Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open live Friday.
Times Square is still shut down, a portion of it.
A suspicious package in a cooler.
Dropped off in front of a hotel.
I'm sure even as we speak, video surveillance camera tape being reviewed.
Looking for a white male in his 40s.
Maybe with a Rush Limpaw bumper sticker on the back of the shirt.
Certainly a tea party cap.
Trying to find out who did this.
Terrorists don't even have to blow anything up to shut down parts of New York City.
800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, the fastest three hours in media, this is the final hour we have here.
Email address, lrushbaugh at eibnet.com.
Just to repeat, nearly 40 million Americans receive food stamps, the latest in an ever higher string.
I mean, Reuters is really happy about this.
I mean, the tone of the story is exultation.
Nearly 40 million Americans receive food stamps, the latest in an ever higher string of record enrollment that dates from December 2008 and a U.S. recession, according to a government update.
Food stamps are the primary federal anti-hunger program, helping poor people buy food and beer.
Food enrollment is highest during times of economic distress.
The jobless rate was 9.9%, the government said.
But almost 40 million people are on food stamps.
Yes, is a recovery you can really sink your teeth into.
Fox News poll.
Most American voters think Arizona was right to pass its own immigration law and think the Obama administration ought to wait and see how the new law works rather than try to stop it.
The new poll from Fox finds 61% of voters nationally think Arizona was right to take action instead of waiting for the federal government to do something on immigration, which is what?
Enforce already existing law.
That's more than twice as many as the 27% who think securing the border is a federal responsibility.
Only 27% think Arizona should have waited for the regime to act.
Most Republicans, 77%, and Independents, 72%, support Arizona taking action.
So, after all of the state-run media and the regime spend two weeks telling us how rotten to the core this law is, how racist, bigoted, and profile-oriented the law is, 61% of Americans still agree with Arizona.
Grab that tune.
Obama singing Arizona Mark Lindsay is a takeoff.
We'll have it in just a second.
Significantly more voters think the Obama administration ought to wait and see how the new law works.
64% then think the administration ought to try to stop.
Only 15% in the Fox Poll think that the regime should stop the Arizona law.
Only 15%.
A prominent Senate Democrat asked Republican Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to put off her state's controversial immigration law to give Congress a chance to act.
Scant time passed before the governor's answer came back.
No.
The request by Senator Chuck Yushumer of New York was a long shot for getting a stalled Senate immigration initiative moving again.
Even the White House thinks the Senate proposal is nearly dead.
Robert Gibbs, there's not enough support to move forward here.
Schumer set out on an unlikely path to passage for the Troubled Immigration Plan in his letter to Brewer yesterday.
He asked her to delay for a year the date the Arizona law takes effect and push one of Arizona's two Republican senators to support the Democrats outline for an overhaul of immigration law.
But the governor said no.
Even if she had agreed to call the legislature back into a special session to make the delay official, it was highly unlikely that either Senator McCain or Senator Kyle would have changed their minds and supported the Democrat proposal.
So Chuck Hugh Schumer, this is interesting.
Don't implement this.
Give us a year.
Give us a year to work on this.
Why do you think Chuck Hugh Schumer, why wait a year?
No, well, after the elections, of course, but it's going to work.
It's going to work.
They don't want this to be in effect.
They don't want this to work.
Remember, what's at stake here in Arizona, what's at stake here is not just this potential for 15 to 30 million illegals to be able to vote someday for Democrats.
What's at stake here is the notion that you must have a photo ID to prove who you are.
The only place you don't have to do that is at the ballot box.
And if it ever eventuates that you have to do that at the ballot box, then the Democrats' primary electoral victory mechanism fraud is out the window.
That's Mark.
No, it's not Lindsey Buckingham.
It's Mark Lindsey.
Lindsey Buckingham was Fleetwood Mac.
Mark Lindsay was a lead singer for a while at Paul Revere and the Raiders.
I once got a call from Mark Lindsay.
He lives in Arizona.
I think he was living there.
I forget was a long, long time ago, early on on the program, and he was offering me something from his music library.
Take it or leave it if you want.
I'd love for you to have it.
So I don't remember what it was, but I was, you know, back then, and this is early 90s, I was always stunned and surprised to find out who listens to the program.
Now, I'm not surprised at all when I, although I have to say, to be told that a nuclear sub back in 1992 is being steered over the Pacific Ocean in order to capture the EIB broadcast signal.
That's pretty cool.
I mean, I wonder what the state of readiness was.
Because the nuclear, they had ballistic missiles on board.
All right, a quick timeout.
It's Open Line Friday and your phone calls.
We've still got some interesting audio sound bites in our roster to treat you with.
All that coming up after this.
Looks like they've opened the streets of Times Square again.
Looks like it, Isaiah.
I have to tell you a story about Mark Lindsay and Paul Revere and the Raiders.
It's amazing the things that happen in life and the way loops get closed.
I'm 17, maybe I'm 18 years old, in high school in my hometown of Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
And I'm working at the radio station there.
It's, you know, top 40 rock and roll radio station.
And we get a call from The agent or somebody for Paul Revere and the Raiders that they are touring somewhere in the Midwest, and they've got an extra day to put on the schedule, and they wanted to come into Cape Girardo, town of 25,000, to the arena building and do a concert.
And they were asking me if I would MC it.
Yeah, of course.
I'm asking myself even back then, what are they doing coming in here?
But they were in the neighborhood.
I think they were in St. Louis, maybe in Memphis, but Cape Girardo is right between the two.
And it happened to be an off night.
I think it was a Thursday, it was a school night.
So I went and I met the band and did the MC thing.
They were nice as they could be.
The place was filled up.
I think the capacity of the arena building is 5,000.
And then they invited me to the post-concert dinner that they had.
The holiday inn stayed open.
Well, which is a big deal.
I mean, the kitchen to stay open after 11 o'clock or midnight.
And the room was just reserved for Paul Revere and the Raiders and their entourage, the roadies and so forth.
And I met all these guys, Mark Lindsay.
And they would never remember this.
And so I start this program.
And four years into it, I get a call from Mark Lindsay, who I'm told now lives in Idaho, which is true.
If it's true, it means he's probably conservative.
But regardless, I'm having trouble.
He was offering me access to some of his music for the program back in the early days of it.
It was a very brief phone conversation.
But I was, as I said, always surprised to find out who listened to the program back then.
I just remembered the story about emceeing a last-minute Paul Revere and the Raiders.
And they were big.
It was a big thing for a band like that to come into Cape Girardeau.
People in Cape Girardo wanted to go to concerts.
You had to go to St. Louis.
Or, well, no, Cape's considered, it's all about border states, snerdly.
Memphis, Tennessee is considered the South.
Cape Girardo is kind of right on the borderline.
If you go south of Cape Girardo, you're going to boot heel of Missouri and Arkansas, you're in the south.
Cape Girardo North, they're considered in the Midwest.
And the ought to, you know, people in St. Louis sound like Chicago.
Their accent sounds like pretty close to Chicago.
In Southeast Missouri, people say get, forget, years.
And I used to talk that way.
I started on the radio when I was 15.
I'd go in and record myself at the radio station.
I'd, you know, hear myself say temperature and get.
And we call it the Southeast Missouri twang because it's very nasal.
And I said, I got to fix this.
I mean, I'm not going to go anywhere.
So I had an objective.
I want to sound like nobody can tell where I come from.
And I worked long and hard on this.
To get rid of the get and forget.
And it's not, it's a result of just speaking fast.
You know, you say forget instead of forget.
But I worked really hard on that.
Can you tell where I'm from if I hadn't?
Of course not.
That was one of my objections.
Okay, enough about me.
I don't.
Mark Lindsay's from Idaho, lives in Florida now, I'm told.
He's from Idaho, lives in Florida.
Okay.
I think it could be liberal.
No, I don't think so.
If he was calling me back in the early 90s, here's Carla in Roanoke, Virginia.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Great to have you here.
It's great to be here, Rush.
I'm so glad you took my call.
Thank you.
I've been hearing about all the terrorist stuff, but we haven't heard anything from Ali Limbali.
Where has he been and why has he been followed?
Ali Limbali.
Ali Limbali, as is so often the case, people who have an association with this program eventually climb the ladder of success and get their own programs.
And this happened to Ali Limbali.
We have been missing him.
Well, I do too.
It's impossible to hold on to everybody because we believe in growth and opportunity for everybody.
But Ali Limbali moved on about – people may not know who she's even talking.
Grab any Ali Limbali bit.
Okay.
Here's who Ali Limbali is.
That's Ali Limbali, who now has his own.
Well, last I heard he had his own gig in New Jersey.
Is that right?
Patterson, New Jersey.
Moving on up.
Indianapolis.
John, you're next on Open Line Friday.
Great to have you here.
Hey, Rush.
Happy Friday.
Take a nap, will you?
Thank you, sir.
All right.
Hey, what's the scoop on all the states repeal that kind of fell off the radar?
What do you know?
On the health care?
Yes, sir.
In fact, I have, let me find this story here.
They're still doing it.
There's even more have joined it.
Let me, damn, what did I?
I had it at the top and I moved it to the bottom.
There's two more states have joined this effort to try to repeal it, to claim it's unconstitutional.
Maybe, yeah.
I wish I could remember the states, but it's still ongoing.
You haven't heard about it because what's happening right now is all of the attorneys general are meeting, trying to figure out the strategy and the best way to go legal-wise on this to make it happen.
But it's still very much in the works.
Well, this concerns me because of all this other rigamorang going on.
I think that it goes back to Mao and what he said, you know, to get rid of the people with the knowledge, and they're trying to extinct a whole voting block of people.
What do you think?
Well, this is a common practice of dictatorial regimes is to try to rid a society of the people who have knowledge of history.
In this case, for example, get rid of people who have knowledge of the truth of the Reagan years.
Because that's the one period of time in our country that shows the antidote to what's happening now works.
And the left is scared to death that more and more people, that's why they constantly revise history about it, lie about the Reagan years and Reagan himself.
But fear not.
Damn it, I wish I could find this story.
I don't know what I did with it.
I had it right here on the top.
I was going to make mention of this today, that the effort is underway here.
More states are joining this whole effort.
Here it is.
It's a bottom of secondary stack.
Oklahoma, Georgia, send Healthcare Freedom Act to governor's desk.
Oklahoma and Georgia have basically to say that they are exempt from Obamacare on constitutional basis.
So it's still percolating there.
Now, let me repeat myself.
Earlier today, since we had a call about what are the states doing on healthcare Story today that many businesses are going to drop health care coverage for their employees, or they're going to reduce the number of full-time employees because that's one of the ways you can exempt yourself from forced coverage.
But they've read the bill and they've found that paying the fine for not providing coverage is cheaper than providing the insurance policy.
Well, we predicted this.
This is what's going to happen.
It's by design.
Individuals and businesses will pay the fine because it's cheaper than having insurance because you can access the insurance when the accident happens.
When you get sick, they have to cover you.
So what this is going to do is force private insurance out of business eventually and force everybody to government, the exchanges, eventually single payer.
So the states are trying to stop this.
They're trying to say that they're either exempt from it or they are going to sue the federal government.
The Democrats.
Now, by the way, let me tell you what's going to happen when this does happen.
I mean, this is because this is all part of the regime's strategy.
When big business, bad business period, when all this goes into effect by 2012 to 2014, when they start actually cutting benefits for people, health insurance, and paying the fine, that will be exactly what Obama wants.
Obama will then be able to call a national TV address and say, what did I tell you?
You can't trust these people.
They're looking after themselves.
We passed this bill.
Reduce costs.
Reduce your premium.
$2,500 a year.
You keep the coverage you want.
We promise you that.
Look what's happening.
They're dropping you.
They don't care about you.
They care about their profits.
That's all they care about.
They don't even want to cover you.
They don't even want to buy insurance.
They're going to pay the fine.
They don't care about you.
So he'll be able to malign the private sector again.
He'll be able to say, if it weren't for me, if it weren't for us in government, you wouldn't have any health insurance.
He'll welcome people to the government option, the public option.
This is all part of the way it was designed.
The Democrats, in the November elections and in the 2012 elections, the Democrats are going to run just as they do against the Republicans on Social Security.
Republicans want to cut your Social Security.
They want to take it away from you.
They're going to say that about health care.
And they're going to have tapes.
They're going to have TV spots with Republican leaders saying, repeal, repeal health care.
They're going to try to convince the American people the Republican Party wants to take away your health care.
Now, they think this is going to work.
I don't know.
The percentages of people who don't want this health care plan continues to rise.
They do not.
The Democrat Party does not represent a majority of thinking in this country.
They are a minority of thought, but they have a media on their side that projects an impression that they are the majority, but they really aren't in any way, shape, man, or form.
Here, back to the soundbites.
We got some.
I want you to hear Stuart Varney last night.
Fox News special report, Brett Baer.
Stuart Varney is at Fox business channel as well.
And Brett Baer said, first Fox Business Network correspondent Stuart Varney in New York to tell us how a simple typo may have sent the market into a nosedive.
What happened?
Do not make the mistake of thinking that this was all just an unfortunate error, an unfortunate human mistake.
The underlying cause is much more serious.
The financial system of Europe today was really quaking.
The Euro was on the verge of collapse.
And, Brett, if I can go a bit one step further, you could say that today we saw the failure of the European model.
High taxes, cradle-to-grave financial security and entitlement programs, and the government dominating the economy.
That model is now failing.
Rado, rado, rado, Stuart Varney with his, we're watching the failure of socialism.
Greece, Spain, Portugal throughout, the European Union.
Last night on CNN Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer talked to the forehead about the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
He said, hey, forehead, when you saw that nearly 1,000 point dropped mid-afternoon today in the stock market, what did you think politically could be the result of that?
Democrats can run on this, and here's how.
Republicans want to privatize Social Security.
The top Republican on the House Budget Committee, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, has a proposal out there, just like the one President Bush put forward, to take 25% of our Social Security, invested in the stock market with Bernie Madoff and Goldman Sachs, and these guys that lost 900 points for a time today.
I think Democrats can run on that and say, look, America, if you want to invest your Social Security in the stock markets, vote for the Republicans.
If you want Social Security to be safe, vote for Democrats.
Now, there's an easy response to this, but whether or not we have the courage and the guts to do it, pretty much, has Warren Buffett gone broke, Forehead.
Has anybody, Pete Peterson and the Blackstone Group, have they gone broke?
Has Goldman Sachs broke, Forehead?
Has Steve Schwartzman, Republican, has he gone broke?
Is Tim Geithner broke?
These guys want to portray the stock market, Social Security in the stock market as the end of your investment.
I mean, that's where you're going to lose money is the stock market.
And the only time that could possibly be true is during the regime's administration.
CNN, by the way, is still on this conspiracy theory, this storyline they just won't let go about me and the what is this?
I don't even know.
It's too much to read here.
It's CNN.
Here, listen to the bike.
Let's just listen to it together.
We are hitting a point right now in the wingnut wars where we can't even deal with a natural disaster like an oil spill without politicizing it.
One of the early adapters was Rush Limbaugh, part of his stock and trade.
He took the airwaves, and I'll do my best, Rush Limbaugh impersonation, to say this.
This bill, the cap and trade bill, was strongly criticized by hardcore environmentalist wackos because it supposedly allowed more offshore drilling in nuclear plants, nuclear plant investment.
So since they're sending SWAT teams down there, folks, to inspect the other rigs, what better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear pants than by blowing up a rig?
He's just saying.
That's John Avalon.
Who is John Avalon?
He's, I guess, his Daily Beast columnist.
Now, that's Tina Brown's piece, but the website.
But the point is here that they keep reporting this.
I never said that the SWAT teams are going to blow it up.
I said if the administration, if the regime is sending SWAT teams down there, maybe they think there was sabotage.
Not that the administration blew it up.
But anyway, it doesn't matter.
The truth doesn't matter when it comes to me and reportage in the media.
Yesterday afternoon on MSNBC, let's see, they had, I don't even know who this guy is, but he was asked a question.
He said this about me.
Rush Limbaugh is fantasy about environmentalist SWAT teams that cause this problem.
He's bought in by corporate interests, and nobody represents us.
What is this?
SWAT teams?
Environmentalist SWAT teams?
It was the regime that sent in the SWAT teams.
Environmentalist SWAT teams?
You know, it's a damn good thing Obama didn't seek to politicize the oil spill, right?
Or we wouldn't be here.
So Paul Bagala says the stock market is Bernie Madoff.
No.
Social Security is Bernie Madoff.
Social Security is the Ponzi scheme.
Do you think that the forehead does not have his retirement fund invested on Wall Street?
You think it's pretty good bet that the forehead has an investment portfolio and that it's invested somewhere, the same place that the security, social security funds would be.
You think that the forehead is putting all of his eggs in the social security basket?
Hardly.
So it's okay for elites like the forehead to have their retirement funds in the stock market, the commodities market, the bond market, wherever they have their money, the bonwaka.
But somehow for average Americans, can't have that.
Here's Mike in Danville, California.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello, sir.
Well, thanks, Rush.
Sure good to talk to you again.
Thank you.
Hey, so the Morgan Hill School District was just trying to protect our Patriot students.
That's what they're saying, right?
Yeah, which Patriot students.
Right.
Well, the guys were in the shirts with the flags on them.
Yeah, but which flags?
American flag.
They sent them home to protect them, right?
Because wearing the American flag is provocative.
Right.
I've got a question then.
If the American flag is such a lightning rod symbol, I just wondered, did the high school fly the American flag on Cinco de Mayo?
Ooh.
Interesting question.
I have a son.
I have a son.
He's an 18-year-old.
He's a senior in high school in the area here.
I said, do not, do not loiter around the flagpole.
Do not loiter.
That's an interesting question.
Did they lower the American flag on Cinco de Mayo at Morgan Hill Has Gruel and raise the Mexican?
To protect the students.
I'll bet they didn't.
I'll bet they didn't either.
I bet they didn't either.
Hey, one other thing.
Around here, Ram Emanuel is lovingly referred to as the Attack Bell Arena.
The Attack Bell Arena.
All right.
Thanks.
Thanks very much, Mike.
I appreciate it.
Lubbock, Texas, Greg.
Great to have you on Open Line Friday.
Hi.
Hi, Rush Dittos from the home of the Texas Tech Red Raiders.
We're here, Lovey, and Lubbock, and appreciate all you do for our country.
Thank you, sir, very much.
Hey, I wanted to make a leadership-style comparison based on the assertion that finding Faisal Shahzad was blind luck.
I don't think that blind luck existed as a result of the people on the streets, the agents, customs agents, FBI agents, but as a result of the level of incompetence much higher up the food chain.
And as such, I think it'd be a fair comparison to compare the leadership style of Department of Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano to Chief Inspector Jacques Clousseau in the old Pink Panther movies, where despite outrageous incompetence, he always managed to catch the thief.
Yeah.
Dumb luck.
But he was much funnier than Big Sis.
Sure enough.
And honestly, probably better looking, too.
Yeah, Inspector Clusau, Keithstone Cops.
I love it.
Laughing at the regime.
Laughing at the best thing we can do is ridicule the regime.
George in Martinez, California.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
I've paid the ultimate price for being conservative.
My own mother's disowned me.
You what?
My mother told me two weeks ago that if I did not stop being a conservative, she would have nothing to do with me, and she has not talked to me since.
How old, George, are you?
I just turned 58.
She's 92.
She's an archetypical left-wing New Deal Democrat who thinks Obama walks on water.
And she throws you under the bus.
She disowns you at age 58?
Yep.
She also blamed me personally for the war in Iraq, said that I told George Bush to go to Iraq.
Now, that makes it sound like dear old mom is in and out of reality.
Well, I don't know, but she also said, you know, you just said surgery, and it's because of the Democrats who had surgery.
And I said, would you rather have me be a poor Democrat or a richer Republican one day?
And there was silence there.
But it infuriated, I refused to be a Democrat.
Have you got her a Mother's Day present since she's not?
Oh, now you've got to be bigger than this.
Well, the problem is, you see, anything I do is I called her up, and it immediately went to politics.
And we can't even talk.
This is amazing because I thought people like your mom define tolerance and understanding and love.
And so your own mother says, unless you change your ideology, she wants nothing to do with you.
You ought to try sending us some pro flowers.
Well, I've thought about it, but I've even had people say that I'm a traitor to my class, which is what people said about FDR, if I remember correctly, that I'm not a Democrat.
A traitor to your class?
Well, I don't make a lot of money.
I've been sick for two years.
Oh, I get it.
I get it.
And so because I'm poor at the moment, I should be a Democrat rather than strive to make money and get out of where I am.
And I wish I had more time.
Sadly, the constraints of the programming format require me to say goodbye.
And thank you very much.
But what an amazing thing.
They told the guy he was a traitor to his class because they couldn't say he was a traitor to his race.