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April 2, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:46
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's 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 going to be a big problem.
I said, folks, it's already done.
You're not going to put 20 eggheads in a room and come up with thousands of pages of agreements in two days.
It's already done, and Obama's going to 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 Limbaugh 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, some of you in 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 going to have problems.
Sarkozy may walk out.
Merkel's put the kabosh on Brown.
Oh, he's heading into a hornet's nose over there.
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.
Obama pledged to do everything he could to help the world economy revive by spending our money around the rest of the world.
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 McClanche newspaper?
They'll re-cue 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.
This is the kind of transparency that he fought for for us over at the G20.
I mean, he just said here, 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 tape.
This was all reported before this started.
This is what Sarkozy wanted.
This is what Sarkozy threatened to walk out over.
This was already tax havens, hedge funds.
They're going to raise taxes.
They're going to go out and create new tax cheats in order to get money from that.
They're going to spend and spend and spend and spend.
This is a global socialist big-time maneuver.
Here's the rest of it.
We will reestablish 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 seeded 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.
Who's going to determine who fails to cooperate?
You're going to need a regulator.
We have done this.
It sounds like a 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 that this there's going to be such a giant backlash to this at some point?
Trust me on this, folks.
Because all these agreements, all these things that are happening, they're going to have a practical reality.
There will be practical applications of these things that will affect everybody's lives in this country in ways that people can't imagine yet.
And it will have a 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 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 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 Whitecaps.
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 .4,800-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 a 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.
$20 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 Whitecaps, Mickey 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 dietician for the Washington-based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, sent a letter to the West Michigan Whitecaps 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 Vego fascism.
These are the Vega Nazis.
No, no, no.
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 white caps open their season, you order this thing, and you're going to get looks of disdain.
People are going to be critical of you because they are going to be the conformists.
They will be the people that have been roped into groupthink that what you're doing is bad for you and that it's their business.
And it's not their business.
A 4,800 calorie hamburger is not going to 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 Vegg Nazis want a warning label and eventually the Vegi Nazis are going to 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 VegNazis are going to be out there demanding that you not have this choice.
Now, I'm telling you, this is, I have spoken of the militant vegetarians.
I mean, look, I knew it was all over.
When the militant vegetarians in Berkeley forced a Burger King to sell a veggie burger, the Veggi Nazis 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 that's fine if they want.
That's all well and good.
More and more are fine.
I've had a veggie burger.
You know, Archer Daniels, Midland makes them, and they put them under different brand names.
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 got to sell, you got to sell whatever.
What does Burger King sell?
The Whopper?
You got to put a Whopper in it.
Do the meat people force their way on you?
No.
They already have a monopoly, Mr. 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 going to 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 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 really, 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 what he's got to, he's got to get involved in globalism, and he's got to make people less vulnerable to anti-American propaganda, which that means he's going to have to sort of change things he says now and then.
And then he said, then he said that 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's.
He did say it.
He did 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 really what I have to convince, well, what I, as president of the United States, president of the American people, I have to convince the American people that their self-interest is tied to yours, is what he said.
Now, 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 lead the world, or we have led the world.
The world follows our lead.
This is all just getting so it's frustrating and it's so dead wrong.
Our self-interest is tied to who?
Who?
I get up every day and I got to wait to figure out what somebody else in the world is doing before I decide whether or not what I'm doing is going to work.
Where it's good for me or my country, what?
Our self-interest?
That most alternative fuel.
So we got to 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.
It doesn't, 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 our self-interest is tied to the worlds, 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, Rush.
My question was: I'm just wondering what can average Americans do to stop or maybe even slow, I should say, this administration's agenda.
I know next year we have the midterm election, but in the meantime, 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 these tea parties, a lot of them are happening on April 15th around the country.
And if there's one happening near where you live, 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 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 G20.
They ended up being a total T-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 anytime, anywhere.
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 Bushes 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 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 had.
Oh, it's just horrible.
Paul is setting him up for just, you know, I think another terrific overachieving, overwhelmingly 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.
Quick timeout, 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 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.
They called here one in common at WNBC-TV4.
I didn't give any comment.
I'll do it on the radio.
Illegitimate governor.
I had to clarify, I don't live there.
I'm going to stop doing business there.
I'm tired of 12 years of audits and all of that.
Also, by popular demand, ladies and gentlemen, you never know.
A soundbite sometimes just lights people up.
And this soundbite, 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.
As I said a moment ago, the Queen's been doing seven years.
Oh, she touched her again.
Oh, my God.
The Queen touched Michelle.
She's been around.
That's right.
It was a reciprocal touch.
It's okay, Vicky, right?
Yep, absolutely.
Absolutely.
It's not okay.
In fact, at one point, Michelle Mybel put her hand on the Queen's shoulder and the queen drank.
Now, look, I know, I know.
We came and America was starting 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 Mybel 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, Balmoral.
I don't know which one it was, but obviously the guest had never seen a fingerbowl.
Have you ever used a fingerbowl sternly?
Have you ever been somewhere where they brought you a finger 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 sizable bowl.
It's nothing that you put off to the side.
And in the bowl are 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, when the queen was serving dinner and they brought the finger bowls out, and 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 aghast.
But the queen started eating it too.
So as to spare it.
And then everybody else followed suit.
That's a true story.
It's a true story.
It is a true story.
Why would I lie?
You sound just like the journalism professor at George Mason University.
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 Mybel doesn't know the protocol, whatever, puts her arm around it.
Queen put her arm around Michelle Mybel.
But here you had, what's funny about this is Larry King doing play-by-play.
There, there, she touched him again.
She touched him.
If you didn't know, if I had not set this up and just played the video, the audio, what would you have think he was describing?
Hey, she touched her again.
Is that okay, Dickie?
Well, perfectly normal, perfectly fine.
The touching expert Dickie said, it's okay.
And I have more requests for that than you can imagine since we aired it in the first hour.
Okay, we have more Obama soundbites from his 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 ingratiate myself to the babes.
But I'm sorry, ladies, 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, now, please ask your question.
That's quite all right.
Here's Justin Webb of the BBC.
In the spirit of openness, 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.
It's everything.
Now, keep in mind, I think that this kind of coordination really is historic.
If you had imagined 10 years ago or 20 years ago or 30 years ago that you'd have the leaders of Germany, France, China, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, a president of the United States named Obama, former adversaries, 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 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 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 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.
Has Russia really changed who they are?
No.
Brazil?
Your head 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 bills 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 where they are.
Germany's always embarrassed of themselves because of Hitler, and they always end up caving.
What's changed here?
France, Germany, throw them out.
China hadn't changed.
They're still the THICOMs.
The Russians are still at KGB.
They're still working deals with the Iranians and with the Cubans and wherever else they can find a grid in Venezuela.
Brazil, South Africa, what's changed is us.
What's changed?
The question was, what did you give away?
The answer is everything.
Oh, 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 Q ⁇ A who, the Australian reporter, Emma Albarici.
Mr. President, from the Australia Broadcasting Corporation, at the moment, in the U.S., the U.K., 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.
The way that too many corporations have operated for too long is that you have a CEO who basically selects his board.
The board, in a fairly cozy relationship, oftentimes with the executive, hires an executive compensation firm, which surprisingly tends to think that it's necessary to retain the best talent to pay people $20 or $30 million a year.
And we get into the kinds of habits and practices that I think have not served shareholders well.
I think ultimately distort the decision-making of many CEOs.
All right.
Ladies, did you get the answer?
You think he answered the question, Snerdley?
Do 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 to 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 going to set salaries, he may as well have set it up because he just said the way they've been running themselves is wrong, too cozy, they're paying themselves too much.
We're going to fix it.
And then the president added this.
Doesn't mean that we want the state dictating salaries.
We don't.
I strongly believe in a free market system.
And as I think people understand in America, at least, people don't resent the rich.
They want to be rich.
And that's good.
But we want to make sure that there's mechanisms in place that holds people accountable and 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.
It doesn't mean we want the state dictating salary.
Better tell Geithner.
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 going to fix that.
The minute you make $250,000 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 that 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 secretarial 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.
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.
Winning an issue of the world.
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, not only may we be depriving ourselves of the next great scientist who's going to find the next new energy source that saves the planet, but we also may make people around the world much more vulnerable to anti-American propaganda.
So, if I'm effective as America's president right now, part of that effectiveness involves holding providing Americans insight into how their self-interest is tied up with yours.
And that's an ongoing project.
Got to 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.
Have a nice evening.
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