I gotta wait something to spit out from the printer here.
Just a second.
Stemmy Hoyer's office has issued a clarification.
I'm waiting for my lightning fast printer that went into cleansing mode.
Here it is.
All right.
Greetings, by the way.
Welcome back, Rushland Ball, the EIB Network.
Great to have you here.
House Majority Leader Stemmy Hoyer's office sought to clarify remarks he made yesterday about the formulation of the so-called torture memos, saying that a number of media outlets incorrectly interpreted his comments.
Hoyer's statement at his Tuesday press briefing that the information about what was said and when it was said and who said it should be on the record was not in reference to Nancy Pelosi and what she was told about the use of waterboarding.
So he's for what he said.
It just he didn't mean that it was about Pelosi.
He's not denying he said it.
He said, I didn't mean Pelosi here.
But of course he did.
But now that I knew, I knew this is going to cause the excrement to hit the fan out there somehow, and it has.
So the muddied waters continue here.
I mentioned before the break at the top of the hour that the Obama administration via the Food and Drug Administration has scolded General Mills, makers of Cheerios, about the way they promote the cereal's health benefits.
The FDA sent a letter of warning to General Mills, and the letter accused them of making unauthorized health claims.
Current boxes of Cheerios are touting what the company calls exciting news, the cereal's ability to help lower cholesterol 10% in one month.
Staten Island resident Lauren Schwamm says, my mother actually eats it every day, seven days a week for breakfast to lower her cholesterol.
Now, according to a letter from the FDA, General Mills advertising violates the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.
The agency said that claims that Cheerios ingredients can lower cholesterol within a certain amount of time, all while providing cancer-fighting and heart-healthy benefits, essentially makes Cheerios a drug by their definition, and no drug in this country can be legally marketed without an approved new drug application.
As a certified dietetic nutritionist, Carrie Glassman often recommends foods high in soluble fiber for patients looking to lower their cholesterol because of the oats, because of the soluble fiber in Cheerios.
It may help you reduce cholesterol.
I think the FDA is still acknowledging that.
I just think they're saying you can't really say it because you're a food product, not a drug.
So even if it does what they say, even if you've got a nutritionist and a couple people who think that it might actually lower your cholesterol, they can't say so.
Because of the Obama administration.
Okay, so now follow me on this.
If false promises are a concern, if we're going to get our underwear in a wad here over misleading claims, I am here to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that Cheerios are the least of our problems.
Barack Obama promised millions of new jobs.
Barack Obama promised to lower the sea levels.
Barack Obama promised to heal the sick.
Barack Obama promised prudent federal budgets.
Barack Obama promised unity.
Barack Obama promised bipartisanship.
Barack Obama promised to end corruption.
Barack Obama promised to end wasteful spending.
He promised a lot more.
So now we're going to throw General Mills in the dock for a misleading claim, supposedly misleading claim on a box of cereal.
And this lying, out-of-control administration gets a full-fledged pass on the same stuff.
Imagine if somebody were to put sugar on their Cheerios.
Oh, my God, what would the FDA do then?
Actually, General Mills does.
They're called honey nut Cheerios.
You ever had honey nut Cheerios?
They put sugar on, oh, no, I just thought of that.
And what happens if somebody having their honey nut Cheerios then drinks coffee with their honey nut Cheerios?
Imagine then if they went out and ate bacon with their honey nut Cheerios and their sugar-sweetened coffee.
It's a gateway drug here, folks.
It's a gateway drug to other addictive behaviors, including lying.
This is the stuff they're focused on.
It's a load of BS.
For all anybody knows, Cheerios may do what it claims they may not.
But we know one thing for sure, Obama lives up to none of his promises.
I don't care what it says on the box.
If I want to eat Cheerios, I will eat them.
People are going to eat Cheerios because they like them.
There may be people who can lower cholesterol.
Half of it's mind control anyway, positive thinking and so forth.
You know, I may eat Cheeros, hope I won't get heart disease, but I'll do all of that before I will believe Barack Obama is going to strengthen our economy.
I'll believe any claim General Mills makes about Cheerios before I'll accept that what Obama's doing is going to help this country's economy revive.
You know what we need to start doing?
Of course, it's just a pipe dream here, but we need to start holding Obama to the same standards that he holds the private sector to.
He has to be as responsible and honest as all these corporations, all these CEOs, all of these people that he's targeting along with Tim Geithner all the time.
No exceptions, no excuses.
And if he isn't, he gets blasted.
By the way, speaking of sugar, sugar taxes from yesterday, I've been thinking a lot about this.
It's not going to stop there.
Who benefits from sugar?
Aside from the Fon Houl family and the people that make it, who benefits from sugar?
Who are the primary beneficiaries of people using sugar?
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.
Your time is up.
Dentists.
Without sugar, dentists would have much less income.
Dentists are the ones benefiting from all of this sugar being consumed, which means that dentists ought to face another 10% tax increase to help pay for educational programs to warn children about the dangers of sugar.
I mean, we're going to tax marijuana.
We're going to tax sugar.
How about a snack tax, a one-two punch?
Tax the dope, tax the snacks, talking real money now, and then tax the devastates who have to do the repair work.
I've also heard, you know, they say, I frankly don't believe this.
I frankly don't believe this, but in fact, I know this isn't true, but they say that late night eating contributes to weight gain.
It does not.
No, it does not.
If you're on a 1,500 calorie a day diet, you can have them all at 11 o'clock before you go to bed and you will lose weight.
Late night's another one of these many myths.
However, since everybody believes it, why not a pizza delivery tax after 9 o'clock when Domino's or Uncle John's or Captain John's want to bring your pizza after 9 o'clock?
Late night eating bad for you is going to make you fatter.
It's going to increase health care expenses.
Tax pizza deliveries an additional 10% after 9 p.m.
See, I am getting into this spirit of how the Obama people think.
I also heard folks that nothing good ever happened in a bar after midnight.
I know it can depend on your perspective, but for the most part, talk to your average NFL player.
Nothing good happens in a bar or a nightclub after midnight.
So in an effort to advance the public welfare, I would propose an after-midnight bar tax.
Any adult beverage served after midnight gets slapped with an additional 20% tax.
All of that, this is how healthcare is going to work.
If we get nationalized health care, this is how it's going to work.
Snurdley's all worried here.
I am making jokes.
And Democrats listening are going to think this is all brilliant, brilliant stuff.
I know there's a track record of my jokes becoming reality.
Late night pizza delivery, I think it's funny as hell.
Late night pizza delivery tax because late night eating, you gain weight.
Nothing good in a bar happens after midnight.
Hey, we smoke cigarettes because I tax cigarettes because it's going to kill you.
We want to raise money for kids' health care and also to encourage you not to smoke so that you don't cost us a lot of health care when you get older from lung cancer and so forth.
So the premise has been set to taxing all of these things on the basis of bad health results.
You have any idea how many people snack while watching television at home?
We've already imposed a snack tax with the trans fats and a snack tax on some potato chips that's coming along with the sugar.
We need to build, how about a blockbuster tax or a Netflix tax, another 15% on top of what your video rental service charges, because they are encouraging obesity.
They're contributing to it at any rate by encouraging the watching of movies at home.
And they should have to pay for the negative consequences of their products.
Video game makers, we all worry that kids are getting slothful and fat because what?
They play video games.
Every computer, every video game, every movie you buy or rent, an additional 10% tax because it's contributing to your obesity.
And your obesity is leading to increased health care costs.
Do you see how this is going to work?
Late night pizza delivery, nothing good happens in a bar after midnight.
And by the way, we cannot deny that movie theaters push unhealthy foods on their sedentary customers.
So let's just double the cost of movie tickets and send that money to Obama called it a day.
It'd be easier just to double the cost of movie tickets rather than raise the cost of concessions because concessions, it's already you're a trapped market there.
You can't go anywhere.
So you got to spend 25 bucks for the Coke.
$15 for the Juju Bees.
$18 for the gummy bears.
It'd be hard to tax that.
I mean, just raise the price of the movie tickets, double them, send the money to Obama to fund health care.
By the way, you sit when you drive, do you not?
You are totally sedentary when you drive.
The more you drive, the less active you are, the greater the odds you're going to gain weight, the greater the odds you're going to put strain on the healthcare system.
So you'll be taxed by the mile you drive, in addition to all the other taxes on gasoline and driving, and your car taxed an additional amount per mile you drive because it's contributing to obesity.
And same thing, public transportation.
If you get on a bus, if you stand on the bus, fine.
If you sit on the bus, and they put sensors in the seats to know who's there.
And you'll have your little ID card the federal government's going to issue you at some point.
You'll know that it's your butt in the seat on the streetcar, on the bus, or what have you.
You see how easy this is all going to be.
If we can go after Cheerios, if we can go after Cheerios as a gateway drug, sugar as a gateway drug.
And you heard this poor woman that called yesterday thinks taxing sugar is a wonderful idea.
There are enough DOLTs in this country who will applaud this because they think doing all this will improve the health of every American, the Thurlamba.
That's exactly right.
And we want people to be healthy and happy and secure and poor.
Yeah.
Brief time out, my friends, as you ponder all the new ways this administration, under the guise of keeping you healthy, can raise your taxes.
Yeah, this is really cool.
The shuttle Atlantis is now docking or linking up with the Hubble Telescope, and they're going to grab it, bring it into cargo bay, start doing all these repairs that over five days there were never intended to be done in orbit.
So far, they've avoided all the space junk.
The space shuttle Endeavor waits ready on the launch pad to get up there and rescue the crew of the Atlantis because if something happens up there, they get dinged by space junk, they can't get down to the orbit level of the space station.
So the shuttle have to go up there and get them.
So it looks like it's official.
Obama has changed his mind now, and the detainee photos depicting horrible Tartar will not be released now.
The ACLU has sued, demanding the release of 44 of those pictures.
You know, folks, we're going to have to have one option in the mix to explain Obama on foreign policy, and that is pure, unadulterated incompetence.
In addition to all the other things, like apologizing for America, his superiority about himself versus every other president we've had, his not thinking there's anything exceptional about America.
We also have to throw in the mix that they just may be incompetent.
Because it was incompetent to even ponder releasing these photos.
It was irrational.
It was made, it was a total ego thing for Obama to even think about this.
Because all he's trying to do is demonstrate how pure he is as compared to the muck and the imperfection of America prior to his ascension to the Oval Office.
Here's Hutch in Brunel, Florida.
Nice to have you, sir, on the EIB network.
Hello.
Thank you, Rush.
Thank you for taking my call.
Yes, sir.
I appreciate you.
Without you, there is nobody.
So I need to make sure.
Well, that may be going.
I mean, not quite true.
Without me, there's nobody.
Well, you're the gutsy guy.
I appreciate that.
Ditto on Sarah Palin, by the way.
Listen, Rush, there's no way that I support national health care, but I find it real hard to believe that people do not remember President Obama stating during the presidential debates that under his plan, all citizens in America would have the same opportunity to the same health care that he had.
I just got a link, and I can't listen to it during the program.
I've got to send it off somewhere.
But I just got a link to the ad Obama ran accusing McCain of wanting to raise taxes on health care benefits one way or the other, and I've got to send it up to see if it's what it is.
But I need to ask you something, Hutch.
Did he actually say that he would have a health care plan that would give health care coverage exactly like members of Congress have?
Or did he say that we should have circumstances like that?
No, sir.
He said, Rush, he said under his plan, all Americans would have the same opportunity to the same health care as he had.
Well, the word opportunity just throws a monkey wrench into that.
Opportunity to the same health care is not the identical plan.
The health plan that members of Congress have, I guarantee you, Petty Hutch Old Buddy, you're never going to have it unless you go buy it yourself.
It's that good.
You're never going to have it unless you go buy it yourself.
And of course, then it wouldn't be the health plan they have because they don't have to buy it.
We're buying their health care plan.
Now, what Obama is planning on doing is modeling national health care after Medicare.
And what is incredible about that is that Medicare is out of money.
What, seven or eight years?
Medicare is broke.
We're going to have a national health care plan modeled on something going broke.
I'm telling you again, everybody, they're going to hook everybody in.
They're going to use Ted Kennedy's name on this.
They're going to get sympathy votes with Ted Kennedy's name on the bill some way, somehow.
And they're going to talk about how the right everybody has to health insurance.
And we're going to insure everybody out of 50 million that aren't.
We're going to come up with a $90 billion to do it.
It's just immoral that people don't have health care.
It's not going to be about that.
It's not going to be about providing health coverage because if it were, they wouldn't do this.
Health coverage is going to become less and health treatment is going to get worse.
What this is about is being able to raise taxes at every turn in your life, at every step of your life.
That's what this is about.
Get this story out of Maine, Clinton, Maine.
Police said a 500-pound moose fell 18 feet to its death when it apparently leaped over a guardrail on an Interstate 95 overpass and landed on Hinkley Road in Clinton, Maine.
Officials learned of this incident when a motorist called a town office shortly after 8 o'clock yesterday morning and told the assistant town clerk, a moose just fell out of the sky.
I'm not sure.
I think this either Nostradamus predicted this or this is in Revelation as a sign of the end days.
Moose falling out of the sky.
Motorists just, if a moose falls out of the sky and nobody's there to see it, did it actually fall?
Had to have somebody watching and be there to see the moose fall out of the sky for us to know that that's indeed what happened.
Hugo Chavez, I love keeping an eye on this guy because I think it's informative and educational.
And this is a story from the UK Guardian.
It's perhaps the world's cheapest mobile phone.
It is the latest offering from Hugo Chavez's socialist revolution.
Its name is derived from a slang word for penis.
Behold, the Virgatorio, that's the name of Chavez's new phone, launched a phone on his TV show with a Mother's Day call to his mother.
He predicted his phone would conquer all rival phones.
This telephone's going to be the biggest seller, not only in Venezuela, but the world, said Hugo Chavez.
Whoever doesn't have a Virgatorio is nothing, he joked.
Now, Virga is slang for penis.
Virgatario is a newly minted word which signifies excellent, but it retains connotations from its root, so to speak.
Now, you well, yeah, when you really want to reach out and touch someone, you get Hugo Chavez's Virgatario.
However, you have to ask yourself: why in the world would Hugo Chavez want to get into the cell phone business?
Put it this way: ask yourself, why would a dictator want to get in the cell phone business?
Does that help clarify what this may be all about?
Folks, they have tried everything to get you to put your cell phone down.
They've tried every scare tactic that it's going to cause brain cancer, it's going to cause ear disease, it's going to cause sterility, it's going to cause blindness, and yet people are using their cell phones left and right.
So, here comes Hugo Chavez.
What do you think the odds are that every damn one of his cell phones is going to be bugged or accessible by his government?
What better way to keep track of any subversive activities than having your own government-made cell phone?
And this is easy to do.
You got the media pumping up your cause left and right.
Go on TV, make it a giant, the cheapest phone you can possibly get.
The best phone, the cheapest phone, wipe out all the competition without even having to take them over.
And then you monitor everything every one of your citizens is saying when you want to.
That's how dictatorships work.
Here's Lindsay in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Hello.
Thanks for taking my call, Rush.
Yes, ma'am.
Got a question for you.
He said there's about 50 million people who are uninsured right now.
The number's not correct, but that's what they say.
Okay.
Right now they need $90 billion, and they want to take away the tax deduction from the companies who currently give their employees help.
That's exactly right.
That's one of the things that's being tossed around as a possibility.
Okay, so if they do that and more businesses decide they can't afford to stay in business, then you have more people who are unemployed or who are unemployed and uninsured.
So where are they going to come up with the money they need to insure those people?
Print it.
Where are they coming up with the money to do anything now, Lindsay?
Where are they coming up with?
So using your scenario, let's take a phantom business out there, a mythical business that is deducting health care costs, the benefits it gives to its employees, and all of a sudden a new tax comes along so you can't deduct it anymore.
So those former tax deductions begin cost of doing business.
One of two things will have to happen.
Maybe both.
The business raises the price of its product or service or lays off some workers, especially in this environment when things are not growing at all, things are shrinking.
Right.
Okay, so people lose their jobs, and if they lose their jobs, they lose their health insurance unless they go CORA.
But that's going to cost somebody some money.
The point when all this breaks down and there's only one option left, guess what the option is going to be?
The national health care.
Government.
Exactly right.
The health care line right next to the motor vehicle line.
Now, also, an extension to that is we're military, which started government pretty much healthcare.
Would he expect that the military would then have government health care automatically?
Well, but let's look at how that's being run.
I mean, the VA is constantly complaining about lack of funding, inefficiencies, and so forth.
A lot of veterans are not getting the promised medical care that they were assured.
And it's not because nobody doesn't want them to have it.
It's just that it's incompetence.
Bureaucracies this big cannot function.
It's already been demonstrated.
People are much, this is what's so frustrating to me.
People are so much better off taking care of themselves.
They just are.
You're a far better person for doing it.
You're happier.
You're going to be better off and you take care of yourself.
But the more people that farm out taking care of themselves to the government because they're Americans and they're entitled or whatever, it's just going to break down.
It's breaking down everywhere it's been tried.
The Great Society, the War on Poverty.
It doesn't and hasn't worked.
Arguably, it has made the cultural decline worse and it has sped it up.
The notion of taking care of yourself, assuming responsibility for yourself, that is as controversial today as Miss California saying she believes marriage is between a man and a woman.
You go out and say, no, I'd rather provide my own health insurance.
I'd rather take care of myself.
I don't want to have to.
I don't want to have to go to the government.
I don't want to have to be dependent.
Well, easy for you to say, easy for you to say, but not everybody is capable.
There would be a far greater number of people capable if we inspired them and motivated them and taught them.
And they'd be happier and they'd be more fulfilled.
And their lives would not be empty if more people were oriented toward taking care of themselves and their families and what have you.
But this rat race to make everybody a victim of something and then make them dependent and then claim the government has an obligation.
The government is just us when it comes to money.
That we all have an obligation to take care of people who don't take care of themselves.
Now, the people who can't are another matter.
We all have compassion for them.
But people who can take care of themselves, who've been weaned and trained not to, who expect everybody else to take care of them for whatever grievance they've got, way too much of that's been going on, and we're reaching a tipping point now.
It doesn't work.
You do not have a happy country.
You do not have a prosperous country.
You do not have a growing economy.
You have none of that.
All you have is a political party in total control, which is what this bunch of people wants.
And in this case, you've got a mix of incompetence and radicalism that is posing a huge threat to the future of the country.
There's no question about it whatsoever.
What do you mean incompetence, Rush?
Well, New York Times has the truth today.
And by the way, this really be a mistake to say it's incompetence.
This was the way the plan was written.
Nearly three months after President Obama approved the $787 billion Porculus package intended to create or save jobs.
And by the way, that was always a saving jobs.
How the hell do you calculate a saved job?
Honestly, you can't.
You cannot.
Now, they're doing it.
They've got their websites with a running total of jobs saved, but you can't do it.
It's a lie.
It's a myth.
But I digress.
We are 90 days after this stimulus package, $787 billion, that was going to create or save jobs.
How much money has been spent?
6% of it.
In the middle of the worst economy since the Great Depression, in the middle of we're going to get this gun, we're going to put people back to work, we're going to have make work projects, we're going to have roads and bridges shovel ready, we're going to get on a go.
Caterpillar is going to go back to hiring people.
We're going to stimulus bills signed.
We're going to be bats out of hell putting this company and country and economy back together.
6% of the money.
And most of the 6% has been spent for social service payments to the states, food stamps, welfare, you name it.
But this was the design.
We tried to tell everybody.
This is why the Republicans didn't vote for this thing.
This is, you can say this is incompetence.
I say it's a lie.
I think it's misleading.
I think it's purposeful.
This is about expanding the welfare state.
The stimulus bill has directly injected $45 billion into the economy, mostly to help states cover the costs of Medicaid and unemployment benefits.
One-time $250 checks that were mailed to Social Security recipients last week and income tax cuts that began to take effect this spring.
And somebody, AOL, somebody doing a poll on these tax cuts, 50% say that these $13 a week is making no difference in their lives.
9% saying it's making a big difference.
58% say no difference, and the others don't know.
So you have to combine the don't knows and no difference, because if you don't know if it's making a difference, it's not making a difference.
I know it's not going to, it's going away anyway.
You're going to be paying that back next January, this tax cut that you're supposedly getting.
At the same time, get this from the New York Times, at the same time, some economists have questioned the administration's claims the bill has saved or created 150,000 jobs.
Some economists are questioning.
What is happening here?
At the same time, some economists are questioning.
6%.
And it's all gone to non-producers.
It has not gone to out-of-work people to help them get a job.
Because it was never going to in the first place.
All right, here's the ad.
This is audio soundbite number 28, Mr. Broadcast Engineer.
Obama health care ad that he ran against Senator McCain last fall.
John McCain talks about a $5,000 tax credit for health care.
But here's what he's not telling you.
McCain would make you pay income tax on your health insurance benefits, taxing health benefits for the first time ever.
And that tax credit, McCain's own website says it goes straight to the insurance companies, not to you.
Leaving you on your own to pay McCain's health insurance tax.
Taxing health care instead of fixing it.
We can't afford John McCain.
I'm Barack Obama, and I approve this message.
Now, the reason we're playing this ad for you is because the New York Times has a story today that they are $90 billion short in coming up with a way to pay for Obamacare.
And one of the ideas being bandied about is to tax health care or to limit, to remove, to eliminate the tax deductibility of health care benefits given to you by your employer.
Right now, there's no tax paid on these benefits.
You don't pay any income tax on them, and your employer gets to deduct the benefits.
And the Obama administration, the New York Times says it, they're trying to convince the president we've got to do this.
And the politicians in the White House, we can't have that ad out there.
This ad that you just heard, we can't have that ad running out there.
So this is where we are.
But folks, ad notwithstanding, there's no way that these health benefits are not going to be taxed, one way or a couple of ways.
There's no way.
You're either going to be taxed as, they're going to be taxed as income to you, imputed income to you, or they're going to eliminate the tax deductibility and maybe a combination of both.
It's too great a source of money and they don't have any.
And they want national health care.
And they're going to tell everybody only the rich are going to be paying this tax anyway, not you, as they lie to you again.
You know who Obama is really hard on?
I'll tell you who Obama's destroying.
The people who've made it, the people who have achieved their success, that's one group of people, and they're being targeted.
And there's no question.
And a lot of them, they're paranoid.
They think it's all going to be taken away.
They think that a lot of it will be.
But at least they've made it.
There are a whole host of Americans who are never going to have the chance to make it.
And that's what rips me apart.
Honest to gosh, folks, it breaks my heart.
You can call them the working poor or the middle class, but there are people, the people that make this country work, are out there to this day.
They may have lost their jobs, but may not, but they're striving to achieve.
They want to get in that upper tax bracket.
They want to have a nice house, nice car.
That's America.
They want to access the opportunity, and this administration is destroying it.
And don't think that it's destroyed at $250,000.
And Obama said you're not going to have a tax increase in anybody over $250,000.
It's going to happen long before you earn $250,000 a year.
But even if that doesn't happen, let's just say you're not going to have a tax increase up $250,000.
When you get there, that's the end of it.
Your American dream's going to stop there.
That's where you become Obama public enemy number one.
That's when you become no different than an AIG CEO who got a bonus.
You're just as guilty of thievery from this economy at the expense of somebody else as a CEO on Wall Street is.
And the real sad thing here is, we can sing the plight of the people who've achieved or going to have it taken away from them and so forth, but at least they got there.
The people who are trying to get there, if this guy succeeds in everything he wants, there's going to be a generation or two who won't get there.
It's going to take a while to roll all this back once people have had their fill of this, which will happen.
10 years, 12 years, 20, whatever.
That's who I feel for.
Those are the people we need to make the country, people striving to improve themselves.
It's just going to be that much harder for them to succeed with Obama and his policies in the way.
AP story, environmental alarms are being raised over home electronics.
Charge your iPod and kill a polar bear.
What until, wait till you have to plug in your car?