From the safe and secretive compound of the EIB Southern Command, it's Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, another hour of broadcast excellence straight ahead, as I am firmly ensconced in the prestigious and distinguished Attila the Hun chair at the respected Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Lots of on-site reports from the tea parties are coming in.
We'll be going to the phones in mere moments.
Also, this is, by the way, phone number, if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882.
Email address, lrushbo at EIBnet.com.
I'm in Sturdley's office a couple minutes ago or watching MSNBC.
And they're just having a cow there.
Breaking news.
Breaking news.
Reports of teabags thrown over White House fence.
And they're doing these up-to-the-minute reports, these breathless reports on what does this mean?
What can this mean?
Teabags thrown over the White House fence.
Yes, it should give you an idea of what's going on out there.
One reporter said, hey, it's teabags.
At least they're probably real teabags and not fake medals like John Kerry once threw over the White House fence.
We're talking with a rabbi a moment ago about how the left simply repeats things.
Remember, after Clinton won election, Peter Jennings out there, the Americans, the Child and a Temper tantrum.
Angry white men.
Today, it's right-wing extremists in Obama's Department of Homeland Security report.
UK Times Online.
World Agenda, Nicholas Sarkozy puts Barack Obama in the doghouse.
That's the headline, the subhead.
Why the master of America's new first mutt is no longer in good odor with President Sarkozy.
The first mutt?
The UK referring to our president as the first mutt?
France has been cooing along with everyone else over the arrival of Bo Obama, it says here, in the White House.
But the master of America's new first dog is no longer in good odor with President Sarkozy.
Oh, I get it.
He's not calling Obama the mutt.
Talk about the new dog they got, the Portuguese water torture dog given to them by Ted Kennedy.
I was going to say, I could not believe that they would do this.
Refer to Obama as the first mutt?
They were talking about the new, it is, it's a Portuguese water torture dog.
It's the same kind of dog that Ted Kennedy has.
That dog's name is Splash.
Mr. Sarkozy pouring cold water on President Obama's efforts to recast American leadership on the world stage, depicting them as unoriginal, unsubstantial, and overrated.
Behind leaks and briefings from Elise Palace lies Mr. Sarkozy's irritation at the rock star welcome that Europe gave Obama on his European tour earlier this month.
The American president's call to free the world of the menace of a nuclear nightmare was hot air, Sarkozy said.
It was rhetoric, not a speech on American security policy, but an export model aimed at improving the image of the U.S. Anyway, you don't see this kind of stuff in the U.S. media.
Ras Mussen reports on immigration, a large gap remains between mainstream America and the political class.
66% of likely voters nationwide say it's very important for the government to improve its enforcement of the borders and reduce illegal immigration.
However, the latest Rasmussen Reports National Telephone Survey found that just 32% of Americans' political class agrees.
Now, I know what the political class here, but what it is, but data shows the anger is directed primarily at the federal government rather than being angry at immigrants.
56% continue to favor a welcoming immigration policy.
It would let anybody move here except national security threats, criminals, or those looking to live off the U.S. welfare system.
That's the next powder keg.
When Obama moves on this, these tea parties are going to look like little romper room sandbox events when that happens.
Robert Gibbs, the most brilliant, the brightest, the most effective press secretary ever in American history, according to the Drive-By Media, had his White House press briefing this afternoon.
We have some sound bites.
Question from Jake Tapper at ABC News.
Does the White House have any response to the Tea Party protests going on across the street and in other parts of the country?
I don't know if there's a specific response to protest as much as there is.
I think you saw the president today talk about as candidate Obama promising to bring a tax cut to 95% of working families in America and as president delivering that tax cut.
The president promised significant tax relief for working families in this country and in the first month of his administration delivered just that to the American people.
Eight bucks, eight bucks, eight bucks a week.
And it's not, no, $13.
It goes to eight bucks in January.
It's not even a tax cut.
And next question, what did this come from?
Ed Henry from CNN.
Up on what the president said today, if you're making $250,000 a year or less, your taxes aren't going to go up, period.
Part of the criticism, if you smoke cigarette, taxes did go up after the president signed the children's health bill.
How do you square those two?
People make a decision to smoke.
People get on airlines and pay taxes to land a plane at O'Hare or in Washington.
Those people also got a tax cut.
I don't know how much they smoke.
I guess that depends on the individual consumption of nicotine habits involved in those at tea parties around the country.
Maybe on a rainy day such as today, one might light up a few more times in hopes of surviving the drizzle.
The caustic hatred coming out of the White House.
He's asked a legitimate question, but how can you say 95% of the American people get a tax cut?
Everybody knows the vast majority of poor people are the ones that smoke.
Taxes went up sky high for them after the recently imposed April 1st increase on tobacco.
And here's Gibbs saying, well, it depends on the individual consumption and nicotine habits involved in those of the tea parties around the country.
See, making fun of the poor.
You got to love this guy.
Savannah Guthrie, NBC, do you think these tea parties reflect a genuine grassroots sentiment out there?
A frustration with the president's tax policies, or is it something that's contrived?
Well, you can speak to the organizers, I guess, on whether they're contrived.
I think the statistics I read, I think, are pretty clear.
If you're one of the 95% of working families in this country, I think it's that earns less than $200,000 a year.
You've seen a tax cut.
I'll let the organizers of whatever these are speak to their motivations.
I think they can be reasonably assured, though.
Maybe they fall outside the window of making a quarter of a million dollars.
Bob, what the hell is it?
They're either smokers who are lining up to smoke cigarettes to get their nicotine fixed at the tea parties.
The vast majority of people in this country are smoker poor, or now they're rich people making over 200 grand a year, 250.
Bob and the media missing the point here.
This is not just about tax cuts.
It's the destruction of the foundation of the country.
It is all of this debt being piled up on every future generation we can think of.
All of this needless, unnecessary spending that is simply enlarging the role of government in people's lives.
These Tea Party protests are essentially aimed at restoring individual liberty and freedom and stopping this massive assault on it.
That's what the Tea Parties are about.
Next question came from an unidentified reporter.
There have been quite a strong reaction to the story that we ran yesterday about this DHS report, right-wing radical groups.
You're with the president a bit.
Is this on his radar?
Does he feel like the concerns have been raised or legitimate?
Do you think, does he think that it's an overreaction or is it just not on his radar?
See, this is, we predicted this.
Does Obama know about the DHS report?
It is Obama's DHS report.
The DHS report calling every mainstream conservative a right-wing extremist is who Barack Obama is.
So here's a dunce reporter.
Does Obama know about this?
I mean, is this even on his radar?
I haven't spoken specifically to him about the report.
I think the Secretary of Homeland Security has and will make a statement about this today.
Well, this is reminiscent of when Janet Waco conducted the Reno invasion.
And Clinton went out there and said, You'd have to talk to Janet Waco about that.
I have no idea.
You got to go talk to the Attorney General.
At Reno Invasion, I was minding my own business.
I was in the White House.
Actually, I was in a little room off the White House.
And I heard that Janet Waco went in there to tanks and gunfire and so I figured it must be a legitimate reason for it, but you got to go talk to her.
Does Obama know about the DHS report?
What does he think of it?
You know, with this bunch, I really do.
I hate it when I'm right.
I hate it.
It infuriates me.
You know, you call me crazy.
I think Homeland Security needs to reorder its priorities.
Sale of radioactive materials needed to make dirty bomb prevented in Ukraine, three arrested.
But instead, Homeland Security warns of right-wing radicals in the United States.
There is a fabulous story in the L.A. Times today.
Well, it is the L.A. Times Chicago Tribune.
It's a Tribune story.
It's by Tom Double Cheeseburger and Ralph Vartabedian.
Well, his name's Hamburger, but who buys hamburgers anymore?
You only get double cheeseburgers, those of you who can eat.
And the thrust of the story here is that the IRS, the agents in the IRS are represented by a union.
It's the National Treasury Employees Union.
There is a deal in the contract between the government and the Treasury Employees Union.
If they don't file their taxes on time, if they don't pay every dime, they get fired.
And yet five Obama administration members got away with not paying their taxes.
They are government employees.
And in fact, we were told, oh, we're so important.
Chump change.
It doesn't matter.
They're too important, like Geithner.
So an IRS agent can be fired, sent to the unemployment line for not filing on time and cheating, and yet they had to sit there and listen to all these cover-ups for Geithner and the rest of these people, the stories about how they're, well, Colleen Kelly,
who's president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said our members are upset and angry, referring to concern bubbling up inside the IRS over unusually strict rules that can cost IRS agents their jobs if they make a mistake, whereas Geithner and others are treated with relative leniency.
In addition, the Geithner case is making the work of IRS compliance agents a bit harder because some taxpayers, even some in the IRS, resent what happened, the double standards.
Why should we be on time?
Why should we pay?
Geithner got away with it, and the government defended him.
And these people can be canned.
As a tax consultant, I can't get away with anything like what Geithner got away with, said Esther's, a member of the Compton Crime Commission.
I mean, the IRS would be on us like that.
To the phones and Cook County, Tennessee, or is it Cook County?
Cock County, Tennessee.
This is Elisa.
Nice to have you on the program.
Hello.
Well, hello, sir.
How are you?
Excellent to outstanding for the most part.
I just can't believe I'm talking to you.
There's no parking here at the park, and we have a tiny little town, and all the kids are out, and there are trucks and cars, and there's, it's beautiful.
It's a thing of beauty.
Our little tiny town.
Well, wait a minute.
You're calling from Koch County.
Is Cock County the name of a town?
Well, actually, Newport is the town, and it's little teeny tiny town.
What's the population of Newport in Koch County?
Maybe about 10,000.
10,000 people, and all the kids are out of school?
Yes, they are, sir.
They're all here.
That's not going to sit well with President Obama.
I don't care what President Obama thinks about kids.
Those government-run indoctrination centers are supposed to prevent kids from being exposed to the right-wing extremism that you are exposing them to today in Newport and Koch County.
We are exposing them to politics.
They're learning that there are two sides to everything, and this is our side.
By the way, somebody just sent me the cutest picture.
It looks like an eight or nine-year-old girl.
And she's holding a sign.
I am the freedom-loving, pro-life, constitution-supporting patriot Homeland Security warned you about.
The most innocent-looking little kid.
Well, I'm glad you're having a good time, Elisa.
Any violence out there?
There's no violence here.
It's a pig of beauty.
Nobody's rolled any cars, set them on fire, none of that.
No, sir.
There's no fires.
No Molotov cocktails thrown through the bank window.
No Molotov cocktails, sir.
It's a bunch of really clean-cut Americans.
You know, I'm watching, you know, I'm watching some of the videotape and some of the live shots of the tea parties, and that's one of the things you notice is just how clean-cut all these young people, a lot of young people at these things, too, got to frighten the White House.
Got to frighten, because young people are supposed to be the new mind-numbed robots blindly following Obama down the path of fairness, equality, and utopia.
Andrew in Amarillo, Texas.
Hello, sir.
Great to have you with us.
Hello, Rush.
Thanks for the line.
Like I said, I'm Premier Marillo.
I just have a quick question for you.
I mean, I am all for people protesting.
I mean, it's their constitutional right.
But as a young registered Democrat, what I do not get, and I was hoping you could explain this to me, is why people are protesting a president and a policy, more importantly, that seems to have already had positive effects on the middle class.
I mean, why are people so outraged with what he is doing right now when it seems to be for the good of America?
Okay, I'll be willing to answer this if you really want the answer.
I mean, I'll be glad to.
Yes, sir.
Okay, in the first place, the middle class is the one that has been devastated.
600,000 Americans a month are losing their jobs.
The Obama administration itself says that whatever has been done, they say that will improve this won't happen this year.
We're looking at an unemployment rate of 10% by the end of the year, according to government projections.
That's number one.
The middle class is not being, nobody is being helped here.
This is what you have here is people who are trying to hold on to individual liberty that is being lost because of an expansion of federal government that has never happened in this country before, and they are scared.
The foundation of this country was the individual, individual freedom and liberty, allowing people to pursue their own self-interest to become whatever they wanted to become, nothing or anything, based on whatever their ambition and desire and so forth.
And that opportunity is shrinking because more and more of the private sector, where all those opportunities are, is being taken over by the federal government.
These people are also protesting the fact, Andrew, that we are printing and borrowing money to the point that people who are not even born yet are already in debt to the tune of $36,000 to $46,000 to the government.
That's how much is being spent on their behalf, and they're not even born yet, two generations down the line.
This is based on a genuine anger that the Constitution as the building block of this country is being slowly chipped away and replaced by an ever-expanding government whose objective is to direct and be in control of as much life as possible.
I understand that, sir.
And, you know, it's the point of whether, you know, Republicans, Democrats, you know, Republicans, you want smaller government.
I understand that.
But what I don't get is how people, I can understand people protesting.
Okay, hang on.
I've got to take a break.
Hang on through the break because this today really isn't about Republicans and Democrats.
It's about freedom and liberty.
I'll explain again when we come back after you comment.
Hi, and welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh, half my brain tied behind my back, just to make it fair.
And we rejoin Andrew in Amarillo.
I didn't mean to interrupt you there, Andrew, but I had to go to a commercial break.
You started to ask me about the first thing I said.
You start talking about Republicans and Democrats, and you don't quite understand what the protests are about.
Is that right?
Yes, sir.
That's right.
Well, when I said it's not really about Republicans and Democrats, the issue that these people are upset about is not really about Republicans and Democrats, but the reason they're out there may have something to do with the Republican Party.
I think a lot of these people at the Tea Parties are wandering around without any leaders.
Republican Party has right now, and this is just the vagaries of politics, there's no single Republican who would either seek elective office or is in elective office that is providing a national leadership around which people can rally and who's carrying the torch for them.
So these people are simply saying, nobody's standing up for us in Washington.
We're going to stand up for ourselves.
They're doing it peacefully, and they're very, very upset.
You know, the old, you sound like a nice young guy.
How old are you, Andrew?
19 years old.
19.
Well, every generation of parents has wanted a better life for their kids, a more opportunity and more freedom, more economic opportunity, and so forth.
Today's parents think it's going to be tough the way this government is spending money and piling debt on future generations, taking over operations of the private sector, like the automobile business and the bank business, when they don't know how to do it.
Nobody in government has the slightest idea about running a car company, building cars, designing them, or running banks.
And these people are a little frightened and they're alarmed that nobody is standing up for their interests.
There are 55 million of them.
They're not all going to show up at the tea parties, but 55 million people voted against what's happening here with the Obama administration because what's happening, you're only 19.
What's happening is that the foundation of the country is the Constitution of the United States, which, you know, well, the Declaration, a founding document, we are all endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
These people see the Obama administration as assaulting all three of those things, life, liberty.
People's freedom is being impinged upon.
When you impinge upon their economic activity and you impinge upon their ability to produce and provide income for themselves and their family, you are infringing on freedom.
And in the pursuit of happiness, there's not a whole lot of happiness in America today.
Have you noticed?
No matter where you look?
I'd agree with that.
Okay.
Now, let me ask you a test question.
There's no wrong answer.
Okay.
Do you believe that it is proper that people should sacrifice for their government?
It is proper that people should sacrifice.
Like, like this is taxes.
It's April 15th.
Should we look at April 15th when we all pay our taxes as a day we are sacrificing for our government?
I'd like to think it's a day that we're helping our government.
I don't know if that would be the same as what you're saying.
I think it was a little bit of a trick question.
Every American will sacrifice for his country.
But sacrificing for the government?
What is so omnipotent and all-wonderful about government?
Does government never make a mistake?
Is government just has government replaced God in many people's lives?
Whatever.
I mean, if you, Andrew, if you look, starting in 1964, Glendon Johnson with the Great Society and the War on Poverty, we have spent close to $11 trillion to eradicate poverty in this country, and the people in poverty, expressed as a percentage, are still the same as in 1964.
The ideas that are being tried by Obama today are not new.
They failed in the 30s when FDR tried to get us out of the Great Depression.
It was World War II that did that, not the New Deal.
The people know this doesn't work.
Individual prosperity and a growing economy is not the result of a bigger government.
It's the result of people like you.
You're going to be either in the workforce or soon entering the workforce, using whatever desire, ambition, and talent you have to be whatever you want to be and to do it as well or as the best as you want.
And the idea that after you've invested in yourself and your education and your time and your passion, and after all of that, that somehow you automatically owe people who are not working a portion of your income, because that's how fairness is defined, is not how a great country progresses.
Rather than take from you, which is going to happen all of your life if Obama gets everything he wants, you're going to be paying taxes like you can't believe in order to pay for what has already been spent here and is on the books to be spent.
What we look at is people who are perhaps not doing as well as they should.
We look at those who are capable as opposed to those who genuinely aren't, who we're all willing to help.
Those who are capable but aren't need to be inspired somehow.
They don't need to be made victims of.
We don't need to look at them with pity.
We need to look at them as potential, as people who have not been inspired somehow to find the best in America and to be the best that they can be, that they don't know how good they are.
And those of us on the right, conservatives, we love everybody, and we want everybody to experience the marvelous wonders of the freedom this country provides.
And the bigger government gets, the tougher it is to achieve.
And the more people government wants to make victims that we'll take care of because they're not capable, is destroying those people's lives.
Everybody who, all things being equal, we're not talking about people who have genuine mental disabilities or some other things that limit those people.
We're a compassionate country.
We'll take care of all of them.
But if you're genuinely able and a government or a politician or some political belief looks at you and says, you know, you're just not capable.
You're a victim because racists are out there or bigots or sexists.
We're going to take care of you.
The government can't take care of you and make you prosperous.
They can keep you dependent, but they can't make you prosperous.
And we look at that as destroying people's lives.
So these people, rather than inspiring them to be the best they can be, we want a great country.
Great country is made up of great people.
A great government does not make a great country.
The government is not the country.
We are the country.
We the people.
We're the country.
We just want the best for everybody.
So this is about people who agree with what I said one degree or another, who are genuinely outraged that the obstacles being placed in them are becoming larger and larger and larger, and they don't want what President Obama is trying to do to succeed.
All right.
So protest, do you ask why ACT UP protests the Catholic Church on condoms?
Do you ask why Code Pink protests the U.S. military?
Do you ask why anti-globalists will protest world, you know, what is it, world trade, world court, whatever it is, the arbiter of NAFTA.
But there are all kinds of, I mean, the left owns the public protest as an operational bullet point.
Do you ever ask why they're protesting?
Well, no, no.
Why not?
Because those are all the things that you said are issues that are issues that I can't speak about because I'm not fully aware of them.
And I haven't seen them.
I have seen people protesting out in front of our post office.
I have seen them protesting out in front of the courthouse, things that I know about.
These things that you're saying.
Wait, wait, you're talking about today.
Are you talking about the Tea Parties protesting in front of the post office?
Yes, sir.
Okay, but you have not seen, you have not seen like the Cindy Sheehan-led protests against George W. Bush over the Iraq War.
You've not seen.
I have seen that.
I have seen that, sir.
So why don't you, but you don't question that, but you do question these people today who probably, many of them for the first time in their lives, Andrew, are protesting.
The left-wing Democrats, liberals, so for whatever you call them, they own the public protest as a means of advancing their agenda.
The people protesting today, this is a first for most of them.
So it's not unfair that they should protest.
I mean, they've got a genuine grievance, just like the other people protesting think they do.
Well, yeah, like I said in the meeting, I mean, I am all for people protesting.
It's their constitutional right.
I just want to know, and you've helped clear some things up for me, Rush, and I thank you for that.
But I just want to know why some of these people who are so I'm driving by and they look so angry, so disappointed, and something that's 100 days in, or a little bit over, I'm assuming, 100 days in for a policy that, in my mind, it seems to be working.
I mean, we're hearing things on the news about President Obama meeting with different people who have already seen the positive effects of his policies.
Ah, okay.
So you're watching the mainstream media, which are stenographers for the Obama administration.
They have cast journalism aside.
It isn't working.
Andrew, now, honestly, how can you say his plan to rebuild the middle class is working when 600,000 Americans a month lose their jobs, when businesses left and right are closing, when the automobile industry domestic is about to shut down.
How can you say it's working?
Is it working in your personal life?
Is your life better off because of the last 70 days?
Past 70, my personal life, no.
I'm assuming my parents' life, my grandparents.
I haven't seen any change really in my personal life, however, in the past 70 days.
Well, I have.
I have.
But these people, I don't want to focus on me because everybody always does.
The answer to your question, why are these people protesting?
It's only been less than 100 days.
Because if it's in their minds, if it's this bad after 70 days, what's it going to be after four years?
What's it going to be after a year?
And they want to try to slow it down.
They know they can't stop it, Andrew, because there aren't enough Republican votes in Washington to stop anything President Obama wants to do.
They're trying to slow it down.
It's all about these people are patriots.
They love the country.
They love the country as it was founded.
I anger and say, hell, I've been angry most of the day here over just things that have happened in the news.
But anger, by the way, is for the past six years has been the exclusive attitude of the American left.
Look, I appreciate your call.
I thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk to you.
You're 19, and if there's no stop to this, if it's not deterred, you are going to grow up and start working in an America unlike this country has seen since the 30s.
And the life that your grandparents or parents live is going to be much, much tougher for you to achieve.
And that's by design.
Anyway, I must take a quick time out here.
I'm glad you called, Andrew.
Thanks.
Call back anytime.
We will be glad to talk to you.
Say, Andrew, if you're still out there, this is an interesting story about the change that has occurred with Obama.
It's from the UK Telegraph.
A Guantanamo inmate captured in Afghanistan at the age of 14, still held there, has become the first to give an interview from inside the camp.
This guy actually somehow called Al Jazeera.
At any rate, his name is Mohammed Al-Gharani.
Seven years at Club Gitmos, said he had been hit with batons until his teeth broke and tear gassed after refusing to leave his cell.
The mistreatment started 20 days before Obama became president, and since then, he says I've been subjected to it almost every day.
This prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, Mohammed El-Gharani, quote, since Obama took charge, he's not shown us that anything will change.
Good grief, my friends.
Even the inmates at Guantanamo are now calling Al Jazeera to complain about how bad it is.
This never happened under Bush.
I never heard of a single jihadist calling Al Jazeera when Bush ran the show.
Now this guy somehow gets hold of a phone and calls Al Jazeera and says it hadn't changed under Obama.
Naperville, Illinois.
This, by the way, the hometown of the great Philadelphia Phillies radio broadcaster and NFL voice Harry Callis.
Steve, welcome to the EIB network.
Hello.
Rush, thank you.
My mother-in-law actually taught him in third grade.
I'll bring in some of that connection.
During the break at the top of the hour, ABC News, oops, I'm sorry, did I mention the mainstream media?
Mentioned Tax Day and tea parties and then answered with a cut twice as long of President Obama said, we promised a no-tax increase for families earning under $250,000.
We kept our promise and we didn't raise taxes.
Well, folks, today I'm actually sitting out in front of the Warrenville, Illinois post office.
It's right next to Naperville.
Had to come by through here.
Every day, people are going in and coming out.
They're filing their income taxes.
They're getting their receipts so that they can prove that they did it.
This guy's been in office less than 90 days.
He didn't do one thing to alter my 1040 or anybody's 1040 that we're filing today.
The audacity of the mainstream media or this president saying that he kept his promise that people aren't paying any more today.
I'm glad you're outraged by that.
I'm outraged by that.
I'm glad you're outraged.
I'm glad you're outraged.
Get used to it.
The drive-by media is nothing but a bunch of stenographers.
They got too much invested in him.
He's too big to fail.
Whatever he does is brand new, unique, never been done before, brilliant, and blah, Get used to it.
A brief timeout.
We'll be back and wrap it up in a sec.
Let's see, if you eat fruit and are a smoker, your chances of cancer increase than if you're just a smoker and don't eat fruit.
Well, of course, if you're a non-smoker for credit, there's no news in that.