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Jan. 25, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:50
January 25, 2010, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Yes, America's anchorman is away today, and this is your undocumented anchorman sitting in, Mark Stein.
Honored to be here.
No supporting paperwork whatsoever.
I flew in in the explosive panties of a Yemeni jihadist, and I am raring to go.
Rush is back Wednesday.
He's judging the Miss America pageant.
It's a lousy job, but somebody has to do it.
Oh, late, late-breaking news.
Scott Brown just won the swimsuit round, so that's exciting.
As an undocumented anchorman, I only get to judge the Miss Undocumented America pageant.
It's great fun.
I like Miss Undocumented California's vital statistics: 44, 26, 36.
That's her fake social security number.
All the girls' vital statistics are picked up at a box in the 7-Eleven parking lot and handed out randomly.
Anyway, Rush will be back Wednesday after two grueling days of Miss America judging.
He'll be returning to Barack Obama's State of the Union, which is no way to wrap up a session of Miss America judging.
Usually when I'm sitting in, I fly down to New York from Burlington, Vermont.
But as you may recall, we've had times when Vermont airspace has been closed due to excessive bovine flatulence levels.
It's not safe to take off in that stuff.
So today we're coming to you live from the great state of New Hampshire, the Granite State.
We were going to use the studios of the last Air America affiliate.
It's a remote cabin on the north face of Mount Washington.
But when we got up there, Janine Garofilo had barricaded herself in and was using Al Franken's books for kindling.
So instead, we've come down to the studios of WNTK New London, New Hampshire.
I believe this station, I think I'm right, this station was one of the very first 50 Rush affiliates a couple of decades back.
So they've been with this show a long time.
They're like a Rush baby, a Rush station baby.
So it's great to be here in New London.
And if you want a bit of New Hampshire local colour, I can't see any because New London is shrouded in fog this morning.
It's like something out of Sherlock Holmes.
New London is just like old London, except with lower taxes and fewer imams.
Now, I understand when Rush is back on Wednesday, he's doing the show live from Vegas.
Is that right, HR?
Yeah, so okay.
I just wanted to figure out how this thing works.
Rush gets to do the show from Las Vegas, Nevada, and I get to do the show from New London, New Hampshire.
So boy, Rush really drew the short end of End of That Deal.
I'm not really sure how this is all going to work technically, but don't worry, it'll all go very smoothly at your end, and you won't notice a thing.
Apparently, it is holding up.
The piece of wet string we got snaking out from New Hampshire down the Connecticut River into Long Island Sound and over to New York is holding up.
But you won't be able to notice a thing with this technical innovation.
All you have to do is call 1-800-282-2882 to put your point.
HR will have it transcribed in New York, then fax to Southern Command in South Florida, where Mr. Snurdley will put it on a steam packet via the Cape of Good Hope to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and from there via Sled Dog to New Hampshire, where I'll respond to your point three weeks later.
So you won't notice a thing.
1-800-282-2882.
And if the satellite uplink does go haywire, we'll go to our standby programming, which is a farewell special.
Rachel Maddow and Randy Rhodes will present a special tribute, the very best of Air America, which I believe lasts one minute and 47 seconds.
And then after that, if the satellite uplink is still fried, HR will put my Christmas CD into high rotation.
So don't worry, it'll all run smoothly.
The fallout from the Scott Brown election victory continues, and the Obama administration is trying to figure out how to respond to this, how to respond to the change in the political landscape.
I like this story out of the Associated Press.
A White House official, Bridgeview, Illinois, a White House official says President Barack Obama will be skipping jury duty after being summoned in Illinois.
The administration official confirmed to the Associated Press that the president alerted the court that he won't be able to make it.
Obama was summoned for jury duty at the Bridgeview Courthouse in suburban Chicago starting Monday.
Poor old Obama.
He said that he thinks the solution is that he's not getting his message out.
He gave only 411 speeches last year and he thinks he needs to redouble his effort and give even more speeches.
He gave 411 speeches and 158 exclusive interviews.
And he feels that that's the problem.
People just aren't getting enough at him, so that he needs to redouble his efforts and redouble the number of interviews he gives and redouble the number of speeches he gives.
Whereas in reality, if he'd only shown up for jury duty in Bridgeview, Illinois this Monday morning and it had been one of these long, complicated trials that goes on for four months and nobody had heard a word from him for four months, I bet his numbers would be back up over 50% in four months' time.
But instead, he's decided that the solution to his problems is to give even more speeches.
There's a whole new category in the Pulitzer Prizes they're introducing this year.
Whole new category.
It's by Obama voters who have turned against him and are filing columns as to how they now regret their vote for Obama.
This one is from some lefty, big, big lefty professor, David Michael Green.
Goes on and on.
David Mike, he's a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York, David Michael Green.
How to squander the presidency in one year.
Hey, Conan Obama.
That's what he calls him now.
He says, he says, he says that Barack Obama is the Conan O'Brien of presidents.
And this guy is a total lefty.
But I must say, there are some beautiful moments in this piece.
Quote, Barack Obama has now, in just a year's time, become the single most inept president, perhaps in all of American history, and certainly in my lifetime, unquote.
And don't forget, this isn't some right-wing guy.
This is a guy who voted for Obama.
Quote, he just talks about things, thinks about things a real long time, defers to others on things, and waits around for things to maybe happen, unquote.
This guy is steamed at Obama.
And here's the thing that I found really odd.
I mean, this would be, this would be, if a right-wing guy wrote this, he'd be getting accused of racism, and the Secret Service would be investigating him.
Professor Green says, quote, of course, I don't give a blank about Barack Obama anymore, other than my desire that really ugly things happen to him as payment in kind for the grandest act of betrayal we've seen since Benedict Arnold did his thing, unquote.
The greatest act of betrayal since Benedict Arnold.
That's the left's view of Barack Obama.
Now, here we have a view from the moderate center, the moderate independent center.
This is by a lady called Jill Dawson.
And the headline on this column is, Why I Regret Voting for President Obama.
Quote, I am a registered independent.
I voted for Barack Obama.
And for that, I am sorry.
I'm not sorry for you.
I'm sorry for me.
Because I voted for Obama for me, not for you.
I voted for hope and change and all the intangibles that Obama was peddling in the wake of the financial crisis, Sarah Palin, September 11th, and all the other ills that shook our country in the last decade.
I wanted something new, something different.
I am ashamed to say that I was blinded by charisma.
Obama, this is like one of those Regency romances.
You feel she should be on the cover in some straining bodice while the wicked squire Obama rides off to pleasure himself with other wenches.
I am ashamed to say that I was blinded by charisma.
Obama was so convincing that I stopped caring about what he knew and started getting caught up in the euphoria.
Imagine having a president who came from a broken home, who had money troubles, who did grassroots community service, a young father, the first black president.
It pains me to admit I got caught up in the hoopla.
Now, this is why.
I'm not saying I'm in favor of revoking votes for women, but honestly, have you ever read such stuff?
Obama was so convincing.
Imagine having a president who came from a broken home, who had money troubles.
What?
This is the basis.
You're electing the most powerful head of government on the planet, the leader of the most powerful nation on the planet.
And you think, oh, well, he comes from a broken home.
That seems good enough reason to check the Obama box.
This lady goes on, hope has given way to disgust.
And I see now that change is simply a euphemism for big government.
That's a brilliant line, by the way.
This woman is all over the map, but that is a superb line.
Change is simply a euphemism for big government.
You said it, lady.
Now, there were people, including the host of this show, Rush, who were telling you this back in 2008 when nobody was listening.
And we're going to be getting a lot of pieces like this in the next few months, so you might as well get yours in early.
If you want a shot at that Pulitzer Prize for the best column by someone who voted for Barack Obama and now deeply regrets it, if you want a shot at that Pulitzer Prize, then you better get your entry in now.
But you know, what is ridiculous about this column by this woman, Jill Dawson, she was offended by Sarah Palin.
She was worried that John McCain would drop dead and that she would find herself with Sarah Palin as president.
But you know something, Jill?
What you're saying in this column is exactly what Sarah Palin was saying about Barack Obama a year and a half ago.
So if you're so smart and she's so stupid and too stupid to be president, and you know she's too stupid to be president, and you're smart enough to vote for the other guy instead, why then are you catching up with her 18 months later?
Do you remember Sarah Palin's great line in her convention speech when she talked about being mayor of Wozilla?
She said it's like being a community organizer, but you know, with actual responsibilities.
She was right about that.
She understood that Barack Obama was a man who had done nothing in his life except be wafted up on what you call his charisma, wafted by his sheer charisma up to the next job before he could leave any trace of accomplishment in the other jobs.
What did he do as a community organizer?
It's a meaningless term anyway, completely meaningless term.
Then he became wafted up to state representative, wafted up to state senator, wafted up to United States Senator.
And after being in the United States Senate for 27 minutes, he decides to run for President of the United States.
And the trouble now is he's got to do something because he can't be wafted up any further.
There's nowhere to go until they invent the post president of the entire planet.
And don't bet that he wouldn't be pushing for that and wouldn't quite like the sound of that.
This is where he's stuck.
He can't go any further.
And for the first time in his life, he's stuck in a job long enough for us to have to measure his performance.
And that's his problem.
And the answer isn't going to be: instead of giving 411 speeches, let's give 822.
That's not going to be the answer to his problems.
He'd be better off going to Tahiti for the next two years and just faxing in any instructions he has to give to the Oval Office, because we're not short of time spent seeing him on TV, seeing him in interviews, seeing him on radio.
So we'll talk about that and lots more in the hours ahead.
Direct from New Hampshire, Mark Stein sitting in for Rush on Ice Station EIB today.
1-800-282-2882.
Mark Stein in for Rush on the EIB network.
Sad news, sad news.
This is from the New York Post.
The once-electric sex life of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie has run so cold that the couple rarely slept in the same bedroom in the past year.
A source said yesterday, as rumors of a split swirled.
Apparently, Brad Pitt is blaming the lack of action this last year on Angelina's anger with George W. Bush over the previous eight years.
So I wouldn't worry about it too much.
I don't think it's serious.
Actually, Obama, some of these stories on Obama are beginning to sound, they're beginning to get indistinguishable from the Brad and Angelina.
If you picture Obama as Brad and the electorate as the disaffected Angelina, there's one story around it.
I've got to find this.
I can't find the right piece of paper.
But the story talks about the president needing to rekindle his relationship with the voters.
The president needs to rekindle his relationship with the voters.
Maybe if he took the voters perhaps for a second honeymoon, perhaps a nice one, or perhaps just a ski weekend up here in New Hampshire.
That would be all it would take to rekindle his relationship with the voters.
Now, yeah, yeah, breakfast will be included.
It'll be like it'll be the honeymoon suite.
It'll be one of those things with the big sunken bath and everything.
And Obama will be lying in the sunken bath with the discrete bubbles.
And then the electorate can climb in there with him.
And there'll be a magnum of champagne brought and they'll rekindle the old magic.
The old spark will be back, the old magic.
Obama, though, doesn't look to me like he's in a rekindling mood.
Did you see this guy on Friday in Ohio?
He was out in Ohio.
He suddenly do.
His whole shtick is Mr. Cool.
He was Mr. Cool.
He was like this James Bond type president, shaken, not shaken, or stirred, regardless of what happens.
You know, he comes out, people try to blow, a guy tries to blow 300 Americans out of the air over Detroit.
He comes out, he's cool, very cool about it.
And people are now saying, oh, he's not cool anymore.
He's aloof.
He's aloof.
He's a reconnect.
So He's trying this new shtick out in Ohio, Mr. Angry.
I'll never stop fighting for you.
Do you know the last guy to use those words?
I'll never stop fighting for you.
It was Al Gore in the third presidential debate of the 2000 campaign.
The last refuge of the desperate politician is when he goes, I'll never stop fighting for you.
And this was Obama in Ohio on Friday.
He starts saying this thing: As long as there remains one privately owned bank in America, as long as there's a patch of interstate anywhere in the lower 48 that hasn't been dug up with stimulus money and turned into scarified pavement, as long as there's one shivering, coatless girl for whom Senator Edwards hasn't yet taken the paternity test, I will never stop fighting for you.
And like if you're watching this thing, it's like you say, man, could you just stop fighting for me for 20 minutes?
It's beginning to give me a bit of a beginning to give me a bit of a headache, man.
I'd just as soon lie back on the couch with a nice cup of herbal tea and listen to the Andy Williams Christmas album.
Man, this is way too much.
But he's like, you push back against the wall.
I will never stop fighting for you.
Now, that's the worst way you can respond to what happened in Massachusetts because this isn't who Obama is.
And I think if there's any message out of Massachusetts, by the way, it's that people value authenticity in a candidate.
They want authenticity in a candidate.
Whatever you feel about Scott Brown, that's who he is.
And this idea that you can just sort of trim and modify and adjust your position.
But what has shocked me, by the way, about the Obama response to Massachusetts?
I mean, aside from the obvious stupidity of it, when he says to us that, you know, the same wave of anger that swept Scott Brown into office is the same wave that swept him into office.
That people are angry.
People are angry about the last eight years.
This idea that somehow people are so angry with George W. Bush.
They're so mad at George W. Bush that they elect a Republican in Massachusetts.
I don't obviously believe he's stupid enough to believe that.
But it's still shocking to discover that he's stupid enough to think we're stupid enough to believe that.
At some point, at some point, they've got to give up on the George W. Bush thing.
And in fact, which we'll get to a bit later in the show, amazingly, despite the evidence that people have forgotten George W. Bush, that this guy's been in office for a year, that he owns the economy, he owns the healthcare debate, he owns all the other issues now.
He owns terrorism, he owns Gitmo.
They're his now.
George W. Bush is gone.
He's giving speeches up in Saskatchewan or something.
He's gone.
He's out of here.
Despite the evidence that this doesn't work, this doesn't work.
James Carville is arguing in the Financial Times today: no, no, no, you just need to pin it on Bush even harder.
A reader of mine sent me a note over the weekend who said it reminded him of the guy who comes on stage in the Faudville Act, and he goes, Boy, they really didn't like the guy who was on before me.
They were still booing all the way through my act.
That's basically the Obama-James Carville line.
They're still booing the other guy all the way through my act.
And that is a problem for Obama if he's foolish enough to keep saying it.
But at the moment, he's doing this thing, I'll never stop fighting for you.
I'll never, I don't care.
I don't care if you just want to lie down and not have me getting in your face and fighting for you.
I'll never say, if you're looking for trouble, you've come to the right place.
If you're looking for trouble, look right in my face.
That's the Obama message from Ohio, and he cannot do it.
Lots more straight ahead.
Mark Stein sitting in for Rush on the EIB network.
1-800-282-2882.
Lots more to come.
Yeah, great to be with you.
Rush will be back Wednesday.
He's judging the Miss America pageant.
Does he get to ask the gay marriage question?
I don't know.
Maybe we'll find out.
This James Carville piece from the Financial Times, by the way, this is hilarious.
This is James Carville's analysis of where the president went wrong, why he has descended.
Don't forget that it's just a year ago that that guy, that hilarious guy who edits Newsweek, was saying Obama isn't just a politician.
No, he's more like a sort of god who bestrides not just America, the world.
Well, he was up there in the godlike stratosphere, and he's now fallen down to below just another 50-50 president.
I mean, he is that's the steepest fall of any president since polling began.
And why did that happen?
Well, according to James Carville, quote, part of the problem is that Mr. Obama was refreshingly naive in believing his own rhetoric.
He really believed we could rid Washington of revolving doors filled with lobbyists, or that there is not a liberal America and a conservative America.
Mr. Obama and his team really believed he could bridge the partisan divide.
But being elected as a change candidate in a change election does not translate into changing Washington.
Nothing can change Washington.
Now he tells us.
Thank you, James.
I mean, come on, come on, you're smarter than this man.
It's not that he believed his own rhetoric.
It's that he explicitly didn't believe it.
He ran as this bipartisan, post-partisan, transformative healer.
There's no red America, there's no blue America, there's just America.
And then what did he do?
He cuts the Republicans out of the healthcare debate completely.
They're not even part of the discussion.
He doesn't invite them.
He doesn't talk to them.
They're just frosted out.
He really believed we could rid Washington of revolving doors filled with lobbyists.
Oh, yeah, right.
There's lobbyists in on every step of everything he's done.
He has unions there for closed-door meetings.
He was supposed to be the most transparent president of all time.
He shut the doors when C-SPAN.
So we're talking about C-SPAN here, not the Rush Limbusha.
We're just talking about those nice non-partisan types of C-SPAN.
Say, well, can we get in there and film the healthcare discussions?
They frost out C-SPAN.
The problem is not that he was naive enough to believe his own rhetoric, but that he disregarded it all too obviously.
Mark signing for Rush, let's go to Kevin on the EIB network.
Kevin from Richmond, Virginia.
You're live on the Rush Limbo show.
Great to see you.
Hello, Mark.
It's good to talk to you.
I was just thinking that Obama, what do you must think?
He must think if you stand and look in the mirror, the more times you look in there, the prettier you get and the younger you get by the number of speeches he wants to give.
He just keeps showing himself off that we'll start liking the pig that he's trying to get us to marry.
Yeah, well, you put that very, that very well.
Apart from that pig line, it wasn't that lipstick on a pig thing.
That was him talking about a certain vice presidential candidate very ungallantly.
But you're right that he's there like the wicked stepmother or whatever she is in Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, whichever one it is.
She's looking in the mirror and going, mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?
And Axelrod and Rah Emmanuel and all these 12-year-olds who write his speeches say, you are Barack.
We just need to fly you in to give another magical speech like the one that worked so well for Martha Copley.
That did such a terrific job.
The only problem was we didn't have you giving 10 speeches like that.
And I don't think that's going to cut it for him.
That's the oldest game in the book is when a president's policies run into trouble, the first thing you do is say, no, we just need to yell about them even louder.
That's right.
And do you think it's going to work?
I can't wait for the next speech.
I just dream about it at night.
Bring it on.
Yeah, that's right.
I think because he gave something like 48 speeches on healthcare last summer.
And eventually, I think he figured out that, in fact, the support for his healthcare reform went up the longer it went between speeches.
Let's go to Alex in Fallsbury, New Jersey.
Alex, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Good afternoon, Mark.
He's doing a great job.
Thank you for substituting.
No, no, I love being here.
Well, one thing, speaking of the line of I'll never stop fighting for you, it was also used in the gubernatorial debate by John Corzine.
Right.
I think that's a politics speak for.
I haven't accomplished a thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think you're right.
It's, as I said, was saying before the break, it's the last refuge of the politician when he's so battered.
And Corzine is a classic example of this.
Corzine was this rich guy who decided to buy himself first the Senate seat and then the governorship of New Jersey and then did a lousy job of just caving in like a big squish to all those various interests who are destroying your once great state, Alex.
And then when he realizes that people have figured that out, then he says, I'll never stop fighting for you.
Well, maybe you should have started a couple of years earlier.
But it's also the case that the guys who say this, if you're a real fighter, you don't need to say this.
If you're a real fighter, you don't need to stand up and announce that you're never going to stop fighting.
It's always the people who aren't.
It's always, as you said, Corzine in New Jersey, Al Gore in that last presidential debate, and now Barack Obama.
And it didn't work for Corzine, and it's not going to work for Obama because it's not who he is.
It's not who he is.
He looks ridiculous.
He looks, the whole look of Obama is meant to be cool and enigmatic.
You can't quite get a read on him.
He's so cool, he's unknowable.
He's like that picture of him with, it looks like something out of the Godfather of him and Joe Biden at the White House, and he's in his black tie.
He looks, he's in the James Bond getup day.
He's in black tie and a tuxedo, leaning coolly against the wall.
And you think that, you know, Blofeld has just said to him, I'm afraid you're going rather tiresome, Mr. Obama.
And James Bond Obama is just about to do something incredibly cool and take out Blofeld and dispatch him, and that'll be the end of the movie.
But in fact, Obama just leans there against the wall, looking cooler and cooler and cooler, but he doesn't actually do anything.
Aside from looking cool, this guy is a real problem.
And so to suddenly take his tie off, and that's the other thing.
What's with the lack of necktie all of a sudden?
Again, that's the lamest thing, too.
You know, the really lame thing?
Rush can check this out while he's in Vegas right now.
When you go and see a really lame lounge act, they always take the bow tie off two-thirds of the way into the act to say, wow, I'm really working hard here.
I'm really working up a sweat here.
I've taken my tie off.
If you're really working hard and if you're really on top of what you're doing, you don't need to take your tie off at these like open neck, open no-necktie appearances that he keeps doing now.
As if suddenly him sounding angry and not wearing a tie is going to turn things around.
These guys are amateurs.
You know, I always used to think, well, you know, okay, Obama's completely qualified to be president.
And I never believed he was the smartest guy on earth.
I thought he'd be smart enough to put guys around him who knew what he was doing.
And you realize with all the 12-year-old speechwriters, this guy, John Favreau, is that his name?
The guy who gets all the glowing profiles in the New Yorker and sends Obama out on the road every night of the week with the same lead and sludge that it isn't selling anymore, the same gaseous generalities, the same banal bromidic uplift that doesn't work anymore.
You think to yourself, you think to yourself, why isn't there anyone around him in the Oval Office who can say, look, Mr. President, you can't do this anymore.
You've got to do something else.
You know who they'd be calling now?
Rush's old pal, David Rodham Gergen.
If only, if David Gergen hadn't made the mistake of handing Scott Brown his election victory by doing that Ted Kennedy seat line in the Massachusetts debate and enabling Scott Brown to say it's not Ted Kennedy's seat, it's the people's seat.
If David Gergen hadn't handed Scott Brown his Senate seat with that line, David Gergen would be getting off Air Force One on the White House lawn and going in as special counselor to the president to turn things around now.
This presidency, normally you've got to wait till the midterm elections.
It's happened a year earlier with this guy.
This is unprecedented in the modern era.
Mark Stein, in for Rush.
Lots more of your calls.
Straight ahead on the EIB network.
Mark Stein in for Rush on the Rush Limbo Show.
Rush is in training for the Miss America pageant judging, but he will be back live from Las Vegas on Wednesday.
Let's go to Patty in Longview, Texas.
Patty, you're live on the Rush Limbo Show.
Great to have you with us.
Hi, thanks for taking my call.
What I want to say is that the elitist attitude that Mr. Obama and everybody in the majority of the Democratic Party display is what really gets to me.
You know, the final straw is when he was making fun of this gentleman in Massachusetts, Brown, for driving a truck.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, my husband drives the truck.
We all drive trucks here in Texas.
Hey, hey, I drove to this studio in a truck, too.
It's truck drive.
It's truck drivers jamboree on the Rush Limbo Show today, Patty.
So it's one truck driver to another.
What truck are you driving?
Well, GMC is what my husband drives.
Okay, okay.
And I'm a Toyota woman.
Okay, I got a Chevy Silverado, but I'm not going to be buying any more government trucks once this one's worn out.
That's right.
Go Toyota, my friend.
But you know what was interesting about that line, Patty?
You know, he said, don't be fooled.
It was very interesting the way.
Let me see if I can pull up the exact wording here because it was very interesting the way he put it.
Forget the ads.
This is Obama in his speech in Massachusetts.
Forget the ads.
Everybody can run slick ads.
Forget the truck.
Everybody can buy a truck.
What's incredible about this is, A, these lines were written for him by his paid speechwriters.
And that was the point I was making earlier: is that the people around Obama, all those like clever little 12-year-old speechwriters he had, no one there, no one in the room was shrewd enough to say, whoa, Mr. President, are you sure the truck jokes are the way we want to go here?
Are you sure sneering at pickup drivers is the way we want to go here?
That's the problem.
He's surrounded by people who come from, who share his same view of you and everyone else in Longview, Texas.
Yes, he does.
And that is insulting, very insulting to a lot of us.
The majority of Americans, I think.
No, I think you're right.
I mean, I think even in Massachusetts, there's no percentage in insulting truck drivers.
What was interesting about it as well is that he thought this truck was, if you look at the way he said it, that he thought this truck was just like a prop, just a gimmick.
You know, like he goes, oh, anybody can buy slick ads, anybody can buy a truck.
As if the ambitious politician in Scott Brown decided to get an ad campaign and decided to buy a pickup truck to put in it.
He's got 200,000 miles on his truck, Patty.
I mean, this is not a guy who, if he's faking it, if his truck is just a prop to pretend to be Mr. Blue Collar, Mr. Average Joe, he's been doing it a long time, this guy.
And I think that's the difference between people like Obama who've never done.
What has Obama ever done in his life that he'd need a pickup truck to put it in the back of?
You know?
All Obama needs a pickup truck for is his speeches, because he gave 411 speeches last year, and you need a heavy-duty rig to carry all that letter-sized double-space paper.
But other than that, this is a guy who never in his life has had any cause to drive a pickup truck and lacks the empathy.
And this is, again, I find interesting for a guy who supposedly Mr. Hope, Mr. Cares about you, Mr. wants to improve your life.
He has no empathy to imagine that there might be people who genuinely need to drive a truck in the course of their daily lives.
It's astonishing to me.
Astonishing, Patty.
Right now, nobody can drive a truck or buy a truck, I should say.
Nobody.
No, and I'll bet the truck dealerships in your state are the same as the truck dealerships in my part of New Hampshire.
The last time I went in there, I've never seen the place so empty.
Thank you for your call, Patty.
Mark Stein in for Rush on the Rush Limbo Show.
And you know, Patty is absolutely right.
One way to think about it is: can you imagine in a million years Bill Clinton ever doing pickup truck jokes?
And you know how bad this is?
It's like Obama is standing there between John Kerry and Patrick Kennedy doing pickup jokes.
And John Kerry gets into the spirit of the thing and he starts doing pickup jokes.
And this is how disconnected this party is.
David Brooks, I always, for some reason, whenever I'm guest hosting for Rush, I always end up having to go at David Brooks.
But David Brooks wrote this cringe-makingly embarrassing piece on January the 20th in the New York Times, saying that this is the smartest administration of all time.
They've all gone to Ivy League schools.
It's got more brain power than any American administration before it, any American administration in history has ever had.
More brain power than anything.
If they had that much brain power, they would understand that the trick of governing in what is still supposedly a democratic republic is not to make it so obvious that you have absolutely no idea of how anybody out there lives their lives,
of how anybody who didn't have the great good fortune to become a community organizer, a job that involves doing nothing, but that actually has to work in construction or has a hairdressing salon or has a feed store or has a small software business or has an accountancy franchise or does any one of a million other things in America having no concept at all of how those people lead their lives.
That's the problem.
It's not that Obama is disconnected because we've had remote patrician presidents before.
I mean FDR wasn't driving a lot of pickup trucks.
It's that everyone around him shares the same narrow worldview, which is why when they were sitting in the Oval Office kicking around the pickup truck jokes, they all thought it was a great hoot and it was going to be a big wow with the crowd.
It was practically, if this were a crueler country, this would have been his Ceaușescu balcony moment when everyone would have realized the regime was done for.
A man made a fool of himself and he thinks the answer is to go out there on the road and make a fool of himself even more and even more often.
Mark Stein in for rush, lots more straight ahead.
Mark Stein, in for rush on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Rush is going to be back Wednesday live from Las Vegas.
I'm coming to you live from fogbound New Hampshire today and it's great to be with you.
I just got the official numbers by the way because I may, in case people think I'm playing fast and loose with the facts here, I just want to make sure we've got it all officially here.
According to CBS News, Obama in his first year gave 158 interviews.
That's like amazing.
158 interviews and 411 speeches.
That's more than any previous president.
And in fact, I think it may be more than all of them put together because I can't see Calvin Coolidge giving 158 exclusive interviews in his first year, or indeed Chester Arthur.
I don't think Chester Arthur gave 158 exclusive interviews.
But there may still be somebody out there who hasn't had an exclusive Obama interview or hasn't had a speech.
So if you haven't, then just call 1-800 Obama and maybe he can come around.
The 412th speech, I believe, is the State of the Union address.
But if you call now, he should be able to come around to your house and give you the 413th speech, which goes on, I think, at least for an hour and a quarter now, because he wants to make sure you understand the message.
That's the problem here.
You're not understanding the message.
He'll come around and give it to you directly in your house.
That's the way it's going to be.
More Obama speeches until you schlubs finally wise up and get the sophisticated nuanced message that he's been peddling at you for these last 12 months.
Mark Stein, in for rush, lots more straight ahead.
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