Well, come out and they'll say some raucous things.
Here.
Remember yesterday I said this.
I said, Well, Obama, he's got a feather in his cap as he goes to the G twenty.
He wants to outdo the Russians over there.
So now look what he can brag about.
He'd go to Dmitry Medvedev, President of Russia to say, hey Dimitri, I got the car companies, babe, I got the car companies.
What you got?
Here's Andrew Mitchell, cut four, some by four, Andrea Mitchell this morning on NBC just Ecstatic that Medvedev wants to now talk to Obama.
Yesterday, the White House got a message from Moscow that Medvedev is interested in a breakthrough on all these disputed issues, Iran, missile defense.
So, with only a couple of hours' notice, the White House sent a top diplomat overnight to meet here at The Hague with Russian counterparts and try to hammer something out that could be announced in London when the president meets with Medvedev later this week.
So this could be a major change in U.S. Moscow relations.
Yes.
Can you just hear the breathless panting, the tongues wagging the sidewalks?
The eager anticipation of an orgasmic G twenty where Obama forges a new relationship with the Putin Medvedev Russian organization.
Comes back and then takes over the oil industry with health care next.
I guarantee you, don't fall for all these reports.
That this G twenty is on thin ice and gonna fall apart, that these European leaders are gonna tell Obama to go to hell or all that.
It's gonna be just the opposite.
Mark, he wouldn't go otherwise.
He's not gonna go unless this is all etched in stone before he gets there.
Back after this.
During the break here, Snerdley just disagreed totally with my recently stated prediction on the outcome of the G twenty.
Shamed him with one sentence.
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