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April 21, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:51
April 21, 2009, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Okay, we're back.
It's great to have you here, folks.
As always, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network, the fastest three hours in media.
A radio show that will challenge you intellectually and make you excited to learn.
Particularly if you are a liberal Democrat with the guts to hang in here.
Telephone number, if you want to be on the program, is 800-282-2882.
The email address El Rushbo at EIBnet.com.
Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, interviewed Dianne Feinstein, senator from California, for nine minutes last hour.
Not one question on the Washington Times story on Die Fi funneling money to her husband.
Here is that story.
On the day the new Congress convened this year, Senator Feinstein introduced legislation to route $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that had just awarded her husband's real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than industry norms.
Do I need to define this for you?
All right, you've got an agency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
Senator Feinstein intervened.
She is not a member of the Senate Committee on Banking and Housing and Urban Affairs with jurisdiction over the FDIC.
The agency is supposed to operate from the money it raises from bank-paid insurance payments, not federal dollars.
Documents reviewed by the Washington Times show that Senator Feinstein first offered October 30th to help the FDIC secure money for its effort to stem the rise of home foreclosures.
Her letter was sent just days before the agency determined that C.B. Richard Ellis Group, the commercial real estate firm that her husband Richard Bloom heads as board chairman, had won the competitive bidding for a contract to sell foreclosed properties the FDIC had inherited from failed banks.
She sends a letter just days before the FDIC awards her husband's company lucrative contracts in foreclosing or collecting on foreclosing houses $25 million.
So, I mean, the way this looks to the casual observer is that Dy-Fi wants her husband to get the grease of a federal bid, federal contract, so she sends a note over to the FDIC and they follow through.
Her husband's name is Richard Bloom.
Mr. Feinstein and Mr. Bloom, maybe it's Blum, B-L-U-M, a wealthy investment banker, are a power couple in both Washington and California who sat behind President Obama during his inauguration in January.
Mrs. Feinstein also is mentioned as a candidate for California governor.
And by the way, the mayor out there, San Francisco, has just announced his candidacy or his intention to run for governor.
That would be Gavin Newsom.
So this is Diane Feinstein acting in President Obama's era of responsibility.
I mean, if she is to be true to Obama's hopes for his new and improved America, she maybe ought to think about resigning.
Let's go back and let's listen to what here's what Obama said in his immaculation address.
Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.
These are the indicators of crisis.
Subject to data and statistics, less measurable but no less profound, is a sapping of confidence across our land, a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights.
The question we ask today is not whether our government's too big or too small, but whether it works, whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage.
And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.
Diane Feinstein just blew that to smithereens.
Seeing to at her husband's company gets $25 billion to collect on foreclosed properties after it's excessive, it's reckless, and of course, it isn't fair.
It just isn't fair.
This is a story from Scientific American.
I, El Rushbo, happen to love this story: corn ethanol will not cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Now, listen, California regulators trying to assess the true environmental cost of corn ethanol are poised to declare that the biofuel cannot help the state reduce global warming.
According to California regulators, and these people are a bunch of liberal Democrats, corn is no better and might be worse than petroleum when total greenhouse gas emissions are considered.
Such a declaration to be considered later this week by the California Air Resources Board would be a considerable blow to the corn ethanol industry in the United States.
If passed, the measure could serve as a model as other states and the federal government tackle carbon emissions.
California regulators say they have no choice.
I remember back during the campaign making this same point that this is going to cause rising food prices, it's going to cause hunger and hunger upon hunger in the less developed parts of the world, that it was going to cost more and create more pollution to produce this stuff.
And I got calls from Republicans.
Remember this, Snertley?
We got calls from Republicans in Iowa.
You just want to tell Republicans how to lose the election?
You just, you want them to lose the election?
Don't you understand that the corn farmers and ethanol farmers in this state are responsible for electing presidents?
I was accused of standing in the way of us evolving as a party.
So our party was supposed to just sit here and go along with something that's wasteful, going to cost a lot of money, going to cause hunger, and it wasn't going to work in the express purpose of getting votes.
I must admit here, I am stunned.
I think some heads might explode if this becomes accepted around the country.
You know how many people believe ethanol is God's gift to global warming?
And here in California, a bunch of lib regulators say ethanol is worse than petroleum in discussing total greenhouse gas emissions.
John Tierney is a columnist for the New York Times.
I don't know if he's still on the staff.
I know he's got a blog there and he writes an occasional column.
He has a piece today on his blog.
His blog is called Tierney Lab, T-I-E-R-N-E-Y.
John Tierney is a libertarian.
The title of his blog today is The Richer is Greener Curve.
In my findings column, I explain how researchers have discovered that over the long term, being richer often translates into being greener.
Greener meaning cleaner, less pollution.
Many environmental problems get worse as a country first industrializes, but once it reaches a certain level of income, the trend reverses, producing a curve shaped like an upside-down U.
It's called a Kuznets curve in honor of the economist Simon Kuznets, who detected this pattern in trends of income inequality.
As promised in the column, here are some graphic examples of Kuznets curve for sulfur dioxide pollution as measured in an assortment of rich and poor countries and also is measured over time in the United States.
And there is the U graph.
Upside-down U. I'm not going to waste time zooming in on it here.
But it illustrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that the emissions and pollution of a country reduce as they get richer.
Now, this is something that I have long known.
We have long proselytized on this program.
We've explained in a number of different ways.
Advanced democracies, prosperous, advanced democracies do a much better job of cleaning up their messes than lesser advanced civilizations.
You can see this.
You can go to the old Soviet Union.
You can go to any place where there are no advanced democracies or prosperous lifestyles that are on the rise.
Go to the third world.
You'll see pollution like you've never seen before.
Go to poor areas of any country, including ours.
You'll see the same thing.
And yet the environmentalist Wacos want us all to get poorer because they equate getting poorer with getting cleaner.
And it's all a scam because it's not that about that at all.
It's about getting poorer so that we're all equal.
It's about getting poorer so that we have socialism.
It's about getting poorer so that government has more control over people's lives, which is really at the root of the hoax of the Global Warming Administration.
And also, if you want to know the root of Obama and the left's actions when it comes to releasing the CIA interrogation memos and now putting greater constraints on people in the field who can interrogate captured prisoners, there's a simple reality to explain it above and beyond the liberalism and the extreme leftism that is these people.
To explain it, let me establish or let me proclaim and establish truism.
It is this.
Barack Obama thinks he's better and more moral, more special than any president we've ever had.
He's the one, I firmly believe, he's got a messianic complex.
But even if you don't believe that, you can listen to him speak just the last two or three days or the sum total of his speeches, and you know he thinks he's special.
And this country was immoral and unjust until he came along.
And now we're on the right road.
Okay, if you have that established, America sucked.
America had problems.
America was not the best she could be.
America was immoral and unjust before Obama gets here.
That means everybody was immoral and unjust.
From George Washington on to George W. Bush.
So what's Obama up against?
In the world of protecting the United States, nobody's done it better recently than George W. Bush and his administration.
After 9-11, not one single attack by terrorists on this country's soil.
That's unarguable.
You can argue if you want, but it's inarguable.
If you want to be wrong, go ahead and be wrong.
So you have that as a baseline.
You have that as a foundation.
The simple reality is that Obama and his people cannot deal with the previous administration's success.
in stopping more terror in America.
Obama's entire popularity poll existence relies on the fact that people think he's special, better than ever before, that everybody came before him, especially Bush, was the absolute pit.
They can't afford for one aspect of the Bush administration to be portrayed as successful.
So, tearing up every aspect of the Bush administration's counterterrorism and defense posture to protect this country, which worked, has to be torn apart in order to keep Obama up on the pedestal.
Supremely narcissistic.
A man about whom this country is devoted to him.
This is all about him.
This has nothing to do with the country.
It has nothing to do with our way of life.
Every aspect of his presidency is about building him up, making him appear to be savior messiah, whatever term you want to call it.
And don't think others are doing it.
He's inspiring it.
We'll take a quick break, come back and continue after this.
I don't know how this can be, folks.
I am stunned and shocked here when I read about the news today in the Wall Street Journal about Caterpillar.
You heard about this?
Caterpillar yesterday swung into a first quarter loss.
Caterpillar cut its full year sales and profit forecasts, said it underestimated the severity of the global economic meltdown.
Caterpillar's sales increased during the extended commodity boom, but its production cuts and forecasts indicate that a recovery of this year is uncertain.
Well, now, wait a minute.
Caterpillar was supposed to be prospering.
Remember, Obama went out there, said that their CEO said, yeah, I'm going to be hiring people back as soon as we get a great stimulus plan.
Obama said, well, that's my plans.
You're going to be hiring people back.
He went out there.
It isn't happening.
Just, just, it's just a shame, folks.
It's just not happening the way Obama said it was going to happen with his own hand-picked model company.
And remember, Caterpillar was going to do well because the Porculus bill was going to be shovel-ready project.
We were going to fix the infrastructure, Mr. Lamore, repair, road them bridget.
Exactly right, but it doesn't seem to be happening, does it?
Robert in San Francisco.
Great to have you with us, sir.
Nice to have you on the EIB network.
Hi.
Hey, Rush.
Thanks for taking my call.
Yes, sir.
I just wanted to say that thank God for your words and your wisdom every day that go out and speak for me since I'm unable to talk to millions of people like you are.
And I really appreciate my mom and dad's wisdom that they give me every election time.
And hearing Dianne Feinstein, this completely reminds me of Martha Stewart going to prison for insider trading.
And it's like, here Diane Feinstein is basically pulling the same stunt.
You know, she's not going to be able to do that.
Yeah, but now this is fascinating.
Because Martha Stewart, whatever she did, can't hold a candle to Diane Feinstein.
Martha Stewart, she was not convicted of insider trading.
She wasn't even charged with it.
She was charged with lying to the FBI.
She was convicted for lying to the FBI.
The jury, the jury, sent her away because they thought she was a rich woman that got away with insider trading.
But that's not, I mean, that wasn't on the indictment.
That wasn't really the charge.
The jury just, you know, average middle-class jury in New York wanted to take it out on a rich woman.
Dianne Feinstein has actually done insider trading here.
I mean, used the power and influence of her Senate office to get a deal for her husband and ultimately herself because they have joint assets.
Right.
It helps benefit her in the long run.
You know, it's even more disgusting than what Martha Stewart did.
It's horrible.
Well, exactly.
But you see, the way this is rationalized is: what is Diane Feinstein?
She's a good person.
She's a Democrat and she cares about people.
And her husband's a wonderful person.
Diane Feinstein, why she had to step in in that turmoil after the assassination of Harvey Milk.
Oh, she's been through such turmoil.
She's such a good person.
It's all excused.
It's all excused.
Two standards, if not more.
Ralph in Brumwall, Pennsylvania.
Hi, and welcome to the EIB Network.
Hi, Rush.
Megan, 19 Ditto's Rush.
Thank you, sir.
You have many years to try to get on.
I used to actually, though, get into the audience on your TV show back on West 57th Street in New York.
And those are some great shows, Rush.
Thank you, sir.
Well, get back to down to business here.
I'm very disappointed and insulted by the recent remarks from Janine Garofilo, okay, about people attending tea parties being racist.
You know, I'd like to say that now I've attended four tea parties, and since I'm a resident of Pennsylvania, you know, I proudly voted and supported for Lynn Swan in the last governor race in Pennsylvania.
You know, and I voted for him because of his character, his integrity, his conservative stand on the issues, Rush.
And I don't care what color he was.
You know, as you know, he's black.
And I know many other people who go to the tea parties who also voted for Lynn.
So we are not racist, Janine Garofilo.
And as a health care provider, I have to say that her comments about the brain are really absurd.
Janine Garofilo also said, I don't know if this is where this was.
Some magazine.
I don't know where it was.
She said that the producers of 24 asked her if she would like to meet me and Lynn Cheney when we made a visit to the set.
And she said, no, I have no desire to meet Rush Limbaugh or Lynn Cheney.
I don't want to go out and get my picture taken.
There's a problem with that.
I haven't been to the set of 24 since she was added to the cast.
The last time I've been to the set of 24 was season four, and this is season seven.
Season four, Kim Raver was still on the show as Jack Bower's quasi-love interest.
I mean, to the extent that he has a love interest in this show.
But she was nowhere around.
The last time I was at 24, the focal point of the show was CTU, Counterterrorist Unit.
It all takes place in Washington now, at least theoretically.
I haven't been out there.
Besides that, I would have never asked to meet her.
If I were going to take a set visit to 24 now, I would make sure to do it on a day when they told me she wasn't there.
So she's just lying through her teeth about this.
And of course, this got picked up by the entertainment press, and the entertainment press gave her kudos at a girl way to stick it to Limboy and Chinese.
I have no clue what she could have been talking about because I haven't been out there in years when they're filming 24.
Certainly, not while she's been a member of the cast.
As far as they're calling people racist, liberals do that all the time.
You get mad about it, but that's who they are.
Finally, we have a story out there where you can say men are hardest hit, not minorities and women.
From the Financial Times, the U.S. recession has opened up the biggest gap between male and female unemployment rates since records began in 1948.
Men are bearing the brunt of the economic contraction.
Get this.
Men have lost almost 80% of the 5.1 million jobs that have gone in the U.S. since the recession started, pushing the male unemployment rate to 8.8%.
The female jobless rate has hit 7%.
This is a dramatic reversal of the trend over the past few years.
Men have been disproportionately hurt because they dominate those industries that have been crushed.
Nine in every 10 construction workers are male.
Seven in every 10 manufacturing workers are male.
These two sectors alone have lost almost 2.5 million jobs.
Women, in contrast, tend to hold more cyclically stable jobs and make up 75% of the most insulated sectors of all education and health care read government.
Wow.
80% of the jobs that have been lost and nobody's talking about it.
You know why?
Because they deserve it.
The majority, predators, they deserve it.
It's about time they understood what it's like to walk out the door without a job.
It's about time.
That's right, Mr. Limbaugh.
That's exactly right.
It's about time things evened out of the society.
Thank you, Neil Castrati, voice of the left.
This morning on Joe Scarborough's show, PMS, NBC, he had Elijah Cummings, Democrat Mary Lanon.
Scarborough said, so you visited Latin America, you went to Columbia, you saw the president this past week getting criticized.
How do you think he did?
What has happened with President Obama is that, as in the elections, a lot of people underestimate the man who I believe is a great leader.
He takes leadership to another height.
Now, I understand the Chavez situation, and people try to figure out, did he smile?
Did he, you know, but I think Barack Obama is above that.
And I think that a lot of times people are operating on a little bit lower level than he is.
His leadership is a leadership that this country has not seen a lot of.
There you have it.
The messianic complex come to life in Elijah Cummings.
This sort of sums up the emotional attachment Democrats have to Obama.
Whatever he does is good.
Why?
Because it's him doing it.
And by the way, it's so good, nobody's ever done it this good before.
He's above all this stuff, shaking hands with Chavez.
Don't forget either that Elijah Cummings is a member of the Congressional Black caucus, which idolizes Fidel Castro.
So it's not as though Chavez and Castro are looked upon with disfavor by Elijah Cummings.
Scarborough then said, well, you know, it's been quite a 90-day time period.
George Bush reached out to Vladimir Putin early, thinking it would yield results, didn't.
And so you believe that if the president or this president reaches out, has his hand slapped, he'll pull back.
I believe that.
And I think leadership, you know, I've always believed that leadership, true leadership is always before its time.
And I think that you have to, and I think Barack believes it, that you've got to act on what you believe is right.
And then sometimes you've got to wait for the critics to catch up.
So not only is he unlike anybody we've ever had, he's so far ahead of us that we can't possibly, we're blinded by the light as we look at his trail.
He's so far ahead of us, folks, that all we see is the dust in which he is leaving us.
He's so far ahead of his time.
And people ask me, how the hell could he have gotten elected?
I give you Elijah Cummings, who represents the mindset, the ignorance of the average Obama voter.
This kind of idolatry of political people has happened before, but it's not healthy.
Pure demagoguery.
Now, we got a couple Barney Frank soundbites here.
He's always good for a couple soundbites.
We've thought about getting a Barney Frank translator in here, but that would sort of destroy it.
You know, I mean, I can do it myself, but sometimes it's better to leave Barney Frank untranslated.
He was on Tabas Smiley's show, PBS, last night.
And Smiley said, what did you do today relative to low-income housing?
One of the causes of the terrible crisis we had over the last few years, which is given us today's problem, it came from people being pushed into buying houses to know that they couldn't afford to stop the tape.
Stop.
Who did that?
Who pushed them into buying houses?
Who pushed them?
Who told these people to be rentals?
That they should buy homes.
Who pushed them in there?
It was you.
It was Barney Frank.
Bill Quinton.
You pushed these people.
You killed the banks.
You told the banks a little money where they couldn't afford it.
You did it.
You did it yourself, and now all of a sudden, these people were paid upon.
Here's the rest of his answer.
It was a conservative view that rental housing was a bad thing.
I had been trying to continue programs to build decent rental housing.
What we had were people in power who didn't like that, and they said, no, no, we'll help them become homeowners.
What people were pushing a homeownership who shouldn't have been there.
We have now in Barack Obama, a president who understands this, that if you are low-income in America, if you're poor, you probably are not going to be able to afford it.
Stop it.
Obama understands it?
He's keeping them in the houses.
We're paying the mortgages.
It's called billion of foreclosure to keep the banks for foreclosing or people with mortgages.
Obama says they should not have been homeowners.
Obama Acorn forced them to be homeowners, Mr. Frank.
This is unreal to this.
I can't keep a faith to this.
It's the rest of the bite.
I met with a group of people today who are very responsible advocates for building decent, affordable rental housing.
Unbelievable.
So now all of a sudden the hell with affordable homeownership being you own it.
Now affordable housing is you rent it.
And then Tavis Smiley is sitting there like the dunks that he is.
I'm glad you're on the case, said Taba Smiley.
But how does that lead to home ownership?
Because you can't tell me that you want to sell folks short on the American dream.
Now, this ought to be good.
I don't want to sell them short.
I want to recognize, though, Tabs, that they may come up short.
Pretending people can do something they can't do is no favor for them.
I wish we could do something about income inequality in America, and I'm for that.
I would like to get better education up and down the social sphere so people can earn more money.
I'd like to bring down the cost of housing, but the point where people...
It's come down!
Stop.
It has come down.
The cost of housing has collapsed, Mr. Frank.
You have succeeded.
The cost of housing is forbidden.
It's destroyed people's equity in their homes.
It's destroyed everything.
It's at the root of the problems in the housing crisis.
You want to see housing prices to come down.
You made it happen.
You made it happen.
And Tabith Smiley sits there and goes, yes, yes, yes.
This is why we produced this song about you, Mr. Frank.
Because you're the architect of all of this.
The song in you singing banking queen because that's what you are.
And we're back, El Rushball, the cutting edge of societal evolution.
Everybody agrees that America needs a rally.
My folks at General Motors Cadillac agree, and they know it starts with thinking differently.
General Motors Cadillac wanting to change the ownership experience, so they've come up with a total confidence plan.
Starts with a fully backed five-year 100,000-mile powertrain limited warranty, whichever comes first, and the safety and security of a full year of OnStar standard on every Cadillac model.
This is really cool.
If you've got a Cadillac with a NAV system and somehow your location is not in the NAV system, you call them on OnStar, and they'll give you turn-by-turn directions via OnStar.
So, I mean, dude, it's just an amazing system.
But this is where it gets really interesting here.
If you buy a new Cadillac and then you lose your job, they'll make your payments up to $500 a month, not for three months, not for six months, all the way up to nine months.
So, you need not fear buying a new car.
And a new car is cleaner than the clunker you're driving.
This illustrates the point: richer is greener.
Go on and buy a new Cadillac, you're polluting less.
And if you're driving around your old 80s or 90s clunker, so go to CadillacConfidence.com.
All the details and limitations are there.
Lincoln, California, Jan, hi, nice to have you on the EIB network.
Hello, Jan.
Yeah, hi.
$13 trillion or $4,000 billion mega dittos to you, Maha Rush.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
I'm calling about a recent American Thinker article entitled America's November Revolution.
I think it totally encapsulates everything Obama has done thus far and plans to do to us in the future.
And I'm interested in what you think.
I haven't seen it.
You know, I normally read the American Spectator website every day, but I have not seen it.
Oh, American Thinker.
American Thinker.
No, I haven't seen it.
I haven't.
Could you summarize it for me?
Basically, he's comparing it to the Russian Revolution in 1917, although that was violent.
Last November's election, he's comparing it to the Russian Revolution.
Yes, though it's not obviously violent.
But, I mean, he goes into John Griffin, it's done by John Griffing.
He goes into all the things that Bush set up for him, the APAIT Act, the Military Commissions Act, the Posse Commodus Act, revisions to that.
And then he goes on to, let's see.
But Obama's strategies go far beyond mere economic control.
We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we set.
We've got to have a civilian.
Well, he talks about a civilian national.
Anyway, he goes on to the president has begun an aggressive campaign against free speech.
He wants to ramrod a bill through to nationalize the press.
Okay, now I get it.
I get it.
And so the question is: does Obama's election change the American way of life?
Forget the election.
Yeah, you can maybe draw similarities.
Look, what the hell's happening?
I mean, yeah, a bit, folks.
Do you realize Obama's even created czars?
I mean, if we want to start comparing Obama to the Russian Revolution, he's got czars.
Only the Russians had czars.
For every cabinet level, he's got three czars that run herd over the cabinet level people.
I'll read the piece.
I'll find the piece.
This piece, obviously, I haven't seen it.
It has to be written from the standpoint that individual liberty and freedom are under assault here at the expense of the government.
Tony in Middletown, Delaware.
Nice to have you on the program, sir.
Hell, hello.
Hey, Rush, Tony.
Listen, just a quick, I've been struggling with this paradox that I understand that the founders were diligent in crafting the Constitution to balance the governing powers and prevent the very situation we're now facing.
So how did it happen and why can't we invoke the Constitution to stop or reverse it?
Well, at some point, hopefully we will, but these things happen in stages.
How did it happen is simple.
It's been developing over 50 years.
You dumb down the education system.
You stop teaching American history.
You teach the Constitution as a constraint and limit rather than what it really is, a limit on government.
You teach the Constitution as something that keeps the government from doing even greater things for you.
And then you eventually nominate a candidate who's a demagogue, who can create among his followers a cult.
People who are emoting, not thinking, and people who are so fed up with what they see as constant bickering that somebody can come along and say, okay, the old tired ways of the past, we need to get rid of them.
And we're all going to get along.
And you promise people you're going to pay their mortgage.
You promise people are going to have health care.
Really, it's the easiest thing in the world to do is tell people you're going to give them everything.
Because the Liberal Democrats have created more and more people who think that that's their entitlement as American citizens.
So it didn't just happen overnight.
It's been building and the lack of an opposition to it, I think, is probably due to the fact that the Washington, New York elite culture, from the Ivy League schools down to the halls of government to the lobbying places are all made up of people whose jobs revolve around government.
And the bigger it is, the richer they get.
And the more power government has, the more power they have.
So we've just turned the meaning of the Constitution and the founding of the country upside down.
But at some point, there's going to be a younger generation prop up.
It's just not going to take.
They're not going to accept the 70% taxes to pay for all this.
And they'll throw these people out.
And they're going to be your kids and grandkids once they discover how indebted they are on the first day they're born.
Well, time is tight.
We're going to squeeze it in here, though.
Tomorrow is Earth Day, ladies and gentlemen, where we ought to be celebrating some of the great capitalists who gave us coal and light bulbs and automobiles.
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