All Episodes
Previous Next
Feb. 1, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:48
February 1, 2010, Monday, Hour #1
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
What did you just ask me?
Do I feel chick-ified?
You mean because I was out at the Miss America pageant?
No!
I don't feel chick-ified.
Chick-ified, you got to be libs.
I mean, chick-ified is libs.
I mean, chickification of America is Lib Women America.
And it's good grief, Snerdley.
It was a great time out there.
You just trying to get me to start here with a negative slant.
You're just jealous that you weren't there.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome back.
El Rushbow at home, comfortable confines of the EIB Southern Command, a full week of broadcast excellence.
And leading up to the Super Bowl on Sunday, the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts.
We'll be talking about it later in the week, as we always do.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882.
And the email address, El Rushbow at EIBNet.com.
You know what, Mike?
Since Snerdley brought this up, let's broom the let's go to, let's see, one, two, three, and four.
Start with audio soundbites one, two, and three, and four.
Miss America pageant Saturday night, Planet Hollywood on TLC HD, Channel 280 on DirecTV.
It was a blast.
I have to tell you, I didn't know what to expect.
I got the invitation, I think, in October, and then they sent the itinerary for the week.
I said, man, well, this is a lot of work.
There's no free time until Friday.
And I thought about it, and I thought about it, thought about it.
And finally, Catherine urged me to do it.
You've got to do this.
And then she started busting a gut at me judging evening gowns.
And so we decided to do it.
Then I got the real itinerary.
I mean, the first two days, it was like 12 to 14 hours of interviewing each of the girls, 53 of them for 10 minutes each, and 10-minute breaks after you did six in a row.
And it's all day Monday and half of Tuesday.
And that was the most grueling part.
But no, these are, you know, we had an after-party at Cabo Wabo at Planet Hollywood on Saturday.
And I went there and all the judges made some remarks.
It was just, it was a party for the judges and the organizers and the judge committee.
And I mentioned, yes, yes, snurdly, you brought it up.
Of course, I'm going to get to the budget for crying out.
It's a three-hour show.
You asked me if I got chickified out there.
I'm explaining this.
You know what?
It was a real pleasure not having you in my ear out there for three days.
So anyway, folks, at the after party, I said, it's just a shame that these women are not the role models in pop culture for American young girls today.
Our pop culture has just been roiled.
And the Paris Hiltons and the Kim Kardashian, I mean, nothing against them.
But compared to these girls in the pan, they've accomplished nothing.
They're famous for being famous, and I don't mean to put them down, but it really was a, it was pleasant.
It was.
It was pleasant to talk to these women and to hear their life ambitions, the things that they've done already in their lives.
I mean, if they chickified me, then it was a fine kind of chickification.
All right.
These are really upstanding and fine women.
And we actually didn't get to know them.
We weren't allowed to talk to them only in the interview period.
I mean, the funny thing, in one of the breaks during the interview, I think this is on Tuesday morning, I walked into the men's bathroom and there's a contestant in there getting her makeup done.
I said, oh, I walked right back out of there and I went and reported it to the judge committee.
I said, look, I just, I ran into a contestant.
I don't know who it was, but I skedaddled out of there.
And I said, we really, really appreciate that.
But we weren't allowed to talk.
Judges were not allowed to talk to each other about this.
I've had a lot of questions.
The Washington Post asked me, Was there a lot of horse trading among the judges?
No, we weren't allowed to speak with each other about how we were scoring anything.
It's kind of like the Supreme Court.
You know, the justices do not debate each other in there.
They just vote.
They write their opinions.
There were no backroom deals.
We didn't learn until Saturday morning, the final judge meeting at 10 o'clock Saturday morning, which is that's just like five, seven hours before the telecast.
That's when we went around the table, and that's when we were told who the 14 semifinalists were.
The 15th was going to be voted on by the contestants.
First time ever that had happened.
So they told us that the 14 finalists, semi-finalists, were based on our scoring up to that point.
And then we went around the table discussing each 14, and we were asked to say two things good, two things bad, or whether we agreed with what some other judge had previously said.
We each took turns going first every time we went to a new semifinalist.
I got the impression at that point.
We pretty much knew who the top three were going to be, barring something unforeseen happening during the telecast Saturday night.
What happened?
We threw out all the scores up to that point and started new with Saturday night because it's live TV.
Anything could happen.
They could have crashed.
Somebody looked good during the week, might have wilted on national TV and the cameras and so forth.
That didn't happen.
And so it was interesting.
In fact, if the judges spent social time together, they were chaperoned to make sure they weren't discussing any of the contestants and how they were scoring.
It was a great experience.
We had a great time at the after party.
The whole thing was unlike what I expected it to be.
And they take it very seriously.
I told the, you know, we met the contestants for the first time Sunday afternoon in mass.
We went over to Plan on Hollywood Theater, and this was during our first day of orientation.
We had a couple hours of orientation.
They took us over to the theater, and the contestants were all sitting in the stands in the audience seats.
And all the judges said a couple things to them.
And by this time, after only two hours, I had discovered that this is not Miss USA, which is a modeling and bathing suit show.
This is a serious endeavor.
The people involved in it are very serious, as are the contestants.
And it's basically a scholarship program.
This bunch, this America organization, donates over $40 million in scholarships to women every year.
I don't think the feminazis are doing that.
I don't think they're getting anywhere close to that.
So when I stood up and talked to the contestants, oh, I was introduced in my bio, Lynn Widener, who was former Ms. Georgia on the judges' committee, introduced me and did my bio and finished up by saying I was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
So I'm standing there, okay, nominated for Nobel Peace Prize.
So the first thing I said to contestants was, yeah, I just want you all to know I should have had that, especially what we know now about this all being a hoax.
And I was screwed by Al Gore.
And they all laughed.
And then I said, look, you know, I want you all to know you've put your lives into this, some of you, all of you a bunch of recent years into it.
And now you have to be wondering after all this, why does the pageant entrust the judging to a bunch of rank amateurs like us?
1989 was the first year Gretchen Carlson won that year.
That was the first year that amateur judges were enlisted.
And I said, I just want you to know that we are going to take this as seriously as you do.
And we did.
It was pressure-packed and it was grueling, but we had our moments of fun as well.
So just a few audio sound bites here.
This is Saturday night, shortly after the telecast began.
Gretchen Carlson was introducing the judges, and they wanted to know what we specifically were looking for among the contestants.
The outspoken star of the Rush Limbaugh Show, Rush Limbaugh.
Hey, Rush!
Hey, new, Gretchen!
Poise, confidence, articulation, and she must like herself.
And then they went on to the other judges that took Vivica Fox before me, and Sean Johnson, who was, she's a pistol, the Olympic gold medalist in Dancing with a Stars winner.
I loved all these judges.
Dave Cos, the saxophonist, Brooke White from American Idol, the finalist there.
Katie Harmon, 2002, Miss America.
It was a great, great panel.
I got to sit next to Vivica Fox.
I mean, I know I'm not Will Smith, but at least I had to sit next to Vivica Ave Fox, and she was relentless in the questioning.
She was, I guarantee she was more intimidating than I was.
I had a nickname for her, Machine Gun.
She's a rat, tat, tat.
I mean, one question after it was tough sometimes for us to get a question in because she just kept bam, bam, bam, going.
So here's, here's a, they had, they videotaped all the interviews, and somebody said in the press conference, why don't you show these interviews in the telecast instead of a swimsuit?
And I said, we would love for you to see these, but there's 15 hours of it.
We'd have to edit it down.
And as soon as it started being edited, you'd have some people complaining that the wrong stuff was shown of certain contestants.
So we couldn't do that.
It's done the best way it can.
But they were in there, and this is from the behind the curtain show, which is the one-hour pre-show that they've never done before.
And they had cameras in there during the interviews, and they did a montage of me talking about questions that I'd asked the contestants.
What does it mean to be an American to you?
Who grants us our rights?
Ours is a world governed by the aggressive use of force.
Do you accept that?
And that doesn't even begin to cover the scope and breadth of the question.
One thing each contestant was asked was: you know, let's assume you're Miss America.
Let's pretend.
And Miss America, by the way, does not have a home for a year.
She's never in a city longer than 48 hours.
Every night's a hotel or a restaurant.
So, okay, you're out there, and you're going to be meeting the press a lot.
And I can tell you the media is a bunch of snarky people.
And what are you going to do when some smart alec from the media says, you know, the Miss America pageant, it's just irrelevant.
I mean, nobody cares about it anymore.
Nobody even knows who Miss America is.
How would you, what would you answer?
And they pretty much all had really good answers to that.
Now, Clinton Kelly was the host of the behind the scenes hour, behind the curtain hour, and he has a show on TLC called What Not to Wear.
And he pretended to be a contestant in the interview process, and we all fired questions at him.
Here's a portion.
You just said that you think every woman has the right to be.
Where do we get these rights from?
We have a right, privilege.
We all have rights to what?
Where do you get these rights?
That's a good question.
Is it a right or is it a privilege?
Perhaps I misspoke.
It's more of a privilege.
But I do believe that we have the right to pursue our own happiness.
We do.
We do.
And I must be, it was, I asked that question not of every contestant, but if the contestant made a big deal about rights.
I said, well, where do they come from?
And just a few knew.
Just a few knew.
It had, I can't, I'm not going to tell you which ones or any of that, but just a few knew.
And, of course, our rights come in this country from God.
Our founding documents say so.
And finally, on Thursday night, Dina Blizzard, who was hilarious, she's a comedian from New Jersey, was the host of the show on Thursday night, televised.
This is the last night of the preliminaries.
And she's just outrageously funny.
And she said, we're going to do a thing with you judges.
I mean, we're going to judge the judges.
And because of my hearing, she gave me a little heads up about what was coming.
The other judges didn't quite know.
She's going to be a dance thing.
That's all I'm going to tell you.
So get out there.
And this is how she described.
And that dance video on YouTube, we've put it at rushlimbaugh.com now, but that dance video has taken off.
The libs are so ticked off about that that I had fun, that there was no controversy.
They are just ticked as hell.
And I won the dance contest.
And here's how that sounded.
So, our final competition for town, our judges perform a miracle dance to Lady Gagov's poker face.
Let's see it.
Come along, okay.
The Jersey fist bump.
So that's how it went.
It was, it was.
I didn't see the video until yesterday because I had my iPhone out there and the iPhone doesn't play videos and so forth.
And my computer was at our secret studio location.
So I just saw it yesterday.
I must say, folks, I wasn't surprised.
A brief time out here.
We'll come back.
Obama's budget.
We have become a banana republic.
Do you know Robert Gibbs yesterday said this guy, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, is going to fry.
He's going to be executed.
Well, with that, why have the trial?
And I will tell you why have the trial.
As opposed to a military tribunal.
Back after this.
Off to a rousing start.
Rush Limbaugh having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
President Obama made it official this morning, announcing his record deficit budget, $1.6 trillion.
Our children will be paying dearly to fund Obama's political ambitions.
Their children will be paying dearly to fund Obama's political ambition.
Oh, I got it.
I need to tell you a word about Miss Virginia, the winner, Carissa Cameron.
The woman has it all.
She is an extraordinarily great conversationalist.
She had an unmistakable presence.
Her beauty was unique.
The combination of just pure beauty and glamour.
And the girl can sing.
She took it up a notch on Saturday night from when she sang that song early in the week.
And her mom and dad were so happy.
Her mom came in with tears, was hugging all of us judges and thanking us profusely.
Her dad was very nice.
He did shake everybody's hands, big smile on his face.
It was a big night for them.
They got to be, and I told them both, you got to be so proud of your daughter because this is not an easy thing to accomplish.
It is not easy at all.
All right, here's Obama announcing, ladies and gentlemen, that we're screwed in his own way.
10 years ago, we had a budget surplus of more than $200 billion with projected surpluses stretching out toward the horizon.
Yet over the course of the past 10 years, the previous administration and previous Congresses created an expensive new drug program, passed massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and funded two wars without paying for any of it, all of which was compounded by recession and by rising health care costs.
As a result, when I first walked through the door, the deficit stood at $1.3 trillion with projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade.
That is a lie.
By the way, Mike, we're going to go get five and six after that.
I just decided audio somebody's five.
That is an out-and-out lie.
He said the same thing to Jeb Henserling and the Republicans on Friday at the retreat in Baltimore, and Henserling went on MSNBC today to put the lie to what Obama had said.
And I've got those bites coming up.
But here once again, it wasn't my fault.
I didn't do anything.
I showed up here.
Bush ruined the country.
Bush did this unentitlement program.
And all those tax cuts that weren't paid.
But Bush did it.
Bush did it.
All those irresponsible things.
He voted for all of it.
He voted for every spending bill that came up from 2005 on.
You know, I think that this is, I told you, we've got a serious problem, delusion.
We have a serious delusional problem here.
And if the Medicare entitlement is so bad, if it's such a strain and drain on us, then repeal it.
Just offer legislation to get rid of it.
It's so bad.
Now, here's Jeb Henson.
You just heard him say here, we arrived in office with a $1.3 trillion deficit and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade.
Here's the truth.
Obama's spending is much higher than Republican spending.
Obama is delusional and being a little bit disingenuous.
And don't forget, nine years ago, we were attacked in 9-11.
Well, either the president misunderstood the point or he just hasn't been well informed.
If you look at the 12 years when Republicans controlled the Congress, the average annual deficit was about $104 billion.
I'm not proud of that number.
That's too high.
But in the three years that Democrats have controlled Congress, the average annual deficit is now $1.1 trillion.
Do the math.
What used to be an annual deficit under Republicans has become a monthly deficit under Democrats.
And so when the president says, I inherited a big deficit, I agree, but he inherited it from a Democratic Congress, and only Congress can spend the money.
That's the point I was making.
Facts are facts, and maybe that's why he wasn't too happy with it.
At the retreat, Obama actually implied Henserling was lying in his question about this, but he's right.
The Democrats ran Congress starting in 2007, all of 2008, and of course all of last year.
So isn't the economy recovering?
That was the next question that Henserling got.
No jobs, no recovery.
I'm happy to see the GDP numbers, and I don't understand how you can slosh around so much money, borrowing it from the future, bringing it into the present, and not have an impact on GDP.
So I'm glad to see that.
But if it's working, then I guess it begs the question, why does the president want yet another stimulus plan?
I lose track.
This is either stimulus three or stimulus four when you throw in the whole government omnibus plan.
I personally don't think it's working.
And small businesses are wondering, how are we going to pay for this debt?
And so that's one of the reasons that job growth is inhibited.
So there is no recovery.
And trust me, there's not.
The 5.7 GDP that everybody was going crazy on Friday, you watch to be revised downward a couple of times.
That won't get much news.
CNN today, you will not believe their headline over the Obama budget story, Obama maps route to lower deficits.
Obama maps route to lower deficits.
Folks, let me tell you what this business is all about.
All of this announcement today was a prelude to massive tax increases to reduce the deficit that he created.
Now, normally, folks, I wouldn't spend much time talking about the president's budget submitted every year.
I mean, you can't get more boring than that.
I mean, and you can't get more minutia than that.
But I mean, this is one of the biggest problems that people are having with Obama, and therefore it is important.
People are fed up with this spending.
They're scared to death of it.
They know full well what it portends.
It portends massive tax increases for years on us, our kids, and grandkids.
It weakens the country.
This is just an abomination.
Nine years ago, we were attacked.
Barack Obama cannot, constitutionally, he's not capable of telling the truth.
He has increased the deficit not by twice, not by three times, but by four times.
And it was not necessary.
Barack Obama was the most liberal member of the Senate when he was there, so reported by the National Journal.
And he's just, folks, he's just incapable of being honest.
Last year's deficit surged to $1.42 trillion, more than three times the record of the previous year.
An imbalance of $454.8 billion said in 2008.
So Bush's last year budget deficit, $454.8 billion.
Obama's budget deficit last year was $1.42 trillion.
That's nearly $1 trillion more that he added to it in fiscal 2009.
This business that he inherited, a $1.3 trillion budget deficit, is a lie.
It's a lie through and through.
He has added $1 trillion.
You did this, President Obama, not Bush, not the Republicans.
You did this.
Like I said in my letter to President Obama last week, it's time to man up and take responsibility for your disastrous and dangerous decisions.
This is childishly immature to make all these decisions, to do all this spending and to want credit for it in terms of reviving the economy and so forth.
And then in the same sentence, saying you didn't do anything, that it was all Bush.
Okay, so if you're going to say we're reviving the economy, then we've got to give Bush the credit for that, huh?
Because you're going to say that all this deficit spending is George Bush's.
That's physically not possible.
It's economically not possible.
It's mathematically not possible.
You did it, sir.
And now you're trying to say that all that spending saved the economy from a total collapse.
But then you say you didn't do it.
Yet Bush did it.
You cannot have it both ways.
Here he is describing the tax increases that are coming.
I proposed a fee on big banks to pay back taxpayers for the bailout.
We're reforming the way contracts are awarded to save taxpayers billions of dollars.
And while we extend middle-class tax cuts in this budget, we will not continue costly tax cuts for oil companies, investment fund managers, and those making over $250,000 a year.
Well, they just can't afford it.
Yeah, yeah.
Now you say that there aren't any middle-class tax cuts.
There were one-time tax rebates, but there aren't any middle-class tax cuts.
And the middle class knows it.
So, yeah, he's going to eliminate $39 billion in tax breaks that the oil companies get, which is going to have an impact on what they do.
And he's going to let the Bush tax cuts expire, which is going to take the top marginal rate up to 39%.
And depending on the state you live in, if you couple that with Medicare taxes and your state tax, the people that grow the economy, the people that invest in small business, people that hire people, are going to be paying an effective national tax rate of over 50%, which means they'll have fewer discretionary dollars to invest and grow the economy, which is exactly what President Obama suggests.
Now, in the budget, which it's a record budget, and here's a quote: the budget incorporates health care legislation currently before lawmakers.
The budget has $646 billion in projected revenue from cap and trade.
But that's been dropped, which implies the White House is doubtful the measure will pass.
But the budget does incorporate health care legislation currently before lawmakers.
And you should know, as we told you last week, that they are still trying for this.
They have not given it up.
The House and Senate Democrats are still plowing away behind closed doors and in secret to make their health care bill a reality.
But they have dropped.
And by the way, there weren't going to be $646 billion in projected revenue from cap and trade.
And you know what?
They've got windmills in Minnesota.
You know what?
The windmills are stop working in Minnesota.
You know why?
Because it's cold.
So what are you going to do in Minnesota when you get rid of all the coal-fired plants to provide electricity and heat?
What are you going to do when the windmills freeze up and don't run?
Because it's too cold.
Just unbelievable.
Here's some other highlights.
Obama on Monday unveiled a budget that projected the 2010 deficit soaring to a post-World War II high of $1.56 trillion or 10.6% of the economy, but falling steeply in following years to half that level by the time his term ends in 2010.
That is to say, however, that Obama is promising that the deficits will go down right after he's re-elected.
That's what he's promising.
Here's some highlights.
The budget forecasts cutting $1.2 trillion from the deficit over the next 10 years.
The largest saving will come from Obama's plan to allow the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts on wealthy American families earning more than a quarter of a million a year to lapse on schedule next year, boosting revenue by $678 billion over 10 years, except that it won't.
Anyone want to take a guess as to why this tax increase will not produce that kind of revenue?
Yeah, you're exactly right.
Because you tax an activity, you get less of it.
People are going to be less inclined to earn all kinds of money if over 50% of it is taken from them.
And as such, I'll tell you something else is going to happen.
This is going to cause an economic slowdown, which means that the revenue produced by economic activity is going to go down.
So that's $678 billion revenue boost.
You watch.
Just like they miscalculated these tax cuts and how much revenue they would produce, they produced twice as much revenue as they were forecast in the static way, particularly capital gains tax cut.
I mean, there was money flowing into Washington during the 2000s that people were stunned in Washington C.
We don't know why they were stunned because it works every time it's tried.
So another thing, this is, by the way, known as raising taxes.
Letting the Bush tax cuts expire is known as raising taxes.
And this projection of $678 billion just happily assumes that people are just going to take it.
That these quote-unquote wealthy Americans will not change their ways to avoid the tax increase, which they will.
They'll find a way to avoid it, or there will be some other result from it.
And it's not going to produce this kind of revenue, and it's going to cause the economy even more trouble in getting restarted.
Obama has proposed saving $250 billion from the budget by 2020, which is nothing.
$250 billion from the budget by 2020 by imposing a three-year freeze starting next year on domestic spending outside of national security.
Now, in truth, Obama's freezing a tiny portion of the budget, but he has already jacked up to astronomical levels.
And so they're going to be frozen at these high levels.
As I mentioned to you last week, he's locking in these massive budget increases by saying that now there's going to be a freeze.
The budget will identify 120 federal programs to curb, including the NASA Space Agency Constellation Project to help develop human spaceflight and return an American to the moon.
Now, it's funny how nobody in our great and terrific watchdog media have noted that Obama is reneging on a campaign promise made back when Florida was very much in play between himself and Mrs. Clinton.
And during when Florida was in play, oh, yeah, man, space flight, I'm all for it.
We're going to go for it.
Now he's turning NASA into a monitoring agency for climate change.
And you know what we've learned now?
We've furthermore learned that this Himalayan stuff, the fallacious report of the melting glaciers up there, we have now learned that it was one student's dissertation which led the UN's IPCC to adopt that belief.
The whole thing is a hoax.
Only Obama does not see it that way.
Look, I could go on and list all of these things, but it adds up to more income redistribution, higher taxes, a declining standard of living.
Exactly what Obama intends.
And get this.
Actually, there's two things about this.
Budget also has elements in it that are called the Re-elect Incumbent Democrats Act of 2010.
That's what I think it should be called.
With women's advocacy groups voicing growing unease with the administration policy, Obama will propose a $3.8 trillion budget or did that will exempt programs for women and girls from spending restrictions he's proposed for other programs.
So just as the unions have been exempt from paying taxes on their health care plans, women and girls are being exempted from spending restrictions, i.e. the freeze.
Obama AIDS denied that political calculation was behind the emphasis on programs for women and girls detailed in a budget document obtained by McClatchy.
This is no more than political hackery.
And then there's this.
President Obama proposed a $33 billion package of tax breaks Friday aimed at encouraging small business to hire new workers.
The latest in a string of administration attempts to accelerate job creation.
And they interviewed some small business people here in the Washington Post, and it's clear that tax breaks are not what lead people to hire.
Growing businesses, growing economy.
Expanding economy is what causes people to hire, and that is not happening.
We'll be right back.
A $33 billion tax break plan to boost jobs.
This is not how you boost jobs.
In fact, the National Federation of Independent Business said a well-intentioned, see they're trying to be nice and not make a little Barry Zotero mad.
A well-intentioned tax credit proposal is not going to convince small business owners to add jobs if they don't have work for those employees to do.
Just that simple.
Obama doesn't understand that.
To Obama, jobs are what businesses have to do morally so people have health care or so that people have income.
That's what businesses are for and to be raped by government.
That's their purpose.
Now, as you listen, as you listen to all the news reports of Obama's $3.8 trillion budget, which goes up to Capitol Hill today, the Heritage Foundation wants you to listen intently for a couple of points.
Obama's making a big deal out of the fact that there are spending freezes in the budget.
You'll hear him talk about spending freeze.
But if you listen closely, you'll learn that the freeze is only on one-eighth of the budget.
And within the seven-eighths that are not frozen, Social Security and Medicare are front and center.
Now, review and analysis of Obama's proposed budget is almost immediately available to Heritage Foundation members.
They stand for reduced government, among other principles.
So looking through this charade is tough on them, but they are thorough.
If you want a breakdown of just how rotten and horrible and damaging this budget is, the Heritage Foundation report is where you should go.
Their researchers are all over it so that you can understand it all and see the truth for what it is.
But you've got to become a member.
There's always a catch to good stuff.
You've got to become a member, but it's only 25 big smackers each year.
Go to askheritage.org and make yourself a member today like I am.
Everybody wants to be me and you can get close to that by doing things I do.
And this you can do.
Go to askheritage.org and become a member.
You choose the level of contribution you want to make.
This is one area where there is no government mandate.
AskHeritage.org.
Go online today.
Los AngelesTimes.com.
Folks, we have got to keep up the pressure on this every day because they are not stopping for anything.
These Democrats are like termites or cockroaches.
Here's the headline.
Democrats quietly working to resuscitate health care overhaul.
While the focus shifts to legislation on jobs, party leaders are taking advantage of a cooling off period to strategierize and seek a new compromise and improve the public's opinion of the legislation.
And behind the scenes, party leaders have nearly settled on that strategy to salvage the massive legislation.
They're meeting almost daily to plot legislative moves while gently persuading skittish rank and file lawmakers to back a sweeping, comprehensive bill.
You've probably heard that they're going to go for it little bit by little bit by little bit.
No, no, no, no.
These people, you have made them mad, and they are doubly enthused now to screw you, govern against the will of the people.
You made them give it up.
They're going to really force it down our throats.
The effort is deliberately being undertaken quietly as Democrats work to focus attention on more popular initiatives to bring down unemployment.
It isn't going to happen.
That just isn't.
Just such a total lack of understanding.
And it's not even that.
It's just an absolute hatred of capitalism.
They want all these jobs, but they hate the engine that creates them.
It's amazing.
Many of these lawmakers have concluded the only hope for resuscitating the healthcare legislation is to push the issue off the front page, give lawmakers time to work out a new compromise, and shift public perception of the bill.
That ain't going to happen.
It is not going to happen.
A little bit of time and quiet would help, said Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor.
Human nature being what it is, it's always easier to be against something than to be for it.
And if you create any uncertainty with change, opponents can jump on that and just try to scare people.
That's been hard to overcome politically.
Pryor said that maybe over time people have a chance to understand what's in the legislation.
Well, there's a little bit of a problem here, folks.
States are seeking to ban mandatory health insurance.
States are doing some unnoticed work out there, holding the feds in check.
And this doesn't make the news much.
But the fact is that even Pelosi, Obama, Dingy Harry, they find a way to ram it through.
The states are putting in roadblocks that'll stop it cold, at least elements of it.
Mandatory insurance.
There's also, I'll give you some details on this as the program unfolds.
Also, it has been learned by a guy at Real Clear Politics during the, what was that called?
The retreat, the Republican retreat.
Obama actually admitted.
Well, let me, I don't even want to tease you with it here, but it was a stunning admission Obama made to the Republicans unintentionally about the debacle of health care.
All that and more coming right up.
Stay with us.
Here's something that'll roil you up.
Also in Obama's budget is $237 million to buy that Illinois prison for Guantanamo detainees.
$237 million to buy the prison!
$237 million!
As I recall, we spent $100 million to build and rebuild and bring Gitmo up to speed to house them back in 2002.
And now $200 million, we're going to $237 million to buy this prison for Guantanamo detainees.
Got to take a break here at the top of the hour, my friends.
Fastest three hours in media.
▲
Export Selection