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April 8, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:52
April 8, 2009, Wednesday, Hour #3
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It's a tight time for a news update, ladies and gentlemen.
And this is about the Maersk Sealand.
This, to my eyes, it's a giant freighter.
Pretty big cargo ship.
It's 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 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 in Broadcasting Network.
Final hour of our excursion into broadcast excellence today.
Now, this is a make, this is 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 got to love these guys at Chrysler.
Bob Nardelli runs the show there.
Chrysler insists that the Jeep Grand Cherokee, which clocks in at 20 miles per hour or 20 miles per gallon in the two-wheel drive version, 19 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 is expecting this demand increase in small cars?
Government is.
Who's expecting an increase in a 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 of 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 Autodata Corporation.
John Wolkanowicz, 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.
And we learned that General Motors, 11, they have 20 vehicles that they make that show a profit.
11 of them are trucks or SUVs.
And what's the big news yesterday?
This stupid little wheelchair with a motor on it.
And there's no market for that, just like there's no market for the Segway on which it's based.
Speaking of this, I'm going 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 much of pirates can actually commandeer the thing.
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 despite that, I have another observation about this.
And I mean this from the bottom of my heart.
And 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, You got to go small.
We got to go green.
We got to go hybrid.
We got to go electric.
We got to 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 something, destroy the planet.
Mommy, mommy, you're killing your polar bears.
Mommy, mommy.
Shut up, kid.
Okay, we'll get a little lawnmower out there and you'll be happy.
Just get off my back.
So I'm worn out.
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 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, the pollution is just, 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.
It's carrying the trailers that you see on a tractor trailer on an 18-wheeler.
You've seen maersk all over the place.
Now, just what alternative energy is going to replace the power plant in these things?
Are we going to have giant windmills on these craters, freighters?
Are we going to have solar panels, fuel cells?
What the hell?
The answer is there isn't anything yet that's going to 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, we're never going to replace, not in our lifetimes, an energy source, a power plant for any of these tankers or cargo ships.
That's okay, Mr. Limbaugh.
That would be fine if everybody else got rid of their big cars and so 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 take, 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 exemptions.
And that's the way it's always going to.
I just, I just, after three or four times in my adult life of being hit up constantly with how my lifestyle 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 that they're going to be doing some good.
And it's just, 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?
6 billion?
It's easy for somebody to think they don't matter.
Hell, even the greatest country in the world.
I don't.
My vote doesn't count.
I don't matter.
What about it?
It doesn't matter.
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 time out 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 a peering with Neil Cavuto shortly after his show starts in the Fox News channel, a little after 4 o'clock this afternoon to talk about the pending tax increase in New York and the impact of that on people staying or leaving the city.
We'll 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. Snerdley, in West Palm Beach, right across from the big courthouse over there.
You've got to have a big tea party in Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Atlanta.
Well, they're all over the place.
And yesterday, 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 loony 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 Cavuto said, Mark, how seriously do you take these threats?
We don't take them seriously at all, and 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 also the people, we trust the grassroots.
We know that the people are skeptical of anybody approaching them at these events, and we believe the people are going to 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 trouble.
Just imagine, folks, thousands of seminar callers.
These are people who are going to show up with anti-Obama slogans.
They're going to show up with the pro-Tea Party.
That's what they're going to make themselves out to be.
And they're actually going to start, they claim they're going to start trying to cause all kinds of trouble for the cameras.
The organizers claim we're not worried.
We're going to outnumber them.
They can't bring this about.
But all it's going to take, all it's going to 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-bys are not going to, they're not reporting on this now, and they're not going to report on this as it happens.
This just flies in the face of the notion they've put forth that this is a country in unified enthrallment of the Obama administration.
Next up was, let's see, John O'Hara, who's the organizer of the Chicago Tea Party.
Mark Meckler still on there from Sacramento.
Cavuto says, John, if the malcontents from Acorn show up, something tells me they're not going to 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, is these critics, the Acorn with their paid activists.
It's a typical left-wing smear campaign 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 others are going to show up.
I don't know how many of them are actually going to wear pro-Obama stuff.
I think 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-Obamauts, 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.
I'm glad to see that the organizer is not being off-put by this.
In fact, they're welcoming Acorn out to become part of the festivities.
Brian in Manchester, Vermont.
Nice to have you with us, sir, on the EIB network.
Hello.
Greetings for us from the People's Republic.
Thank you.
You know, Russ, something no one ever talks about relative to normalizing trade with Cuba is the foreign claims of American citizens.
let's not forget that when Castro took over, he nationalized all the real estate and all the private property in Cuba, thousands of which were owned by American citizens.
Now, when Carter...
Oh, yeah, that's right.
Phone companies, ITT, casinos.
He even nationalized a bunch of stuff that was run by the mob.
Yeah.
I mean, our family owned land that was for rice farming east of Havana.
That was nationalized.
There are thousands of Americans that have foreign claims with the State Department.
Reagan and Carter came close to normalizing relations, but the big hang-up was how American citizens were going to be remunerated for the confiscated property.
Yeah, I know this is something that a lot of people are not informed about, but all of these people, you know, the Cuban exiles or Americans who own property there, 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 want to be reimbursed for your property if the embargo is lifted and the Castro brothers are sent packing.
And it's going to be a huge legal backlog if and when this day ever happens.
We've had a claim in for almost 50 years.
You've had a claim for almost.
Yeah, there was a claim for 50 years.
And, of course, you're going to 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 eminent domain, but we also have fair payment for confiscated property by the government.
You don't have that in Cuba, and we're just sitting there waiting for our claims to be processed.
All right.
So you're intimately involved in this.
So what is your forecast?
What do you think is going to happen and when?
What I'm afraid is going to happen is that that Obama administration is going to nationalize relations.
And I mean, given their view on capitalism, what do they care?
It's not their claim.
So what do they care if American citizens get their money back for the property that was confiscated?
I'm afraid that Obama's going to go in and just normalize relations with no consideration of that whatsoever.
Well, that's a pretty good guess.
Pretty good bet.
But he's not going to lift the embargo anytime soon.
He's going to 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 that capitalists can go and start redeveloping.
That may be, but I think any normalization of relations is going to involve some type of...
Exactly.
If you normalize relations with the existing communist government, you are SOL.
Look, let me address something here.
I'm getting more emails about this that I can respond to.
So let me attack it here.
I've got a lot of people very nice and kind in requesting that I go to one of these tea parties.
Rush, you need to come out here to Atlanta.
You need to come out of your adopted hometown, Sacramento.
You need to come to the one in St. Louis.
I think I've been invited to speak at virtually every tea party.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am too famous to go.
These tea parties are, that organizer said it the right.
These are grassroots things.
And 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 craved the idea, it'd be Rick Santelli at CNBC, who has been neutered.
Spayed for those of you in Rio Linda and Point St. Lucie.
But these things are exciting because they are the American people who are just reacting to this thing, and it's a great illustration.
I hope they're all huge.
And this is 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 elites and the media that not everybody has fallen in.
And not everybody is a bunch of mind-numbing robots following along with 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 haven't forgotten it.
I'm going to get to it now.
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.
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 funny.
Okay, I'll tell you what it was.
But you've got to understand, I'm just a joke.
It's just for humor, but nobody can laugh.
Okay, if this is true, 571 people between 17 and 25 about their lives found those who grew up with sisters are more likely to be happy and balanced than why the hell is 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 could 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.
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, social workers.
We may have to think carefully about the way we deal with families with lots of boys.
Jerry Bernickel, 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 the family has lots of brothers, you got to 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 hassle-free because everybody would be vomiting their emotions all day and nobody would have any questions about how anybody felt.
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.
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, and 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 got to vomit your feelings.
I mean, 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 discuss your feelings about everything.
There's too much to do.
You end up with a bunch of sniveling, crying, emotings, a bunch of heaps of mush.
Do you think Eisenhower had lectures before DD?
How do you feel, men?
We're going to have a little group session here before we launch tomorrow.
How are you feeling?
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.
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 a few laughs here.
I think men who don't, just who are not obsessed with discussing their feelings, they're always going to get grief for it.
They're always going to get grief for it.
But for crying out loud, families are better off with sisters.
I don't know.
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 our parents hated us.
Kidding for crying out loud.
Kidding.
Parents didn't hate us.
But 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 a younger brother.
Not because the family would have been any better, not because the family 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 rotgut 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.
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'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 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 going to be out there trying to find out who flew in during these times and was there a CEO on board.
And so there's 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 curtailed because the people who 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, great to have you here on the EIB Network, sir.
Hello.
Hey, Rush, mega robotic cult dittos.
It's great to talk to you.
Thank you, sir, very much.
You know, just keeping in mind that the best callers are the ones who make the host look good, I offer the following comment in support of your contention that these eco, you know, environed 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 IndyCar, you got speedboats, you got motorcycle racing.
And, I mean, surely that's of no use to anybody, right?
I mean, that would take effect today, Rush, rather than, you know, trying to get people to switch cars or, you know, I know.
When you look at things, when you look at things like this, and then you look or listen to the global warming people from Obama on down talking about how we're too excessive, we waste too much, we're too greedy and so forth.
Go to any city, if you live in a big city, just look out the window at night and imagine that city literally dark because people say we've 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 about.
Getting rid of racing, getting rid of this.
I doubt there are people who would like to do that simply because they resent the people who either race or who go to the races because they're elites.
But anyway, I appreciate the call, man.
A brief timeout.
We'll be right back.
Stay with us.
Okay, got to 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 4 o'clock Eastern.
In the meantime, have a wonderful evening and afternoon.
you tomorrow.
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