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Oct. 22, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:05
October 22, 2009, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
I honestly do not know where to begin today.
Jobless claims, dent recovery hopes, the Pesar cutting Wall Street salaries by 90%, and Obama is said to not know about it, which is total BS.
Seven months after the stimulus plan, 49 out of 50 states have lost jobs.
The unemployment rate has skyrocketed.
Initial claims jump 11,000 to 531,000, much more than expected.
It is, Daniel Henninger has a piece in the Wall Street Journal.
Everything's fake.
We are all balloon boys now.
This is one of the reasons why people are so out of it.
Nothing appears real.
The media interviews hoaxers, pretend leaders of the Chamber of Commerce tries to pass them off as real.
I mean, it's everybody's head spinning out there.
Obama is out there saying that Fox News is talk radio.
I am living rent-free in this guy's head.
Fox News is talk radio.
If that's true, MSNBC is pornography and Obama likes MSNBC.
CNN is child porn.
My God, folks, greetings and great to have you here.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network, and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney taking it to President Obama and his irresponsibility and his lying.
The Bush administration did leave Obama with a battle plan for Afghanistan.
Obama said, please don't, don't, don't, don't go public that you left us this.
Then Cheney said, okay, well, we won't.
And Cheney is now out ripping Obama for blaming Bush for all of this and defending CIA agents who are being hounded by their own government or these interrogators at Club Gittenhoe.
And we've got, we got another song.
We don't even know where this one's from, but we got more school kids singing a song about President Obama.
Hey, Ed, by the way, you need to find the song in there.
And I don't know if you know where it is.
HR can help you.
I just thought of this.
But we got a song of school kids singing to me.
This happened.
We put it together.
I'm sure this bothers President Obama.
All right.
Here is, this is from February of this year.
That's all we know.
It's an unknown scruple.
Here is a group of third grade elementary scruel students singing a song about President Obama.
We like to study real hard just like Barack.
That's a cop.
Me and you.
So sorry life's worth left to you.
That was a cowbell in there, Son.
This is in February, so this is we don't even know the school.
All right, now get this, Nancy.
Nancy, you got mine?
Obama's not the only one that's got school kids singing songs to him.
The only problem is I don't have a cowbell in my song.
My kids didn't bring a cowbell in there, but I mean, we could easily add a cowbell if we want.
I mean, Obama's kids got nothing on our kids, folks.
That's the bottom line.
All right, telephone number if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882.
The email address, LRushbo at EIBNet.com.
Get this now.
This is hot off the presentation.
Just an hour ago from state-controlled AP, a top White House economist says that spending from the $787 billion economic stimulus has already had its biggest impact on economic growth and will likely not contribute to significant expansion next year.
This is it.
This is it.
Seven months after the stimulus, 49 of 50 states have lost jobs.
The jobless claims are way up, denting recovery hopes.
And now, Christina Romer of the Obama administration, and we wonder for how long she will be with the Obama administration, now says this is it.
That porkulus has already had its biggest impact on economic growth.
She is admitting, you know, we've only spent 14% of it.
The bulk of it gets spent next year.
And what she's telling us is what we already know, that it's not about economic stimulus.
It's to re-elect Democrats.
That's where most of the money is going to go.
Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi did not get the memo.
Late yesterday afternoon on CNBC, Maria Barcharomo interviewed the Speaker of the House.
She said, do we need a second stimulus?
I mean, it seems that after $787 billion in stimulus and then the $700 billion from TARP, it's surprising we haven't seen a bigger impact here.
I don't think anybody's surprised that we haven't seen any job creation from TARP.
The recovery package that we passed later in January under President Obama has had positive results.
Economists told us this morning in our session that absent that recovery package, we'd be in much worse shape.
Hard to see.
It's not an accident that right now, as the recession is coming to an end, it does so where the recovery package is weighing in at its biggest impact in this third quarter, quarter of 2009.
But more must be done.
It's not enough to say we save jobs and we haven't created enough.
And that's why we have to look at the tax code and other remedies that are there for us in the short term.
So Christina Romer says, this is it, folks.
The biggest bang for the buck has already happened.
Ain't going to get any more.
Pelosi said stimulus is working.
Now it's time to raise taxes.
So Barteromo said on the tax issue, allowing the...
Now, you've got to hear this.
You got to hear this.
Allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire would essentially be a tax increase.
No, it wasn't a tax increase.
It is eliminating a tax decrease that was there.
It was controversial to begin with.
It is a boon to those who have had it for now.
But I think that you will see that happen.
And that affects, what, the upper 2% of our population.
Given the fact that we are still in this fragile recovery, would you rethink allowing those tax cuts to expire, given that we are still pretty vulnerable in terms of the economic recovery?
I don't think many people here see, nor do the American people, see those tax cuts at the high end as being job creating.
They think that that's part of the reason we're in the fiscal, the budgetary situation that we're in, because those tax cuts cost money and we can't afford those taxes.
We never could, those tax cuts.
All right.
Did you figure all that out, ladies and gentlemen?
We're dealing with genuine idiots here.
Genuine, illiterate, economic, illiterate idiots are running the show here.
So the administration says we've already had our biggest bang for the buck on the stimulus.
Pelosi says, oh, no, no, no, it's working.
It's time to raise taxes.
But see, it's not a tax increase to let a tax cut expire.
No, no, no.
It's eliminating a tax decrease that was there.
It's eliminating a tax decrease that was there.
I guess we got to, yeah, we got to send more.
But who is going to be sending more money to Washington?
Do you realize?
Well, yeah, you do realize it because the economy is you, and there isn't any growth out there.
I'm more frustrated than I have been.
Each and every day brings more evidence that we have a willful and purposeful destruction of the private sector economy in the United States.
And it's not just Obama, it is the entire Democrat Party, which is signed on to this.
By the way, Obama with a special announcement for EIB listeners.
The economic news continues to be unbelievably horrible and bad.
And by the way, I think Christina Romer is saying, this is it.
We've had the big bang for the buck that we're going to get on the stimulus.
Is she not saying, ladies and gentlemen, that Barack Obama's stimulus has failed?
49 out of 50 states report job losses after the stimulus.
So his own economic advisor, Christina Romer, essentially saying Obama has failed.
Hope and change.
You remember what hope is?
Hope is an excuse for doing nothing.
People sitting around waiting for Mr. Obama to make their lives right.
Labor Department statistics show that the District of Columbia leads the nation in the percentage of jobs lost in September relative to population.
Figures released show that New York lost the most jobs last month, but D.C. had the highest percentage of jobs lost relative to population.
A D.C. unemployment rate shot up to 11.4% right under Obama's nose.
Right under the administration's nose, the Michigan unemployment rate, the highest in the nation, 15%.
The media is not concerned.
They keep saying jobless claims dent recovery hope.
She go back to 2004 or 2008 and look at them reporting a loss of 20,000 jobs, and it was a calamity.
It was disaster.
It was a recession in the making.
And of course, that's when George W. Bush was in the office.
What's happening here, folks, is Obama's numbers are tanking.
A Gallup poll is it is devastating what the Gallup survey shows.
Obama's quarterly approval average slips nine points to 53%.
Now, forget the number, 53%, because I don't think it's that high.
I don't think he's got, I don't think over half the country approves of the job he's doing.
In Gallup Daily Tracking that spans Obama's third quarter in office, July 20th through October 19th, the president averaged a 53% job approval rating, which is down sharply from his prior quarterly averages, which were both above 60%.
In fact, the nine-point drop in the most recent quarter is the largest Gallup has ever measured for an elected president between the second and third quarters of his term, dating back to 1953.
One president who was not elected in his first term, Harry Truman, had a 13-point drop between his second and third quarters in office in 1945 and 1946.
More generally, Obama's nine-point slide between the quarters ranks as one of the steepest for a president at any point in his first year in office.
So his numbers are tanking.
The media doing everything it can to cover for him and his party.
The fact is, millions of people have gone from indifference or even support for Obama to outright opposition.
It is out there.
It is effervescing.
It is bubbling up.
The media is not covering it, but you know and I know it is out there.
There used to be indifference.
There used to be moderate support.
It has given way to outright opposition all over this country in every city, every demographic that you want to talk about.
Obama's policies are very unpopular because they require the bankrupting of the country.
They undermine the Constitution.
And his staff is extremely radical.
The staff reflects his own belief system.
He is his staff.
He is his czars.
All this baloney about how far out of the mainstream traditional conservatives are.
The fact is, we can see all around us it is Obama and his administration and his party and his supporters in and out of the media who have lost the confidence of the public.
The public doesn't trust the media.
The public does not trust Obama.
The public does not trust the czars.
The public does not trust Congress.
The public basically does not trust its government anymore.
And yet, Politico out with its second installment today, oh yeah, it's the conservatives causing the problems, the Republican Party, Republican Party meeting in secret to find out what they can do about Limbaugh and Beck and Hannity and Levin.
Oh no, the country's falling apart.
We have nothing to do with it.
We're the ones championing liberty and freedom, free markets.
We are the ones trying to save this country and wake the American people up, those who are still asleep at the switch here, and alert them as to what is really happening.
And of course, it's natural that we would be attacked.
It's natural that we would be targeted by the aiders and abettors in the media of the Obama presidency.
So they're now meeting in secret.
They've created an enemies list.
They are using tax dollars and the law to destroy certain companies and industries, all for the purpose of appointing their cronies to head them.
And Politico is concerned about us.
The drive-by media is obsessed with us.
We are said to be the greatest threat to the future of the Republican Party.
At this point, folks, I couldn't care less about the Republican Party, particularly when you look at the candidate they are supporting, Didi Scazafava, up of the 23rd District of New York.
Frankly, folks, our focus is not on the Republican Party.
Our focus is trying to save the country.
Save the country as it was founded.
And there is a lot of hope on that regard, in that regard.
Heritage Foundation today talks about the vote in the Senate yesterday.
You have to read all the way to page A25 of today's New York Times to learn about it, but the Senate took its first floor vote on Obamacare yesterday and the White House lost.
Big.
New York Times reports Democrats lost a big test on health care legislation on Wednesday as the Senate blocked action on a bill to increase Medicare payments to doctors.
They tried to bribe the doctors and people wouldn't go along with it.
Yesterday's vote marks a significant failure of the left's special interest approach to passing Obamacare from the beginning.
The White House thought that if it bought off all the business interests involved, the AMA, the drug industry, health insurers, and so forth, opposition to the plan would wither.
In one sense, the plan worked.
USA Today reports that Big Pharma, Pfizer, America's health insurance plans, the Federation of American Hospitals have all ponied up millions of dollars for lobbying and TV ads in support of Obamacare, but all these special interest TV ads failed to rid Americans of their common sense objections to Obamacare's government takeover of health care.
Read all about it at the Heritage Foundation.
The American people have told Gallup they want to see Congress move in the opposite direction.
They're currently moving on health care.
This was a big failure for the Democrats, a big failure for their strategy, a big failure for their tactics.
They'll be back, but it was a huge failure.
AskHeritage.org has all the details of this.
I'm going to be supplanting details, of course, with my own as the program unfolds.
But askheritage.org deserves your attention.
Go there, sign up 25 books a year to join, keep them alive, and become a member.
Access for yourself, the brilliance that they publish daily.
Here's more hope and change for you.
Washington, D.C., in light of all the skyrocketing and new unemployment, Metro officials say that they've seen a 40% increase in robberies in the first eight months of the year.
Obama's Washington, D.C. Metro Transit Police statistics released ahead of today's Metro board meeting show a 5% increase in overall crime in the transit system.
Over 1,000 incidents in the first eight months of 2008, 1,173 during the same period.
This year, the number of reported robberies grew from 370 to 524.
First eight months of the year, larcenies fell down to 470.
So that rampant crime, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
How's that hope and change working out for you?
Let's move on to this Pesar business.
I know a lot of you have mixed emotions about this.
I'll explain what I think your mixed emotions are.
Here you have a bunch of Wall Street types, and they've already got a bad image.
I mean, these are the fat cats paying themselves gazillion-dollar bonuses and salaries, and nobody likes that.
And meanwhile, they're getting rich.
Everybody else got poor.
The subprime crisis, all just the fraud that was there.
So these guys then have to, to save themselves, sign up to the TARP bailout, and they accept all this bailout money.
And they probably all voted for Obama, or the vast majority of them did.
And now all of a sudden, out of blue, here comes a Pesar saying, guess what?
We're going to cut your pay by 90%.
And some of you are going, well, good.
Time that happened.
These guys ripped us off.
They stole and everything.
And now they're taking federal bailout money.
Okay.
If you get in bed with a snake, you got to expect the snake to be a snake.
In this case, the government's the snake.
You get in bed with the government.
You let the government bail you out.
You are opening yourself up to letting the government tell you how to run your business.
That's exactly what's happened.
And I know that a lot of you probably think it's pretty good.
It's just like when you see taxes go up on cigarette smoke.
Yes.
I mean, smoking kills.
Secondhand smoke kills.
Raise taxes on those filthy people.
Yeah, you say that until it then starts to happen to you.
When everybody else starts to get the shaft, but you don't, and you think everybody who's getting the shaft deserves it, then you sign on to it.
This that happened yesterday with this Pesar, regardless of your emotions on this issue, is simply outrageous.
And they're giving Obama the secret to presidential success, ladies and gentlemen, is deniability.
That is one of the major secrets to any president's success.
I didn't know that was going on.
Bill Clinton, Weko and Basia, you better go talk to Attorney General.
I had no clue about that.
So now it is said that Obama had no idea that his Pesar, Kenneth Feinberg, had come up with this figure of 90% cuts in pay.
He didn't know.
He stands by the decision now, but he didn't know about it.
These czars, if that's true, these czars have even more power.
There's even more reason for an investigation to be called.
We got people who are not confirmed by the Senate, not accountable to anybody except Obama, and he doesn't know what they're doing, his own administration says, running around, basically taking over the private sector under the guise of bailing it out and helping it.
You can look at General Motors and Chrysler and say, hey, that's going well, isn't it?
He learned yesterday all that bailout money.
Guess what?
The taxpayers will not get it back.
Really, government investments in these things are not going to pay off.
Big shock, whoever thought they were.
It'll go down in history as one of Obama's signature decisions on the economy.
A dramatic move to slash corporate pay at bailed-out banks and automakers.
But on a Wednesday night, administration officials said the president didn't have all that much to do with a decision that will, in many ways, come to define his relationship with Wall Street.
In fact, sources within the administration say the decision to cap corporate pay was Kenneth Feinberg's and his alone.
Feinberg's decision rocked Wall Street, where many otherwise media-friendly executives avoided phone calls and deleted emails from reporters Wednesday night.
Many issued outright no-comment statements rather than react to the pay cut news in the first hours after the news broke.
Very few executives thought a pay cut of this size would ever happen or was warranted.
We're to start with this, folks.
This is a level 10 BS alert, Barbara Streisstand alert.
First, we are supposed to believe little old Barry Obama had no idea that his Pesar was out acting like fascists and other czars have and do.
That Barry was clueless, that some rogue czar in his administration was out dictating pay for financial firms.
It is like Barry had no idea that Anita Dunn idolizes Mao Tzedong.
Barry had no idea that Ron Bloom idolizes Mao Tzedong.
Barry had no idea that Dan Jones was an avowed Marxist and communist.
Barry had no idea of any of this.
You see the wall of deniability the press is trying to build up.
Oh, he didn't know about any of this.
He's Mr. Perfect.
He's Mr. Clean.
He's Mr. Calm, Cool, Collected.
He's reworking the American economy.
So what's happening now doesn't ever happen again.
The only way that can happen is if what's happening now becomes permanent.
Let's go there.
Has there ever been a more compelling case?
I ask you for Congress to get rid of every so-called czar there is?
Has there ever been a bigger bucket of crap poured on Americans and American businesses than this administration and this so-called Pesar, who's acting unilaterally without old Barry's knowledge?
Is there no one in Congress to stand up and say, what's going on?
We're going to investigate this.
You've got people acting without the president's knowledge, interfering in the private sector, capping executive pay.
The problem is, the Democrats in Congress are all for this.
And Barney Frank, in case you've forgotten, wants Congress to go further than even the Pesar has gone.
Barney Frank wants the government to regulate pay of every business in the country, whether they've received bailout money or not.
So it's no wonder Obama's out there attacking me and Fox News.
Who else will report this?
That's what's really going on here.
The people who are reporting the truth in this country are the targets of this administration.
Fox News, talk radio, me in particular.
That's what's going on.
The American thinker has a piece today.
There was a hearing yesterday.
Joe Lieberman, whatever his Senate Health Committee is, Lieberman had three administration officials up to talk about the shortage of the H1N1 flu vaccine.
Have you seen any news stories on that?
Did you know it happened other than me telling you?
If there were a shortage of flu vaccine in the Bush administration and the senator had called three members of the administration up to explain it, that's all you'd be hearing about because they'd be trying to create a panic that Bush is incompetent.
His administration is so incompetent, it'll lead to people dying.
There was one news agency that reported the results, the story at all.
It was Fox News.
You can go to Google.
You can go to AOL.
You can go to any search engine you want and try to find any mainstream story of Lieberman and a hearing with three administration officials on the shortage of H1N1, and it's not there.
They didn't report it.
Only Fox did.
And in this way, some people are saying maybe the administration's plan to marginalize Fox is working.
Fox reports something, you simply let it stay with Fox.
It doesn't go anywhere else, and only the Fox audience will know about it.
There is definitely collusion because there's no difference between Barack Obama and Chris Matthews, Barack Obama or anybody else in the drive-by media.
They are on the same team.
They are doing the same things, just from different locations.
This is, I think everything about this story, this Pesar, is blockbuster.
It is, it's late-night comedy gold.
Everything about the story is a lie.
Everything about the story, this isn't a politico, but it's all over the place.
It's at foxnews.com.
Every detail about this story has to be a lie.
I refuse to believe it.
Obama didn't know what Feinberg was doing.
In fact, the truth probably is Feinberg's following orders.
Feinberg is following orders, and I guarantee them to you, Obama said, you get up there and you rape them and you make them poor and you make them pay and you let them know.
Just don't tell them that I knew anything about it.
You go out there and you on your own and I'll back you up.
I don't believe for a moment that Obama had no idea what his Pesar was doing when he announced these kinds of cuts.
One official told Fox News that Feinberg from the start had the independent authority to work with companies and make such a call.
Obama was never required to sign off before final decisions were made.
Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot, WTF, who in the hell is going to believe this?
Sign me up for the 10 million man march, folks.
I mean, this is so much worse than Clinton hiding behind Janet Reno's skirt after the Waco invasion.
It isn't even fair.
Obama didn't sign off?
What the hell else has he turned over to his czars?
I mean, it's all a lie, but it's just, and it just, here's another headline from Fox News.
White House Pesar Kenneth Feinberg did not seek Obama's approval.
I don't believe it for a minute.
I believe that Feinberg could not have acted without Obama's instructions.
Make no mistake.
Obama's not an innocent bystander.
He's not Mr. Perfect.
This guy's got a chip on his shoulder, and he's going after everybody that he thinks is responsible for this nation's immorality and unjustness and unfairness.
And those people happen to be those who achieve.
I would really like to ask everybody, because I know there are a lot of people happy about this.
This is what's scary.
There are a lot of people happy that these guys have been raped this way.
I know that's why I started this out by saying, I know you've got mixed emotions, but I want to ask you a question.
I want to ask you, how is your life better now that the Pesar is in control?
Okay, these Wall Street guys got 90% of their salaries cut.
I want to know how that's improved your life.
If all you're doing is sitting around saying, yeah, man, yeah, man, you screw them.
Is your life any better for that?
You want to live on vengeance?
Is vengeance your diet?
Is vengeance your meal?
Show me the calories.
Show me the nutritional value of it.
Just like when the rich get tax increases.
Yeah, man, yeah, man.
Soak them.
Does that make your life any better?
So Wall Street execs are going to lose 90% of their compensation.
How's that job search coming for you, by the way?
So you're going to get a new job now because of this?
You're going to get more money?
You're going to have a better life because Wall Street got screwed?
Cut salaries of a hot shot Wall Street guy.
No problem.
I'm not a Wall Street guy.
You go ahead and cut them.
Go ahead and raise taxes on cigarettes.
I'm not one of the cigarette smokers.
Ripple effect.
It's all coming.
It's going to affect all of us.
This is right out in the open.
We can all see it.
Oh, by the way, in the Associated Press story on this is this little paragraph.
Elsewhere, Freddie Mac, a supposed private sector business, it's a government-run mortgage house.
Freddie Mac is giving its chief financial officer compensation worth as much as $5.5 million, including a $2 million signing bonus.
The government-controlled mortgage finance company doesn't have to follow the executive compensation rules because it's being paid outside the troubled asset relief program or TARP.
So you work for the government, you get paid whatever you want.
$5.5 million to the Freddie Mac CEO.
Wall Street guys get canned, get raped.
And Barry Obama had no clue.
Do you believe that?
And we're back.
Let's go to the phones.
People have already lined up.
Phone number again, 800-282-2882.
And John in Houston, welcome to the EIB Network, sir.
Hello.
Hey, Rush, Megan Dittos from Big State of Texas.
I've listened to you for many years, and it's so funny I get through on a day that I disagree with you on this one issue.
I'm open to your ideas and changing me.
The only thing I've liked that BO has done so far is given those Navy SEALs the authorization to shoot the pirates.
So I'm not a supporter of his.
But the payzar is limiting the compensation of the CEOs who have received my tax dollars.
So I understand the overall principle you're saying that it's a bad thing for the government to get into this business of regulating who can make what.
I don't agree with that overall.
But in these specific instances, what's wrong with that?
Well, there's a practical reality to all of this.
And that is that despite what you think of these people, they are the best and brightest at what they do.
And they're going to go elsewhere.
They're going to go elsewhere.
They're going to leave the country to find jobs elsewhere.
They're not going to sit and put up with this.
You know, we can go on and on and on about my tax dollars bailed them out.
This is one, you know, $1.4 trillion of our tax dollars don't even exist and they're spending it.
Look, I understand the mixed feelings.
Central planning fascists shouldn't have anything to say about private sector compensation.
That's a given.
But these firms took money from central planners.
I really would like to know how many of them voted for Obama.
But here's the thing.
Every business in the country can now see what happens when you make a deal with the devil, when you get in bed with the snake.
You end up selling your soul.
These companies are now screwed, John.
They are screwed, which is the design here.
The Obama administration, this is fascism.
They're still privately owned, but they're being run by who?
Not even Obama, we're told.
The freaking Pesar.
Who doesn't even have to tell Obama what he's doing?
So he doesn't have to stop at the execs.
He can limit the pay of the janitors.
He can limit the pay of anybody he wants.
And pretty soon it's going to spread beyond companies that took TARP money.
These people who put their companies on the hook are going to get the hell out.
And the second teamers will step in and run things into the ground in partnership with the government that intends to take over these businesses.
The unintended consequences here are things that you need to look at.
It's tempting to say, oh, it's my tax dollars.
They took my tax dollars and they paid themselves big bonuses.
It's about time we got the tax.
You're not going to get the tax dollars back, pal.
Obama's taking them back.
Obama is stealing people's work.
Go talk to Ken Davis, runs Bank of America.
They are just, they are retracting.
They are taking back his entire 2009 salary, the whole thing, not 90%, all $2.3 million of it.
Now, class envy has been practiced so well by the Democrats that a lot of the country is cheering about this.
But it's not helping anybody's life.
It's not improving anybody's circumstance.
I'll tell you who I feel for here, John.
There are shareholders of these companies.
People like you who have invested in these companies, not with your tax dollars, but with your after-tax dollars.
Our government has taken advantage of financial crisis they created.
They're destroying firms.
They're destroying jobs, destroying wealth, and they don't need to be applauded for it.
Look, folks, I'm going to have a lot more to say about this as soon as we get back to the monologue segment of the next hour.
Would you people please stop and think what you're saying?
So you pay taxes and you think you can dictate pay for firms?
You pay taxes and that allows you to support people who want to take over private business.
You get to tell Walmart how much it pays people simply because you go in there and buy a damn pair of flip-flops every other day?
Folks, you got to wake up here.
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