All Episodes
Previous Next
April 8, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:50
April 8, 2009, Wednesday, Hour #3
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
It's a tight time for a news update, ladies and gentlemen.
And this is about the Maersk Sealand.
This uh to my eyes, it's a giant freighter.
Pretty big cargo ship.
As the ship that's been hijacked by Somali Pirates.
Now we were told right as the program began that the ship's crew had regained control of the ship from the Somali Pirates while the Obama administration was in discussions about how to handle this.
We have a news update for you on this, ladies and gentlemen.
The ship's captain is still being held by the pirates.
The crew apparently not under such tight control, but the ship's captain is still being held captive by the Somali Pirates, which is okay.
In fact, that's even cool.
The ship's captain's a CEO.
He's the leader.
He's the boss.
He deserves to be held captive by the pirates.
The uh great unwashed, the crew members are free, and that's the way it ought to be.
But that captain, it's good that he's still captive of the pirates, because he is a CEO.
Greetings and welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
Final hour of our excursion into broadcast excellence today.
Now, this is a make this some AP.
Chrysler rolls out SUV after government scolding.
Just a week after the White House scolded Chrysler for relying too much on gas guzzlers.
The company is heading to a Marquee auto show today to unveil a new SUV.
You gotta love these guys at Chrysler.
Bob Nardelli runs the show there.
Chrysler insists that the Jeep Grand Cherokee, which clocks in at twenty miles per hour or twenty miles per gallon in the two-wheel drive version, nineteen miles per gallon in the four-wheel drive, is a crowd favorite and a crucial part of its lineup.
It's showing a profit.
It's one of the vehicles Chrysler makes that's showing a profit.
This is a very important vehicle for us.
It's one of the primary legs of the Chrysler stool, said a Chrysler spokesman.
Customers have told us they want this vehicle and that it's the right size.
Holy smokes, folks, do you understand what you just heard?
Chrysler is listening to customers.
Chrysler's actually listening to customers here, which is a novel idea, particularly in the auto business as run now by Obama.
Chrysler should be listening to Obama.
Chrysler should be listening to the government.
But Chrysler is listening to customers.
The 2011 model is 11% more fuel efficient than its predecessor.
It's powered by a cleaner and more powerful engine.
Still, Chrysler's decision to debut an SUV as its only new car.
At the New York International Auto Show, seems like odd timing to say the least.
Because on March 30, Obama issued a scathing rejection of Chrysler's survival plan and gave it 30 days to secure a merger with Fiat.
The White House slammed Chrysler for having a product lineup so heavily weighted with trucks and SUVs.
It added that the automaker does not have enough products in the pipeline to meet an expected increase in demand for small cars.
Now can I ask, who who is expecting this demand increase in small cars?
Government is.
Who's expecting an increase in the demand for small cars?
We know that the demand for small cars happens, at least our empirical evidence is, that when gasoline hits $4 a gallon.
And it isn't at $4.
And Chrysler said this is what their customers want.
Chrysler's standing by the Grand Cherokee.
It's profitable, recognizable.
It's the number two selling vehicle in the Jeep lineup.
Grand Cherokee sales fell by almost half during the first three months of the year, but its market share has remained steady, according to Auto Data Corporation.
John Wolkenowitz, who is a senior automotive analyst for an auto consulting firm, said it's one of their most important vehicles.
The market for SUVs has not gone away, particularly for smaller ones like the Grand Cherokee.
but the government said that Chrysler doesn't have enough products in the pipeline to meet an expected increase in demand for small cars.
Now again I ask, where's that demand for small cars coming from?
That's right, Obama Motors Corporation.
This is and we learn that General Motors 11, they have 20 vehicles that they make that show a profit.
11 of them are trucks or SUVs.
And you know, what's the big news yesterday?
This stupid little uh wheelchair with the with a motor on it.
And there's no market for that, just like there's no market for the segue on which it's based.
Speaking of this, I want to go back to this pirate ship for just a second because I've been watching video of this ship.
Now, I don't know how big it is in relation to their cargo freighters, but it's big.
This thing is huge.
I mean, if it's so big, I'm wondering how a bunch of pirates can actually commandeer the thing.
I I would think after all this time that some of these ships would have at least some machine guns there for the crew to use if the pirates start showing up.
But but despite that, I have another observation about this.
And I mean this in the bottom of my heart.
And this this episode here with Chrysler illustrates it.
They're making an SUV.
The customers want it.
It's a profit center for them.
And they need profit centers.
The government's saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, you've got to go small.
We gotta go uh green.
Uh we gotta go hybrid, we we've got to go electric.
We gotta save the planet.
We need alternative forms of energy.
Folks, I don't know about you.
I'm 58 years old and I am worn out on alternative energies.
I've been hearing about it my whole life.
This is the third or fourth time people have gotten the people of this country ripped into a tizzy over alternative energy, alternative fuels, and it finally, after three or four times, it looks like it's set in, the American people actually believe that their cars are destroying the planet.
If they don't, their kids do.
And when your kids believe you're doing some destroy the planet, mommy, mommy, you're killing the power, mommy, mommy.
Shut up, kid.
Okay, we'll get a little lawnmower out there and you'll be happy.
Just get off my back.
Uh so I'm I'm worn out.
I I frankly, I'm bored with alternative energy.
It is nothing but a political ploy.
The market will take care of that when and if.
I'm looking at this giant ship, and I got to thinking of all the oil tankers that are out there.
When I flew into Dubai for a two-day rest stop before on a troop visit to Afghanistan, I've seen oil tankers.
I never saw as many in one place as I saw on the descent into the United Arab Emirates.
Out there in the Gulf.
I look at pictures of this cargo ship, the uh the Maersk, and I'm thinking, okay, we've got all these engines that burn some derivative of a fossil fuel, and they're destroying the planet, and they're creating global warming, and the carbon footprint of pollution is just uh it's intolerable.
And I'm looking at these giant things, and I'm thinking, okay, what of the alternative energy plans being pushed is going to replace the power plants in these giant freighters and tankers as they plow through the ocean.
And what's this thing carrying?
It's carrying cargo.
You it's it's carrying the uh uh trailers that you see on a tractor trailer on a on a on an 18-wheeler.
You've seen Maresk all over the place.
Uh just what alternative energy is gonna replace the power flant in these things?
Are we gonna have giant windmills on the on these craters, freighters?
Are we gonna have solar panels, fuel cells?
What the hell?
The answer is there isn't anything yet.
It's gonna replace the engines necessary to get these things plowing through the oceans.
And yet everybody is worked into a tizzy here over getting rid of SUVs and getting rid of large combustible engine cars that don't get much miles.
You want to talk about the miles per gallon one of these things gets when these freighters get.
I know you don't measure it that way, but if we did, I mean you'd be you'd be you'd be stunned.
We're never gonna replace, not in our lifetimes an energy source, a power plant for any of these tankers or cargo ships.
That's okay, Mether Limbaugh.
That would be fine if we got rid of everybody else got rid of their big cards and full forth, then we would have some playroom there.
We'd have some latitude.
We're going to fill all out some of these big tankers to think take.
Yeah, but it's cargo, it's commerce.
Okay, so we're going to start now.
We'll have exemptions.
We're going to have exempt and that's the way it's always going to happen.
But I I just, I just, after three or four times in my adult life of being hit up constantly with how my lifestyle is a as an affluent prosperous American is destroying the planet.
I cannot tell you how that offends my intelligence and my sensibilities.
And it really makes me mad when I see how many Americans unable to resist the tug of popular sentiment go right along with it because they think they're going to be doing some good.
When it's just it's the whole thing is so intellectually absurd.
It's so political.
But I understand the human condition.
I understand most people think they don't matter.
In a population, what's the world population?
Six billion.
It's easy for somebody to think they don't matter.
Yeah, even the greatest country in the world.
I don't, my vote doesn't count.
I don't matter.
What do I do?
People want to matter.
They want to think their lives have meaning.
They want to think that their lives mean something.
And what better way to do that than to live your life in such a way that you are saving the planet?
So it's very seductive.
The entire climate change, global warming approach or appeal.
But it's nonsensical.
All right, a brief timeout here, and we'll come back some interesting soundbites on Neil Cavuto yesterday.
And again, a reminder, I'm going to be doing it's a phone interview, but I'm going to do appearing with Neil Cavuto shortly after his show starts in the Fox News Channel, a little after four o'clock this afternoon to talk about the uh pending tax increase in New York and the impact of that on people staying or leaving.
City will be back after this.
All the tea parties are scheduled for April 15th, tax day.
Biggies.
Why, there's even going to be a tea party here where we live, Mr. Snurdly.
In West Palm Beach, right across from the big courthouse over there.
You gotta have uh big Tea Party in Cincinnati, Indianapolis, uh, Atlanta.
Well, they're all over the place.
And yesterday, uh word somehow got out that Acorn and a bunch of Obamatrons are so upset by this that they are planning on infiltrating the Tea Parties to cause mayhem and unrest and violence,
that Obamatrons from Acorn want there to be fights and all kinds of violence breaking out to make it look like that the people opposing the Obama administration are just a bunch of looney tunes.
So Neil Cavuto yesterday had one of the organizers of the Sacramento Tea Party, Mark Meckler, and asked him about this infiltration and the threats.
And uh and Cavuto said, Mark, how how seriously do you take these threats?
We don't take them seriously at all, and I'll I'll tell you why.
It's not that they don't exist.
We expect people to attempt to infiltrate.
The reality is this is a very broad-based grassroots movement.
There is no leader at the top, there's no individual event that they could disturb that would cause us a problem nationwide.
So our also the people, we trust the grassroots.
We know that the people are skeptical of anybody approaching them at these events, and we believe that people are gonna handle it well.
And in fact, we invite everybody to come to our events.
We don't care whether they're from Acorn, the Huffington Post, Daily Cause, we want them all there.
Yes, and they'll all be there trying to cause.
Just imagine, folks, thousands of seminar callers.
These are people gonna show up with anti-Obama slogans, they're gonna show up with they're gonna be the pro-Tea Party, that's what they're gonna make themselves out to be, and they're actually gonna start there, they're they claim they're gonna start trying to cause all kinds of trouble for the cameras.
The organizers claim we're not worried, we're gonna outnumber them, they can't, they can't bring this about.
But all it's gonna take, all it's gonna take is two malcontents causing a problem with the right drive-by camera, and that'll be the only video anybody will see.
The drive-by's are not gonna they're not reporting on this now, and they're not gonna report on this as it happens.
This just flies in the face of the notion they put forth that this is a country in unified enthrallment of the Obama administration.
Next up was uh, let's see, John O'Hara, who's the organizer of the Chicago Tea Party.
Mark Meckler still still on there from Sacramento.
Cavuto says, John, if if the malcontents from Acorn show up, something tells me they're not gonna be sharing the same placards.
Are you worried about that?
No, Neil, I'm not worried about it at all.
If Acorn wants to send some of their paid pretend activists to show up, that's fine.
The people understand what these movements are about.
The people who are involved understand that they're not racist, they're not fringe, they're not even partisan.
I mean, these are events where we've got people across the board, Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, liberals, libertarians, you name it, everybody's coming out to these events.
The real fringe group here, again, i is is these critics, the acorn with their paid activists.
It's a typical left-wing smear campaign, uh uh an at with ad hominem attacks rather than getting at the real issues we're talking about.
So the organizers know that it's being talked about.
They know that it's in the works, they know that Acorn and uh and others are gonna show up.
I I don't know how many of them are actually gonna wear pro-Obama stuff.
I I think the I mean infiltration means you try to blend in.
Taking it over would be another thing.
But they would love to be able to create the impression that the Tea Party supporters, the anti-Obama nuts, uh are are a bunch of violent, out of control, destructive like Acorn really is.
And Acorn knows how to cause trouble because it's their business.
So we'll see.
It's not but I'm I'm glad to see that the organizers are not being off put by this.
And that they're in fact they're welcoming Acorn uh out to become part of the festivities.
Brian in uh Manchester, Vermont.
Nice to have you with us, sir on the EIB network.
Hello.
Greeting for us from the People's Republic.
Thank you.
Um, Russ, something no one ever talks about relative to uh normalizing trade with Cuba is the uh is the foreign claims of American uh citizens.
Well, let's not forget that when Castro took over, uh he nationalized all the real estate and all the private property in Cuba, uh thousands of which were owned by American citizens.
Now, when that's that's right.
Phone companies, ITT, uh casinos.
They took he even nationalized a bunch of stuff that was run by the mob.
Yeah.
I mean, our family owned uh owned land that uh was for rice farming uh uh east of of Havana.
That was nationalized.
Uh there are thousands of Americans that have foreign claims to the State Department.
Uh Reagan and Carter came close to uh nationalized uh to uh normalizing relations, but the big hang up was how American citizens were going to be remunerated for the uh confiscated property.
Yeah, I I know this is in fact this is a uh something that a lot of people are not informed about, but all of these people, either the Cuban exiles or Americans who own property there, they uh they're they're correct me if I'm wrong, but there's been a plan at the State Department of Commerce for a long time where you can make a claim.
I mean you you you want to be reimbursed for your property if the embargoes lifted and uh the Castro brothers are sent packing, and it it would be it's gonna be a huge legal backlog if and when this day ever happens.
We've had a claim in for almost fifty years.
You've had a claim for almost Yeah, uh there was uh claim for fifty years.
And of course, you're gonna want that claim adjudicated one way or the other once the day comes where it can be.
Absolutely.
I mean, we're using this property.
I mean, we have uh imminent domain, but we also have uh, you know, fair uh fair payment for confiscated property by the government.
You don't have that in Cuba, and we're just sitting there waiting for uh for our claims to be processed.
All right.
So you're intimately involved in this.
So what what is your forecast?
What do you think is going to happen and when?
What afraid's gonna happen is that that Obama administration is gonna nationalize relations, and uh, I mean, given their view on capitalism, um, what uh what do they care?
It's not their claim, so what do they care if American citizens get uh get their money back for the property that was confiscated?
I'm afraid that Obama's gonna go in and just normalize relations with uh no consideration of that whatsoever.
Well, that's a pretty good guess.
Pretty good bet.
But he's not gonna lift the embargo anytime soon.
He's gonna lift travel restrictions and the amount of money that people here can send relatives who live in Cuba.
But I don't see him lifting the embargo to the point that Cuba's considered some place uh that uh capitalists can go and start redeveloping.
That may be, but I think any normalation uh normalization of uh of relations is gonna involve some type of exactly.
But if if you normalize relations with the existing communist government, you are SOL.
Look, let me address something here.
I I um I'm getting more emails about this that I can respond to.
So let me let me attack it here.
I've got a lot of people are very nice and kind and requesting that I go to one of these tea parties.
Rush, you need to come out here to Atlanta, or you need to come out of your adopted hometown Sacramento, you need to come to the one in St. Louis.
I I think I think I've been invited uh to speak at virtually every tea party.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am too famous uh to to go these these these tea parties are this that organizers said it the right, these are grassroots things.
Uh, and and these are these people these things have sprung up on their own.
There is nobody that can claim, although a lot of people are trying to, nobody can claim that they started this.
There's not Mark Meckler had it right.
There's not one individual who had this brilliant brainstorm organize all this.
Now there are a lot of people trying to take credit for it, but this is genuine.
This is genuine.
If you had to say anybody created the idea, it'd be Rick Santelli at CNBC, who has been neutered.
Spade, for those of you in Rio Linda and Port St. Lucy.
But it's um these things are exciting because they are the American people are just reacting to this thing, and it's a great illustration.
I hope they're all huge.
And this is uh uh people who have no leadership, no elected leadership, they don't feel they're being represented anywhere, and they're taking matters into their own hands, and they are going to try to demonstrate to their leaders and to the Washington uh uh elites and the media that not everybody has fallen in, and not everybody's a bunch of mind-numbered robots following along with the uh the diminution of the American private sector.
It just isn't happening.
Now, I mentioned a story yesterday at the end of the program, and I uh I haven't forgotten it.
I'm gonna get to it now, and I want it's just incredible.
It has, as does everything in the drive-by media.
It has a hidden agenda and ulterior motive that only somebody like me who can read the stitches on the fastball can see instinctively.
It's an innocent enough story from the BBC.
Sisters make people happy.
Sisters spread happiness while brothers breed distress, experts believe.
Researchers quizzed 571 people between 17 and 25 about their lives, and they found that those who grew up with sisters were more likely to be happy and balanced.
Now I think I will censor myself here in my quest to reach out to women and show a difference.
I'll just censor the comment.
My instinctive comment to this.
I'm going to censor.
Well, because I'm not pandering, but we have this new outreach, and we've had one women's summit, might do another one.
And I'm trying to avoid stereotypical humor because nobody gets it.
Nobody thinks anything's f okay.
I'll tell you what it was, but you gotta understand I'm just a joke.
It's just for humor, but nobody can laugh.
Okay, if this is true, five hundred and seventy-one people between seventeen and twenty-five about their lives, found those who grew up with sisters are more likely to be happy and balanced, and why the hell's a divorce rate 50%.
Supposed to be funny.
Has a grain of truth in it.
How dare he?
That's just my reaction.
Anyway, moving on with the story.
The University of Ulster said having daughters made a family more open and willing to discuss feelings.
They said the influence of girls was particularly important after distressing family events such as marital breakups.
My God, this thing is just loaded.
There's a line that I can utter for every sentence I'm reading here.
But I shall refrain and move on with the story.
During the study, participants filled in psychological questionnaires, which researchers used to assess a range of issues, including whether they had a positive outlook and whether there were any mental health problems.
Lead researcher Professor Tony Cassidy said, sisters appear to encourage more open communication and cohesion in families.
However, brothers seem to have the alternative effect.
Emotional expression is fundamental to good psychological health.
Having sisters promotes this in families.
Brothers have the alternative.
Brothers actually cause problems in families.
Now, let me now switch to the next page.
He said that many of the participants had been brought up in families where parents had split and the impact of sisters was even more marked in these circumstances.
I think these findings could be used by people offering support to families and children during distressing times.
We may have to think carefully about the way we deal with families with lots of boys.
Now stop and think of this.
Listen to this.
We may have to think carefully about the way we deal, meaning family planners.
Therapists, psychosis managers, um social workers.
We may have to think carefully about the way we deal with families with lots of boys.
Jerry Bernaquel, co-author of the charity support line, which offers counseling to young people and families, said this is very interesting and certainly chimes with our experience.
Boys tend to internalize problems.
And in families where there are lots of sons, I can see that can cause problems.
I think the most important thing in these circumstances is to give people someone independent to talk to outside the immediate family unit.
So you can't, when a family has lots of brothers, you gotta go outside to some expert to solve family problems because the brothers are causing them.
Whereas if you had sisters in there, if you had daughters in there, it would be idyllic and uh hassle-free because everybody would be vomiting their emotions all day, and nobody would have any questions about how anybody felt.
Now, now here's the thing about feeling I understand this notion about not bottling up your feelings and all that.
If you become obsessed with telling everybody how you feel, the odds are you're not going to do anything.
Most people obsessed with telling everybody how they feel, don't get anything done.
They become bureaucrats.
And they get nothing done.
Leaders don't have time to tell you how they feel.
Leaders, most leaders feel like crap.
Because they're getting grief all the time.
They don't have time to deal with that because they're leading something.
They're trying to get something done.
Let me tell you what this is.
This is just an all kidding aside.
This is just the latest blatant attempt to try and feminize men and boys to feminize the culture.
This is a stupid study, and all it does say is girls are good and boys are bad.
Girls in families make families wonderful, boys in families make families bad.
And we need to think carefully how we deal With those families.
Yeah, they're different.
Everybody knows this except Time magazine.
And you know, boys and girls, men and women respond to things in a different manner, but that's not bad.
In fact, it's good.
We need balance.
We need diversity, do we not?
They say we need more men who are solid and less emotional.
I mean, in the general everyday going about things.
In your intimate relationships, yeah, you gotta you gotta vomit your feelings.
I mean, that's otherwise you can't have intimacy.
But for crying out loud in a normal everyday operation, a lot of times you don't have feel a time to you know discuss your feelings about everything.
There's too much to do.
You end up with a bunch of snivelling, crying emotings, a bunch of heaps of mush.
Do you think Eisenhower had lectures before D Day?
How do you feel, men?
We're gonna have a little group session here before we launch tomorrow.
How are you feeling?
Uh I don't want to go home.
I don't want to go.
Too bad.
How do you feel?
I agree with him.
I don't want to go.
I don't worry about it.
You think they did that?
You need men to fight wars to be cops.
You need men to carry hysterical women out of burning buildings.
Just a joke, folks.
It's more stereotypical humor.
It's just me being me, trying to get a few laughs here.
I think uh you know, men who don't, just who are not obsessed with discussing their feelings, they're always gonna get grief for it.
They're always gonna get grief for it.
But for crying out loud, families are better off with sisters.
I don't know.
I here's what I wish, you know, my brother and I, no wonder, I now know why my brother and I were so miserable, why my our parents hated us.
Kidding for crying out loud.
Kidding.
Parents didn't hate us.
But I'll tell I would have loved to have had an older sister.
I would have loved just one.
All it would have taken was just one.
Yes, there's no doubt in my mind, but it wasn't to be.
It wasn't to be.
I had I had a younger brother.
Not not because the family would have been any better, not because the family would would have would have I don't buy into this.
I'm not saying I've got a whole different reason.
Well, I wish I would have had an older sister.
But it has nothing to do with any of this rot gut research.
Final story here before we go to the break.
Hawaii has suffered one of the worst winters for tourism in recent years.
And they have appealed to the state's most famous native son, Barack Obama, to help turn its fortunes around.
They've the hotel occupancy, the lowest in the last five years.
In February, the state's busiest month.
The occupancy rate dropped to 75%.
That was the lowest level since 1991 during the Persian Gulf War when it fell to 69%.
And they're gonna they've sent the governor, Linda Lingle, to talk to him.
You got Oscar Goodman in Las Vegas.
Please, President Obama, would you keep running down our town?
Stop running down our town.
Everybody's afraid to travel.
Augusta National.
The Masters is this week.
I have lots of friends who go there.
I have lots of friends who take tour groups of people there for the week and to go out and watch the practice rounds and so forth.
A lot of people in the Augusta area, Martin, as they rent their, they go on vacation for a week and rent their homes.
Their home rentals are down.
People are afraid to take their jets into Augusta National because they think the media and other spies are gonna out be out there trying to find out who flew in during these times, and was there a CEO on board?
And so there's the it's it's it's just absurd.
What is that?
That's you want stimulus.
That's the kind of stimulus everybody needs.
And that's kind of stimulus is being um uh curtailed because the people engage in that are being intimidated.
Their taxes are slated to go up.
Back after this, folks, stay right where you are.
Mike in Houston.
Uh, great to have you here on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Hey, Rush, mega robotic cult ditto.
It's great to talk to you.
Thank you, sir, very much.
Um, you know, I just keeping in mind that the best callers are the ones who make the host look good.
I offer the following comment uh in support of your contention that uh these eco, you know, environmental wackos really don't care about the environment.
If they really did rush, what they would do is something that would take effect immediately.
And that is they would tell the teleprompter to tell his boss to make any kind of racing illegal today.
I mean, you got NASCAR racing, right?
You got indie car, you got speed boats, you got motorcycle racing, and I mean, surely that's of no use to anybody, right?
I mean, that would take effect two-day rush rather than you know trying to get people to switch cars or you know, I know.
When you look at things when when you look at things like this, and then you you look or listen to the global warming people from Obama on down, talking about how we've we're too excessive, we waste too much, we're too greedy and so forth.
Uh go to go to any city.
If you're in if you live in a big city, just look out the window at night.
And imagine that city literally dark.
Because people say we got to save the planet.
It isn't going to happen.
That kind of backward regression is not progress.
This country has always been about progress, and the recipe for the supposed sins that we have created is rolling back progress.
And if it ever did seriously start, there would be a revolution against it.
That's not what life in America is uh is about uh getting rid of racing, getting rid of this.
Though I don't doubt there are people who would like to do that simply because they resent the people who ooh the race or who go to the races, because they're elites, but anyway, I appreciate the call, Matt.
A brief timeout.
We'll be right back.
Stay with us.
Okay, gotta go, but I'll be on the air with Neil Cavuto via telephone on the Fox News channel, a little over an hour from now, shortly after four o'clock Eastern.
In the meantime, have a wonderful evening and afternoon.
▲
Export Selection