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April 2, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:45
April 2, 2009, Thursday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Well, let's see.
Nicholas Sarkozy did not walk out of the G20 summit.
Angela Merkel has made no news whatsoever.
Yeah, what was all the pre-pub?
Obama Z stepping into a Hornet's nest.
Sarkozy's threatening to walk out.
Merkel put the kibosh on Gordon Brown's spending plan.
Wow, this is gonna be a big promise.
Folks, it's already done.
You're not gonna put 20 eggheads in a room and come up with thousands of pages of agreements in uh in two days.
It's already done, and Obama's gonna be the star.
It's already done.
And that's exactly how it's happening right now.
Greetings.
Great to have you.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network, the Limboy Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Here is President Obama saying he defied the pundits and achieved G20 success.
In the days leading up to the summit, uh some of you and the press, some commentators, confused honest and open debate with irreconcilable differences.
But after weeks of preparation and two days of careful negotiation, we have agreed on a series of unprecedented steps to restore growth and prevent a crisis like this from happening again.
Now, this is just hilarious.
It was all done before he got there, and the press teed him up.
See, part and parcel of this is the press reporting.
He's gonna have problems.
Sarkozy may walk out.
Merkel's put the gabosh on Brown.
Oh, he's heading into a hornet's nose over there.
This is gonna it could be a disaster.
The press teed him up, and now he's giving his closing remarks.
He overcame the pundits, he overcame the commentators.
And now, after two careful days of careful negotiation, after weeks of preparation, weeks, he sneaks that in there.
We've agreed on a series of unprecedented steps.
There's nothing that hasn't been done before, folks, to restore growth and prevent a crisis like this from happening again.
Want to bet.
How many times in the 90s did Clinton say we fixed the business cycle problem?
A lot of times.
They haven't fixed anything.
Uh the uh Obama pledged to do everything he could to help the world economy revive by spending our money around the rest of the world.
Uh the the fastest way to revive the world economy is to revive ours.
Unfortunately, that's not what's happening.
Here's the final of our two sound bites from President Obama.
We made enormous strides in committing ourselves to comprehensive reform of a failed regulatory system.
We agreed to increase transparency and capital protections for financial institutions.
Wait, wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
Can I share with you a headline here from McClanchy newspapers?
Requeue that to the top.
Treasury won't disclose bank bailout details.
The massive programs designed to rescue the nation's financial sector are operating without adequate oversight with vague goals and limited disclosure of their details to the taxpayers who are paying for them.
Government watchdogs told a Senate panel on Tuesday.
Uh this is the kind of transparency that uh he fought for for us over at the G20.
I mean, just sit here.
Play play this again.
Play it again.
We made enormous strides in committing ourselves to comprehensive reform of a failed regulatory system.
We agreed to increase transparency and capital protections for financial institutions.
We're extending supervision to all systemically important institutions, markets, and products, including hedge funds.
We'll identify jurisdictions that fail to cooperate, including tax havens, and take action to defend our financial system.
Stop the this was all reported before this started.
This is what Sarkozy wanted.
This is what Sarkozy threatened to walk out over.
This is this was already tax havens, hedge funds.
They're gonna raise taxes, they're gonna go out and create new tax cheats in order to get money from them.
They're gonna spend and spend and spend and spend.
This is a global socialist Big time maneuver.
Here's the rest of it.
We will re-establish the financial stability forum with a stronger mandate.
And we will reform and expand the IMF and World Bank so they are more efficient, effective, and representative.
Okay.
You've been warned.
You have been warned all of these global institutions just got much bigger for all this talk that our sovereignty has not been uh ceded with this global regulator.
I listened to that bite, and all of that we've done this, and we've done that, and we've identified jurisdictions that fail to cooperate.
Well, who's going to determine who fails to cooperate?
You're going to need a regular.
We have done this global regulator to me.
Meanwhile, again, the Treasury Department will not disclose bank bailout details despite Obama's promise moments ago in London of all of this transparency coming out of the G20.
Is this all this there's going to be such a giant backlash to this at some point?
Trust me on this, folks.
Agreements, all these things that are happening are they're going to have, you know, a practical reality.
There will be practical applications of these things that will affect everybody's lives in this country in uh in ways that people can't imagine yet.
And it will have the blowback.
Why?
Bank secrecy.
I don't know what they're going to do.
I think they're giving themselves as many options as they can here.
We are extending supervision to all systemically important institutions, markets, and products, including hedge funds.
We'll identify jurisdictions that fail to cooperate, including tax havens and take action to defend our financial system.
He was talking about reforming and expanding the IMF and world banks so they are more efficient, not your own local bank.
They're going to take they're going to fire the CEO at your local bank.
And they're going to make the CEO at your local bank quit because they're going to put uh earnings limitations on your CEO.
Now, leaving that aside because that's what it is.
Continuing our theme of recent years on the loss of individual freedom and liberty in this country.
There's a minor league baseball team in Michigan called the West Michigan White Caps.
They're in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
They are a farm team of the Detroit Tigers.
I believe.
And they have created a new food item for their concession stands for games this year.
It is a giant 4800 calorie hamburger.
I have a picture of the thing here.
It's bigger than a pizza, and it looks like it's about six to seven inches tall.
There's the guy holding it at the ballpark.
So they're going to sell this 4,800 calorie hamburger, and if you can eat it all, they're going to offer you some prize, like a I don't know what the prize will be.
Twenty dollars is what it'll cost.
It's four pounds.
The $20 burger features five beef patties, five slices of cheese, nearly a cup of chili, and salsa and corn chips, and it's all on an eight-inch bun.
Spokesman for the West Michigan White Caps, Vicky Graham says the burger is a gimmick that's being promoted as a very unhealthy menu item.
But they're putting it on there.
All this, despite a vegan advocacy group's request to put a warning label on the thing.
Susan Levin, a staff dietitian for the Washington-based physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine sent a letter to the West Michigan White Caps on Tuesday, and she's asking that this 4,800 calorie burger be labeled a dietary disaster that increases the risk of cancer and heart disease.
Now, why is it that when people discover a lifestyle they feel is important for themselves to embrace, they also feel they have to impose it on everybody else.
This is veggio fascism.
These are the veginazis.
No, no, no.
I I am serious about this.
Here you have a minor league baseball team.
They want to put this item on their menu.
It's nobody's damn business whether you as a fan go in there and buy it and try to eat it.
And yet what happens?
I will guarantee you that a bunch of fans who hear about this, you go to this ballpark when the uh when the white caps open their season and you order this thing and you're gonna get looks of disdain.
People are gonna be critical of you because they are going to be the conformists.
They will be the people that have been roped into group think that what you're doing is bad for you, and that it's their business.
And it's not their business.
A 4800 calorie hamburger is not gonna kill anybody.
And yet, there will be a stigma attached to this.
It's a promotional gimmick.
They're actually putting an unhealthy item on the menu, and they're calling it that.
But the veganazis want a warning label, and eventually the veganazis are gonna try to get this thing banned because you're not smart enough to make your own decisions in life.
You're not capable and competent enough to know what's good for you and what isn't for you.
So the veginazis are going to be out there demanding that you not have this choice.
Now, I'm telling you, this is I I have spoken of the militant vegetarians.
I mean, look at I knew the I I knew it was all over.
When the militant vegetarians in Berkeley forced a Burger King to sell a veggie burger.
The Veganazis got hold of the city council in Berkeley and forced a Burger King to sell a veggie burger.
Of course nobody bought it.
You don't go to Burger King for a veggie burger.
You go to the grocery store for one of those things and you load so much stuff up on it so it doesn't taste like the cardboard that it is.
And you fix it at home.
Now there are some restaurants that sell veggie burgers, and it's fine if they want, that's all well and good.
More and more are fine.
I look at, I've I've had a veggie burger.
You know, Archer Daniels Midlands uh Midland makes them, and they put them under different brand names.
Uh I've had I've tried these things.
Big whoop.
But the point is, you know, when you go in and get a veggie burger, does McDonald say, screw you?
You gotta sell, you gotta sell whatever what is Burger King sell?
A whopper?
You gotta put a whopper next.
Do the do the meat people force their way on you?
Oh.
They already have a monopoly, Mether Limbaugh.
They already have a monopoly.
Now people want it.
And the people that don't like it don't eat it.
But the people that think they have discovered this all-pure, all-healthy lifestyle seem to want to force everybody to do what they do.
And they use the trick of conformity to make this happen, and what ends up is the loss of individual liberty and some fun.
It's fun to put a behemoth like this.
It'd probably be fun to watch some idiot go buy it and try to eat it.
Half of it's gonna end up in his lap.
Quick timeout, we'll be back.
We will continue more phone calls right after this.
Do not go away.
I'm watching President Obama and the uh closing press conference he's having at the end of the G20, and he's stumbling along there.
He doesn't have the prompter, he's now answering questions from the media, and he's stumbling along, and he just he just really, really stumbled, I mean, just mere moments ago, trying to I don't know what the question was, but he was talking about what his job is as president of the United States is and what he's gotta he's gotta get involved in globalism, and he's gotta make people less vulnerable to anti American propaganda.
Which means he's going to have to sort of change things he says now and then.
And then he said, then he said that his one of his biggest challenges will be to convince us, citizens of the United States, that our self-interest is tied to the rest of the world.
He did say it.
He didn't say it.
He said to yours, he's talking to a reporter, the reporter, obviously a European or reporter not from America.
And this is where he was stumbling around.
He started to say something and then stopped dead in his tracks, and there's about a two or three second dead air pause.
And he's stuttering back into life again.
And uh really what I I have to convince uh uh well, what I uh as president of the United States president of the American people, I I I have to convince the American people that their self-interest is tied to yours, is what he said.
Now, I you know I don't want to split syllables here, but our self-interest as a nation derives from our self-interest as individuals.
Our self-interest, we we we lead the world, or we have led the world.
The world, you know, follows follows our lead.
I uh this is all just getting so it it it's frustrating and it's so dead wrong.
Our self-interest is tied to who?
Who?
I get up every day and I gotta wait to figure out what somebody else in the world is doing before I decide whether or not what I'm doing is gonna work.
Our self-interest that most alternative fuel.
So we gotta get rid of oil so somebody else can come up with a new green technology.
What is all this?
Is socialist gobbledygook.
It sounds just brilliant.
It sounds just unified and compassionate doesn't it it when you when you start analyzing it, you can't well, you don't want to figure it out because you know what it means.
I mean, if if our self-interest is tied to the world's, it means we've got to be cut down to size.
All right, Michelle in Orland Park, Illinois, I'm glad you waited.
You're next in the Rush Limbaugh program.
Great to have you here.
Yes, uh Rush, my question was I'm just wondering what can average Americans do to stop or maybe even flow, I should say, this administration's agenda.
I know next year we have the midterm election, but in the meantime, every all these changes coming.
What do we do?
I mean, it's very frustrating.
Well, right now there's a great series of things called tea parties that people are joining, and it's a great outlet for frustration, and it's allowing people to show up in great numbers.
In fact, some local governments are trying to cancel these things because they're getting so big.
Local governments say they may not be able to provide adequate security and this kind of thing.
These tea parties, a lot of them are happening on April 15th around the country.
And uh if if there's one happening near near where you live, uh it's always helpful to run around and get involved with people who have the same point of view you do with the same concerns, because then you realize that you're uh that you're not alone.
But right now, you have to understand there aren't the votes to stop any of this.
Right.
They're just not there.
Now there's a story in the AP today, and I see I don't believe anything coming out of the news these days, just like the pre-stories on the G twenty, they ended up being a total tee up for Obama.
The stories talked of rifts and divisions and oh, it was an impossible task.
Sarkozy may walk out, and now it's a giant kumbaya.
It is perhaps the most successful G meeting any time anywhere.
Uh-huh.
Now, this story from Andrew Taylor of AP, President Obama's Democratic allies in Congress are taking only baby steps with his budget, putting off crucial decisions on his ambitious plans to expand health care, curb global warming, and raise taxes on the wealthy.
It says here, Presidents Reagan, Clinton, and both Bush has all got far stronger assists from Congress on their first budgets.
Nonetheless, Obama is counting on votes, approving budget outlines this week to give him some semblance of momentum.
So poor old Obama again.
Here's the sort of poor old Obama.
Why he's got this wonderful budget, but his own Democrats, why they're starting to drift off.
Well, I don't think they can go quite as far as they have, oh, it's just horrible.
Oh, it's just all is setting him up for uh just a uh, you know, I th I think uh another terrific overachieving, overwhelming the odds, coming back against all opposition.
So they tease us with these things that Obama is in the process of being stopped by his own party, which I don't believe for a minute.
Yeah, quick time out, back after this.
Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have Rush Limbaugh.
This is the Limbaugh Institute for advanced conservative studies.
I am the man about whom the governor of New York said today in a press conference, the illegitimate because he's unelected, and that's a lib's definition of illegitimate, unelected and who will never be elected governor,
the illegitimate governor of New York State, David Patterson, when asked by a drive-by media reporter to react to uh my claim to leave the city because of his tax increases, the governor of New York said, if I had known that I could have gotten rid of Rush Limbaugh by raising taxes, I would have done it sooner.
Trying to think of another private citizen that any governor has said that about, a resident, and get the hell out of Dodge.
Uh they called here one in common at WNBC TV for I didn't give him any comment and said I'll do it on the radio.
Illegitimate governor, I had to clarify, I don't live there.
I'm gonna stop doing business there.
I'm tired of twelve years of audits and all of that.
Also, by popular demand, ladies and gentlemen, I'm di you never know.
A sound bite sometimes just lights people up.
And this sound bite, Larry King last night was social commentator Nancy Giles and Buckingham Palace spokesman Dickie Arbiter, Dickie, by the way, an expert on touching.
The Queen.
Well, Dickie is an expert on touching, and Larry King set him up that way.
How would you like to be asked what you do for a living?
Oh, my name's Dickie, and I am an expert on touching.
So Larry King was overcome last night.
They had play by play of explosive video of Michelle Obama touching the Queen.
By the way, we have a new video of Michelle touching the Queen.
Dickie, is that a no-no?
Not really.
Um, as I said a moment ago, the Queen's been doing that.
Yeah, she just touched seven years.
Oh, she touched her again.
Oh my gosh.
That's right.
It was a reciprocal touch.
It's okay, Dickie, right?
Yep, absolutely.
Absolutely.
It's not okay.
In fact, at one point, Michelle My Bell put her put her hand on the Queen's shoulder and the Queen drank it.
Now look, I know, I know.
We came and America was started to get rid of having to deal with royalty in this way.
You don't shake the Queen's hand, you don't do this.
But there's Michelle My Bell with her arm around the Queen, so the Queen put her, the Queen's a very gracious person.
You've heard the old story about the finger bowl.
She had somebody to dinner at Buckingham Palace or Balmoral, uh, Belmore, I don't know which one it was, but obviously the guest had never seen a finger bowl.
Have you ever used a finger bowl startily?
Have they ever been somewhere where they brought you a finger?
But in a formal way, in a formal way.
All right.
Well, the formal way is that you're sitting there after one of the courses which might happen to be messy, and they bring you a bowl on a plate.
And it's a it's it's a sizable bowl.
It's nothing that you put off to the side.
And uh on on the uh uh the in the in the bowl are are uh thing you you've you've got to yourself remove napkins and things and put them to the side of the bowl so that the water in the bowl is free for usage.
The servers don't do that.
Well, the Queen was serving dinner and they brought the the the finger bowls out, and guys the guy thought it was soup.
So he put spoon in there and started eating it as soup, and of course, the guests at the royal table were agast, but the queen started eating it too so as to spare, and then everybody else followed suit.
That's a true story.
It's a true story, it is a true story.
Don why why would I lie?
You sound just like the journalism professor at George Mason Universe.
Why would I lie?
Why would I make this up?
You can look it up.
There's all kinds of stories like this about the Queen.
So Michelle My Bell doesn't know the protocol water, puts her arm around it.
Queen put her arm around Michelle My Bell.
But here you had oh, what's funny about this is Larry King doing play by play.
There, there, she touched him again.
She touched him again.
If you didn't know, if I had not set this up and just played the video, the audio, what would you have those describing?
Hey, she touched her again.
Said okay, Dickie?
Perfectly normal, perfectly fine.
So touching expert Dickie said it's all okay.
And I have more requests for that than you can imagine since we aired it in the uh in the first hour.
Okay, we have more Obama sound bites from his uh press conference, question from the BBC's Justin Webb, and I should point out this is not going to ingratiate me to women, and I'm making a supreme effort to myself to the babes.
But I'm sorry, ladies, the the the female reporters I've seen so far that are getting a chance to ask Obama a question are embarrassing.
Thank you, Mr. President, for calling on me.
Thank you, Mr. President, you're wonderful.
Thank you so much for calling on me.
Now no, please ask your question.
That's quite all right.
Uh here's Justin uh Justin Justin Webb of the BBC.
In the spirit of openness, uh, which you are going to run your administration, could you give us an insight in areas where you came to London wanting something but didn't get it?
Where you compromised, where you gave something away to achieve an agreement.
I'd rather not specify what those precise items would be because it's a collective document.
Everything.
Now, keep in mind, I think that this kind of coordination uh really is historic.
If you had imagined ten years ago or twenty years ago or thirty years ago that you'd have uh the leaders of Germany, France, China, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, a president of the United States named Obama,
former adversaries, uh in some cases former mortal enemies negotiating this swiftly on behalf of fixing the global economy, you would have said that's crazy.
And yet it was happening, and it happened with relatively little uh relatively few hiccups.
It happened before everybody got there.
These things always do.
But I want to go through this list.
He said, keep in mind, this kind of coordination really is historic.
If you had imagined ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty years ago that you'd have the leaders of Germany, France, China, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, president of the United States named Obama, former adversaries.
What's changed?
Has China changed who they are?
No.
Um has Russia really changed who they are?
Brazil?
You had honcho down there said that this whole crisis blamed on blue-eyed white people.
Have they changed any?
South Africa, have they changed?
Last 10 to 20, 30 years, hell's bells they've changed.
They've got a communist Marxist government for all intents and purposes, with the ANC guys running around with a hammer and sickle.
So you've got, okay, in Germany and France, France, you know, they're always what they are.
Germany's Germany's always embarrassed of themselves because of Hitler.
They always end up caving.
What's changed here?
France, Germany throw them out, China hadn't changed.
They're still the ChICOMs.
The Russians are still a KGB.
They're still working deals with the Iranians and with the Cubans and wherever else they can find agreement.
Venezuela, Brazil, South Africa.
What's changed is us.
What's changed?
He had the question was what did you give away?
The answers everything.
Well, I don't want to be specific about that.
This is a group deal, you know.
Remarkable here.
Group got together major, major things.
But he didn't want to tell what he sacrificed.
He's asking every one of us to sacrifice, but he didn't want to specify the precise items because it's a collective document.
We're all the same.
Here's the next uh QA, the Australian reporter Emma Albarici.
Mr. President from the Australia Broadcasting Corporation, at the moment, in the U.S., the UK, and in Australia, executive salaries and bonuses decided in the boardroom, the major publicly listed companies, who will be making those decisions on salaries and bonuses as a result of the agreement you have made here today.
And if it is still the boards, will they be guided by principles or legislation?
Theoretically, that should be the shareholders.
But the way that too many corporations have operated for too long is that you have a CEO who basically selects his board.
Yeah.
The board in a fairly cozy relationship, oftentimes with the executive, uh, hires a executive compensation firm, which surprisingly tends to think that it's necessary to retain the best talent to pay people 20 or 30 million dollars a year.
Uh uh.
And we we get into the kinds of habits and practices that I think have have not been have not served shareholders well.
Uh I think ultimately uh distort the decision making of many CEOs.
All right, ladies and did you get the answer?
Did you think he answered the question sturdily?
You think he answered it?
Yes, he did.
Yes, he did.
He most certainly did answer the question.
He just trashed the whole private sector system for selecting CEO salaries.
He just trashed friendly, cozy boards chosen of the CEO.
He just chose or trashed compensation committees.
He just not compensation companies, by the way, it's compensation committee made up of the board.
He just trashed all these cozy relationships.
He just trashed paying people 20 million to 30 million a year.
He trashed the kinds of habits and practices that that has created, which have not served shareholders well, and have ultimately distorted the decision making of many CEOs.
While he didn't say, well, we're gonna set salaries, he may as well have set it up, cause he just said the way they've been running themselves is wrong, too cozy, they're paying themselves too much.
We're gonna fix it.
And then the the president um added this.
Doesn't mean that uh we want uh the state dictating salaries.
We don't.
You know, we I strongly believe in a free market system, and as I you know, uh as I think people understand uh in America at least uh uh people don't resent the rich, they want to be rich.
And that's good.
Uh but we want to make sure that there's mechanisms in place Uh that uh holds people accountable and uh uh produces results.
Don't resent the rich.
You just sent your goon squad acorn after the people who got bonuses that were in legislation in Connecticut that work for AIG.
Don't resent the rich.
Your whole career has been built on making people resent the rich.
I should say his whole career has been.
Doesn't mean we want the state dictating salary.
Better tell Geitner.
We I strongly believe in a free market system.
That just cannot be true.
Not with what he's doing.
As I think people understand in America, at least people don't resent the rich, they want to be rich.
Yeah, but he's gonna fix that.
The minute you make 250 grand a year, you can kiss being rich goodbye.
Be back after this.
Don't go away.
I want to do a little flashback here.
I want to read a small little excerpt from the book Dreams of My Father by Barack Obama, a man who just said that he loves the free market.
Here's the excerpt.
Eventually, a consulting house to a multinational corporation agreed to hire me as a research assistant, like a spy behind enemy lines.
I arrived every day at my mid-Manhattan office and sat at my computer terminal checking the Reuters machine, blinked bright emerald messages from across the globe.
As far as I could tell, I was the only black man in the company, a source of shame for me, but a source of considerable pride for the company's secretariatal pool.
They treated me like a son, those black ladies.
They told me how they expected me to run the company one day.
Tony, this guy is no different than your average street liberal when it comes to corporations.
The multinationals.
The corporations.
They are the evil, and he is no friend of the free market.
All right.
Here's the question and answer I was talking about when Obama said our self-interest is linked to everybody else.
The question comes from a reporter from China TV.
shaped Mr. President, politics is very local, even though talking global solutions indicated by your recent preference over American journalists and British, which is okay.
How can you make sure that you will do whatever you can so that bad local politics, meaning American, will not trump or negatively affect good international economics.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I'm the president of the United States.
I'm not the president of China.
I'm not the president of Japan.
I'm not the president of the other participants here.
And so I have a direct responsibility to my constituents to make their lives better.
It is also my responsibility to lead America into recognizing that its interests, its fate is tied up.
with the larger world.
That unless we are concerned about the education of all children and not just our children, uh not only may we be depriving ourselves of the next great scientist who's gonna find the next new energy source that saves the planet, uh but uh we also may uh make people around the world much more vulnerable to anti-American propaganda.
So if I'm effective as as America's president right now, part of that effectiveness involves uh holding a providing uh Americans insight into how their self-interest is tied up with yours.
Uh and uh and that's an ongoing project.
Gotta take a break back after this.
Folks, we're going to prevail over this.
The country's too strong, and there are still too many of us left.
So while all this may be disconcerting, we're going to beat it back.
We'll see you tomorrow.
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