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April 21, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:33
April 21, 2010, Wednesday, Hour #2
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Time Text
That's what I thought.
The chairman, the chairman of the SEC was appointed by Reagan in 1988, reappointed by Bush 41 and Clinton.
And elevated to chairman by Obama.
And she's a Democrat.
And she's running the SEC.
Anyway.
Nice to have you back, folks.
Rush Limbaugh behind the golden EIB microphone.
800-282-2882, the email address L Rushbaugh at EIB net.com.
You know, the old uh the old standby.
It's not the nature of the evidence that matters, it's the seriousness of the charge.
That's what's at play here with the Goldman Sachs business, because it's apparent a lot of people now looked into this from the Washington Post and the New York Times, CNBC, they don't see any evidence here.
Could not find anybody who thinks they have a case here.
Couldn't find anybody who thinks they've got a case, but that doesn't matter, you see, because it's the seriousness of the charge, not the nature of the evidence.
And I think, you know, I find this laughable.
That there are people who have doubts that Obama, the White House were not involved.
After all that's happened in a year and 14, 14, 15 months, whatever it is, how can anybody have any doubts?
Do you think Obama gets anything done by policy?
Did he get the health care debate?
Did he win that by policy?
Did he win that in the arena of ideas?
No.
He never does.
He never triumphs in the arena of ideas.
His ideas are not what secures him victory.
This is key.
You don't think Obama is going to be depending on silly policy discussions to win, do you?
You don't think he really cares how the debate in the Senate goes on Dodd's bill on financial regulatory reform?
He doesn't even care.
He doesn't care what the debate consists of.
He didn't care how the debate went in health care.
He didn't care what was in the health care bill.
All that mattered was what he said was in it.
But even what he said was in it was not enough to get it passed, was it?
This is why, if you want to know for sure, if you want to have no doubts about it, if you want to know why the Tea Party's doing what it's doing, and why so many people are becoming part of that movement, and they may not even know specifically, they just know something's not right here.
This is not how things get done in America.
This is not the way massive legislation is passed.
Because this is governing against the will of the people.
The people know that a majority of them are opposed to every aspect of Obama's agenda, and yet he's getting it.
How?
He's not winning any policy debates.
So how is he doing it?
Well, let's reconstruct a little Obama history.
Do you think Obama depended on policy to get his opponent for the state legislature seat in Illinois disqualified?
No, I wasn't policy about that.
Do you think he depended on policy or a superior argument in policy to reveal the sealed divorce papers of his primary opponent for his Senate run?
No.
He didn't defeat either of those candidates because he had a better plan, or because he beat them in debates, or because people liked his ideas better than anybody else's.
Obama hasn't won diddly squat on that basis.
He has won everything on the basis of thuggery.
As detailed by no less than President Clinton.
Good old-fashioned Chicago thug.
They all know what Obama is in the Democrat Party.
They know every aspect of what he is.
They know that Obama's ideas do not prevail anywhere, except within his little core group.
Obama's ideas could not prevail in America today.
America's or Obama's ideas did not win the election in 2008.
His cult of personality did.
Not his ideas.
He benefited from his party and the media ratcheting up a level of hate against George W. Bush that we couldn't understand.
A level of hate for the U.S. military, a level of hate for the U.S. economy.
I played golf with a bunch of Democrats.
One of them, a good friend of mine, very smart guy, hated Bush with a purple passion.
Couldn't tell me why.
Oh, it can't get any worse, Rush.
It can't get any worse than what it is.
You want to bet it can't get any worse, and it has proceeded to get worse.
Do you think that Obama depended on policy to reveal the sealed divorce papers of his Republican opponent for his Senate run?
He didn't.
He didn't depend on policy when his henchmen tanked the markets in September 2008.
Do you think he was running on policy then?
Obama never even tries to win via debate.
Obama never even tries to win via the political process.
He wins by thuggery.
He wins by tanking the economy.
They call the Tea Party people haters.
They call the Tea Party people seditious, and me and others seditious.
Barack Obama is single-handedly overthrowing this country from within without winning a thing in policy.
Without winning.
Do you know what I mean by policy, certainly when I'm am I using the right term here?
What I mean is Obama's not coming to us and saying, look, I want to take over Wall Street because I want to improve this country, it'll make it better, it'll get your credit card rates down.
No, he's not doing that.
He's winning the debate by having the SEC go in and besmirch and impugn Goldman Sachs, whether they deserve it or not.
To create the illusion that there's all these demons on Wall Street and that they're out there screwing you day in and day out.
If it weren't for Lloyd Blankfine at Goldman Sachs or Jamie Diamond at JP Morgan Chase or whoever, why you'd be okay.
If it weren't for you, your house would still have its value.
If it weren't for those guys, uh your life would be fine.
Unemployment, this is what Obama does.
He's not convincing anybody his ideas are superior because he can't because they aren't.
He's simply muscling his way through here.
He didn't convince anybody.
Look at the polls.
He didn't convince anybody, even his own party, they had to bribe, and who knows what else, to get votes in the Senate and in the House for his own health care bill.
He didn't convince them on the superiority of his ideas.
How great his plan was for the country.
No, it was all about you can't embarrass him, he's got to get this.
I mean, if he doesn't get this, the presidency is over.
This is a man who doesn't like this country much and hasn't his whole life, and really has it in for some Americans, too.
And he's bound and determined to cut this country down to size and make it pay for whatever transgressions he thinks it's guilty of.
And if you want to know what those are, just go listen to any sermon of Reverend Wright, his pastor for 20 years.
Or go listen to Father Flegger or listen to Calypso Louis Farrakhan.
Or now Al Sharpton, who is, it is said Obama's direct link to the streets.
What a title.
Direct link to the streets.
My point here, ladies and gentlemen, is that we're not losing because our ideas are in the minority.
We're not losing because the country's turning liberal.
We're not losing because the country's turning socialist.
Yeah, we got some freeloaders.
Yeah, we got a lot of people who aren't paying federal income taxes.
Yeah, the Democrat Party's created a bunch of people who are dependent, but that's not the country yet.
We haven't lost the country.
I don't believe we're even at 47% of freeloaders.
I know the number of 47% of people are not paying federal income taxes.
I do not think that we are anywhere near 47% of the country who wants to sit on their butt all day and simply collect $300 a week in unemployment.
It may be 35%, maybe 40, but it's nowhere near 50 yet.
If it were, we wouldn't have the Tea Party's doing what they're doing.
If it were, we wouldn't have a chance if it if the country had reverted to over 50% of it wanting to sit on its butt and receive federal handouts, then you wouldn't see polls for the November elections like you're seeing, where the Democrats are going to get thrown out in record numbers.
Because everybody knows it's a Democrats that enable you to sit on your butt and not have to do anything for 300 bucks a week.
And if a majority of people wanted that, why we would see Democrats winning in the landslide majorities in November.
We're not seeing that.
So Obama here is not succeeding at all within the conventional norms of the American political system.
He is a thug.
He is a community organizer.
Ideas, those are to distract you.
Get all bogged down in the superiority of the left argument versus the right argument, socialism versus capitalism.
He doesn't care about that.
He is going to thug his way through whatever he wants.
He's now going to control one-sixth of the U.S. economy and health care via regulation and direct control, because he's going to put the private sector insurance business out of business.
And now the financial services industry.
By regulation, he's going to end up controlling every aspect of that.
And make no mistake, when we do talk about ideas and policy, let me just tell you.
Listen to Reverend Wright, listen to Father Flegger, listen to whoever it is at Harvard, Columbia, wherever Obama was taught, they all think the same thing.
Wall Street's a bunch of SOBs.
Wall Street rich fat cats got money, they haven't deserved it.
They pay themselves billions of dollars.
I mean, it's it has been tradition to hate bankers.
It has been tradition in this country to hate executive bankers.
But the minute you start sounding off your suspicions about elected officials, why it's a sedition.
But you want to go destroy any private sector industry, you are a hero to people like Barack Obama.
You want to help him destroy the private sector, you're a hero, because that's where all the real criminal activity is.
The white knights and the saviors.
And the people that care about you, the little guy.
Yeah, they're all in Congress.
And they're in the White House.
Come on.
Independent agency SEC had no clue that filing their charges here was going to help Obama get his regulatory reform.
Anthem Blue Cross, 39% in.
Look at that, by God, we can't allow that.
That's exactly what we're talking about.
It's why we need health insurance reform.
And now Goldman Sachs.
And there's no evidence to get a conviction.
The nature of the evidence is irrelevant.
It's the seriousness of the charge that matters here.
This is not a lawsuit.
This is a prop.
A brief timeout.
Your phone calls are next, right when we get back.
So make no mistake about it.
The Tea Party people know full well that what's going on here is not right.
They know full well that something isn't right.
They look at it as Obama governing against the will of the people.
Well, yeah, but it's more than that.
This is not about policy, it's not about triumphing, it's not about convincing a majority of people to agree with you.
It's about thuggery, pure and simple.
And I'm gonna tell you something else.
Just to give you um some confidence here that I'm right, that we're nowhere near.
I don't buy anywhere near 50% of this country is a freeloader bunch.
I know it's easy to think that, but if we were there, Obama wouldn't have to be lying every step of the way about every agenda item he's got.
If we were at 50% free loaders, that would be his agenda.
The fact that he's still having to lie, he's out there talking now about his first conversations with the Senate leaders over the next Supreme Court nominee.
Says he wants a consensus builder.
B.S. He doesn't care about a consensus builder, he's gonna find the hardest left judge that he can get confirmed.
There's no consensus with Obama.
That's precisely the point.
There's no traditional politics with Obama.
Well, this is not Civics 101, where our ideas are better, and we convince people ours are we've already won that battle.
What we're up against is a thug.
We're up against a Chicago thug.
Bill Clinton called him that, and he's exactly right.
We're up against somebody who doesn't care about the U.S. political process.
He doesn't care about traditions and institutions that made the country great.
He doesn't like them.
It's all there.
It's happening right in front of our faces.
To the phones we go.
John Dole.
Oh, that's interesting.
Somebody wants to remain anonymous from somewhere in the United States.
Hello, John, welcome to the program.
Yes, sir, Mr. Lombok, can you hear me?
Yes, sir, I do.
Yes, sir.
I'm a former employee of Google.
Uh I worked there a few years ago as an intern when I was in graduate school, and I have some information about the uh the Goldman Sachs SEC keyword on Google that you might be interested in.
How do you know are you still there?
Yes, sir.
Can you hear me?
Yeah, I no no.
Are you still at Google?
Uh no, sir.
I worked there as an intern when I was at graduate school a few years ago.
All right.
So how I'm just done to get it, how do you know what they're doing now?
Well, sir, I learned about the online advertising business, and it hasn't really changed uh since since six or eight years ago when it was first perfected by Google.
Okay.
Well tell us then.
Tell us about it.
And the way it works is that uh, for instance, with the Goldman Sachs SEC keyword, uh a company or a political campaign can put in a bid on that keyword or that phrase so that uh when when someone does a Google search for that phrase, an online auction is conducted instantaneously and the highest bidding uh organization has its advertisement displayed there.
So if you were the Obama campaign, you would bid enough so that the very top result would be the one that you want people to see, namely uh the the anti-Goldman Sachs uh advertising campaign.
Right, your website, uh uh Save America Now or whatever it is, organizing for America.
Yes, sir, and so each other.
What is something like this cost in your experience?
Well, uh it can cost anywhere from five to ten cents a click, or it can cost upwards of two to five or ten dollars a click, uh depending on how popular and how much in demand those keywords are.
And so for instance, every time you click on that ad, uh the campaign is charged anywhere from twenty-five to fifty cents.
Uh and I actually ran an experiment this morning by the ad, by no way, I want to get terms right.
By ad you mean the first link that pops up in the search field after you've ended your key keyword searches.
The first link that you can top of the list of links, that's the ad you mean.
Yes, sir.
And in this case, it's a sponsored link.
And a sponsored link is something that somebody has paid for.
Right, but it doesn't appear it doesn't appear that way.
It just appears that uh oh, look at what turned our search search uh turned up here.
Well, look at here.
But we don't know.
The average Google user doesn't know that he's being steered into something that's been bought and paid for.
That's correct, sir.
They look very similar, but in this case you can tell uh it just you know i you can tell it was deliberately placed there.
But what your audience might be interested to know, sir, is that each time somebody clicks on that link, the campaign is charged anywhere from twenty-five to fifty cents or greater.
Uh and so I don't want to tell anybody what to do, but again, your audience of millions of people might be interested to know that each time they click on that link, uh the campaign is charged uh a small fractional amount.
But with millions of uh millions of listeners, sir, uh that can that can end up having in a back.
Yeah, sturdler, do you know what he's talking about?
I I know no idea what he's talking about here.
Uh let me let me yeah, uh uh John Dole from uh somewhere in the country, uh let me sometimes I'm you know pretty thick.
Let me see if I understand this right.
Every time somebody enters uh Goldman Sachs SEC in the Google search field, the first link or ad that pops up will be whoever has paid the most to get their link or ad to pop up based on how much they're willing to pay per click.
That's correct, sir.
So if like the twenty million people in this audience all clicked on it entered Goldman Sachs SEC.
Uh and then clicked on the first result that came up at the top of the list, the person responsible behind that link, in this case the uh the the campaign, would be charged twenty-five to fifty cents.
That's correct, sir.
Well, that can add up to a lot of money if I'm if I'm hearing you right.
It can, sir.
And in many cases, uh the organization will establish a daily budget of maybe fifty dollars or a hundred or or ten thousand or or a hundred thousand dollars.
But in any case, uh each time there's a click, there is a charge against that organization, and when they reach their maximum budget for the day, their ad disappears.
Oh, is that right?
Yes, sir.
Oh.
Oh, so the White House I'm I'm sorry, the the campaign here has agreed to a maximum daily financial exposure and whenever that limit is reached per day that link then disappears from any further searches.
That's correct, sir.
It's it's typically a daily budget, but in some cases it can be weekly or monthly.
But whatever the case may be, when the charges add up to that budget, the ad disappears.
What is, in your experience, what is the highest price somebody has paid to get their ad at the top of the page?
Well, sir, for very popular keywords, for items that are in high demand or items that cost a lot, the car companies pay a tremendous amount, for instance, to have their ads appear at the top.
And to have customers click on those ads and get to their websites.
It's all based on how badly...
how much somebody is willing to pay uh huh uh to have that traffic come to them sir so John do what what I'm given to understand here is that most people going into Google to search think that their result is actually a clean production of here are the best websites for you to figure out what it is you want to know when in fact most of those are the result of paid advertisements.
Sir, it's not most of them.
It's just the top one or two that appear at the very, very top of the screen.
And usually they're shaded in another color, like pink, so that a discerning consumer will know that that has been paid for.
All right.
Well, we've been clicking on that search term, SEC, Goldman Sachs SEC.
And you're right.
Just in our staff here, we've hit the limit.
That ad is now gone.
so it probably is gone for the day well this is a great public service uh that has been performed here by uh by John Doe from somewhere uh in the United States thank you John Doe very much quivering uh all over and the excellence in broadcasting network you remember late in the second term of George W. Bush if you entered the search term miserable
failure in the Google search field you would come up with stories on George W. Bush and Google said that well there's nothing we can do about that.
But then when it began to hurt Obama because after what would Obama was like you put in miserable failure whatever the uh algorithm was it defaulted to whoever the president was that was a way of hiding it being a direct fault to uh George W. Bush there was a time you could enter miserable failure in a Google site or search field and you would end up with Obama.
They found a way to fix it then the economic crisis was the culmination of his life's work so they might have a big budget although uh many people are reporting to me that the White House link has now disappeared if you enter that search term so the daily quota that they were willing to pay for has uh has obviously been hit.
Miserable failure at Google was linked to the White House page the official Whitehouse.gov page and so when Bush was present miserable failure it took you there but when Obama assumed office it still took you there and then Google found a way to change it.
They said they couldn't change it during they didn't know how it was happening.
So when Obama was elected it went to him and Google said oh no no we can't have that so they changed it.
So now miserable failure does not take you to the White House website ever since Obama has been immaculated.
Here's Candy in Lakeland, Michigan Candy, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Nice to have you here.
Mega dittos, Rush.
I'm a conservative Republican Tea Party U.S. citizen surviving in the democratic economy of the land of unemployment, Michigan.
And I have a real simple question for you because I learn so much when I listen to your program.
And my husband and I are on vacation.
And of course, we're spending our afternoon with you.
my question is just that you mentioned that GM let go sixty five thousand um people and that they send their pensions as well.
And I don't understand how they could have possibly done that.
Um aren't they still responsible for the pension?
Well, let me let me share with you the way Time magazine uh deals with that in their April 15th issue.
Could taxpayers really be on the hook for UAW pensions?
Yes.
General Motors could face a funding crisis in twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen when under the current projections, the automaker will be required to make more than twelve billion dollars in contributions to its pension funds to keep them solvent, according to the government accounting office analysis.
Chrysler's estimated future pension obligation is three billion, not twelve.
Now, if the companies cannot meet their funding obligations, they may have to terminate their plans, and the financial responsibilities up to government limits would be assumed by the penet uh pension benefit guarantee corporation, meaning us, Candy.
Yeah.
The funding could easily become a serious challenge for the uh PBG C with a the public benefit guarantee corporation, which says it's now facing a hundred sixty-eight billion dollars in possible planned terminations across a range of companies.
So, yeah, they get rid of them because they just flop them off to the government.
Now the government does not make them all whole.
Uh of course not.
They pay twenty-five to fifty cents on the dollar, I think.
That's exactly right.
Yeah.
But they haven't done that yet.
And if the American people stop buying foreign junk and start buying American products, even if it is government owned GM products.
Um hopefully in that position.
It's it's interesting aren't there, Candy, that just today there is news.
There's some survey that says the uh American people much prefer American made automobiles to foreign made automobiles.
Uh and the uh I find this very curious since Toyota's sales have not plummeted uh any at all.
But I I don't why should we buy government cars to keep union pensions healthy?
That's not why people buy cars.
This is that's as distorted a way of thinking as a company exists to provide health care and jobs for the community.
That's not why a company is in existence.
And we don't buy cars to make sure union workers have their pensions paid in full.
That's not I'm sorry, that's not the definition of patriotism.
We're gonna be paying for their pensions anyway, up to a point, whether they have their cars purchased by us or not.
Bill, up next in Pittsburgh, welcome, sir.
Great to have you here.
Uh great to be here, Rush.
Your uh inspiration.
Thank you very much, sir.
Appreciate that.
Thank you.
I was just wondering if we were missing the big picture um with the passage of the health care debacle, and if it's able to go through to fruition.
There's gonna the government's gonna have so much control over the people, much more control over than any SEC uh fine of Goldman Sachs.
When we start talking about this SEC and the Goldman Sachs and mortgages and all that, people's eyes glaze over and they forget about things.
And then they also forget about the health care debacle.
I was wondering if we should be maybe keep the health care on top of the list to talk about and to keep everybody energized.
I don't think we have to.
Uh, the latest poll from Rasmussen fifty-six percent of the American people still oppose it and the numbers rising.
There are all kinds of stories out today that you know Obama and the Democrats said he got a big bump once the thing was signed into law.
He hasn't.
They haven't got a smidgen of a bump.
They're continuing to lose ground.
But it's all part and parcel of the same thing.
Nobody's forgetting health care here.
Just because they're now focused on the SEC uh lawsuit against Goldman Sachs.
This is it's the same technique being played out.
The objective is the same.
The end result is the same.
A total takeover of the U.S. private sector or a tear down of the uh U.S. private sector.
I don't I don't think uh I don't think anybody is losing any enthusiasm at all.
In fact, I think this this financial regulatory reform bill is just adding more to the anger, more fuel to the fire over this.
I don't think anybody's getting lazy or sidetracked or distracted in any way, shape, manner, or form about this.
But I appreciate the call.
This is Rockland County of New York.
Alan, great to have you on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
A pleasure to be here, Rush.
Thank you.
I think it's official, though, Rush.
I think uh we can actually take down the signs.
Uh they've changed Washington into Chicago.
And uh the reason why I'm calling, I'm a little moral dilemma.
I've only owned GM cars.
And uh I want to know from you is if I buy a GM or Chevy now, is that the same as making a campaign contribution to Barack Obama?
Hmm.
Hmm.
The money is directly going to the unions who only support Democrats.
I have to say that you're right.
I have to say that buying a General Motor Chrysler car is a campaign donation in kind, at least.
So we go one step further.
Because Bill Maher has ripped the shred out of uh Tea Partiers and Conservatives.
If I watch HBO and give them money, am I doing the same thing?
Yes.
Essentially.
Essentially you are, because you you know HBO is a subscriber supported channel, not ad supported.
What about Oprah and her advertisers?
Uh same thing, probably, yes.
So okay.
I I have a lot of work to do, and I appreciate it.
You know, if people keep saying we can't do anything, we can.
We could stop buying their products.
Excellent point.
Glad you called.
Thanks very much out there, Alan.
A quick timeout, folks.
Back with much more right after this.
Ha, welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Try this as a thought.
Try this at thought.
We hate Goldman Sachs, right?
Those guys, that bunch of that they're the devil incarnate.
AIG, we hate these guys.
We hate all these Wall Street types, right?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, these guys, they're cheating everybody, they're enriching themselves, paying themselves big bonuses in the middle of a of a of a recession.
We can't trust these guys.
And yet, when a Goldman Sachs guy leaves Goldman Sachs and goes to the government, some magical thing happens.
He becomes an angel.
Hank Paulson, SOB, can't trust him, private sector, enriching himself at the public's expense.
When is it Goldman Sachs?
When he comes Treasury Secretary, why?
He's an angel.
He's with the government now.
Robert Rubin.
Cut throat, mean get rid of anybody in his way when he was Goldman Sachs chairman.
Ends up as the Treasury Secretary for Bill Clinton.
He's an angel.
Why?
Look at what happens.
Something magical and purifying.
When these Goldman Wall Street hacks pulse John Corzine.
John Corzine was a Goldman Sachs chairman.
He ended up as a senator from Jersey and then a governor in New Jersey.
And during his political career, he was a saint.
They leave Wall Street with their sacks of evil money.
They go to Washington.
And then automatically we can trust them.
Their sins are forgiven.
How does that work, folks?
Is like, you know, some idiot getting elected to Congress.
Suddenly they're an expert and genius on everything that comes down the pike.
Obama doesn't know diddly squat about anything, becomes president, and he is qualified to run the U.S. healthcare system.
Did all the American automobile business, did all the American financial sector.
When he doesn't know diddly squawk, somehow he gets to Washington, why, a magical conversion takes place.
And he becomes the world's foremost authority.
A brief timeout here, folks, is you know I don't talk about myself very much.
That happens anyway.
I have had this piece sent to me by a number of people.
It is a blog called Bookworm.
It's a woman.
I don't know her identity.
Bookworm Room.com.
And she posted the following piece yesterday.
Ordinary people view Rush as a dangerous Zvengali.
If you'd been around in 1894, you would instantly have recognized the name Svengali.
He was the chief villain, the villain in George de Morrier's blockbuster novel Trilby.
The Svengali plot line Was a simple one.
Trilby was an innocent and tone-deaf laundress and model living in Paris.
Svengale hypnotized her into becoming a great singer in the toast of the music world.
When Svengali suffered a heart attack during one of her performances, his spell over her broke, and she was left standing on stage, bewildered and humiliated.
Since then, we use the word Svengali to describe a person who steals the will of another with evil intent.
It has become increasingly clear to me that liberals view Rush Limbaugh in precisely this light.
And no, I'm not making the obvious point that the Obami and the Democrat Party fear Rush's bully pulpit and consistently demonize him.
I'm talking about the rank and files fear that even listening to Rush for a moment or two causes a person to lose the will to be a liberal.
Those liberals to whom I speak shy away from him, not because they disagree with what he has to say, but because they fear he will convince them that he's right.
The following is a talk I just had the other day while driving in the car with a liberal friend who having voted for Obama is now deeply regretting that decision.
Me.
Well, how would you like to do something completely different?
Let me put Rush on the radio.
Her.
No, no, no, don't want to do that.
Me.
Come on, you'll like him.
He's not at all the way you've heard him described in the other media, well informed, quite funny, amazingly prescient.
Her.
No, no, no, it's too arrogant.
Me.
Nah nah, that's just an act.
Give it a try, just for a few minutes.
Nope, can't listen to him.
But I do watch Fox sometimes.
So here we have a woman who realizes she made a mistake voting Democrat this election, who is open to conservative news, yet who assiduously avoids any contact with Rush.
Incidentally, this was not a one-time only conversation.
I had virtually the same conversation with two other regret-filled liberals.
The belligerently liberal ones are equally averse to exposing themselves to Rush.
Me.
I challenge you to listen to Rush for just a half hour.
No way, he's an idiot.
Have you ever listened to him?
No.
Well, then how do you know he's an idiot?
He is.
He's a wacko.
He doesn't know anything.
Well, how do you know that?
Are you trying to make me mad?
No, but I do think you should listen to him.
At least then you'd have firsthand knowledge of what he says and whether you agree or disagree with it.
Nah, nah, I'm not going to waste my time.
And so on, ad infinitum.
And definitely ad nauseum.
During the 1990s, when I was an unthinking liberal, I knew Rush was out there, but he existed on the periphery of my existence.
I had read Al Franken's book.
I'd laughed at how stupid Rush was, but I actually didn't care about any of the core issues at stake.
I had no interest whatsoever in finding out what Rush was like because nothing he said really mattered.
I mean, I was working hard at my career, I was getting married, I was starting a family and was therefore disinterested in things political.
The world seemed to be rolling along just fine.
Democrat president, booming economy.
Now to give myself some retroactive credit, though, if a conservative had challenged me back then to listen to Rush, I would have done so.
Because I would have been certain Rush was a big joke, and that I could have laughed at him just as Franken did.
I might have expected to be bored or offended, but I wouldn't have been worried about being mesmerized or brainwashed.
But then came September 11th, 2001, and I started paying attention.
I began to be concerned about what was going on around me.
This concern led me to start reading anything I could get my hands on about all sorts of subjects.
I read blogs, both liberal and conservative.
I opened my mind to the possibility my attachment to the Democrat Party was wrong, a possibility helped by the fact that I found myself agreeing with the major political decisions Bush was making, both regarding national security and the economy.
In other words, once I realized that my old political staples were failing, I started looking for new information.
I wasn't scared of the new information, but I was curious.
Both my old attitude sure brings Silly Rush on because he'll be good for a laugh, and my new attitude, there's something out there I need to learn about, make it impossible for me to understand the resistance that shades into fear that my friends and family show when confronted with the possibility they might hear a minute or two of Rush.
They don't seem to recognize either the possibility they might laugh at a fool or learn from a wise man.
Instead, they seem genuinely afraid that any exposure to Rush will corrupt them irreparably.
Like poor Trilby, they'll be seduced into an unsustainable way of being only to find themselves suddenly abandoned and exposed.
To them, Rush is no mere conservative.
He is Satan incarnate, a tempter who will destroy their liberal souls and leave them in an endless conservative hell.
It's actually quite a high compliment to Rush that ordinary liberals believe he has extraordinary powers.
It isn't every conservative radio or talk show host who is perceived as so compelling and so seductive that he can destroy people's worldview in an instant.
But for all the wrong reasons, they're right about one thing.
Rush will change their minds.
Still a couple of paragraphs to share with you in the bookworm piece.
I had to excerpt that to squeeze it into our final programming second.
Many, many uh, you know, busy broadcast day here.
And I'll share you those other two paragraphs when we come back.
By the way, a quick question.
Goldman Sachs says uh has there ever been an SEC prosecution or investigation?
When a firm has lost money in the deal in question, Goldman Sachs lost billions of dollars in this deal.
They bet long on the mortgages and they lost billions.
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