As always, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
While executing assigned host duties flawlessly, zero mistakes.
So things you need to know about Obama.
Well, that's things that you already know about Obamacare.
We're just going to confirm them.
The teaser headlines, public option is alive and well, but hidden.
Another headline.
Insurers and doctors are already consolidating their businesses in the wake of Obamacare's passage.
No, you won't keep your health care plan.
Out of Houston, Texas doctors opting out of Medicare at alarming rate from the Hill Health Reform threatens to cram already overwhelmed emergency rooms.
Those are the headlines of the upcoming story.
Oh, and then, of course, Newsweek, Save Yourself.
Healthcare Reform is only half the battle.
The other half of the battle is eating right and living right.
And Newsweek, which lost $28 million last year, is going to tell us how.
But I want to stick with the Gulf oil spill for just a minute here first.
A couple stories.
One from the Politico response to Gulf oil spill examined.
Senator Joe Lieberman, after beating up big oil all of last week, congressional panels now beginning to pick apart the federal response to the spill.
The Obama administration will face questions about why key agencies seem unprepared for the scope of the disaster.
Senator Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said Monday that the government might not have been equipped to handle such a large spill.
Well, if they're not equipped to handle something like this, then pray tell, why are they qualified or equipped to handle anything?
Maine Senator Susan Collins, top Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, expressed outrage that only the Minerals Management Service approved oil spill response plans without the Coast Guard having a say.
Oh yeah, we need more than one government agency involved here.
Only one is not enough to get the job done.
Big sis, Janet Napolitano, the first of several cabinet members scheduled to testify this week, admitted the government has limited capability and expertise in dealing with such disasters in very deep water.
And she said nobody would have predicted that a blowout preventer wouldn't work.
Nobody would have predicted a blowout preventer.
Does she even know what a blowout preventer is?
Apparently not because she sent a SWAT team down there.
I mean, when I hear blowout preventer, I wonder if she even knows what that means in relationship to an oil rig.
She might know what it means in relation to other things.
But I don't know about an oil rig.
From the Washington Post, Louisiana Governor Jindal takes active role in dealing with spill.
Strapped into a National Guard blackhawk peering down at green water motted with oidelsheen, the most serious man in Louisiana, is starting to sound ridiculous.
Over the helicopters intercom, Governor Bobby Jindal is explaining to the mayor of New Orleans about two of the state's efforts to keep back the oil slick.
One is named for a Mexican food entree.
The other is for a Cajun sausage.
The burrito levee and the boudin bag are part of a vast effort overseen by Jindal to hold back a slick that's already spitting up tar balls on the state's coast.
He also has a plan to create more Louisiana building new barrier islands in the oil's path.
It makes so much sense.
It's so obvious.
We got to do it, Jendal said in his headphones.
His call for a major government response stands in apparent contrast to his previous calls for small government.
By the way, this is a news story in the Washington Post.
David Ferentbold, or Ferrent whole, it could be hold.
So here's a governor trying to do something about it.
A governor of a state, and this snarky reporter says he's sounding ridiculous because he's always believed in small government, so he's a hypocrite now because he wants the state of Louisiana to build barrier islands to protect the otherwise pristine coast of Louisiana.
Jindal, by contrast, has treated the oil spill as an existential threat, saying repeatedly that what's at stake is a way of life for us.
To fight it, he has assigned himself a catch-all role that includes spotting oil sheen from National Guard helicopters, badgering the federal government for money and supplies, and giving hyper-detailed news conferences.
Jindal has emphasized repeatedly that Louisiana is not waiting for anybody's help.
He has touted the benefits of homegrown designs like the Boudin bags, which are long sand-filled booms that lie on beach sand, and burrito levees, which are boudin bags covered in another layer of sand.
One of the mistakes we made during Katrina, we maybe waited on somebody to help us, said Mitch Landrew, a Democrat, newly elected mayor of New Orleans, who has appeared at Jindal's side at a number of events.
Jindal's biggest idea, building a protective line of islands called sand booms, using mud dredged from the Gulf bottom.
The governor has said if the federal government signs off on the plan, land could emerge from the Gulf within 10 days.
The plan has raised objections from environmentalist wackos who say that it has not been properly vetted.
State Representative Sam Jones, the Democrats, said he thought Jendal's response was at odds with his previous calls for limited government.
No small government can go rebuild a barrier island.
Who the hell are these people?
So in order to make Bobby Jindal look bad, they are willing to risk the oil slick hitting the state of Louisiana.
There can be no other way to interpret this.
This mealy mouse, Sam Jones, Jindal's response is at odds with his previous calls for limited government.
He's speaking about limited federal government.
He's talking about the government getting into every aspect of our lives and telling us what we can and can't do.
He's not talking about the government's job of protecting and defending the borders and the people of this country for crying out loud.
So I guess these Democrats and this reporter for the Washington Post, rather than have Jindal succeed here, are going to embarrass him and child.
You can't do that.
You believe in small government.
Get out of the way.
Let the oil slick come.
Everything to these people is a political agenda-oriented opportunity.
I don't care what the worst disaster in the world is, and they think this is a bad one.
But, I mean, compare Jindal to Blanco for crying out loud.
Who's better?
Blanco sat around, got out of town, compared Jindal to School Bus Nagan.
And they were heroes.
Well, Blanco ended up not being one.
But stop and think of this.
Rather than Bobby Jindal look bad, or good, we can't have that.
We cannot have a Republican governor look good here.
Not will the eyes of the nation are on Louisiana.
Can't have that.
So we have to make him a hypocrite for wanting the state to take action to keep the oil offshore.
And he gives details.
He gives details.
He's like a jack in a box.
He's popping up all the time.
Why didn't he shut up?
Obama, anybody?
On television two or three times a day?
Jindal's staff responded that ultimately BP will pay for all of this government action.
Federal government makes billions off of our coast and doesn't share the state with the state the way they do with onshore drilling, said Melissa Sellers, who is Jindal's communications director.
A more basic objection comes from oil spill experts.
They say that it'll be very difficult to protect all of the state's maze of coastal marshes, especially if hurricanes help push oily water ashore.
For the cost involved, the chances of being successful at doing any good are minuscule, said Jerome Milgram, a professor at MIT.
So here we have higher learning academics.
We have Democrat politicians.
No, no, no, that won't work.
That's a stupid idea.
Besides, especially at hurricanes, they want the disaster.
They like the disaster.
There's no other way to characterize this.
They like the disaster.
They can blame it on capitalism.
They absolve themselves from any blame.
Obama especially goes out.
He trashes everybody but himself.
And there has been somebody that quit.
Somebody from the Mineral Mines Service or whatever the heck it's called has resigned here.
And then we don't know if he was pushed out or if he fell on the sword voluntarily.
But this is the guy, I think, in charge of the agency that gave the rig a very high approval, saying it served as a model for safety for other oil rigs.
And then here's the obligatory hurricane story from Reuters.
BP's oil spill could make for one of the highest stakes U.S. Gulf hurricane seasons on record.
Storms may scuttle cleanup efforts.
They may force containment vessels to retreat or propel spilled crude and tarballs over vast expenses of sea and beach.
Reuters happily, anticipatorily, reports.
Meteorologists say that climate conditions are ripe for an unusually destructive hurricane season.
Yes.
The storm-prone period that runs from June 1st to the end of November in the Gulf.
Oceanographers say that could hurt the cleanup.
If a storm comes into this situation, it could vastly complicate everything, said Florida State University oceanography professor Ian McDonald.
All efforts on the shoreline and at sea, the booms and structures and the rigs involved in cleanup and containment could stop working.
Do you see what's going on here?
Forecasting, hopefully, an even greater disaster.
They are essentially saying, God, please make it worse.
God, you gave us the spill.
Now please make it worse.
God, please don't let Jendal succeed.
We would rather have oil up our rivers and on our shores than for Jindal to succeed in stopping it.
Jindal is a hypocrite.
He believes in limited government.
How can he suggest that the state do anything?
And now we have the Florida State University oceanographer, the MIT guy.
Oh, this is nothing.
Wait till a hurricane's hit.
We're dead.
Happily, they say this.
Eagerly, with great anticipation.
With great hopefulness, they wish for an even greater disaster.
Why?
And a lot of you people are probably saying, Rush, come on, you're just exaggerating, trying to be funny.
I wish I were.
Don't doubt me.
I know these people.
They have exaggerated the scope of this disaster from day one.
They exaggerate the scope of every disaster.
They imagine disasters and predict them and actually act on those that don't even happen, i.e. the swine flu.
They want the chaos.
They want the tumult.
They want the anxiety.
And they want the destruction.
Makes them happy.
Keeps them excited.
C, see, unbridled, unfettered capitalism.
C, God must be a Democrat.
C, pointing the way for us.
What?
Jindal wants to fix this?
What?
He wants to build some barrier.
That won't work.
Who does he think he is?
He believes in small government anyway.
Screw Jindal.
Yeah, we can't have a Republican governor succeed at all in this disaster.
That would not bode well for future elections back after this.
I'm watching the most incredible thing here.
I'm watching this Richard Blumenthal press conference responding to the controversy over the fact he said he served in Vietnam when he didn't.
By the way, NBC reported it today, did not mention he was a Democrat.
CBS on their morning show did not report it at all.
Now, Blumenthal, to give you an idea, he looks like a cross between Ron Howard with hair and Elliot Spitzer.
It's the best I can do.
And he is surrounded by Marines.
He found a bunch of Marines, either probably Union guys wearing Marine caps for all I know.
They look like Union guys to me.
And you know me.
I mean, I love the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation.
Wait till Dingy Harry gets hold of these comments.
But even so, he's surrounded by a bunch of Marines in red high school or college leather jackets.
And he is talking about how proud he is to have served in the Marine Reserves.
One of those Marines is holding a flag.
There they are.
Yep, they're Marines.
There's a bunch of them there, camouflage caps.
There's one guy with a bandana.
Looks like a biker.
I mean, he's got a cross-section here of, okay, even got a female Marine back there.
I am proud of my service in the Marines.
This is surreal.
There's no wife standing by.
That's not his wife back there, is it?
That can't be his wife.
I know his wife's in the name.
Folks, I don't know.
Maybe I'm just getting too cynical here, but here's a guy who said he served in Vietnam and he didn't.
And He regrets it.
I know he regrets it.
He said he misplaced words.
The New York Times said his story differs from history.
He is proud to have served in the Marine.
I am proud that my son is currently active in the Marine Corps Reserve.
So there you have.
By the way, a lot of people are asking me in the email, what's happened to the stock market?
The stock market started up today.
It was up seriously, like at 100 some odds.
And as we speak, it's down 76 and falling.
And I will tell you exactly what happened.
The German government is floating the idea of implementing a ban on all naked short selling in the market there.
The Euro has dropped by more than 1%.
This will actually make things worse if you eliminate, if you ban all naked short selling, because if the markets go up with no traders allowed to go short, then you can see a bubble burst as prices get artificially high with no professional shorting against the buying.
You always have people on both sides of these things.
If you take away the short sellers, the people guaranteeing it that the Euro is going to go down, or any market, any stock is going to go down, then you're artificially messing with it.
They think short sellers are what's destroying the Euro, destroying the markets.
This is the government intervening once again, not knowing at all what they're doing.
Folks, it's graduation season out there.
Universities and colleges are sending hundreds of thousands of college grads into the job marketplace.
Some of those graduates are going into the military, like the dozen or so Hillsdale College grads from the class of 2010 that are going into officer candidate schools in the Marine Corps and other branches of the military.
I don't know if they'll find a picture of Richard Blumenthal when they show up at the Marine Corps candidate school offices, but you never know after today.
Hillsdale College, a long tradition of producing young people that are proud to serve our country through military service.
Every one of them does so without taking any government assistance.
I mean, these kids and their families support and believe in the premise that Hillsdale College is to be free from government control by not taking any government money or subsidies.
As a result, Hillsdale has legions of people that support these students with scholarship money.
They welcome your support as well.
There's a link at my website today for Hillsdale College.
There's another way you can get connected to it as well.
And that's by subscribing to their free monthly digest, Imprimus.
Each month in the mail, they deliver a digest featuring one of the latest speeches delivered with a conservative point of view.
And there are quite a few notables in the Imprimus history.
It's yours.
I'm one of them, ladies and gentlemen.
Andy McCarthy, a recent one.
Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher.
And this is genuinely free from Hillsdale.
Just go online to rushforhillsdale.com and get signed up today or use the phone.
1-866-Hillsdale.
Rushforhillsdale.com.
That's the web address.
And people ask me, what's the point here, Rush?
Very simple.
Larry Arn, Dr. Larry Arn runs the place.
Everybody associated with Hillsdale is as proud as they can be of it.
And they simply want as many people as possible to know that they exist.
They wish they were larger.
They wish they could enroll more students than they currently can each year.
And they're great at what they do.
Genuinely teach the Constitution, genuinely teach critical thinking.
They're proud of what they do, and they simply want you to know about it and make available to you via Imprimus at rushforhillsdale.com a way you can connect to them too.
From www.newsbusters.org, a mayor of Phoenix, Phil Gordon, is blaming the lack of a fairness doctrine for the passage of the Arizona immigration law.
He says the lack of the fairness doctrine is why 60% of us like the Arizona immigration law.
I think it goes back to the Reagan era when the fairness doctrine was dropped, that instead of requiring both sides of a debate to be aired, only one side was given the chance, depending on who was providing that.
Fairness doctrine.
That's why you haven't had adequate exposure to people who oppose the Arizona immigration law, which I mean, I guess means that the White House is not getting their message out.
You need the fairness doctrine so the White House can be heard?
So the city of San Francisco can be heard?
We on this program have told everybody in this audience who opposes the law.
We have not hit it.
They have.
I guess that is.
That's the problem.
That's the problem.
We are telling people what liberals think and do.
Yeah.
Fairness doctrine would prevent that.
Speaking of which, speaking of which, no, I just had something here that slipped my mind.
It'll come to me.
Let me go to the phones.
John in Indianapolis, thank you for waiting.
You're next.
Great to have you here.
Yet another stellar and informative show.
Cheers.
Thank you, sir.
Hey, one of the funniest things you said on your program a while back is that this administration reminds you of a bunch of morticians.
And you're correct.
They do look like morticians.
And I believe that we, the American people, are being embalmed alive.
Well, you know, that's, I'm looking at this Blumenthal guy, and I'm reaching for an accurate description of the way he looks.
And he looks like a mortician.
He even sounds like a mortician.
He looks like the kind of guy that would show you the coffins in a funeral home.
Well, you know, when they were signing that health care bill and the bill was in front of Obama and they were all standing around him, I just pictured myself as the bill and I was getting injected by Pelosi and Reed.
It was an awful feeling.
Being embalmed.
Yes.
Yes.
Well, I'm sick of them.
I'm sick of Pelosi, Schumer, Durbin, and their little announcers, Beckle, Alan Combs, Oberman, Matthews, and that chick that looks like Mary Lou Retton on steroids.
And I'm really sick of this word Lydia and all those gold coins.
Mary Lou Retton on steroids?
Well, I don't know what her name is.
I'm glad I forgot that information, but she really bothers me.
Anyway, keep up the good work.
Yeah, you too.
You too.
Thanks.
Who's he talking about?
Which chick?
I'm going to leave it at that.
Rather than identify the chick, let your imagination run wild, folks.
Just picture Mary Lou Retton on steroids, and whatever you come up with is who he's talking about.
I mentioned Pelosi Last Wednesday, soundbites 32 and 33 here, last Wednesday on Capitol Hill, Pelosi addressed the Asian American and Pacific Islanders Summit.
And during her remarks, she said this about health care.
We see it as an entrepreneurial bill, a bill that says to someone, if you want to be creative and be a musician or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent, your skill, your passion, your aspirations, because you will have health care.
She's saying to all you budding artists, quit your jobs.
You don't have to take jobs you don't want just for health care anymore because they passed health care.
So you can quit your job.
You can focus on your art and other taxpayers will pick up your health care.
This is not the first time Madame Pelosi has said this.
March 11th, earlier this year, on the Mary Lou Retton with steroids show during a discussion about healthcare.
Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer, a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance.
Or that people could start a business and be entrepreneurial and take risk, but not job locked because a child has asthma or someone in the family is bipolar, you name it, any condition is job locking.
Job locking, yes.
If you want to be an artist, we'll have people do it now.
But, well, greed and grease.
But nevertheless, see, what she's saying, the artists, go ahead and quit.
But focus on your art.
Follow your passion.
Sit in your basement, throw wads of paint up on a canvas, or go out and try to compose some music, go sing it at a coffee shop, and maybe you too can become Don McLean.
And then let the taxpayers pay for your health care.
You don't have to sit there and actually work because we Democrats understand you don't want work.
You want to be artists.
And when you finish being funded with your health care, if your art is risque and obscene enough, we'll even pay for that via the National Endowment for the Arts.
By the way, apply for food stamps.
We've got to cover 99 weeks unemployment compensation after you quit your job.
We Democrats have you covered.
Okay, I'm told now that the German government has made it official.
They are, as of midnight tonight, banning naked short selling.
Naked short selling is, I'll tell you what it is.
They're banning short selling.
So only way you can bet on a stock or a bond or a currency is that it's going to go up.
You cannot bet.
You cannot invest on the downside of it.
It's totally artificial and convoluted, and it's going to do nothing but artificially raise prices.
They're going to have no relationship to any reality whatsoever.
It remains to be seen, Snerdley, how you get out of something.
Clearly, what they're saying, what they believe is that the people going short are the problem.
People betting on whatever it is to go down.
The Euro, they're shorting the Euro, shorting the dollar.
And remember, during that big 1,000-point drop here a couple weeks ago, due to fat fingers, never yet been identified, part of that, I'm convinced, was the Euro was falling, the dollar was gaining ground, and a lot of people were shorting the dollar, and there was utter panic that set in.
You combine that with the computerized trading that was going on, which a lot of it is.
And the real question is not who is Fat Fingers?
The real question is how did it come back 600 points?
It dropped 1,000 points in 20 minutes.
It gained 600 points back in a half hour.
Now, that is as interesting and curious to me as what happened to make it drop.
I mean, if the bottom is falling out of something that fast, who in the world is going to get in here on the reverse side of that and bid it up?
And how many people are going to get in on this on the reverse side of it and bid it up?
When you have a plunge like that, everybody bails.
And this happened in 20 minutes.
And after 20 minutes, maybe a half hour, all of a sudden it starts.
And it wasn't creeping back up.
I mean, it was regaining its loss pretty quickly.
So that's as interesting to me as whoever the heck Fatfingers is.
Newcastle, Pennsylvania.
Tom, you're next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hello, sir.
Hi, Rush.
Ditto's from a fellow 1951 Born American.
Thank you, sir.
The purpose of my call, I'm a Democrat, and I'm a Democrat that's totally fed up with the direction that the House, the Senate, and the White House are leading this country.
Today is a primary in Pennsylvania, and I'm discussing Arlen Specter and Joe Sestak, the two Democratic candidates for the Senate.
I've done some thinking.
There's not a lot of passion in Pennsylvania over this race.
There's a lot of undecided voters, and it's real close.
And I've been thinking about it, and I've decided to vote for Arlen Specter.
The reason, it might sound curious coming from a Democrat, but the Republican candidate will be Pat Toomey, and he pulls much better against Arlen Specter.
He pulls 50 to 38 percent above Specter.
But if he were to run against Joe Sestak, it's a dead race.
My vote today for Arlen Specter is actually a vote for Republican Pat Toomey.
Yeah, even though you're a Democrat, you said you were.
Even though I'm a Democrat.
Yeah.
Well, I saw Senator Specter today was asked what he thinks about this.
Well, if it stops raining, I have a chance.
Raining, raining big time in Philadelphia.
Pardon me?
I said I'm in the Pittsburgh area, and it's been raining all day.
Yeah, well, cold, 50 degrees.
Same global cooling.
Same thing in Philadelphia, same thing in New York.
And yeah, 50 degrees.
I mean, these people are decked out in winter clothes, and if you can see their breath, watching these reports in Philadelphia.
Carl Cameron, who weighs about 80 pounds, he's wearing four overcoats.
You can see his breath as he reports on a street corner there in Philadelphia.
So Specter basically, I guess what he's saying is that the rain will suppress the seasoned citizen vote.
That's an interesting theory of yours, because you're right.
Toomey does poll much better against Specter than he does SESTAC.
Tom, great call.
Thanks very much.
Quick timeout.
Back after this.
Okay, naked short selling already illegal in the United States as of 2008, September 7th, September 17th of 2008, Securities Exchange Commission adopted a new set of rules which would ultimately ban the practice of so-called naked short selling.
So what is it?
Snirdley wants to know what naked short selling is.
It is theoretically illegal.
It basically is, they say illegal because it allows manipulators a chance to force stock prices down without regard for normal stock supply-demand patterns.
The illegal practice of short-selling shares that have not been affirmatively determined to exist is basically what naked short-selling is.
If you want to sell short, ordinarily, traders must borrow a stock or determine that it can be borrowed before they sell it short.
You have to have it before you can sell it.
Naked short-selling is when you don't own it, when you don't have it, you're just going in.
And that's as of September 2008, illegal in this country, and it's now taking place in Europe.
But the reason why the market is tumbling over there, or our market's tumbling in the Euro, is because of this.
It's just a dramatic, dramatic change from what their markets are used to.
Interesting soundbite here.
This is Blumenthal this afternoon, West Hartford, Connecticut, at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Hall.
A reporter said there have been a number of articles written besides the New York Times article where the reporter said you served in Vietnam.
With all the articles out there saying you served in Vietnam, what didn't you create the record until today?
There were a few articles, not many.
I am responsible for my own statements and for any of my misplaced words, anytime that I misspeak.
I can't be responsible for all the articles.
I may not even have seen them.
And I know that I am not speaking about anyone in this room, but sometimes journalists do make mistakes.
I'm responsible for my mistakes.
I can't be held responsible for all the mistakes in all the articles, thousands of them that are written about it.
Whoa, now he said that he served in Vietnam.
Journalists reported it, and he just blamed them for reporting it.
Because those were misplaced words in his vernacular.
It's blue state.
It isn't going to matter.
I'm telling you, folks, it's a resume enhancement to lie about your VM.
Look at John F. Kerry.
You lie about it.
You get elected.
Same thing with Blumenthal.
Carbonite Pro is a new addition to Carbonite.
Carbonite Pro is for small businesses.
And the great thing about Carbonite Pro is you can have any number of computers in your small business on one account.
With Carbonite, every computer you have to pay for on one account or in a separate account.
With Carbonite Pro, you don't have to do that.
Every computer is backed up to Carbonite on one account.
You get a dashboard.
Whoever runs your IT services in your office can check on the backup status of every computer.
So you don't have to worry about it.
It's taking place.
The backup is always happening.
Your financial records, your client information, spreadsheets that took hours to prepare.
You don't want those vanishing.
You don't want those being destroyed in a computer crash.
But the great thing here is about the pricing.
Carbonite Pro is the backup plan with one account, one monthly bill, giving you one centralized dashboard to monitor the backup status across all of your PCs.
$10 per month price point, if you go to CarbonitePro.com right now, and you'll get a one-month free trial.
Genuine one-month free trial.
CarbonitePro.com for your small business, Chicago.
Joe, I have about a minute, but I wanted to get to you anyway, sir.
Hello.
Yes, Rush, I was just looking in the Boston Globe, and it said Blumenthal was deferred service for five times in there.
So maybe he was planning on going, but he deferred himself from going.
Well, he addressed that.
I happen to hear him say that.
You know what he said about the deferrals or deferments?
What's that?
Well, sometimes you don't even know when you're getting one.
Sometimes they defer you in the draft board office and you don't even know it.
I was not aware of all the deferments I got.
Well, it sounds like something that maybe came up with.
I wonder what he'll say tomorrow.
Well, maybe there are some other misplaced deferments that we don't know about yet.
Maybe there are more than five deferments.
Look at can you say slime?
Can you say oily?
I mean, just how else to describe this circumstance?
Very interesting.
A little tidbit of news here about Richard Blumenthal.
He was the editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal.
Now, if you have a position like that, if you are editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal, which would be a journal, a journalistic media publication, you have a position like that, folks.
There's no way that you're going to tell lies or misrepresent your past, right?