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Aug. 21, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
31:06
August 21, 2009, Friday, Hour #2
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Time Text
Look, I don't think it's appropriate to bring up that LA Times story.
We've hit a speed bump here at the EIB network here just in the last 20 minutes.
I've got to deal with that.
And that L.A. Times story, that's a little, if I could find, you know, we've got Obama, you know, everybody's wee-wee'd up in August.
This story in the L.A. Times is about the female orgasm, and Obama's out there poo-pooing everything.
We have Barney Frank floating around Uranus berating people who show up at his healthcare town hall meeting.
And now I got this, I got this Snerdley problem on Friday.
It's the first speed bump of the week.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday.
Yip, yip, yahoo.
Open line Friday.
Tremendous career risk taken by me turning over the content portion of the program to rank amateurs.
That would be lovable rank amateurs.
It's always fun.
There are no limits to what you, well, some, but I mean, not very many.
The difference is on Friday, I don't have to care about what it is you want to talk about.
Monday through Thursday, it's a requirement, but on Friday, we kind of broom that.
So here's the telephone number, 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the email address, it's LRushbo at EIBnet.com.
Here's the speed bump.
And Carson, HR has compounded the problem.
Snerdley is not screening the program today.
The program is being screened by H.R. Kit Carson, trusted chief of staff.
And the first call today set up the screen here.
Her name was Dorothy.
And she got sort of indignant and said it was Margie.
And I said, well, Snerdley must be screening today because he's the sometimes gets names up.
So I got this note.
Hey, that's really nice.
That's really cool.
Appreciate that.
And then Carson said, look, all I was doing, it's my mistake, but I did it on purpose.
I'm just, I was dedicating screening today to Bo Snerdley.
Well, Snerdley heard about that, and now I got this note he's threatening to resign.
And I just want to say, Snerdley, you want to make this public?
Fine.
I'll tell you what they told me at the Kansas City Royals.
When I was making $13,000 a year in the group sales department, I went and I asked, you know, just a couple thousand dollars would make all the difference.
No, if you quit, we got people who do your job for nothing.
All right, we continue now with the disarray that the Obama White House is in on healthcare and Obama himself and the angst this is causing in state-controlled media.
Very concerned that Obama has lost the magic.
This morning on the MSNBC, Joe Scarborough was talking with Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes, and they're talking about Obama's health care.
And Scarborough says, you know, Leslie, it seems like it's always something in August.
People get wee-weed up out there.
You know, I was thinking about Reagan and how unbelievably unpopular he became when he had his recession.
And we forget that that happens to presidents when you have increasing joblessness.
It is absolutely inevitable.
Obama's unpopularity, the same thing Reagan went through in a recession.
There's a difference, though.
What's the big difference, Glickwick?
I'm going to put you on the spot here.
What is the big difference in Reagan and his recession and Obama and his recession?
And we need to pass this on so Leslie Stahl can understand it too.
What is the big difference?
Chad, you want to take a stab at this?
What's the big difference in the two recessions?
Nobody wants to take a seat.
This is why there isn't another me.
I'm giving everyone an opportunity to show that they can do it.
No.
Well, he did have optimism, but the big difference is Reagan was trying to end his recession.
Obama's not trying to end his.
Very simple.
Obama's not doing one thing to end this recession.
He's doing things to compound it.
Reagan was trying to end it.
He cut taxes.
Obama's making it worse.
And then she wasn't through.
She kept going.
There's all this question about how he's not being passionate.
He's not expressing verve.
And Reagan used to do it so brilliantly.
He could be angry without having that angry face.
People said he was a B actor, but as president, he was an A actor.
I would be right up close and he'd get that angry, for example, at the air traffic controllers, things like that.
He'd get the angry look, and I knew he was acting.
I knew it wasn't from down here.
And Obama has to find that spot because he's an actor too, and find a way to express his passion without crossing a line he doesn't want to cross.
He doesn't want to become part of the angry mob.
This is unbelievable.
This woman is one of many who spent years impugning, insulting Reagan because he was an actor.
He wasn't a real guy.
And now all of a sudden, he was great.
He was a great A actor.
And Obama's got to learn how to act.
This couldn't be a bigger insult.
Of all the people, somebody in the state-run media is advising Barack Obama to emulate Ronald Reagan.
They're spiraling out of control over there.
Obama, ladies, I guarantee you his head's swimming.
He has no idea where he is now.
That is white comedian Paul Shanklin.
And I'm in over my head, that's Barack Obama.
You know, folks, somebody had better, just thought of this, somebody had better tell the media, like Leslie Stahl of state-controlled media, stop harping on Reagan.
The era of Reagan is over.
You know, who said it?
David Brooks has said that.
David Frum has said that.
A number of conservative media.
The era of Reagan is over.
And yet now we've got the state-run media saying, Obama, you are going to have to figure out how to be like Reagan.
Twin spin time, folks.
White comedian Paul Shanklin as President Obama and American Lai, a featured twin spin here at the EIB network.
By the way, Robert Gibbs, Baghdad Bob Gibbs, the great Gibbs, here at the White House press briefing this afternoon, a question from Savannah Guthrie at NBC.
What does weed up mean?
What is weed up?
I don't know if I should do that from the podium.
I think we weed up is when people just get all nervous for no particular reason.
This is sort of an August pundit pattern between people getting overly nervous for something that still has a long way to go.
Bedwetting would be probably the more consumer-friendly term.
So he did mean that.
He did mean that people are weeweeing out there.
He meant first it was Nazis, now it's bedwetters.
Everybody's out there.
Ruly mobs, unruly mobs or gangs.
And now they're bedwetters.
And now they're pee-peeing all over the place in August.
And this dolph press secretary has just confirmed it.
Rush Limbaugh, a household name in all four corners of the world, serving humanity simply by showing up here at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
This is the 50th anniversary of Hawaiian statehood today, August 21st.
I actually remember this as a kid, the 50th anniversary.
I was eight years old.
Hawaii is, of course, famous for lots of things.
Hawaii 5-0, grass skirts, lays, the flower necklaces.
I didn't mean to confuse the two.
Lays and then flower necklaces, hula hoops.
Hawaii actually morphed into Kenya one day in 1961 and then reverted back to Hawaii the next day.
It's an amazing place.
That'll get them.
That'll just, when they hear that, wouldn't they?
Oh, no, Limbo's encouraging the birthers again.
All right, here is June in Greenwood, Arkansas.
Great to have you.
Thank you for calling and welcome.
Rush, it's an honor to speak with you.
Thank you very much.
I'm calling because I've had similar success on a weight loss program, very similar to your program.
Not possible.
The weight I've lost, I haven't lost, according to the experts.
I know.
I heard that.
But I started out at 319.
I lost 90 pounds.
In what period of time?
It took about a year.
It took about a year.
And I looked online at the program you were using, and I realized that the products were very similar to the ones, the protein supplements and those things were very similar.
Well, congratulations.
That's great.
90 pounds, that's significant.
I'm at 82, and since March the 9th.
But men lose weight faster than women do.
They just do.
Well, and I had kind of slacked off and wasn't being as diligent.
And then when I saw what you were doing, I got back on it and I lost five pounds the first week.
Well, I'm happy to provide inspiration in yet another way.
Thank you.
You had a question.
It says up here, you do still eat what?
What were you going to ask?
Oh, the screener was asking me if I go hungry.
And I told him, no, I don't go hungry at all.
The food is very nutritious.
It really teaches you the proper portions, and you don't go hungry at all.
Yeah, I actually don't look at this as a diet anymore.
I look at it, portion control or whatever.
It's just how to eat.
It's just how to eat sensibly.
I will be, I'll tell you a little something.
We've had a blast out here this week, and I went, I've been going to dinner every night.
And one night this week, it's not because I overate or anything.
One night this week, at the end of the night, I felt like I used to feel when I weighed 290 after eating dinner.
And I said, I am never going through this.
That is never going to happen.
It just took that one time.
And I really didn't overeat.
I don't know what happened.
I think it was just a combination.
That was the night I pulled the all-nighter and so forth.
But it's this is the first diet, quote-unquote diet I have ever been on that I don't want to get off of.
Well, I'm thinking of it.
Other diets, when I finally got to the goal, I said, all right.
Exactly.
That's what I did.
And I started putting it back on.
Yeah, well, that'll happen.
Well, congratulations, June.
That's very proud of you.
People don't know how hard this is.
They don't know how to stick with something, lose 90 pounds.
It is hard, but people can do it.
Of course.
Of course they can do it.
People do it all the time.
But the experts say it even I haven't done it.
I know.
I heard that.
I mean, it's just amazing.
June, thanks for the call.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
Albany and Tom, you're next.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
It's great to speak with you.
I'd like to thank you for the great work that you've been doing for so many years.
Thank you, sir.
I have an observation I'd like to share with you and possibly get your feedback.
Since Obama took over, I've been watching some of these town hall meetings, and it hurts me to see fellow Americans be categorized as Nazis, being on the lunatic fringe, and so on.
And what they did with Sarah Palin was despicable.
Now, two years ago, when Bush was in the White House, he had his detractors, the Jersey gals and the Dixie chicks, and in particular, Cindy Sheehan.
Oh, yeah.
And did anybody in the Bush White House call Cindy Sheehan a Nazi or a member of the lunatic fringe?
Or did they treat her with respect?
I actually think they treated her sympathetically.
They didn't mention her at all publicly.
Well, they didn't, and my mind is going blank.
The guy who ran for Terry?
No, no, the Republican with Sarah Phelan.
McCain.
Yeah, didn't he sit down and meet with her?
Yeah, he might have.
My point is, they never categorized any of these people as lunatic fringe or Nazis.
They accepted the fact that they didn't agree with them.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, I know exactly your point.
It's just a matter of, you know, you're president of the United States, you're president of all the people, and you're not going to start.
You know, Bush would not get partisan.
To a lot of people's frustration, he would not get partisan because he didn't want to lower the dignity of the office.
But I had to take a look at Cindy Sheehan.
You know, she's going to Martha's Vineyard to protest Obama.
She thinks there's no difference in Obama and Bush because we're still in Iraq and we're still in Afghanistan.
And you would not believe what Charlie Gibson said about Cindy Sheehan when he was asked about her.
As to Cindy Sheehan, by the way, welcome back, Rush Limbos, serving humanity, half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
You know, when Cindy Sheehan was all revved up and said protests outside George Bush's Crawford, Texas home and marching around, she did meet with McCain, and after the meeting, she called him a warmonger.
I always said at the time that I felt sorry for her.
This woman was devastated by the loss of her son.
She couldn't get over it.
And she was trying to find some meaning to it.
And she was used, a PR firm in San Francisco decided to adopt her and promote her story as a way, a leftist PR firm in San Francisco, of continually harassing the Bush administration to defeat our Iraq objectives and policy.
She was used by these people.
And I actually, I mean, I was angry at her, but at the same time, I felt sorry for her because she was just a pawn.
She was just a pawn.
And I knew, like every other pawn that the Democrats use, when they're finished with them, they throw them away and just get rid of them.
Once they've served their purpose, they just become the statistic.
So this week, in Chicago, on our affiliate WLS, The Big 89, Charlie Gibson, the anchor of ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, was talking to the host up there, Don Wade, about Cindy Sheehan.
And Don Wade noted all the coverage that Sheehan had received in 2005.
And he asked Charlie Gibson whether we're going to see some coverage of Cindy Sheehan as she goes up to Martha's Vineyard to protest Obama, because he's still in Iraq and he's still got us in Afghanistan.
And here is what Charlie Gibson said.
It's such a sad story.
Martha Radditz of ABC News wrote a terrific book about one battle that took place in Iraq.
It was the battle in which Cindy's son was killed.
And you look at somebody like that and you think, here's somebody who's just trying to find some meaning in her son's death.
And you have to be.
You have to be sympathetic to her.
Anybody who's given a son, anybody who's given a son to this country has made an enormous sacrifice.
You have to be sympathetic, but enough already.
Enough already, Cindy.
You know, so after going through all the proper, oh, she's sympathetic figures, so sad, trying to find meaning.
Why did her son die?
What was it?
Has it helped anything?
Is it really an honor for her and her country that her son gave her life in battle and so forth?
When she's out there revving up people against George W. Bush, it's let's cover her 24-7.
Let's make sure we have our cameras out there outside Bush's ranch when she's there, whatever she's saying, whatever she's doing.
If she goes down and meets with Hugo Chavez, our cameras will be there.
I could not get enough of her.
Now that she's headed to Martha's Vineyard, the state-controlled media, Charlie Gibson, state-controlled anchor ABC, enough already.
Cindy, leave it alone.
Get out.
We're not interested.
We're not going to cover you going to Martha's Vineyard because our guy is president now and you're just a hassle.
You're just a problem.
And I knew to these people, they never had any true, genuine emotional interest in her.
She was just a pawn.
She was just a woman to be used and then thrown overboard once they're through with her.
And they're through with her.
They don't want any part of Cindy Sheehan protesting against any war when Obama happens to be president.
We now go to Yakima, Washington.
This is Andrew.
Andrew, how long have you lived in Yakima, Washington?
I've lived there my entire life, 31 years old.
31 years old.
You may, you're right on the cusp.
Let's see, 1985.
Born in 78 on March 9th, the day you started losing weight.
Yeah, you might be a little young.
There's something that Yakima Washington was the first at in this country, ever.
Something that happened.
Yakima Washington did it before anybody else did.
And it's pretty common now all over the country.
Do you have any idea what I'm talking about?
Not a clue.
Yakima, Washington was the first community to put 90-gallon trash cans on wheels for your home.
So you fill up your 90-gallon trash can and you roll it out there in the driveway, and the sanitation people come pick it up.
Up till that time, the largest trash can ever used was like 30 gallons.
And they, I mean, this had the lid on the wheel.
Yakima Washington was the first to break the garbage can size barrier.
Very nice.
I can tell you're really proud of that.
I just want to just wanted to mention that to you.
I know that's not why you called.
What is your question?
I'd like to make a statement, and then I have a couple of elaborations.
The first is, I believe that the Democrats have to be most concerned about losing their fringe base.
And let me elaborate.
First, Republicans lost the support of staunch conservatives by not being able to enact a conservative agenda, and then finally, by behaving like liberals.
And then the blue dogs have to be concerned whether or not they pass this health care bill.
Because if they pass it, they lose support of their constituents.
And if they don't pass it, they lose support of their base.
That's close.
You're right in the first count.
If they vote against the health care bill, they satisfy their base, mean their constituents.
If they go along with this health care bill, their constituents are their base.
If they go along with the health care bill.
No, it's the other way around.
If they vote against the health care bill, they have made angry Nancy Pelosi and Rah Emmanuel, who will see to it they don't get any reelection money and no committee assignments, nothing of any kind of stature in the House.
But they have a tremendous problem, the Blue Dogs.
What do they do?
And the question is, who are they going to be most afraid of?
Their voters or Pelosi and Rahm Emanuel?
I'm not sure it matters.
Well, it does to them.
I mean, because the politicians' first job is to get reelected.
If they go against the leadership, the leadership can make sure they don't get re-elected.
If they go against their constituents, their constituents can make sure they don't get elected.
But Pelosi and Reed can say, no, no, no, we'll send Acorn in there.
We'll have enough voter fraud.
We'll run enough commercials that their constituents won't matter.
That's what they're going to be.
That's what they're going to be told.
At the end of the day, they're just Democrats.
Yes, but that's they're just, I say that to a Republican audience here or a conservative audience, blue dog, blue dog, what, at the end of the day, they are Democrats, but they're trying to craft this image that they're fiscally responsible, that they're conservative in that way because their voters are.
If they vote for this thing, they can no longer claim fiscal responsibility.
They're just as radical as anybody else.
But you did hit on something.
And it points that it illustrates the big difference in the House and the Senate.
Nancy Pelosi, like she's out there saying, I don't care what Obama says about a public option.
The public option is going to be in the health care.
In fact, let me find the bite.
I've got it all out of order, and she might be on the first page.
She's not on the first page.
Number 28, I'll trust you.
Let's play Nancy Pelosi.
I agree with the president that public option was the best way to keep the insurance companies on it.
Let me say it another way.
There's no way I can pass a bill in the House of Representatives without a public option.
That's it.
No way I can pass a bill in the House of Representatives without a public option because of her fringe base, the lunatic fringe base and the Democrat Party, they're already upset.
They're upset that Obama's still spying on Americans.
They're upset we haven't closed Gitmo.
They're upset we're still in Iraq.
They're upset we're still in Afghanistan.
They're upset over this public option business.
When Obama said or when Sebelius went out there and took it off the table, there was an eruption and a kook left website.
Remember, I told you I went to Democrat Underground and every other word was the F-bomb.
And they're saying, my gosh, if we have the White House, if we have the Congress, we have the House and the Senate, why the hell can't we get anything done?
So Pelosi's, that's, you know, the House is as radical fringe left as what you'll find down in Venezuela.
But it's not that way in the Senate.
So Pelosi has to pass this bill with the public option in it.
This is no head fake from her.
This is pedal to the metal.
The public option is going forward because Pelosi is driving the bus.
Harry Reid, on the other hand, has got a re-election campaign of his own in 2010.
He's in trouble, and the public option is not something his constituents want.
So he's not nearly as pedal to the metal on this as Pelosi is.
And this is going to be an interesting conference fight when they get there because Obama's going to win this.
There will be a public option because there's no reason to reform health care from their perspective if there's not.
But the public option is not an option the public wants or needs.
It's the government option.
Public option equals government option, and there's no other way to look at it.
And this is the Pelosi-Obama campaign.
Pelosi's made her intentions clear.
Obama has the luxury of pretending the government option isn't that big a deal to him.
To Obama, getting the public option isn't everything.
It is the only thing, but he can go out there and act like it doesn't really.
That matter much to him.
Pelosi can't.
Pelosi has to act like it's the only thing.
Now, once it gets through the House, Obama and the state-controlled media will move heaven and earth to get it passed through the Senate.
And it could destroy Harry Reed, but he's too weak to put up a fight.
Reed's expendable.
They can find some other soft-spoken little nerd to run the Democrats in the House.
And this is killing Hillary.
This is killing her because she could have been the next Senate majority leader if she'd have stayed there.
Now she's been dispatched to where?
Nairobi and Kenya.
Her job now is to run around and kiss the graves of all of Obama's dead relatives while Bill's out there securing freedom for Algore journalists from the little pot-bellied dictator in North Korea, Kim Pong-yang or whatever his name is.
To add insult to injury, Reed's in trouble.
The public option is his problem, and therefore he's expendable.
So the mother of all political battles lies ahead.
The statists want a war, and a war is what they're going to get.
General Patton said pressure makes diamonds.
Pressure also crushes the weak and the unworthy.
And this is a country of the people, by the people, for the people.
The people in this country are the diamonds.
The statists are not.
So this is, you know, when you say that they're playing to their base, that is true.
The fringe base, Pelosi, has to play to it.
Plus, she is one of those kooks.
I mean, it's not as though she's doing something she doesn't want to do.
Now, you know, we gave you a detailed description and analysis earlier of the problems that Obama has, his plummeting poll numbers.
He's now below 50% in terms of people having faith or trust in him.
And the drive-by media is all concerned.
Oh, no, no, no, is he really human after all?
Is he really human after?
They're actually asking that question.
Is he human?
In fact, let me find the by the death.
Stick with me on this.
I know it's coming up soon.
I saw it here back in the end.
Is he human after all?
It might have been Leslie Stahl that asked that question.
But they are asking it.
In the meantime, Joe Connison, who is a lunatic fringe, angry, typical, ultra-radical leftist, has a column.
And I want to read to you a portion of what Connison has written.
Every mistake made by the Obama White House in the pursuit of health care reform can be traced to the political style and the ideological prejudices of Rah Emmanuel.
Now, this is the way.
You know, we look at Rah Emmanuel and we see this knife-throwing, dead fish-sending former ballerina who just goes for the juggler.
Joe Connason is upset because he sees Rahm Emmanuel catering to conservatives.
Listen to this: every mistake made by the Obama White House in the pursuit of healthcare reform can be traced to the political style and ideological prejudices of Rah Emmanuel, who has sought to intimidate progressives and empower conservatives, always in the name of winning elections and getting things done.
Now, let me ask you a question.
For those of you that are up to speed on Rom Emmanuel, is anything he's doing look to you like patronizing us, empowering conservatives?
Is Ron Emmanuel doing one thing to empower conservatives?
Ron Emmanuel is leading the charge to destroy conservatives and Republicans.
And yet here's this fringe ultra-left radical Connison.
He sees Emmanuel as being tough on the progressives, the libs, and kowtowing to conservatives.
Although few Democrats trusted Emmanuel to hold true to principle, many hoped that he would get things done and that those things would reflect the liberal progressive outlook of his boss rather than the attitude of accommodation he picked up on Capitol Hill.
So the kuk fringe in the Democrat Party looks at Ron Emmanuel as a softy.
And he's, I got to stop myself in the middle of brilliance because I fail to see the quark again.
All right, now back to the brilliance that was so rudely interrupted by the programming format.
You got Ron Emmanuel out there who is doing everything he can to destroy us and foist upon this country a single-payer health care system that will forever change the relationship Americans have with one another and their government.
And yet Joe Connason, kook fringe liberal radical, thinks that Rah's gone soft and is kowtowing to conservatives and empowering them because he thinks he needs them in order to get things done.
And he doesn't.
The Democrats don't need one Republican vote.
So anyway, Connison is Hillary's favorite columnist.
And there is a civil war that has begun here on the Democrat side.
All of the stuff that we have mentioned today about faith, Obama losing it, trust, Obama losing it, approval, Obama losing it.
And so Connison's all upset blaming Emmanuel for this because he's going too soft.
He writes, instead, and perhaps inevitably, the narrow pragmatism of Rah Emmanuel is shaping the Obama administration's approach to reform.
As long as some kind of bill passes, Emmanuel won't worry when the corporate powers override the public interest once again.
He'll congratulate himself on a job well done.
His blue dog Democrats will boast of frustrating the liberal Obama.
Everybody will get a nice check from the insurance lobbyists, but the president's promise will be soiled and the nation's future will be dimmed.
So the details here, they're interesting.
But it points up another thing.
They just were fuming mad when Obama made the deal with Big Pharma to buy advertising to support the plan in exchange for Obama promising not to negotiate price increases with them.
And so the left there, from Robert B. Reich, they're just mad as hell.
They hate corporations.
Now here's Obama in bed with them, and they're blaming Emmanuel.
So you've got a civil war that's brewing on the Democrat side here.
And it's not Emmanuel, it's Obama.
He's the one failing to meet promise.
And Paul Krugman today tears into Obama in the New York Times.
Have an idea.
Nobody likes the term death panels.
Well, I happen to like the term death panels, but how about cash for caskets?
Hey, Coco, get Michelle at the website working on a graphic of that.
Cash for caskets.
Get a bunch of old people.
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