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April 3, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:49
April 3, 2009, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Oh, no, it's just a day out there for sad news.
It's a surprise move, it says here at the AP, but a judge today has rejected Madonna's request to adopt another child from Malawi.
Said it would set a dangerous precedent to bend rules.
It is very, very sad.
Very sad.
Madonna just going to have to go out and find a different kind of accessory.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday.
Yip, yahoo.
Here we are, ladies and gentlemen, Open Line Friday.
And for the millions of you that are new to this program, Friday differs from Thursday in this regard.
Monday through Thursday, we only talk about what I want to talk about.
See, I'm a host.
I'm a benevolent dictator.
I don't want to talk about things that bore me because then you will get bored.
But on Friday, I cast all that aside.
And as the benevolent dictator I am, in a great act of magnanimity, I allow you, when we go to the phones, to choose whatever it is we talk about today.
So if you think something needs to be discussed that hasn't been, this is the day.
You have a question, comment, this is the day.
Telephone number for Open Line Friday is 800-282-2882, and the email address is Elrushbo at EIBnet.com.
You know, you can't win out there.
You just can't win out there.
In Germany, a German woman has divorced her husband because she was fed up with him cleaning all the time.
German media reported the wife got through 15 years of marriage putting up with a man's penchant for doing chores, tidying up and rearranging the furniture.
But she ran out of patience when he knocked down and rebuilt a wall at their home when it got dirty.
The judge said, I never had anybody seek a divorce for this.
Well, you either don't clean enough or now you clean too much.
Speaking of Germany, of course, President Obama with a joint press conference this morning with Angela Merkel.
She is perhaps unique on the world stage among all of the European Union leaders in that she is not spellbound and she's not rendered a little high school cheerleader when Obama comes to town.
Story here from Baden, Germany.
Last time Obama came to Germany, he was campaigning for the White House.
He met Angela Merkel.
He was treated like a rock star by hundreds of thousands of people.
But today, there is an undercurrent, however slight of resentment against the U.S. and its role in the global financial meltdown.
Now, I thought that was all fixed yesterday.
I thought the resentment of the United States was fixed because I thought Obama went over there, the G20.
I thought he apologized.
I thought he gave up.
He handed him quite a lot of America.
I mean, John Bolton has a piece here that I'm going to quote from as we get into the program today about what the loss of sovereignty looks like.
And basically, you know, it's one thing.
Bolton's point is it's one thing, ladies and gentlemen, to give up your sovereignty in foreign policy.
But what really worries, and that's a big concern, but what really worries John Bolton is the giving up of sovereignty in American domestic policy.
He really written some great stuff about this, and as I say, I'll share it with you as the program unfolds today.
The German people seem to like Obama.
He may be more popular than Merkel, says the AP.
But Obama will find a Germany more worried than enthralled, and Merkel, who faces a tough reelection campaign in September, more than willing to hold her own ground.
And Simon Koschut of the German Council on Foreign Relations said Merkel is not a huge fan of Obama.
She's skeptical not only of his policies, she is skeptical of his whole personality.
That was the backdrop for their joint press conference that took place.
And I watched a little bit of it, didn't listen to much of it, because I think this is all a giant dog and pony show that is going on.
But let's review some of the AP coverage of the events going on in Europe.
Now, this first story, this is fascinating.
President Obama says al-Qaeda is still determined to harm Westerners and that the war in Iraq was a distraction from a shared goal with Europe to dismantle the terrorist network.
Obama said Friday that the unpopular war in Iraq undermined Europe's initial support for America after the 9-11 attacks.
He says he wants to repair that relationship because the U.S. and Europe will have a shared interest in rooting out al-Qaeda.
Obama says the world cannot expect that because somebody named Barack Hussein Obama got elected, that everything is going to be okay.
Now, what?
What is this?
It's okay to use Hussein in Europe, and it's okay to warm pay just because my middle name's Hussein doesn't mean the Islamo-fascists are going to end up loving us.
So what does he do?
Once again, he goes over to European soil and blames the United States and excuses Europe for failing to join us in not just the war in Iraq, but the war on terror.
And of course, he conveniently forgets to point out, folks, that the French, that the Ruskis and the Chikoms had ties with the other Hussein.
That would be Saddam Hussein.
Have we forgotten the days of Dominique de Villepin and Jacques Chirac?
Have we forgotten the oil for food program?
Have we forgotten the members of parliament, or one of them anyway, in the UK, and journalists who were bribed by Saddam Hussein?
The reason the French wanted no part of the Iraq war had nothing to do with policy or morality or any of that.
It had to do with the fact that they had under the table business deals with Saddam Hussein.
And that's why they didn't care that Saddam Hussein was mass murdering his own people.
They had development deals, real estate deals, oil deals.
They had all kinds of deals, some of them personally, some of them country to country.
They had ties with Saddam Hussein that were economic.
The moral component of getting rid of the other Hussein was uninteresting to them.
They had no desire.
And that's why they opposed us.
It wasn't because they hated Bush.
That was just a cover story.
But never mind.
Never mind.
President Obama is willing to go over there and continue to spread and enlarge the myth.
Now, the only reason Europe didn't support us is because everybody hated George W. Bush and hated the Iraq war because they thought the U.S. was immoral.
Everybody wanted to go to Afghanistan.
If that's true, why isn't everybody joining us in Afghanistan?
There's a story today that says Obama says we can't go it alone in Afghanistan.
He's trying to get NATO to go along.
If everybody thought Afghanistan was the prize, if everybody thought, and by the way, how's Obama's plan to capture Osama coming?
Well, remember, that's how they defined success in Afghanistan when Bush was running the show.
Now, all of a sudden, have you heard a whisper even about capturing Osama bin Laden?
So, if Europe really wanted us to go to Afghanistan, if they opposed Iraq because they thought it was unnecessary, then where is all the support for our ramped up efforts in Afghanistan?
The security of the region never entered the equation over there.
So, the myth continues.
The world hated Bush.
The world loves Obama.
Now, the world loves the United States.
If the world loves the United States, at least the G20 loves the United States, it's because the United States has decided to stop being who we have always been.
And Barack Obama wants to turn the United States into something similar to a Western European socialist democracy.
The next story I found interesting also from the Associated Press welcomed with thunderous cheers, President Obama pledged today to work repair damaged relations with, work on to repair damaged relations with Europe, saying the world came together following the 2001 terrorist attack, but then we got sidetracked by Iraq, so he mentioned it again.
We were all kumbaya.
We were all happy.
We were all hunky-dory.
We were one world.
And then Bush, Bush, Bush made us hated around the world because he went into a rock.
Obama said, we must be honest with ourselves.
In recent years, we've allowed our alliance to drift.
We got sidetracked by Iraq.
We have not fully recovered that initial insight that we have a mutual interest in ensuring that an organization like Al-Qaeda cannot operate.
I think it's important for Europe to understand that even though I'm president and George Bush is not president, Al-Qaeda is still a threat.
I cannot tell you how this makes the blood boil.
I just feed the hatred of George W. Bush, but then don't change the policy, ramp up the policy in Afghanistan.
Whoa.
All the while pledging to repair U.S. relations with Europe.
How do you do that?
You go over there and you bow down to the king of Saudi Arabia.
You go over there and you say, yep, we're to blame.
I agree with you.
United States' a problem and we're going to fix it.
That's how you do it.
And you go to the Chikom and say, hey, look, we're going to get rid of our nukes.
And you go to Medburg, hey, we'll get rid of our nukes.
Hey, we're going to totally nuclear disarm.
And they go, oh, well, and the audiences applaud.
And the Chi-Coms and the Russians say, can we be this lucky?
Can we be this lucky?
The American people elected this dunce?
All we got to do is pretend we're going along with this.
These guys have figured out all they have to do is figure out, they figured out all they have to do is act like they are enthralled with this guy.
All they've got to do is do that.
And the American people will think Obama's working miracles while he dismantles the United States of America.
And these guys sit around and laugh behind closed doors all the while in public, except for Merkel.
They make it look like they are just as big rock star fans as all of you, many Americans.
We'll be back.
Stay with us, folks.
It's Open Line Friday, Rush Limbaugh.
We'll get to your phone calls as soon as Snerdley gets busy answering some.
800-282-2882, if you'd like to be on the program.
Wall Street Journal says in a compensation program that has drawn angry protests from politicians, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac expect to pay about $210 million in retention bonuses to 7,600 employees over 18 months.
This according to a letter from the mortgage company's regulator to Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa.
The maximum retention bonus for any individual executive under the plan will total $1.5 million during the 18 months ending in early 2010, according to the letter.
So what will Barney Frank do?
What will you do?
What will the angry pitchfork mobs do?
$165 million in bonuses at AIG caused riots, protests at the homes of the executives.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, supposedly privately held companies.
They're just front operations.
They're holding companies for the United States government.
Let's see.
Ladies and gentlemen, if indeed anybody gets all upset over $210 million in retention bonuses at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Back to the European theater here from Strasbourg, France.
President Obama says impoverished nations are entitled to help, but they also have to help themselves.
You know, President Obama, that'd be very, very nice to hear here.
That would be very nice if you would say that about the entitlement class.
You know, one in 10 Americans.
I don't know how this makes you feel.
It does not make me feel good.
It does not make me feel, well, look at how compassionate we are.
What a great country we are.
And it also doesn't make me look, wow, what a rotten country we are.
What a stinking, rotten, horrible economy.
One in 10 Americans today.
One in 10 is on food stamps.
Just one entitlement program.
Food stamps.
One in 10.
That's a crying shame out there.
It doesn't say anything great about us.
It doesn't say anything rotten about the economy.
What it talks about is lives that have been destroyed, pummeled into submission, people believing there's no option.
And I'm sure you've got the cheats and the scams in there at the same time.
While Obama's in France and telling everybody over there, hey, you've got to help yourselves.
The world ought to help, but you need to fix your corruption and you need to help yourselves.
It'd be great if he would say that here, but that's not what he's saying here.
Here's what he's saying here.
White comedian Paul Shanklin and every cent you make.
Speaking of taxes, skip audio soundbite number one.
We'll go to soundbite number two here.
Yesterday, as you know, WNBC-TV Channel 4 called and they want to know what I thought about Governor Patterson suggesting that he would have raised taxes sooner had he known it would force me out of the state and the city.
Here is the package Channel 4 in New York put together.
The governor has said he fears New Yorkers drowning in taxes will flee the state, but he's not worried about reports that conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh plans to pack up.
If I knew that would be the result, I would have thought about the taxes earlier.
When I called Limbaugh to get his reaction, it became red meat for his radio show today.
Media Relations Department just got a call from WNBC-TV in New York.
That's Channel 4.
Channel 4 has requested a response from me regarding a statement made by the governor of New York, David Patterson, in a press conference this morning.
Well, it's happened again, folks.
I've always said if you place a bag of manure in front of a Democrat, they will certainly step in it.
And New York Governor David Patterson certainly has.
And for the record, Limbaugh says he's technically not leaving New York because he says he already did leave New York in 1997.
He says he's lived in Florida ever since.
You know what has not, and it purposely being omitted.
The coverage this story is getting is amazing.
You know, all over, not just in New York, but over the country.
And the one aspect that everybody leaves out of this story that has got to be purposeful is the tipping point.
I'm in New York 10, 15 days a year, and I get audited every year for 12 years, and I've just had it.
The tax increase is the tipping point.
The late great Bo Diddley.
Standby on audio soundbite number 22, Mr. Broadcast Engineer.
Okay, it's Open Line Friday.
We always try to go to the phones earlier on Friday.
We try to take more calls on Friday than as usual.
So we'll start in Tri-City, Washington.
This is Andrea.
Glad that you called.
Nice to have you here.
Hi.
First of all, Rush, you need to know I absolutely love your show.
Thank you.
I have a couple questions for you.
First of all, how is it that smart people can be so deceived and ignorant about Obama?
It's like the evidence is right in front of their faces, and yet they don't do it.
That's an interesting question.
I'm glad you asked the question because we have to define smart.
No, we really do.
I mean, because here you have your view of Obama.
Right.
And you think it's based on an informed analysis of what he says and what he's done and what he says he wants to do.
Right.
And then you have people that you also think are smart who see the same stuff you do and either ignore it or think it's good.
And you wonder how can smart people not see through Obama?
What do you think smart is?
I don't mean to put you on the spot.
It's not a trick question.
What do you think smart is?
Oh, well, I have a couple of friends who I think are very up to politics.
I mean, they watch everything.
They know what's going on.
And yet they see hope in Obama.
They see that he's bringing change.
And in fact, one of them, her husband, runs as a senator, and her and her husband see things differently.
But, you know, she supports Obama.
And I think, wow, it just shocks me.
So I would think that smart people would just be up to date on the politics.
They know what's going on.
And yet they're not.
Well, see, this is smart people.
Smart people.
They may be smart, but there's so many variables here.
For example, the Washington Post came out with a poll on Tuesday.
And let me, I want to get this exact.
Hang on here just a second.
I didn't print it out because I actually hadn't intended talking.
But 80%, 80% in the Washington Post poll on Tuesday, this ABC Washington Post poll, blame banks, financial institutions, and corporations and George W. Bush for the economy that we're in today.
20% do not.
70% also blamed consumers.
Now, I would imagine that the people you think are smart probably would agree with that.
They probably think the economy is rotten.
And why do they think so?
Smart people, people who think they're smart, people you're talking about, probably watch a lot of media.
They probably watch a lot of mainstream media, and they still believe what they hear and what they see there.
And for the last six years, this economy, the media and the Democrat Party, tried to create in people's minds a recession.
They tried to create pessimism in as many minds as possible about the future of the country economically or for the purposes of winning an election in 2008.
And I think also you have people going along with a group.
If you've got people saying, yeah, I see hope and I see the change, then you've got a cult following there.
You've got people who are devoted to the personality.
And the popular sentiment is Obama's smart, Obama's fresh, Obama's neat, Obama's historical.
And it's really easy to get on board that.
It's difficult to resist that tug.
It's difficult to resist the tug of popular sites because you might get criticized.
So where they may be smart, they could also be sellouts.
They could be very ignorant.
They could be very misinformed.
And in this case, I think a lot of people are.
And they just, it's going to be a while before any of this starts to turn around.
Yeah, I agree.
That's so sad.
Well, my other question for you was about your sleep number bed.
I know, totally off the wall, but my husband and I have huge back issues.
And I actually got in two car accidents a month apart from each other while I was pregnant, six and seven months pregnant, and neither of them were my fault.
So that was a year ago.
And now my back is doing great, except that my bed is not supporting me.
And so it keeps, you know, just letting me down.
Every morning I'm sore.
And my husband's a police officer, and he has a horrible back.
And so every night and every morning, we're just tossing and turning.
And so we're looking at all these different beds, and we have to spend a lot of money.
And so I want to make sure that we're spending it in the right place.
And I know that you just talk so highly of your sleep number bed.
And I really, I want to know, have you tried different mattresses before the sleep number bed?
And that's what.
Of course I've tried different mattresses before.
I mean, like, 58 and 58 years old.
Of course, I've tried different.
I've slept on floors.
I've slept on sofas.
I've slept on these little rafts that you go on a swim pool with on the floor.
I've slept in airplanes.
I've slept everywhere.
Okay.
Really good, good mattresses then.
How do they compare with that sleep number bed?
Well, I've had mine 10 years.
I'm just getting ready to get a new one.
And I've had no thought of getting rid of it.
I love it.
Really?
Yeah.
Of course, now, you know, what I can easily say is, look, Andrea, don't tell anybody, but I'm lying about it.
Don't believe a thing I say about the bed or politics.
I'm just, why?
It is full of it.
You watch that be reported in the drive-by media.
No, I'm telling you, it's great.
I'm a firm believer in it, which is why they are sponsored.
I love sharing my passions, folks.
I love coming to this program, sharing my passions with people.
And many of those are our sponsors.
But you can't go wrong.
Whether you need a hard or soft sleep, this will provide it.
That's the whole point of it.
And it's, I've, you know, there's a lot of testimonials I can give you here.
You're just going to have to trust me.
I can't go any further, but it's great.
It's absolutely fabulous.
I'm glad you called.
Good luck with it.
David in Nashville, you're next on Open Line Friday.
Hi.
Ditto's Rush.
A question.
I don't mean to be indelicate about the recent passing of Natasha Richardson or anything, but, you know, in our rush to socialism and everything with socialized medicine, ABC had a, you know, kind of a chronological order of what happened on the day of her passing.
And it said that they took her to one hospital in Canada and then turned around and shipped her to another hospital, both using an ambulance, and it took three hours to finally get to a neurosurgeon.
Whereas in the U.S., basically, you know, helicopter services available all over the place.
And yet we're rushing to kind of emulate that.
Well, I've heard this.
You know, there are people not in the world of politics, by the way.
You know, this is a story that was largely reported in the entertainment media.
And the entertainment media, after all, the obligatory aspects of the story reported, did start asking themselves, well, the fact that the Canadian health care system is so arduous, could it have been prevented had there been less time spent getting from the two hospitals?
I read it was four hours.
And after, or maybe it was four hours total, one hour at a certain hospital where they figured out, oh, we can't do what we need to do here, and they had to drive her to another.
There are a lot of factors in this.
If what we've been told is the truth, what we've been told is that she had a minor accident and that the ski patrol said, you know, you better let us check you.
No, no, no, I feel fine.
She went back to the hotel room and an hour later started feeling very ill and very sick.
And that's when they got people.
So an hour there went by, supposedly.
Other versions of the story say it was pretty obvious at the outset.
Regardless, it did take a long time for her to get to a place that, and this was a five-star ski resort in Canada.
It did take a long time for her to get to a place where the proper kind of treatment could be administered.
And it was too late by the time she finally got there.
Look, we had, you know, the British, or the European Union member of Parliament, the MEP, Mr. Dannon, the guy who took Gordon Brown to task a couple weeks ago, was on Sean Hannity's television show and just begged and implored the American people do not go to a national health care plan.
And he gave specifics of the problem.
And we talk about them here.
If you get breast cancer in the U.K. now, you're basically told to stay home.
They don't have room for you.
They don't have you.
They give you some medication to do at home, and that's it.
It's an absolute mess.
And the same thing happens there that will happen here.
People who can afford it will have their own private doctors and private hospitals they can go to.
And people who can't will be stuck in the system.
And we had a call earlier.
How can smart people do dumb things?
You take a look at any government bureaucracy with which you interface, and you realize it's an absolute, it's the last thing in the world you look forward to.
I don't care if it's a city, state, or federal agency you have to deal with.
You don't want to do it.
From getting your car license to your driver's license on up, you don't want to do it.
Now you're going to have Obama in charge of car warranties.
Can you imagine getting your warranty honored if GM goes into bankruptcy through some federal government division or department?
So imagine healthcare with this.
But that even misses the point.
We're down here to a principle.
And this is where a lot of people are frightened and scared.
The notion of the government running one-seventh of a private sector, the best healthcare system in the world.
The notion of the government doing it, whether they do it well or not, and they don't do it well.
In the old days, this would have just been a no-brainer, slam dunk.
No way, no how.
That's not what America is about.
Today, you have, it's arguable what percentage of the American people think the government should be doing everything.
But it doesn't matter because Obama does.
Obama thinks the government is in charge of making this country fair.
Obama is about returning the nation's wealth to its quote-unquote rightful owners.
Obama, Charles Krauthammer, refers to it today this way.
Obama essentially wants to give you not an automobile warranty, but a life warranty.
He wants to warranty your life.
Anything that goes wrong, he will deal with.
The government will fix anything, any injustice, any economic injustice, any kind of inequality, anything that's not fair that happens to you, the government will make it right.
That's what he seeks.
Krauthammer calls it a great leveler.
This is basically you have to destroy capitalism, you have to wipe it out, and then you have to take everything from everybody you deem that has too much.
And then you have to redistribute.
That's what he wants to do.
So whether it's health care or what have you.
And in the old days, this kind of stuff, the American people would have stood up in righteous indignation and said, no way.
Now they may have voted for it.
Have a sound bite here.
I want you to hear.
It is from former Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich.
But it may as well be any liberal.
It could just as easily be Barack Obama.
It's on CNBC this morning, and I had a discussion of the program called The Call on Obama's budget and the national debt.
By the way, the budget passed in the House and the Senate without a single Republican vote anywhere.
There are some things that didn't make it.
They're in trouble.
They're not gone.
Cap and trade in big trouble.
Card check in big trouble.
The charitable donation, some Democrats are balking in that.
But the budget outline, the blueprint was passed.
Not the budget itself, but the blueprint was passed with not a single Republican vote.
And of course, the drive-by's are going, well, this is horrible.
Why, that Banford buying things can't blame it.
The Democrats don't need a single Republican vote.
If I were the Republicans, I wouldn't vote for one shred of this.
I'd try to stop as much of it as I could, but make them own this.
When 80% of the people of this country think that this economy is owing to George Bush and the banks and corporations, then the challenge is to turn this into Obama's economy as fast to hell as you can.
And that means staying away from it and not voting for one aspect of it.
In fact, Obama lost in the House 20 Democrats from the previous vote on this.
This has got to be turned into Obama's economy and Obama's budget.
Now, here's Robert B. Reich talking about something that's very interesting.
Tax cuts are fine, but what we know about tax cuts is that they don't always stimulate growth nearly to the extent that direct government spending does for two very obvious reasons.
One is a lot of people, if they get a tax cut, they are going to save it or they're going to pay down their own debt.
That may be good for the individual.
Even if they do spend, they are often going to go to the mall and buy something from another country.
We have to do a stimulus instead of tax cuts because the American consumer is too stupid to know what to buy.
I mean, that's the umbrella under which this statement was made.
But I want to parse this even further.
First place, he's lying through his teeth.
Tax cuts are fine, but we know that tax cuts, they don't always stimulate growth nearly to the extent that direct government spending does.
Well, Secretary Rice, that's just disingenuous of you.
That is purposely dishonest.
What's the new unemployment number?
$669,000?
8.5% some stimulus, huh?
Some stimulus, Secretary Reich.
We've had trillions of dollars in stimulus since last year, and we're losing jobs.
And I thought the purpose of the stimulus was to create jobs.
So all this damn government spending is better at creating jobs in the private sector than tax cuts are.
A lot of people, they get a tax cut, they're going to save it, they're going to pay down their debt.
That may be good for the individual, but not good for Democrats.
It's all about the individual.
It's his or her money.
If the individual wants to retire some of their debt, which they have been preached to for decades to do, even in this Washington Post poll, 70% say that our economy's in bad shape because you have been irresponsible with your credit card.
So it ought to follow that if you get a tax cut and you pay down your debt, your fellow citizens will love you.
But regardless, you are the individual, and it's nobody's damn business what you do with your money as long as we're living in a moral society and you're not breaking the law with it.
It's nobody's business.
But the Democrats and the liberals are going to make it their business because you're not smart enough to spend it on the right stuff to cause economic growth.
Maybe good for the individual self-interest.
The individual, the world's smallest minority, the individual working in his or her own self-interest is what built this country.
And then, even if these individuals do spend, they're often going to go to the mall and buy something from another country.
Do you realize just in how much contempt the Democrat Party holds you?
Do you realize what a bunch of brain-dead idiots they think you are?
And a bunch of brain-dead idiots voted for them.
Why would they not think it?
Unemployment, 25-year high, 8.5%.
A question.
Should you feel guilty about having a job during times like this?
Some think you should.
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