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June 22, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:45
June 22, 2010, Tuesday, Hour #3
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The views expressed by the host on this program make more sense than anything anybody else out there happens to be saying because the views expressed by the host on this program are the result of a daily unstoppable relentless pursuit of the truth.
Happy to have you along.
Rush Limbaugh and Olimbo Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
800-282-2882, if you want to be on the program today.
All right, this the offshore drilling moratorium has been blocked by a federal judge.
The White House has already said they're going to appeal this.
The uh there's some question as to whether the moratorium's actually gone into place.
We had some callers from Houston last week who said they're still drilling out there.
So I don't really know if they have stopped drilling in these other 33 rigs.
The White House says, well, the president thinks it's uh deep water drilling out there.
Till we find out what went wrong here, it'd be too big a threat to the people to work on these rigs, the people in the Gulf and the coast, and of course the environment to continue drilling.
But we're gonna have oil tankers traversing the globe, shipping oil, and this was one of the points the judge made in questioning the government lawyer.
If you're gonna shut down these these wells and the rigs, what about what about the oil tankers?
Just as many spills there, if not more.
Well, we didn't think about that, the government said.
Now, here's the interesting thing.
This will be appealed by the White House at the Fifth Circuit.
Now, the Fifth Circuit is scheduled to go on vacation next Thursday.
And I don't know how long the Fifth Circuit is out on vacation, but if if they're gonna they may have to rush this through before then to get it settled, because they go on vacation a week from Thursday.
Steny Hoyer is on a huge roll out there.
Stenny Hoyer says Afghanistan can't possibly win it.
Echoing Harry Reid in Iraq.
This war is lost.
And now the same Democrat Stenny Hoyer today said that tax increases will eventually be necessary to address the nation's mounting debt, raising a difficult, difficult election year issue as Democrats fight to retain control of Congress.
Hoyer raised the possibility Congress will only temporarily extend middle class tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year.
He pointedly suggested that making them permanent would be too costly.
Too costly for whom?
Too cost So here you have the Democrats dying, dying to forestall disaster.
And here comes a number two Democrat in one day, saying we can't win in Afghanistan and middle class tax puts tax No, no, no.
We're gonna have to raise taxes pretty soon.
Uh because we that's the only way we're gonna face our mounting debt.
No, it isn't, sir.
Spending cuts, the primary way, and tax cuts across the board to generate revenue.
I don't think generating revenue is what these people are about.
I I if if generating revenue was what they're about, there's plenty clear ways to do this.
They're not.
This is about combination, it's about control.
But I wonder middle class tax cuts are too costly.
This always interests me when we hear people in government say, well, if we're gonna have these tax cuts, we have to pay for them.
Yeah, what do you mean pay for them?
Well, we hear it to government, we can never do with less money.
Well, we have to have more money every year than we had the year before to do our important work.
Yeah, well, no American household has that option.
So this this superiority feeling, this this arrogance and conceit, middle class, it's not your money, you see, it's theirs.
All money is Washington, and uh you only end up with what you have based on their good graces and their mood of the day.
So costly, just too costly.
To who?
You, as a member of the federal government, one of the architects of spending insanity?
Stanley Hoyer.
You know, Democrats are gonna have a they're gonna have a lot of damage to do before they give up power at the end of this year.
Make no mistake, that's what the agenda is now, folks, to enact as much of their agenda.
That's what all this talk is about blanket amnesty via executive order, cap and trade.
There's even talk.
After the election, after they lose, to go ahead and go in there and just ram cap and trade through before the new Congress with a Republican majority or at least significant number of Republican increases is sworn into office in January.
They're they're not going to be stopped.
They are blazing a trail of utter distraction, or destruction, I should say, and nothing's gonna stop them.
They're gonna just they're gonna do as much damage, they're gonna cause as much damage as they can.
Now they don't look at it as causing damage.
We do.
They look at it as personal enrichment and power.
Thomas Sowell.
Investors' business daily is the U.S. now on a slippery slope to tyranny.
Get the way he starts this piece.
When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s, leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics.
Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler's rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions.
Useful idiots was the term supposedly coined by Vladimir Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship of the Soviet Union.
Put differently, a democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive or ultimately even survive.
In our times, American democracy is being dismantled piece by piece before our very eyes by the current regime in Washington, and few people seem to be concerned about it.
The president's poll numbers are going down because increasing numbers of people disagree with particular policies of his, but the damage being done to the fundamental structure of this nation goes far beyond particular counterproductive policies.
Just where in the Constitution does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation.
It says this is the BP shakedown he's talking about, and it says that nowhere in the Constitution.
The president does not have that kind of power.
And yet that's precisely what's happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people.
Many other public and media people may think that the issue is simply whether BP's oil spill has damaged many people who ought to be compensated, but our government's supposed to be a government of laws, not of men.
If our laws and our institutions determine that BP ought to pay 20 billion or 50 billion or a hundred billion, then so be it.
But the Constitution says that private property is not to be confiscated by the government without due process of law.
And by demanding twenty billion dollars in a shakedown, you're taking BP's property without due process.
Technically, if it's not been confiscated by Barack Obama, but that's a distinction without a difference.
With vastly expanded powers, a government available at the discretion of politicians and bureaucrats, private individuals and organizations can be forced into accepting the imposition of powers that were never granted to the government by the Constitution.
If you believe that the end justifies the means, then you don't believe in constitutional government.
And without constitutional government, freedom cannot endure.
There will always be a crisis, which, as the president's chief of staff has said, cannot be allowed to go to waste as an opportunity to expand the government's power.
However, That power will, of course, not be confined to BP or to the particular period of crisis that gave rise to the use of that power, much less to the particular issues.
When FDR arbitrarily took the U.S. off the gold standard, he cited a law passed during the first world war to prevent trading with the country's wartime enemies.
But there was no war when FDR ended the gold standard's restrictions on the printing of money.
And about the same time during the worldwide Great Depression, the German Reichstag passed a law for the relief of the German people.
That law gave Hitler dictatorial powers that were used for things going far beyond the relief of the German people.
Indeed, powers that ultimately brought a reign of destruction down on the German people and on others.
If the agreement with BP was an isolated event, perhaps we might hope that it would not be a precedent.
But there is nothing isolated about it.
The man appointed by President Obama to dispense BP's money, as the administration sees fit to whomever it sees fit, is only the latest in a long line of presidentially appointed czars controlling different parts of the economy without even having to be confirmed by the Senate as cabinet members are.
Those who cannot see beyond the immediate events to the issues of arbitrary power versus the rule of law and the preservation of freedom are the useful idiots of our time, but useful to whom?
Well written Thomas Sowell, and this people say that I was defending Joe Barton.
When I said, please don't apologize, because he accurately described what happened.
There's a larger issue here, and that's our way of life.
That's our constitutional form of government.
And it is under assault each and every day power grabs like you can't believe.
Today on health care, yesterday on health care, last month on health care, automobiles, insurance, homes, mortgages, you name it.
All being done for the good of the people in a down economic period, which is being amplified and exacerbated by the very policies of this administration to continue to wreak havoc and chaos throughout our society.
So while people want to focus on the petty, look at Limbaugh defending Barton.
Well, there's a godsend for the Democrat.
No.
Standing up for the Constitution.
Standing up for the American way of life.
It is a principal thing.
As F. Chuck Todd of all people got right in discussing my motivations.
It's a principle thing.
Sol's right.
We're watching freedom evaporate and erode every day right in front of our eyes.
And I don't think people, even the majority of people who oppose Obama's policies, don't really think it's that.
They just think he's some incompetent boob.
I'm even reading uh there was there was a blog today by a guy named Roger Simon, and there's a bunch of Roger Simons, I'm not sure which one this is a pajamas media, claiming Obama's bored.
He doesn't like the job.
He may quit or you know, retire and not run for re-election.
But he really doesn't enjoy the job.
He just he quoted or cited his um his inept energy speech last week.
Some of his slump shoulders really didn't want to be there.
And his point was it's very, very bad no matter who the president is if we got somebody who doesn't want the job.
Now, with all due respect, I think Obama loves his job.
I think Obama's having the time of his life.
I think Obama loves drilling moratoriums.
I think he loves confiscating one-sixth of the U.S. economy in taking over health care.
I think he loves getting even with this country.
I think he loves punishing this country.
I think he adores the opportunity to cut this country down to size, because I know that he was raised and educated to not like nor approve of this country.
I think Obama salivates every day at the opportunity he's got.
And he doesn't have to work very hard at it because nobody's holding him accountable.
So he can go play golf, and he can complain about the BP CEO of a yacht race.
He can go watch baseball, he can go walk the beach and go watch soccer, and everybody says it's good that our president takes time away to keep his juices recharged.
Obama knows he doesn't have any serious opposition in the watchdog accountability media.
He may be bored, but if he's bored, it's with how easy all this destruction has been.
A year and a half, folks.
The liberals have been trying to do for 75 years what Obama has accomplished in 18 months.
He's got to love this.
Of course he wants to be pre.
He loves this McChrystal business.
I happen to think that the white, it was white was it was uh Stephanopoulos and Mike Allen Politico today, which got this whole McChrystal Rolling Stone piece rolling.
And they take their orders from Gibbs.
They wanted this Rolling Stone Peace out there.
They wanted McCristol on the chopping block.
They wanted it to appear Obama's being dissed, so he can once again assert his authority, have his uh is his loyal allies stand up for him and defend him.
How dare people speak out against our dear leader?
And of course, uh predictably a number of Republicans, uh, media people have uh have joined the fray, supporting Obama, criticizing McChrystal.
In the meantime, all that happens, a giant distraction from the judge putting a stop to the offshore drilling moratorium.
Uh and then you have Obama's you think you loved it today to go out there and basically say, screw 2014, we're gonna implement health care today, and I'm gonna start setting it up in the executive branch.
This is not the action of somebody who doesn't like his job.
This is somebody who's figured out how to destroy this country or totally remake it while playing golf, while watching soccer, while eaching bushwhackers, while walking the beach and hold what not to like about this job from his perspective.
If I may, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to expand on the Thomas Sowell piece, the road to tyranny, and the uh the expand on my uh own monologue, too, on Obama hates the job.
I would think this guy destroy the country in 18 months.
What?
I wouldn't be able to go to sleep at night, I'd be so excited.
That was my objective and all the success I'm having.
But of all these things, of all of these things, the most dangerous attack of all on the U.S. and the world by this administration is not the assault on the economy or on the financial systems, not the assault on our social mores or culture, or the political framework, or religious tradition.
They're all bad.
But the daily unraveling of our legal system, on which rests the stability of the entire world.
Obama's war on the greatest legal system of all time seems to be escalating every day in some new way.
And that is one war that he loves.
And you ask me, snurdly, why don't they use the courts and make it look like the legal systems that were because of this judge in Louisiana?
They don't own all the judiciary yet.
And this judge, I guarantee this judge has ticked them off like you can't.
You don't stand up to Obama this way.
This is the kind of gets his attention.
This judge, who does he think he is, McChrystal?
Is Obama gonna summon the judge to the Oval Office?
Wouldn't be surprised.
The unraveling of the legal system.
Look at folks, Sowell got something right to simply go in and take 20 billion dollars of BP's property.
Their cash is their property, just as much as a drilling rig is.
And to go in there and confiscate it as he no doubt did, is an abject violation of the U.S. Constitution and thus law.
And look at what now this this um there's another story confirming apparently that Obama is actually planning on using an executive order to grant blanket amnesty.
And they were going to deem health care to be passed, even when it hadn't.
So it is clear that the rule of law and the constitution, which is what keeps this country together and separates it from the rest of the world, is under assault by this administration because it gets in their way.
And don't forget, we warned you about this during the campaign.
They don't like the Bill of Rights.
They look at it as a set of negative liberties.
Because it doesn't say the Bill of Rights don't say what the government can do.
The Bill of Rights says what the government cannot do.
And they don't like that.
So there's a story today, too, about Obama with a new health care bill of rights.
There's no such thing as a health care bill of rights.
But he's just going to implement one.
British petroleum was looted.
I'm sorry, BP, the new name.
And they were donors.
They gave Obama a million dollars.
They are for cap and trade.
They are not his enemy on the surface.
Just like we see in the third world, whenever they have a crisis, Hugo Chavez confiscates oil companies.
Obama confiscates BP's.
Just loot them.
It's the rule of law being torn apart.
Your phone calls are coming up in just a second, folks.
Get this.
Mexico has now sued Arizona.
Mexico has sued Arizona over its immigration law.
The nation of Mexico has sued Arizona over its immigration law.
I kid doesn't matter, Snertley.
And get this, the Iranians have offered help to Obama.
The oil slick.
They claim it's a humanitarian issue, and the mullahs and Ahmedini's Dad claim that they have experience and they can help out.
They have offered assistance to Obama.
They want his poll numbers to go up.
Here, I've got the I've got the story right now.
I didn't print it out.
Uh let's see.
Print it out.
I'll continue.
I'll grab a phone call while it's printing.
Here's Bert in St. Louis.
Bert, welcome to the EIB network, sir.
Great to have you here.
Hey, thank you, Russia.
Real thrill.
Um listen, this is what I think about the McChrystal development.
From what I understand, the analyst and strategists and generals say the most important thing to do in Afghanistan is to find and build reliable partnerships, dependable partnerships, and mutually uh beneficial partnerships.
And the way I read this McCrystal revelation is this that McChrystal and Karzai are now in the same boat.
They both have no one to build a reliable partnership with.
Well, now it's interesting you say that because Karzai has come out and defended McChrystal today.
Uh Karzai came out and said, I'm I enjoy working with McCrystall.
We're on the same page here.
We're we're making we're making good progress here.
Well, Rush, look at it uh pragmatically from the historical record.
When Obama took office in the Honduras uh this uh tragedy happened, who did Obama side with?
He didn't side with the legitimate government of Honduras, he sided with the lone communist insurgent.
That's true.
In Israel, who did Obama side with?
He did not side with the legitimate government of Israel, but with Hamas.
Now, if you're in a struggle and you want a reliable partner, look at the track record.
Can you depend and rely on that partner?
No.
No, speaking, speaking bluntly, you can't if if you're any of our allies, I made this point earlier.
You can't you can't trust the guy.
Uh he's lost, he's lost their respect.
Um and let's let's not forget Obama tried to destroy Karzai during these elections.
Remember, our guys, Carville, whoever went over there to support some insurgent candidate, and uh we we tried to oust Karzai Karzai.
Whatever you think of him, Hamid Karzai says the best commander the U.S. ever sent to Afghanistan's McChrystal.
So uh you may have a point out there, Bert.
I'm glad you called.
Here's this here's this story.
It's uh what's the uh what's this from Israel National News.com.
Iran has offered to help solve for the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill And extricate Obama from the mess that's caused his already sinking popularity to drop even further.
A New York Times CBS uh poll published today revealed that fifty-nine percent of Americans think the president's not done a good job, does not have a clear plan for combating the spill.
Sixty-one percent said the president's response to the spill has been too slow.
The survey also showed a lack of confidence that Obama can stop the flow of oil soon and give necessary help to residents affected.
But oh, by the way, speaking, you people in the Gulf region who are going to get uh money from BP from this twenty billion dollar uh uh slush fund, you're gonna be taxed on that.
That that's that's gonna be income to you.
You're you're going to be paying taxes on just an FYI.
However, Iran is ready to rescue President Obama if he requests help.
The semi-officials FARS News Agency reported today.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Raman Meman Paratz underlined Tehran's technical capability to help the U.S. control the spill, the resulting slick when he said it's a humanitarian issue.
One day earlier, the Iranian revolutionary guards offered to provide experts to help the Americans.
The experience of Iranians uh curbing oil spills in a number of neighboring states in the Gulf, such as Kuwait, demonstrates Iranian capabilities and skills, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps ready to help curb the oil spill, said uh the commander of the revolutionary guards, Katam Al-Anbi a headquarters.
Well, that's just peachy cane.
That doesn't take the cake.
The Netherlands you know the Iranians don't have a chance, because I'll guarantee them to you, none of their workers are unionized.
You think the uh these uh Iranian revolutionary guard guys are members of some kind of a revolutionary guard union.
Till they unionize, they've got no prayer.
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Here's uh a captain of the Marines on the phone from unknown places.
Welcome to the program, sir.
Nice to have you with us.
Rush, how are you doing?
Very well, sir.
Thank you.
Great.
I uh I just gotta say, you're so it it is a rock of sanity in a sea where common sense is an uncommon virtue.
Thank you, sir, very much.
I I really appreciate it.
Look, I w in the last hour you had a caller, Kevin, and he said a couple things that really got me upset.
He said, uh, first off that Obama has nothing to do with our rules of engagement.
That is not true.
His policies are being support as a general, you have to support the policies of the commander in chief.
And our rules are engagement are constructed off of that.
And so his policies that he has out there are directly they directly affect our rules of engagement.
Uh that's the first thing.
Second thing, he said that we take an oath to Obama.
That is patently not true.
When I got my commission, I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same.
I take no oath to a president, to a vice president, anybody.
My oath is to the Constitution.
Nowhere in your oath do you have to express uh loyalty, fealty to the commander in chief.
That is correct.
Well, I can understand why this caller ticked you off.
He ticked me off.
Well, he was totally uninformed.
I mean, it's just uh that your average typical left-wing Obama defender.
And you heard the guy plain as day.
Uh look, I appreciate I appreciate the call, Captain.
It's a marine captain calling from parts unknown.
Look, there's rules of engagement business.
Uh the rules of engagement are such, and we've recite them specifically to you, but essentially, the overall writing concern, overriding concern is that no civilian be killed.
Now I I know that well, what's wrong with that, Rush?
I mean, what the hell is wrong with that?
We're well, we're uh we're a very compassionate country, Rush.
What the hell wrong with want to kill civilians?
Uh I would just like to remind you that the purpose of war and the way they're won is to kill people and break things.
Do you remember the bombing of Dresden and the bombing of Britain and the bombing of all the other Nagasaki?
Hiroshima, do you think that we were not targeting civilians?
In fact, in every one of those bombing raids, it was precisely civilians who were targeted.
That is how you win wars.
Now we've got these rules of engagement that say you can't purposefully or even indiscriminately go out and injure or fire on places where there are civilians.
Well, all you're doing, you may as well not go to war if you're gonna do that.
You're you you you're doing something else, but it isn't war.
I can't believe I'm hearing you saying this, Rush, why you advocating killing No, no, you you look at I'm trying to remind people of the hard cold truths in reality.
War is awful.
And not even the experts who plan them like them and want to do them.
But when you're called into one, I mean, that's that's there are definite ways you win these things.
There's definite ways you prolong a loss.
And it's what it is.
If you can have rules of engagement, I there's there's there's no warrior general who would construct rules of engagement like we face in Afghanistan.
There might be a corporate general who would, who is politically correct and worried about image and is trying to uh grease his advancement to another star or a top spot in the uh Pentagon, perhaps the joint chiefs, but a warrior general is not going to limit himself.
That's you get your people killed.
You get your own people killed with rules of engagement like this.
And furthermore, we were not joking.
NATO is actually contemplating a courageous medal of restraint or a medal awarding courageous restraint, not pulling the trigger.
Now, if they're gonna actually do this, they're gonna have to award that medal posthumously in most cases.
That's how you get yourself killed.
But how many times could we is it said we could have taken out uh Al Qaeda leaders until we learned that there were women, children, citizens in the house or the Al-Qaeda leader was and had to call off the attack or what have you.
And of course, that's for PR.
That's for P we United States killing innocent women and children and so forth.
We're just uh worried about what people think of us.
Which is fine, but if you put a country, a group of people or an individual, You put what people think of you ahead of what you have to do and what's right, then you are you you're you're gonna be miserable and you're going to be confused, and you're going to be a loser.
Because you're allowing other people to define your success, and you are forever at their whim.
If you are totally, totally beholden to what people think of you.
In any endeavor of your life.
Folks, there's a good book out there.
It was somewhat of a uh a best seller a few years ago.
That helps people understand how dangerous the rules of engagement are in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The book is called Lone Survivor, the eyewitness account of Operation Red Wing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10.
And it was written before the current rules of engagement were made even more impossible.
Lone Survivor.
I have so many people recommended that book to me.
I when I got it on my Kindle.
Now, of course, it's on my iPad.
Speaking of which, people are getting their iPhone 4s today.
Yes, the official launch date's not till Thursday, but some people are getting their iPhone 4s today.
Well, I don't, it's random customers.
They're getting them today, and and a lot of people are reporting that their uh FedEx tracking information shows delivery tomorrow.
And here I sit.
A powerful, influential member of the media, and my hands are empty.
No iPhone 4.
I'm not gonna get mine tomorrow.
I'm I'm not I'm not gonna get I I rem I couldn't get in.
I remember I spent all day here during the program at home.
I had three other people, four other people trying to get through and make an order on the website.
No, no, it didn't happen.
Now I think one of the reasons they moved it up, I I guess there's a new Android phone from Verizon that's coming out on uh on on uh on Wednesday, and Obama uh Obama, Apple wants to get the jump on him.
Quickly, John Indianapolis, welcome to the EIB network.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Hey, Rush, I just had a few quick comments regarding General McChrystal.
My first point is I think the honorable thing now would be for him to meet face to face with President Obama and resign on principle and then challenge him for the presidency or at least give speeches opposing the president and his policies.
And we should never forget when we elect a president, we are first and foremost electing a commander-in-chief, and this time we elected a man who doesn't want badly enough or at all to win a war against an enemy he won't even name.
Well, my last point is if if General McCoystal doesn't resign and Obama doesn't fire him, civilian control of the military will be weakened, and Obama will be shown to be weaker than he already appears to be now.
Well, it's interesting.
Now I've I've seen been watching television today, and supposedly McChrystal has apologized.
And we'll do so again tomorrow.
He shouldn't do that.
He should resign.
Yeah, it's too late if he if he has apologized, it's too late, of course, not to.
Right.
Resign, I don't know.
I don't I I look it.
Um I'll go long here.
I I I actually don't think Obama will fire the guy.
But I wouldn't be surprised if he did.
You know, trying to explain this guy rationally just doesn't work.
Hey, just read a story on CBS.
The Clintons are planning Chelsea's 400 guest wedding, scheduled for the 31st of July in ultra high secrecy in an undisclosed location.
CBS calling it the social event of the season.
I did a fairly good job of keeping mine secret.
Maybe I should share some wedding of the season secrets with the Clintons.
Offer a little advice.
Think they take it.
I bet whatever they do, it does not do mine.
In fact, I know it.
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