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Nov. 4, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:23
November 4, 2009, Wednesday, Hour #2
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Hey, I think I got an idea on how to get Obama to go to Germany.
It's really not complicated at all.
Angela Merkel should call him back and say, hey, President Obama, there's going to be an emergency meeting of the Olympic Organizing Committee to reconsider the choice of Brazil for the next Olympics.
You want to come back.
Greetings.
Obama's not a narcissist.
He's not a narcissist.
He watched a documentary about him while the election returns were coming in last night.
That's what Bob Gibbs tells us.
Welcome, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network, and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
He's watching a documentary that, folks, I would be embarrassed if somebody put together a documentary about me, the way this has been put together.
I mean, it is godlike.
But I have a question.
He's the president.
This thing aired live last night, 9 o'clock HBO.
Now, you mean to tell me that they didn't send him a screener copy or a preview?
You mean to tell me he had to wait to see this thing?
I frankly, folks, can't believe that he hadn't seen it and didn't help in having the whole thing put together because it's the most fawning.
If a documentary could get anal poisoning, this one could.
I mean, it just kissed butt, kissed butt, kissed butt all over the place.
And here he's watching it?
He's watching a one-year-old version of himself and events.
I mean, this is like Citizen Kane alone in a 45,000 square foot mansion sitting in front of the 500 square foot fireplace, drinking brandy as his empire's crumbling all around him and thinking he's having a good time.
I mean, it's just weird.
It's just weird.
He doesn't have time to decide on Afghanistan.
He doesn't have time to go to Berlin.
But he did have enough time to campaign for Democrats in various states who lost anyway.
And by the way, he did not go to New York, where the Democrat won.
The one place Obama didn't go is where the Democrat won.
Where Obama went, it was, folks, Virginia.
Virginia was a landslide.
It was not just the governor's race.
It was all the way down the ticket.
All the major candidates' numbers in Virginia were almost identical to each other.
This was about the lack of coattails.
The lieutenant governor, few points lower since he was an incumbent.
But basically, McDonald, the lieutenant governor, the attorney general got the same percentage of a vote.
There's no question if it was anti-Obama coattails working its way down the ticket.
Now, I was waiting for this.
Axelrod, who has spoken out.
CBSNews.com.
As Barack Obama marks one year since his historic election, one of the architects of his campaign acknowledges the president has not forged the post-partisan atmosphere that he had hoped to achieve.
Senior advisor David Axelrod said the president is not a magician.
You don't, with a wave of a wand, make everything different.
He said, while the president has extended a hand to cooperation, some in the other party made a political decision that isn't in their interest.
There's an awful lot of pressure from the right wing of the Republican Party.
It's made it more difficult for moderate Republicans to step forward and join us.
Wait a minute, though.
He was the Messiah.
He was the one we were all waiting for.
The hope, the change, post-partisan, post-racial.
Now it's even post-accomplishment because there isn't any of that either.
So now it's my fault.
It's right-wing Republicans.
And meanwhile, you know, I've talked to Mitch McConnell.
I've talked to John Boehner.
They can't get a meeting with the president.
He's not talking to Republicans.
I guess that's my fault.
And remember, when Boehner did go up there with the congressional leadership back in February, Obama said, you know, you got to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.
That's not how things get done in this town.
Defense Secretary can't get a meeting.
That's true.
His defense secretary can't get a meeting.
McChrystal can't get a meeting.
He's watching documentary about himself.
He's not a narcissist.
Snerdley has a good question.
I think I have an answer for it.
Barbara from Westchester County called in just outrageous about property taxes.
I got my property tax bill yesterday.
Did you guys get yours?
Now, no, you don't have percentage-wise.
A staff member is saying that they may be paying a higher percentage than do I.
Yeah, you're in New Jersey.
Well, we'll compare percentage.
But anyway, in my case, I write the check for the property taxes.
The question certainly is, how come people get so upset about their property taxes, but not their overall tax burden?
And I've always believed that people are not aware, as aware, of income taxes that are withheld because they never see it anyway.
They might look at the gross on a pay stub or the automatic deposit slip, but they see the net.
I don't know how many people, property tax is part of the mortgage payment, but that you still bank the payment.
You're still paying it.
You still write the check.
So you know how much it is.
And that, plus, you add to it now the plummeting value of most people's homes and the rising property taxes.
And you realize we've been lied to all this time.
This is not about assessing the value of our homes.
That's not how.
They're just taxing what they think we'll pay, what we'll put up with.
Because if it was really about accurate assessments, our taxes would be going down.
But they're not.
So there's a whole lot of reasons, Snerdley, why this is irritating to people.
From the Associated Press, a dejected Associated Press, the headline, Dejection Fills a Maine Ballroom After Marriage Vote.
Cecilia Burnett and Ann Swanson had already set their wedding dates.
When they joined about 1,000 other gay marriage supporters for an election night party in a holiday inn ballroom, they hoped to celebrate the vote that would make it possible.
Instead, they went home at midnight, dejected and near tears, after a failed bid to make Maine the first state to approve same-sex marriage in the ballot box.
Now, you know, what are there?
Six or seven states where same-sex marriage is legal, but it's never been passed by a vote of the peoples.
It has been inflicted on them by governors, legislatures, supreme courts in the various states.
But, I mean, here you go.
If you read the whole story, you've got chickification of the news.
You have distortion of the issue and a conservative trend all here in one story.
I'm not going to read it all to you, but it's just, it's predictable.
Let's do some audio sound bites.
We'll start here at the top.
What we're going to do here, we're going to give you, you know, that's where Obama did not want the poll result.
I wonder if anybody's even told him what the returns are.
Does Obama know how the election?
I mean, if he's going to sit there and watch a one-year-old version of his life and his campaign, have they dared wake him up and say, by the way, we got our clocks clean in Virginia?
And we got our clocks clean in New Jersey.
Does he even know yet?
Does anybody have the guts to tell him?
Does he care?
Does he care?
Now, an excellent question posed by El Snerdbo.
He is such a narcissist.
It is, does he care?
I guarantee you, in his mind, it's not about him.
Nothing bad could ever be about him.
No.
So I'm sure they've told him.
And I'm sure he's figured out who he's going to blame for it.
In addition to me and Palin, he'll dump on Corzine.
What did I heard last night?
I didn't hear.
Somebody sent me.
I don't watch MSNBC, but somebody was.
And some, I don't know who it was, some analyst on MSNBC last night talking about the narrowness of Michael Bloomberg's victory.
What did he spend?
$200 million or something?
What did he spend on his race?
Not maybe $200.
Corazine spent $30 million, I think, of his own money.
$35,000 a second?
A second of what?
A minute of what?
For how long a period of time?
$35,000.
So $35,000 a minute for six months?
Or whatever.
It's a lot of money he spent.
Corazine spent 30.
Corzine shellact, Bloomberg, a narrow victor, and this wizard of smart on MSNBC said, what we take away from this is that voters are really mad at rich guys.
Oh, it had nothing to do with party affiliation.
It had nothing to do with politics.
Voters are just mad at rich guys of Wall Street types.
Corazine lost because he's a Wall Street guy.
And people just found out he got all his money at Goldman Sachs.
I mean, that's, you can't make it up.
You just, you couldn't make it up if you wanted to.
Okay, just a couple soundbites.
Here is me making a prediction about Virginia yesterday.
Whatever the vote totals in Virginia, the state-controlled media will report that the turnout was not as big as expected.
That the vote for the Republicans and against the Democrats was not as big as expected.
And besides, everybody knew that the Republicans would win.
It's no surprise.
The White House even knew it.
Why, the White House threw this guy Cree Deeds under the bus a couple of weeks ago.
The White House knew he ran a lousy campaign.
CNN, Jeffrey Toobin.
The question is, are Virginia voters, were they more excited by Barack Obama or Craig Deeds?
That's a pretty easy question and a pretty easy answer.
He was a lousy candidate.
He didn't have a message.
He distanced himself from the Democratic Party and he lost big.
I don't draw a lot of conclusions from that.
You know, these people ought to just listen to me and say something different from what I predict just to not make me right.
Because they hate it when I'm right.
Okay, here's Tavis Smiley.
He was on Larry King Alive last night.
Virginia is very close to D.C., but in terms of voting patterns, Virginia could not be any different than D.C. What Barack Obama did in Virginia last year was out of the ordinary, terribly extraordinary, and we celebrated that last year.
But tonight just says that we've returned to business as usual.
I don't think anybody in the country expected that this race was going to be any different.
That is for governor in the state of Virginia.
Do I know these people or do I know these people?
Everybody knew he was going to lose.
It was not unexpected.
Lousy candidate.
Now, Rush prediction comes true in New Jersey.
First, what I said yesterday.
The damage control spin will be that the president was heroic in his efforts to save a hopeless candidate.
Corzine was surrounded by corruption.
He destroyed New Jersey's economy.
He was enormously unpopular, but the president decided to make a courageous stand and to try to save him.
And despite Corzine losing, look how close the election became.
But for Obama and his team, New Jersey would have been a wipeout, not a nail biter.
So New Jersey's actually an Obama win, even should Corzine lose.
Here is Howard Feynman on MSNBC's election coverage.
The White House thought accurately that Corzine was a very weak candidate.
No people skills, didn't follow through on tax cuts, has the Goldman Sachs tie, the Wall Street tie, all of what Chris Matthews was just talking about.
They did, however, suck it up and stick with him.
They did what they could.
It wasn't enough.
They were trying to nudge Corzine out.
They knew he was a weak candidate.
Can't wait to do these two again.
Folks, there are those days and moments where even I think I'm great.
I know you do every day.
I don't have time to think about myself that way very often, but today it's one of those days where I join you and agree with you.
And this has been a kickbutt show.
Play four and five back to back.
This is uncanny.
The damage control spin will be that the president was heroic in his efforts to save a hopeless candidate.
Corzine was surrounded by corruption.
He destroyed New Jersey's economy.
He was enormously unpopular.
But the president decided to make a courageous stand and to try to save him.
And despite Corzine losing, look how close the election became.
But for Obama and his team, New Jersey would have been a wipeout, not a nail biter.
So New Jersey's actually an Obama win, even should Corzine lose.
The White House thought accurately that Corzine was a very weak candidate.
No people skills, didn't follow through on tax cuts, has the Goldman Sachs tie, the Wall Street tie, all of what Chris Matthews was just talking about.
They did, however, suck it up and stick with him.
They did what they could.
It wasn't enough.
They were trying to nudge Corzine out.
They knew he was a weak candidate.
You know, these guys, Howard Tavis smiling, I thought Virginia was realignment.
After this big sweep a year ago, they were all talking about how Virginia was a realignment.
And by the way, lest we forget, the Washington Post lost the election yesterday, too.
They backed every loser for statewide office.
They backed many of the losers for delegates in the state.
So the question is, what clout does the Washington Post really have anymore?
Because here's the media, and you'll hear it in a minute.
Limbaugh Palin rebuffed.
Limbaugh Palin responsible for the loss of Doug Hoffman, New York 23, Limbaugh Palin, Limbaugh Palin.
How about the Washington Post?
The Washington Post tried to destroy McDonald the way they destroyed George Allen.
You still can't find the word maca in a dictionary anywhere.
You can't ignore that the Washington Post did everything they could for Creed Deeds.
By the way, who were Toobin, pronounced his name, Craig Deeds.
It's Creed Deeds.
Anyway, I got to take a break here.
We'll be back.
Don't go away.
You sit tight.
My friends do not ever doubt me.
I expressed incredulity moments ago when I heard that Obama did not watch election returns last night because he was watching himself an HBO documentary on his campaign and election.
And I said to myself, this doesn't make any sense.
He's president.
He'd have to wait for this thing to air live and get a screener copy of it.
I said, the hell with that.
He probably had a role in approving the damn thing.
Talking points memo, lib blog, November 1st, 6.17 p.m.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says Obama has already seen By the People, produced and directed by Alicia Sams and Amy Rice and backed by actor Edward Norton.
Gibbs told the Talking Points memo D.C. that Obama's review was thumbs up.
Now, this is November 4th.
Last night was November 3rd.
Gibbs told us that Obama was watching himself last night, but we know that he's already seen the damn thing.
Oh, of course he wasn't watching Return.
He didn't care about that.
He watched a rerun about himself.
If that's what happened, if he actually did, he watched a rerun to see if the version that aired live was the same one that they had sent him.
And can you probably watching the rerun?
Boy, boy, do I look good.
Do I look, I just imagine, but do we buy any of this?
He's watching himself.
Why would even if he was doing it, do you realize why announce it's election night?
You're president of the United States.
You have put it all on the line.
The signs in New Jersey have your name above Corzine's.
You flew in there.
And you don't care?
You're not interested.
You are watching yourself.
It gets even better here.
From the Politico, Nancy Pelosi to reporters during a Wednesday morning photo op today.
From our perspective, we won last night.
We had one race that we were engaged in.
It was in northern New York.
It was a race the Republican has held since Civil War.
We won that seat.
So from our standpoint, no, a candidate was victorious who supports health care reform.
His remark last night said that this is a victory for health care reform, other initiatives for the American people.
So from our standpoint, we picked up votes last night.
But yeah, Nancy, you might have lost all the blue dogs.
You know, I guarantee you, a lot of Democrats are here in footsteps today because of what happened in Virginia, particularly Virginia.
But New Jersey as well.
These blue dogs, I heard Karl Rove.
People are picking up on this now.
Karl Rove last night said Pelosi wouldn't mind the blue dogs losing.
Folks, this is a salient, salient point.
Pelosi doesn't like the blue dogs being in the caucus because they're not radical enough for it.
They're not really dependable.
She has to work too hard keeping them in line.
She would love to get their votes on healthcare and send them home and be trounced so she doesn't have to deal.
Think of it as thinning the herd.
That's exactly what she would love to do.
So from her standpoint, it was a big win last night.
Andrew Malcolm at the blog at the Los Angeles Times, well aware of the approaching bad news wave, Obama holed up on the White House Tuesday night where aides claimed he didn't pay attention to the returns, right?
And the Cubs still have a chance of pulling out a World Series win this week.
The President of the United States did five events for Corzine, talking of him as a partner in the Senate and in the White House.
And both Obama and the candidates praised his economic stimulus package and his health care reforms.
I'm telling you all this because I'm going to go back to the audio soundbites and I want you to listen to the Democrats make my prediction come true and throw Corzine overboard and then back up and run over him.
They're not content to throw him overboard.
They back up and run over him and then speed off.
It's going to be Bob Beckle and Joe Trippy.
Oh, wait till you hear this, folks.
Don't go away.
And we are back.
El Rushbo having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
All right, we're going to go to my prediction coming true about media spin in New Jersey.
We'll follow it back to back by Joe Trippe on a Fox News channel last night and Bob Beckle on the Fox News channel last night.
Here goes.
The damage control spin will be that the president was heroic in his efforts to save a hopeless candidate.
Corzine was surrounded by corruption.
He destroyed New Jersey's economy.
He was enormously unpopular.
But the president decided to make a courageous stand and to try to save him.
And despite Corzine losing, look how close the election became.
But for Obama and his team, New Jersey would have been a wipeout, not a nail biter.
So New Jersey's actually an Obama win, even should Corzine lose.
I don't think so.
I think Corzine, with the approval ratings he had, most consultants or pundits would say those numbers were terminal.
If Christie had been a stronger candidate, he should have really, really done some damage here.
He's barely going to win this thing.
I mean, it'd be 100,000 votes.
Maybe he's held that margin throughout the night, and we'll see how that holds up.
But I really think that this is about throwing out the ins with the outs.
Are you kidding me?
The second coming wouldn't have saved Corzine.
It's the reason that I predicted Christie was going to win yesterday.
Yes, could you say it's a good night for the Republicans?
Yes, but it's not going to change things.
Obama's 51% favorable.
Obama doesn't have much to worry about.
The second coming, that means Jesus Christ, not even Jesus Christ could have saved Corzine.
Yeah, he's a Corzine, right?
I mean, they're really dissing the guy now.
But not even Jesus Christ could save Corzine.
Beckle, do you know how nuts you are?
How in the world do you compare one visit from Jesus Christ with five visits from Obama?
He had five visits from the Messiah, from the one.
And you're bringing Jesus Christ into this?
Jesus Christ doesn't stand a chance.
With one visit, Obama had five in there, Beckle?
Folks, I'm having more fun today than I've had this stuff in a long time.
Get this.
Wall Street Journal.
Desperation grabs for revenue.
Nothing new in politics, but California once again leading the way in creative financing to help close close yet another gaping budget deficit, now estimated to be $7 billion this year, reach as high as $20 billion next year.
Sacramento lawmakers have authorized a 10% increase in the amount of taxes withheld from worker paychecks starting November 1 and through 2010.
The extra withholding tax will reduce California's take-home pay by about $1.7 billion for the year.
But the lawmakers say it's not a tax increase.
They're calling it a compulsory interest-free loan from taxpayers.
A 10% increase in withholding.
It's an income tax increase, and they're calling it a loan.
Sacramento demanding loans from taxpayers.
I just, they're going to destroy the state.
They're going to take $1.7 billion out of an economy that's already in trouble.
Here's Denise in Austin, Texas, as we go back to the phones.
Thanks for waiting, Denise.
Nice to have you with us.
Oh, thanks, Bosch.
It's an honor and just a thrill to talk to you.
Thank you.
First, I just want to say, I loved your comments on the Berlin Wall.
If they weren't so true, it'd be funny.
But what I wanted to tell you, the race in New York was so reminiscent of letting the liberal press pick our candidate for president last year.
Yeah, I know.
It's pretty much like that.
Letting the liberal media and the Democrats pick our candidate.
Yeah, I mean if we had any other candidate, any governor or that mayor, I think we go to one.
It's just so fast to say.
See, that is the dirty little secret of New York 23 is how the smart thinkers in the Republican Party totally blew this.
They picked the wrong candidate, they stood by the wrong candidate, sent the wrong candidate 900 grand.
The wrong candidate gets shellacked and pulls out.
They praise her.
Oh, we love Didi, and she endorses the Democrat.
Had there been a primary up there, and that's a special election, but had there been a primary up there, none of this would have happened.
And don't forget now, Hoffman got a larger percentage of the vote up there than any conservative in New York, than any conservative or any candidate has in a conservative line.
And I'm not talking about total numbers of votes.
I'm talking about percentage.
He got even a higher percentage than James Buckley got when he won a Senate seat running on the conservative line.
Richard in Mary, Pennsylvania.
Hi.
Yes, sir.
A pleasure.
Thank you.
What I'm worried about is the split.
Sorry, Virginia, McDonald won by, I think, 20%, they said.
18.
18%, but who's counting?
All right, yeah.
But the other races were like 3 to 5%.
What I'm worried about is this so-close split.
How are the conservatives, not the Republicans, not the Republicans?
What races are you talking about, 3 to 5%?
Well, corresponding New Jersey.
That's 5% in it.
That's what I'm saying.
And then Hoffman, what he loses by 6 or 7%?
lost by five, but that's because five percent went to a candidate that wasn't even still in the ring.
I understand, sir.
I understand.
But I'm saying is we're on this divide.
We're so split, sir.
How do we turn it to the terms?
Who is this we?
Who are you talking about?
We say we're.
I'm talking about conservatives, not Republicans, conservatives.
How do we turn it to we're so close?
How do we turn it to our, you're the one that can answer this, sir?
You want to know how we can get bigger majorities?
That's right.
I want to know how we can get, instead of 3%, 5%, how do we get 10%, 20% besides Virginia?
McDonald won.
Wait a second.
I'm going to be patient here.
Let's look at both of these states.
Don't tell me you're unhappy with 18% in Virginia.
No, no, I'm not unhappy with Virginia, but I'm saying with Hoffman.
Now, let's go to New Jersey then.
New Jersey is so blue, it's almost black.
It's a navy blue state.
I mean, it is deep Democrat.
For a Republican to win by one vote in that state, it says something.
The last Republican it did was Christy Whitman, I believe.
And maybe there's something to the name Christie that people vote for in New Jersey.
Maybe every Republican is hunting the name Christie somewhere in there, first or last name.
But this was this, the corruption in this state is such that the most popular jewelry item among elected Democrats this year has been a set of handcuffs.
And even at that, Democrats usually still win.
To have a 5% win in New Jersey is nothing to sneeze at.
We're just starting.
We just had the big, big Obama victories in these states a year ago, and they were talking about realignment.
I think there's two things going on here, Richard.
One thing, Obama's been stopped.
There is no question this is an anti-Obama vote.
And largely, when you see the exit poll say that it's the economy, there can be no other person that's associated with the economy than Obama.
They're not voting against Bush because he's not around.
The whole business of expanding majorities has to be Republican Party's got to finally decide, is it going to be conservative or is it going to go moderate like David Brooks type?
And if it goes that way, it's going to lose, and we're likely to be talking about majorities, winning majorities.
The conservative movement here is on an ascendancy, and it's got a fresh opportunity here.
And this was a great start yesterday to have these two margins of victory.
18% is huge in Virginia, and it was all the way down the ticket, Bob, all the way down the ballot for the statewide offices.
So there's a lot to build on here.
And both these candidates, Bob, you know, I've had people say the email, well, you know, Russia, I'm listening to the media talk about McDonnell in Virginia saying, this is a candidate the Republicans need to nominate, moderate candidate, moderate, somewhat conservative, but not a right-winger.
You need to be a Republican needed.
This is the kind of candidate you need.
What people don't want to admit here is that both Christie and McDonnell in the last weeks of the campaign went peddle to the metal conservative, particularly McDonnell when he saw the margin that he had.
Had Hoffman been in this race from the get-go as a conservative with no turncoat, no liberal Republican on the ticket in New York 23, still on the ballot in two places, Bob.
She gets 5% of the vote yesterday.
That was just a mismanaged campaign election from the get-go by the smart thinkers in the Republican Party.
It has every reason to feel optimistic about this.
We'll be back in just a second.
By the way, folks, one more thing about New York 23.
When this all started, look at where Doug Hoffman was.
He was down there in last place.
Nobody had ever heard of him.
He's at 20%.
And despite all the incompetence and despite the party being against it, remember the Republican Party ran ads against Hoffman.
Remember this.
And he still climbed.
With 45% of the vote, he still ended up there.
Now, I'm telling the percentage of the vote that Hoffman got has put the fear of 2010 in the mind of every blue dog and in a lot of rhinos.
This guy almost pulled it out with his own party running ads against him and endorsing a liberal Republican and then praising her when she leaves and then she endorses the Democrat.
And all this is done in 30 days.
You need to keep all this stuff in perspective about New York 23 and again, not buy into the media template on this at all.
I want you to listen to Dingy Harry in Washington yesterday in Capitol Hill at a press conference.
Reporters said, you think you can pass health care reform this year.
First of all, we're not going to be bound by any timelines.
We need to do the best job we can for the American people.
We want quality legislation, and we're going to do that.
We're going to do this legislation as expeditiously as we can, but we're going to do it as fairly as we can also.
Now, wait, wait a second.
Wait a second.
What was this big press conference about last week announcing this thing?
Done, sent over to the CBO to have it scored?
Pelosi going to have a vote Friday?
And now, he can't commit to it being done this year.
And then there's an ABC story by Jonathan Carl.
Senior congressional Democrats say reform before the end of the year is highly unlikely.
Senior congressional Democrats told ABC News yesterday, it's highly unlikely that a health care reform bill will be completed this year, just a week after President Obama declared he was absolutely confident he'll be able to sign one by then.
Getting this done by the end of the year, that's a no-go, a senior Democrat leadership aide told ABC News.
And two other key congressional Democrats also told ABC News the same thing.
Now, this may come as an unwelcome surprise for the White House, where officials from the president on Dunn have repeatedly said health care bill will be signed into law by the end of the year.
Pelosi, October 27th at a fundraiser for the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee, I am absolutely confident we're going to get health care done by the end of this year.
Blah, blah, blah.
But after Reed made his comments, other spokesmen out there saying, we're not going to be finished this year.
The delay is causing some frustration among Reed's fellow Democrats.
Reed said of his colleagues, they want us to do this the right way, not the fast.
Well, now, something doesn't jive here, folks, because last I heard about this, there was going to be this giant vote Friday in the House.
Harry Reid was getting his bill back next week from the CBO, and that it was a pretty done deal.
And you know, I'm wondering if all of this is not just a giant big bluff that's been called to try to make people think something was a fait accompli next week when it's not.
Now, all this talk about not getting it done before the end of the year, I wonder if what the purpose of that is is sort of tame the crowd that's going to show up tomorrow in Washington.
I wonder if they're putting this, folks, don't I don't believe anything you hear coming out of this.
There's just there that we're dealing with Democrats.
We're dealing with people that do not care what you think, but they don't want to stare you in the face when they hear you tell them that you don't want what they're doing.
But to all of a sudden have this news out that they're not going to get this done by the end of the year.
Obama has said, by the way, if it doesn't get done by the end of the year, it doesn't get done.
And that's how precious the timeline on this is on Dingy Harry not committing to it.
And here's something else.
Dingy Harry sent his bill, his health care bill, over to the CBO to have it scored.
Everybody's been commenting about the contents of the bill and the cost.
So the Republicans haven't seen it.
So the Republicans sent him a letter.
Could you please release the text of the bill to us?
And Dingy Harry wrote back and said bill does not exist.
It hasn't been written yet.
Apart from my decision to include a public option from which states may opt out, no final decisions have been made and none can be made until we get more information about how CBO would score different combinations.
So no final, this is all in quotes from Harry Reid's response letter.
No final decisions have been made.
There is no bill to release publicly.
It does not exist.
There is no bill in the Senate.
Just the Baucus bill was not a bill.
It was a draft and it had phony numbers in it.
It got scored by the CBO a certain way.
Didn't have the public option.
That's how Olympia Snow was brought on board.
Dingy Harry getting heat from the left.
So I'm going to have a public option with a state opt-out.
I mean, I think we're being hosed.
I don't think they're anywhere near where they want to be on this, but they want us to think it's imminent.
Regardless, this rally in Washington tomorrow, you know, Levin's going to be there, and John Voigt, and people from all over the country are showing up at this thing.
And I just wonder if all this news here isn't designed to make people relax and think they don't have to go.
Don't fall for it, folks.
There's something about this.
I'm really not comfortable saying they're bluffing because when you say they're bluffing, you allow yourself to be convinced that they're not close.
But I know how desperate they are to get this.
And I know that they will do whatever they can to get this.
I also know that the no votes on this will be influenced by people in person in Washington saying, you know, shake your finger and say, no, you don't.
We don't want this.
Now, Dingy Harry won't commit to it.
The end of the year.
White House is upset, concerned.
What is going on?
Anyone got any ideas?
Maureen Dowd, she has a column about me today, the New York Times.
I don't know, either Michael Douglas broke up with her again or they raised taxes on bourbon.
That's the only thing I can explain to be why she's so snarky to me today.
Nevertheless, look, folks, we've got fastest three hours of media going on.
Two of them are in a can and only one more to go.
We'll take a brief, a brief break here at the top of the hour.
Lots more still to do, plus your phone calls coming right back right after this.
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