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June 24, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:54
June 24, 2009, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
What did I miss?
Did I miss anything big?
No, nothing of major import happens unless I'm here to talk about it.
And if I don't talk about it, it's no big deal.
But there is, I'm only kidding, there's a lot happened, and we're going to talk about it, and therefore it matters.
Greetings.
Great to be back with you.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network, and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Our telephone number, if you want to be on the air today, is 800-282-2882.
The email address, lrushbaugh at EIBNet.com.
Well, my friends, it never stops.
No matter where you are, it just never stops.
The Obama show just keeps on rolling.
And, you know, last week, before I split the scene for these two short days, Monday and Tuesday, I thought maybe it might be fun to try to do an entire show without mentioning Obama's name.
And I don't think it'd be possible.
I think the guy has so permeated virtually every aspect of the daily news cycle and of life in general, or wants to, that it'd be difficult.
We're still working on it.
I'm still putting together show prep things.
And I'm close.
I think I got about an hour and a half worth of stuff here that would not, that would mention, well, yeah, we could, if we waited during the football season, we could certainly do it on a Friday prior to, say, the opening of the NFL season.
At any rate, I have to play a couple soundbites.
So one soundbite here to start.
This is from yesterday morning on the early show on CBS, Harry Smith talking to President Obama, and he says, golf, what does golf do for you, Obama?
It is the only time that for six hours.
First of all, that I'm outside.
And second of all, where you almost feel normal in the sense that you're not in the bubble.
There are a whole bunch of secret service guys, but they're sort of in the woods.
And when you're out there in the team and you're hacking away and hitting some terrible shot and your friends are laughing at you, you know, it feels as if, you know, you're out of the container.
Now, this is incredible.
Even I, El Rushbo, get grief from my own audience when I leave this program to play golf.
And that's what I was doing Monday or Tuesday, Monday and Tuesday.
It was actually Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.
It took yesterday to get back from Hawaii, but I played golf three days in a row, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.
I went over to June Jones, the former coach, University of Hawaii, who's now at SMU, has an annual fundraiser for his foundation over there on the big island of Hawaii.
And I was the guest of Mr. Hawaii, Mike Hartley.
You know who was on my team?
Mike Post.
Does the name Mike Post ring a bell to you?
Mike Post does all of the music.
He's Mike Post, Hill Street Blues, the Rockford Finals.
He does all the law and orders, criminal intent.
And his son Aaron and Mr. Hawaii Jr. Al Souza, that was, and Steve Barkowski, the former quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons.
It was a sixths.
And we played in this tournament on Monday.
I guess we came in in fourth place.
We got two practice rounds in on Saturday and Sunday.
Anyway, when I go and play golf, I mean, I get notes from my own audience.
Stick to the issues.
And when I get back and talk about going out and playing golf, I get grief from my own audience.
Stick to the issues.
You don't care about golf.
Golf's an elitist game.
Golf doesn't relate to the American people.
When you go around and talk about golf and all these places, how many people do you think you're relating to?
You sound like an elitist, Rush.
Shut up about it.
My own audience says this.
That when George Bush went out and played golf, the media just went nuts when Bush went out and played golf.
They couldn't handle it, especially if, you know, Bush stopped playing golf when the Iraq war started.
He refused to go.
When he went on the record, and the same thing with Bush 41, he was always out there speedboating or golfing or doing something.
And it was always getting now.
Obama gets out there, and Obama says golf keeps him in touch with common people.
This is how he relates.
This is how he makes sure that he, as a normal person, because he goes out when he's on the TV.
It's just amazing.
And the press, of course, dying to know what does golf do for you?
What does golf do for you?
So the state-run media.
Well, that's, yeah, but no, but Obama went on on Father's Day, abandoned the family, abandoned the family on Father's Day, and went out there and played golf.
And so Dawn just said, what did you say?
Average people are working, they don't play golf.
Yeah, common people are working that don't play golf.
Well, but Obama, he's redefining what's common here.
You know, you leave the family on Father's Day, you head out there with a Secret Service detail, you go to the T-Box, you spend six hours out there hacking it around.
I guarantee you, if he's as bad as he says he is, it is not fun.
Trust me.
If he's as bad a golfer, if he's that bad as he makes, and I've seen his swing, folks, and he's bad.
I guarantee you, the guy has a boomerang slice.
If the thing was in the air long enough, it'd come back and plunk him in the head.
It's not fun when you're that bad.
I don't care.
You're out there communing with nature, whatever the hell you're doing out there.
B.S.
It is not.
They ought to make prisoners play this game.
That's how frustrating it is.
That's how maddening it is.
I had a really bad, one of these three days.
I had a, I played worse than I've played in three or four years.
I was just horrible.
And it was not fun.
I said, get me out of here.
He's out there saying he has fun.
Then, after that, let's, this question yesterday from the press conference on, well, it was on a bunch of things, healthcare and Iran.
And I'll tell you what, this press conference yesterday was a smokescreen.
I know Iran and his reaction to it has been up and down, and that people think he should have been tougher and all that sort of stuff.
In fact, the Washington Post has a funny story today saying that Obama, they repeat the White House line that Obama's Cairo speech is what inspired all the protests in Iran.
There's one major problem.
His speech was not televised in Iran.
The Mullahs blocked it.
The people of Iran did not see his Cairo speech unless they saw it on the YouTube internet or whatever.
And Ahmedini's out, and the Mullahs have blocked that as well.
It's all BS.
But what really is going on, this cap and trade thing that the House is going to get ready to sign on Friday, this is major.
This is the biggest tax increase to come down the pike.
It's as bad as health care.
It's as bad as any of his other legislative ideas for what its purpose is and what it's intended.
And it's happening under the radar.
Nobody talking about it.
Nobody asking questions about it.
So he got to use this press conference yesterday.
And I knew he was going to have this press conference, by the way.
When I saw these approval numbers dip down into the 50s, I saw this when I was gone.
I paid attention to, even when I'm not here, I'm working.
And I saw these approval numbers plummet.
And I saw the Rasmussen index, his approval index at zero.
And I saw Gallup taking him down to the 50s.
And Gallup's always plus four high.
I think his numbers are actually in the lower 50s.
I knew it was time for Hail Mary.
I knew it was time for a major speech or a press conference or something.
And voila, we got it yesterday.
Major Garrett with the question of the day had this exchange with President Obama.
In your opening remarks, sir, you said about Iran that you were appalled and outraged.
What took you so long?
I don't think that's accurate.
Track what I've been saying.
Right after the election, I said that we had profound concerns about the nature of the election, but that it was not up to us to determine what the outcome was.
As soon as violence broke out, in fact, in anticipation of potential violence, we were very clear in saying that violence was unacceptable.
I don't get you.
Stop it.
It's just words.
The question, though, what took you so long?
I don't think that's you could just the look on his face at that question.
That was insolence.
Had a look on his face.
And then there was another, was it Garrett who asked a follow-up question?
Or somebody asked the question, when are you responding to Senator McCain's criticism?
What do you think?
What do you think Obama said?
I'm watching.
I said, hell yes, you're responding to the criticism.
That's all you do in the White House.
You respond to the criticism here or there.
Garrett followed up and get this.
Obama said he wouldn't rule out having the Iranians over for hot dogs on the 4th of July.
The question, are Iranian diplomats still welcome at the embassy on the 4th of July, sir?
Well, I think as you're aware, Major, we don't have formal diplomatic relations with Iran.
It's not on a prompter there, so he said it three times.
We have said that if Iran chooses a path that abides by international norms and principles, then we are interested in healing some of the wounds of 30 years in terms of U.S.-Iranian.
This is idiotic.
But that is a choice that the Iranians are going to have to make.
All right.
So the question again.
That's a choice the Iranian.
Are you going to have them over for hot dogs on the 4th of July?
Now, Eric Cantor, the House minority whip, thinks Obama needs to get tougher with the Mullahs.
Eric Cantor is upset that diplomats from Iran are still being invited to U.S. government-sponsored 4th of July parties.
I have a way around this.
All we have to do is tell the Iranians that we're serving Hebrew national hot dogs, and they won't show up.
It's that simple.
Don't serve them, Nathans.
Don't serve them.
Just tell me, they're Hebrew national hot dogs, and I guarantee you these diplomats won't show up.
Obama even got testy with NBC News F. Chuck Todd.
The question from F. Chuck Todd.
Mr. President, I want to follow up on Iran.
You've avoided twice spelling out consequences.
You've hinted that there would be some from the international community if they continue to violate these norms.
You seem to hint that there are human rights violations taking place.
I'm not hinting.
I think that when a young woman gets shot on the street when she gets out of her car, that's a problem.
Then why won't you spell out the consequences that the Iranians?
Because I think, Chuck, that we don't know yet how this thing is going to play out.
I know everybody here is on a 24-hour news cycle.
I'm not.
I mean, it shouldn't the legal answer.
I answered the Iranian regime.
No.
You have to answer the question, Chuck, which is that we don't yet know how this is going to play out.
Yeah, they're shooting people.
They're shooting people on the streets.
We don't know how it's going to play out.
So we're not ready to announce any consequence.
We want them to come over for hot dogs on the 4th of July.
We don't want to make them mad.
When I was gone, I noticed a story, ladies and gentlemen, I thought would just cause fireworks.
And maybe it did, and we just don't know about it.
It was the story that Goldman Sachs is going to pay out huge bonuses because of a record six months.
Well, I don't know if it's a record, but a fabulous first six months of 2009.
And I thought back to the calls that we had last week.
We had two, maybe three calls from Obama voters who were livid at Obama, but for reasons that we didn't understand until they spoke to us.
I mean, we're mad at Obama for what we see is the destruction of the private sector, the depletion of capital from the private sector.
These two or three Obama people called up, and they were mad because they see Obama giving all the money to Wall Street, all the money to big business, and not giving the money to them.
They expected to get all the money, and they're not getting it.
So I thought when this Goldman Sachs story hit, I mean, who is having a record anything in 2009?
Well, we at the EIB network are, ladies and gentlemen, but that's not out of the ordinary.
We haven't had a down year in our 20-plus years in business.
But I mean, aside from, you know, some obvious exceptions, what industry is having a huge record first half of 2009?
Well, aside from, yeah, the U.S. government is too, yeah.
And they are about an industry.
This whole cap and trade thing is nothing more than Soviet-style five-year plan national industrial policy, and it's all based on hoaxes.
I'll get into that later.
I expected there to be outrage.
I expected there to be people fit to be tied.
Goldman Sachs, a Wall Street firm, I thought Obama was going to cap their pay.
I thought he was going to limit bonuses and compensation.
I know it hadn't been done yet.
I thought Obama was going to get tough with these people.
Here they have a record 2000, first half of 2009.
And then we learned today from the New York Times, which is just beside itself over this, that Citibank, Citibank, which is barely still in business, is going to give raises instead of bonuses after all those losses.
This is the New York Times.
After all those losses and bailouts, rank-and-file employees of Citigroup are getting some good news.
Their salaries are going up.
The troubled banking giant, which to many symbolizes the troubles in the nation's financial industry, intends to raise workers' base salaries by as much as 50% this year to offset smaller annual bonuses, according to people with direct knowledge of the plan.
Now, this shift means that most Citigroup employees will make as much money as they did in 2008, although some might earn more and a few might earn less.
Company also plans to award millions of new stock options to employees in an effort to retain.
What's going on here?
What in the world is going on?
Goldman Sachs, a record 2009 or something like that.
Citibank, 50% raises in lieu of bonuses.
Citibank is not doing well.
And they got bailout and went.
is going on?
Remember the outrage sparked at AIG when they were getting bonuses that were contractually permitted?
Maybe these Obama voters that called us last week had a point.
This is the last thing we all expected to happen here, except the smart money.
Smart people like me, I know exactly what's going on.
The Goldman Sachs people are practically running this show.
The Goldman Sachs people ended up getting a lot.
They got some bailout money from AIG.
People have forgotten this.
AIG was used as a cutout, essentially, to send money to Goldman Sachs.
Paulson was some Goldman Sachs.
Geithner was the New York Federal Reserve.
Goldman Sachs was able, the one financial institution on Wall Street that was not bailed out, the one financial institution that was allowed to hit the bricks and go south was what?
Lehman Brothers just happened to be, in Goldman Sachs' view, their number one competitor.
They're gone.
Everybody else bailed out.
In fact, let's go back to me.
On this program, March 18th, I said this.
The true AIG outrage is how AIG was used by Geithner and Henry Paulson to send money to foreign banks, Goldman Sachs, and a couple of other domestic banks, in addition to what they got in the TARP bailout, the first phase.
Yesterday, the number was $93 billion.
It's over $100 billion now that went to places like Deutsche Bank, a French bank, a couple of other banks in Europe, Goldman Sachs, which is where Paulson came from.
They got $13 billion.
Now, this is the real, real outrage of what has happened.
And all of this other stuff is simply a distraction.
Meaning, the bonuses.
Everybody was all upset about the bonuses, the AIG retention bonuses that the workers were getting for hanging on and not fleeing a sinking ship.
Acorn was up there leading protests against AIG executives, and everybody was going baddie about this.
And Goldman Sachs ends up getting some bailout money.
And now Goldman Sachs, now, a lot of people, we were talking about this over the weekend in Hawaii.
I thought it would be a big deal.
Somebody said, well, Rush, what's your reaction to this?
I said, well, I have mixed emotions about it because in the normal ebb and flow, I'm all for companies doing well.
I'm all for big profits.
I'm all for people making a lot of money.
I want everybody in America to succeed.
But at the same time, we're looking at an industry that this administration targeted and blamed and pointed fingers at and tried to create as much disgust among the general population for as possible.
And people ended up supporting Obama, thinking he was for them, for the little guy, for the common guy.
And you're going to really punish these Wall Street people.
And now, all of a sudden, because of bailouts or what have you, these firms are doing well when nobody else is.
I just, I don't know how this is going to play.
And now we get the Citibank news today.
And folks, I'm telling you, I've watched, and the state-run media did not make a big deal out of this.
The Goldman Sachs thing, they didn't.
Now, the New York Times is livid over this Citibank thing, and they're trying to make a big deal out of it.
And Fox News has covered it a little bit today, but it hasn't gotten anywhere near the play you would expect it to get.
And as such, there could be, and there will be, I'm going to see to this, outrage among Obama voters for this.
This is not how they thought this was going to play out.
They were the ones.
They were going to the stimulus bill, the porculus bill, the foreclosure bill, the save your house mortgage bill.
People who voted for Obama were supposed to be in Fat City by now.
And we learned that it's Goldman Sachs and Citibank that are in Fat City.
Happy to be back, Rush Lindborg, Revved and Raring to go here on the EIB network as we are now officially full-fledged into summertime.
By the way, this New York Times story, where they are just outraged over the raises that Citibank is going to give to its employees, they actually say in this story that they hope that Obama's Pesar will put an end to this kind of thing.
They actually hope.
So the Times is outraged.
But see, ABC didn't have time to report on this because they're involved in the ABC Obama healthcare infomercial, which actually started this morning on Good Morning America.
Conclude tonight from the White House.
CBS, Bob Schieffer, he doesn't care about anything except the question he asked Cheney.
He still, he says, the biggest moment of his career was when he asked Cheney, who's a better Republican, Limbaugh or Colin Powell.
And Cheney said, Limbaugh.
Bob Schieffer, that's the best.
I've never gotten a reaction to any question and answered.
See, he's still running around talking about that.
The CBS is focused on nobody watching them.
So even if they did talk about the outrage of Goldman Sachs and Citibank, nobody would hear about it.
So as usual, it's up to us to take this news to the Obama voters.
I guarantee, folks, this is not what they thought they were getting.
It's Republicans.
Don't forget now.
Stereotypically, it's Republicans that bail out their Wall Street buddies.
It's Republicans that make sure the big money people stay big money people.
Look what Obama just did.
Goldman Sachs, how in the world do they have a record 2009 first half?
Anyway, a couple of phone calls.
People here have been dying to talk to me for two days.
They haven't been able to.
So we're going to go to the phones a little earlier than we normally would.
JD in Bristol, Tennessee, you're up first today, sir.
Nice to have you with us.
Mr. Limbaugh, thanks for taking my call.
Yes, sir.
I remember one time many years ago, you said you used to like to sit at the end of airports and watch jets take off.
I'm like that too.
But I was just curious.
You said you went to Hawaii and you got a G, whatever number you got now.
I was just wondering, how long does it take to get from where you live all the way over there in a jet like you've got?
Well, I know it's a G550, and there are pictures of it at rushlimbaugh.com in the Limbaugh Broadcast Museum.
They got pictures of the interior.
We got exterior shots of this.
You can see it at rushlimbaugh.com.
It took me nine hours on the button.
We got a great circle route from West Palm Beach to, we went to Kailuacona because I went to the big guys at nine hours on the button.
And we didn't have a lot of headwinds.
We flew at 43,000 feet the whole way because those were where the winds were the best.
Coming back, it took eight and a half because the jet stream was way far north.
We didn't get any.
The biggest tailwind we had coming back was 25 miles per hour.
Normally it's 55 to 150 with the jet stream, but it was far north.
So we shaved a half hour coming back.
It was nine hours on the button.
Goed over.
I left here at 3.30 in the afternoon on Friday, and I got over there at 6.30.
They're six hours behind us.
Well, I appreciate you answering.
And you want to know what else?
You want to know what else?
What?
I'll tell you what else.
I have wireless internet on EIB1.
Yeah, I heard you say so.
It's called Broadband Multi-Link.
And I actually got it.
I had it all the way over to Hawaii.
It used to just be continental United States.
I had it all the way over to Hawaii.
So I was working the whole way.
How do you think I knew about the Goldman Sachs business?
In the middle of the Pacific Ocean between the coast of California to Hawaii, you've got that.
Yeah.
That's unreal.
Yeah, recently activated.
It was just the first time.
The first trip I've taken that it was active beyond continental United States.
And the same thing coming back yesterday.
I appreciate the information, Rush.
I love listening to you.
And thanks for taking my call.
I appreciate it.
This is like the late 80s.
Thank you.
Thank you, JD.
You can't have listened much longer than that because that's when we started.
That's devotion.
I appreciate that.
Little town in Norton, Virginia carriage at that time.
I don't know if you remember that one or not.
Little town.
I remember every market that carried or carries this program.
It's my business.
They're all special.
Every darn one of them is special.
Yep.
Hell, I don't know if it's carrying you anymore, but I listen to you whenever I can.
I'm up in the mountains in the middle of almost nowhere right now.
It's safe to assume that they're carrying us.
If they were carrying us, there still are.
There's no reason for anybody to cancel us.
It never happens.
Never happens.
So we've only grown.
I'm sure they're still with us.
Staff and management of the space station may not totally agree with everything I say, but give it five more years and we'll have them wrapped up.
JD, thanks.
I appreciate it very much.
New York Times today on their blog.
I kid you not: Green blog or green ink blog, New York Times.
With summer upon us, how many green vacationers' fancies will turn to thoughts of nudism?
Going without clothes on beaches and other vacation spots is commonly called naturism, a description that implies helping the planet, as some practitioners claim to be doing.
Spending more time with nothing on stems waste and pollution in all sorts of ways, according to an article by Kathy Blanchard on the Naturist Society's website.
Living more hours naked each day results in a dramatic drop in my laundry, which in turn reduces my water and energy use, along with my related bills.
It also reduces the amount of soap I release, in my case, into the Puget Sound.
They've got a picture of a surfer here on some beach at the in a naked surfer in California.
Now, I have a problem looking at most people when they're clothed.
Most people with their clothes on, it's tough to look at them.
But when you take their clothes off of them, come on.
And now we're being urged to go nude to save the princess.
How ridiculous.
What about skin cancer?
What about skin cancer we're all going to get?
So the naturist, it's no longer, it's not called nudism anymore.
Naturism.
These people are nuts.
They're actual looney tunes.
Snerdley, I'm going to knock it.
I'm going to knock it.
These people, I guarantee you, I guarantee.
Look, I don't want to be stereotypical here, but I guarantee you, the people we're talking about here are nothing to look at.
They're nothing to write home about.
You wouldn't put their pictures in a magazine.
I guarantee you.
Trust me on this.
No, I haven't seen them.
But I just, I know these people.
I know the left.
I know liberals.
Would you want to see Barbara McCulsky nude on a beach?
Would you want to see Nancy Pelosi nude?
Okay, do I make my point?
Okay.
So, speaking of which, by the way, Grand Forks North Dakota mother, get this headline: Grand Forks mom pleads guilty in breastfeeding case.
A Grand Forks mother who police say was extremely intoxicated while breastfeeding her six-week-old pleaded guilty to child neglect yesterday.
Officers responded to an unrelated call at a Grand Forks residence in the early morning of February 13th, saw 26-year-old Stacey Anvarina slurring her speech in breastfeeding.
Larson said officers were concerned about the infant's welfare, so they called the hospital, were told that breastfeeding while intoxicated is not good for the kid.
Ms. Ann Varinia was notified of that.
She continued to make attempts to breastfeed.
She wasn't driving.
She's sitting at home breastfeeding while intoxicated.
I don't know if they collected evidence or not.
I don't know how they know that she was intoxicated.
They must have collected evidence somehow.
I don't want to go any further than that.
President Obama.
Where is this from?
Boston Herald.
White House officials, after initially denying reports that President Obama and family would vacation on Martha's Vineyard this summer, now say they have not confirmed any vacation plans at this time.
Word began circulating On the vineyard months ago, that the first family would spend two weeks at the end of August in the East Chop section of Oak Bluffs, an enclave where the Black Upper Crust has vacation for the Black Upper Crust.
What?
Now, come on, folks.
How many minorities are there in Martha's Vineyard?
I myself have been there.
A friend of mine, here we go again, owns a golf course there.
I have flown in.
I actually thought about putting anti-missile detectors on my airplane before flying in there.
Now, how many minorities are there in Martha's Vineyard?
The black upper crust has vacation.
The black upper crust in this case is who?
Vernon Jordan.
And, well, he doesn't live there, but he vacations there.
I don't know.
I assume when Obama goes to Martha's Vineyard, he's going to condemn the affluence and the undertone of racism that exists there because there's only one small section where the black upper crust is vacation for generations.
You think he'll do that?
You think he'll condemn the racism of Martha's Vineyard?
Of course not.
I asked the question rhetorically.
We'll be back.
We'll continue.
Stay with us.
And we're back.
Rush Limbaugh already, already back in a groove, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Reggie in Dover, New Hampshire.
Hi, Reggie.
Great to have you with us here on the EIB network.
Rush, first time call, a longtime listener.
Truly an honor.
Thank you, sir.
I'm very excited.
Hey, Obama's acting classes, they must have paid off because of yesterday, his pre-planned question with the Huffington Post reporter.
That totally threw me for a loop.
I couldn't believe that.
You know, since now, I know anybody could say this to you.
Anybody could say this to you.
I rolled in.
I left Hawaii at what time was it?
When I get wheels up, 7 o'clock Monday night locals.
I left here at 1 a.m.
And I rolled in at about 9.30.
And I didn't sleep on the plane.
I was wired up and so forth.
And I got home and I tried to get some little soda and I couldn't.
So I just, I watched the Obama press conference at 12.30 yesterday.
And when that second question came, I know there's somebody here.
I probably got a question of people in the wrong.
That says staged from the moment I saw this.
I said, this is a setup.
This is Huffington Post.
And it was indeed staged.
Here's how it all went down.
I know Nico Pitney is here from Huffington Post.
Of course you do.
I know that you and all across the internet, we've been seeing a lot of reports coming directly out of Iran.
I know that there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the internet.
Do you have a question?
Yeah, I did, but I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from Irani, and we solicited questions last night from people who were still courageous enough to be communicating online.
And one of them wanted to ask you this.
Under which conditions would you accept the election of Akhadinejah?
Now, anybody with half a brain listening to that knows the whole thing's a setup.
And it turned out to be the story is Obama did not know what question he was going to get, but that they put the HuffPo guy in there and that the HuffPo guy agreed to ask a question from an Iranian.
Now, the purpose of this, of course, is to provide an image of the great population of Iran desperately wanting to know what Obama is going to do, desperately caring for Obama to do.
The world of Iran is as much devoted to President Obama, the nation of Iran, as are the American people.
And here, of course, is Obama's scripted response.
We didn't have international observers on the ground.
We can't say definitively what exactly happened at polling places throughout the country.
What we can do is to say unequivocally that there are sets of international norms and principles about violence, about dealing with peaceful dissent, that spans cultures, spans borders.
It is not too late for the Iranian government to recognize that there is a peaceful path that will lead to stability and legitimacy and prosperity for the Iranian people.
We hope they take it.
I don't know what he knows about Iran and doesn't know.
I really don't.
I don't know if he's naive or if he's just saying all this for public consumption to make people think he's some kind of new arrival that can really talk and his words have the power to change these guys.
He's dealing with absolute whack jobs.
These mullahs are whack jobs.
They are lunatics.
They are insane dictators.
Worldwide norms.
This is from a country that's one of the lead sponsors of terrorism.
This is from a country that teaches its people, well, other Arabs.
They're not Arabs, but they teach Arabs to put bombs on their infants and send them out to blow up themselves and buses.
Anyway, the mission was accomplished.
Except everybody in the press corps knew it.
Everybody, the politico's writing about it today.
Everybody in the press corps knew that this whole thing was set up.
They talked about it yesterday afternoon on Fox.
Martha McCallum talked to their reporter, Mike Emmanuel.
And the question is something that I think bears talking about a little bit.
Reporter brought in from the HuffPoll.
The president knew what the reporter was going to bring to the table.
Some saying it was a little bit out of the ordinary.
Definitely unusual behavior, Martha, when the President of the United States goes from an Associated Press question to Huffington Post.
The reporter was escorted in by a deputy press secretary.
The reporter, Nico Pitney, says that he had been blogging about 20 hours a day about the Iran issue.
Somebody from the White House reached out to him, made clear that they would like a question directly from an Iranian.
Therefore, he was escorted into a packed briefing room for the news conference and called on pretty quickly after the Associated Press.
The Associated Press gets the first question since Helen Thomas is off chewing cud somewhere.
And the first question always goes to Jennifer Lovin of AP.
And then after that, and what the political story is, is that the reporters in the front row looked over at Rahm Emmanuel who laughed at him, smiled again, quarter, gave him a wink.
Everybody was in on this.
Do you remember, however, the outcry over Jeff Gannon at the Bush press conference?
The media claimed that he was a fake reporter with a fake name, used a question proposed by me, is what they said.
It was a national crisis.
February 2005, here's a montage of that.
He misquoted Senate minority leader Harry Reid as having forecast an economy so bad it would produce soup kitchens.
The remark was actually made in jest by the conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh.
He's in a position to ask the President of the United States a question like, Harry Reid is talking about soup lines.
Well, the Senator Reid never talked about soup lines.
That was a characterization we picked up from Rush Limbaugh.
This guy was repeating exactly the kind of allegation coming out of Rush Lindbaugh's mouth.
So when I throw a question out there and some reporter gets in, the whole thing is a trick.
The whole thing is a stunt, stupid question.
Who is this guy?
Wolf Blitzer talked to Jeff Gannon and they asked him, should I call you Jeff or James?
Please call me Jeff Gannon.
So explain the discrepancy.
Your real name is James D. Gookert.
Yes, it's pronounced Gookert.
Gookert.
It's a professional name.
I used it because Jeff Gannon is easier to pronounce and easier to remember.
But you haven't legally changed it.
They went out and they tried to destroy this guy and the whole notion of a put-up fake imposter, imposter reporter, a fake reporter.
And yet a blogger gets in yesterday and Rah Emanuel's looking at the front row of the press corps, winking and smiling at him.
We have to ask a very salient question, ladies and gentlemen.
When did the Huffington Post become the official outlet for the Iranian protesters?
When did that happen?
Also, Warren Buffett interview on CNBC right now slams the economy.
Says it is in shambles.
No signs of recovery yet.
Big Obama supporter.
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