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Aug. 19, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:07
August 19, 2010, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, a little warning.
It's going to be, it might be one of those days.
Working on a limited sleep.
Catherine's out of town, which means I have to get up twice during the night to let the puppy out.
And an alarm does not wake me up, so I actually do not sleep.
Well, the staff does not.
No, Brian, let the dog out.
No.
Greetings, ladies and gentlemen.
Welcome to Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network.
There's crisis, crisis in Liberalville.
Over this Pew Research Center poll, it shows about one in five Americans think that Obama is a Muslim.
Telephone number 800-282-2882, the email address LRushbaugh at EIBnet.com.
The U.S. economy is showing more signs recovery is slowing.
In a related story, Brett Favre is showing more signs he's not retiring.
I mean, what are we talking about here?
The U.S. economy showing more signs recovery is slowing.
And here's the CBO numbers are out.
Difficult.
Economic times are ahead, according to the CBO, Doug Elmendorf, who we pay, what, $193,000 a year to tell us how bad things are.
Snerdley would do it for half that.
And without, you don't need any special training.
Difficult economic times ahead, CBO warns.
Chronic high unemployment rates, slow manufacturing growth, hurting recovery.
There isn't a recovery.
We also have a new iPad winner.
Let me get this mentioned.
Brent N of Grand Rapids, Michigan is the winner of the fourth special iPad given away.
People who've registered at our Facebook page, facebook.com slash Rush Limbaugh.
And we started the Facebook page to post 20 pictures out of the 7,000 from the weekend of the wedding of the century, mine, that happened on June the 4th and 5th here in Florida.
And to commemorate this, we're giving away nine iPads.
Each iPad is engraved on the back, my signature and a large EIB logo.
If you've already signed up at Facebook, you're good for the remaining drawings, five to go every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday through the August 30th.
And so if you're not registered, just go to facebook.com slash Rush Limbaugh, or you can get to it by going to the top of our webpage, rushlimbaugh.com.
Washington Post, I mean, there's panic out there.
Poll shows more Americans think Obama is a Muslim.
Spreading of falsehoods is to blame.
Washington Post leaves out the fact in their story, one in 10 Democrats think that Imam Obama is a Muslim.
One in 10 Democrats.
On page two of the Washington Post poll, 61% oppose the Hamas.
55% say okay to build one next to them.
But 61% oppose building it at ground zero.
Americans increasingly are convinced, incorrectly, this is the AP, that President Obama is a Muslim.
A growing number are thoroughly confused about his religion.
Nearly one in five people, 18%, said they think Obama's a Muslim, up from the 11% who said so in March of 2009, according to a Pew poll.
The proportion who correctly say Obama's a Christian is down to just 34%.
I mean, they're beside themselves here at the partisan political operative media.
The largest share of people, 43%, said they don't know what his religion is, an increase from 34% who said that in early 2003.
You want to hear some panic from the state-controlled media?
Well, here we go.
This is the Daily Rundown.
MSNBC this morning co-hosts Savannah Guthrie talking about the new poll.
The more people have gotten to know President Obama since he's taken office, the more people of all parties have started to believe that he's Muslim.
So, for example, now 34% think he's Christian, 18% say he's Muslim, 43% do not know.
Whereas in March of 2009, nearly half the country thought he was Christian, only 11% thought Muslim, and only 34% didn't know.
How do you explain this?
Let me explain it.
Because the more people have gotten to know Obama since he's taken office, and how are they getting to know Obama?
No.
Well, he's talking a lot, but how are they hearing what he says?
It's television.
And sure enough, in this Pew Poll, six in 10 of those, six in 10, the way to say that 60% of the 18% who think he's a Muslim.
So over half of those who think he's a Muslim said they got the information from the media.
The largest portion, 16% of them, saying it was on television.
11% said they learned it from Obama's behavior and words.
So this has got to be a double whammy for the state-controlled media.
People are, they don't know yet.
Tom Brokart, Charlie Rose, still don't know who Obama is.
They know what books he's read.
Wait, there's a kicker coming here.
If you just hang in with me here, folks, there's a big kicker coming now.
It says on television.
People say they're learning it on television.
Or they just learn it from Obama's behavior and his words.
Now, Savannah Guthrie over there at Mess NBC was not talking to herself when she said, how do you explain this?
She was talking to the Pew Research Center research associate director, Alan Cooperman, who answered her question.
This is not just among the people who don't like the president.
It's not just the critics.
It's not just that there's nearly one in five who say he's Muslim.
It's that the percentage who say he's Christian has also dropped dramatically, and so many people don't know.
You would think after the president's in office 18 months to two years that the number of people who don't know would be declining.
But the number of don't knows has been rising.
And it's now even among groups who support this president, for example, among Democrats, it's fewer than half of Democrats who say the president is a Christian.
Fewer than half, the more they get to know him.
Now, Jeff Zelany at the New York Times makes an interesting point.
In the next sound bite, I'm going to preempt it.
Zelany, New York Test says, well, what does Obama do on Sunday?
He plays golf.
He doesn't go to church.
He plays golf.
Jeff Zelany points it out in the New York Times.
Here, let you can hear it.
That also happened today on Mess NBC.
F. Chuck Todd talked to Zelany about all of this.
And F. Chuck said, look, religion was a huge part of the campaign, different moments in time.
Reverend Wright, of course.
That's the one moment a lot of people remember.
And I know that Andy Kohut, also of Pew, joked with somebody that Reverend Wright's episode, as negative politics, that was for the president, it did serve as a reminder to the country that Obama's a Christian and attended church on a regular basis.
No, it didn't, F. Chuck, because Obama said he never heard anything that Wright said.
So we're told that he went to church for 20 years, but he never heard anything that Wright said, which leads people to believe, well, maybe he really didn't go there.
Maybe he didn't go to church, or maybe he did and is lying.
But the bottom line is the more people get to know about Obama, the more confused they are.
So Zelany makes this point.
I think that that is something that will probably be changing over the next, you know, if not several months, certainly over the next year as the president moves into his reelection.
What does he do every Sunday, almost every Sunday?
He plays golf.
I think you'll be seeing him go, you know, to black churches, white churches, you name it churches to try and remind people that he, in fact, is Christian.
He doesn't go to church.
And the drive-bys can't understand why the number of people who think Obama's a Christian is dwindling.
He's starting his sixth vacation, I think, today or tomorrow, going to Martha's Vineyard.
And we'll see if Zelany's right here.
We'll see if Obama goes to church every Sunday.
A bunch of different churches.
But what difference does it make?
Really, folks, what difference does it make?
If he were a Muslim, we don't care.
Why does the media?
What's wrong with being a Muslim?
Really?
I mean, why the controversy here?
What's the big deal?
I mean, we're into outreach.
If he's a Muslim, that's fine, right?
We went back to the archives of the New York Times, May 12, 2008.
Edward Lutvach, he's a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
I remember Ed Lutwach.
I used to see Ed Lutvach when I lived in Sacramento back in the workout there in the mid-80s, mid to late 80s.
Edward Lutvach was brilliant on TV.
And I remember I went to Washington for a week's worth of shows.
A station there was hell-bent on me interviewing people.
And I refused to do it.
So they sent me to Washington.
And I remember trying to get Lutwach on, and I'd get his answering machine over at the think tank, and he never returned a call.
And you should have heard these messages.
Professor Lutvach, please, please, would you?
It was amazing.
Anyway, he's written this piece back in the campaign, May 12, 2008.
And the headline of the piece is President Apostate.
And I want to read to you a couple of paragraphs.
The idea goes hand in hand with the altogether more plausible argument that Mr. Obama's election would raise America's esteem in Africa.
Indeed, he already arouses much enthusiasm in his father's native Kenya and to a degree elsewhere on the continent, where, I might add, the brother still lives in a hut.
But it is a mistake to conflate Obama's African identity with his Muslim heritage.
Senator Obama is half African by birth, and Africans can understand, understandably, identify with him.
In Islam, however, there is no such thing as a half-Muslim.
Like all monotheistic religions, Islam is an exclusive faith.
As the son of a Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law.
And that is universally understood.
It makes no difference.
That as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion.
Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Quran, his mother's Christian background is irrelevant.
Of course, as most Americans understand it, Senator Obama is not a Muslim.
He chose to become a Christian and indeed has written convincingly to explain how he arrived at his choice and how important his Christian faith is to him.
His conversion, however, was a crime in Muslim eyes.
It's not tolerated.
In fact, it's the worst of all crimes that a Muslim can commit, worse than murder, that is to quit Islam.
So, according to Lutvach, Muslims look at this guy, he's a Muslim.
His father was a Muslim, and that's all it takes.
The American people increasingly don't know.
Stop and think about this now.
We're not talking about a local city councilman.
We're talking about the president of the United States.
Almost 20% of the American people think he's a Muslim.
A dwindling number believe he's not a Christian.
We're talking about, which he professes to be.
We're talking about the President of the United States here.
And there is obviously here, according to the Pew Center, confusion over the identity of Imam Obama.
I find this, I find it twilight zone-ish.
I mean, this is not Clinton's medical records not being released.
This is the president of the United States about whom the American people are increasingly confused.
By the way, and can you blame them?
They see a man in a state of denial over the state of the economy.
He's in a state of utter denial over the state of economy.
He went into Ohio the other day, this week, earlier, to talk about jobs and so forth, and they're not impressed.
There's a story here, one of the Ohio papers.
Hey, we don't need any more optics.
We don't need any more photo ops.
We need jobs.
We don't need mosques.
We need jobs.
There aren't any.
Jobless claims.
How in the hell can they still write unexpected?
Up to 500,000 new, first-time, jobless claims.
Not first-time, just 500,000.
And they even, now they're starting to say it's going to be even higher than that.
I mean, even the state control media, it's going to be even higher than that because they are now tabulating the number people have given up looking for work.
Meanwhile, meanwhile, we're told here the economy is showing more signs that the recovery is slowing.
That's Al Reuters.
Lots to do on the program today, folks.
Sit tight.
We're coming right back with much more Il Rush Bo right here behind the golden EIB microphone.
So what do we get?
Unemployment way up, 500,000 jobless claims, and there he is on television beating up Congress for not passing another stimulus bill that supposedly contains all kinds of tax breaks for small business investment.
They just sent out $26 billion, but that was for teachers.
And of course, we learned yesterday that the school districts are not hiring teachers with the money.
We know what's happening to money.
The money is going to shore up teacher pension funds.
Now, this is a guy who is just doubling down on failure.
He's there ripping into Congress, the Senate specifically, for not passing another.
I don't even know what stimulus bill he's talking about, small business jobs bill.
At some point, folks, well, we know he's the one that's in denial.
Jobs bills don't create jobs.
Businesses create jobs.
And government regulation, toying around with regulation is not the answer here.
This is just, this is frustrating as hell to watch this.
At this point, I don't care whether he's a neophyte, idiot, naive, ignorant, doesn't know what he's doing, or knows exactly what he's doing and is destroying the economy.
I don't care.
At this point, we're beyond that.
This is just utterly ridiculous.
It's amateur hour at the White House.
No matter how you slice this, 500,000 jobless claims, and we get another whine and moan today.
The only thing he didn't complain about was Bush.
Another whine and moan about another piece of legislation.
We have demonstrated, in fact, I got stories in the stack coming up here.
People are starting to admit Keynesian economics has failed.
There are more and more people admitting the big stimulus did not work.
And yet there he is, Barack Obama doubling down on it, wanting more legislation, more government control with silly, non-existent so-called incentives to small business.
He says he's been talking to a lot of entrepreneurs.
He wouldn't know an entrepreneur if he saw one.
He says he's been talking to a lot of entrepreneurs, and the entrepreneurs have been telling him that this bill in the Senate is exactly what they need.
That they need to be able to go out and make loans, get loans.
And the banks are not loaning to small business.
And his legislation is going to change that.
Well, why aren't they loaning or borrowing money?
Why aren't corporations spending the money they've got?
It's because of him.
His health care plan, his tax increases that are coming.
No small business owner in his right mind is going to borrow money right now to grow the business in this economy.
You can blame the banks for not lending.
You can blame Congress for not passing legislation.
But the bottom line is responsible small business owners are not going to borrow money to grow the business in most cases because there isn't growth.
There's no economic growth taking place whatsoever.
And there is more punishment coming.
These tax increases hit starting in January.
No need to think about it, child.
We do that for you.
Look, folks, I know you're going to expect Michelle My Bell and the kids to be going in and out of church every day with 20-pound Bibles being lugged around.
Obama might even walk into one now and then.
Let me ask you a question.
If you were Obama, why would you waste time going to church to pray to yourself?
Well, you can pray to yourself in the White House.
Why it's a waste of time to go to church when all you're doing is praying to yourself.
And the media is out there trying to make us believe that we're just a bunch of rubes.
We're so unsophisticated.
We just can't understand.
We do not have the ability to understand just how brilliant Obama is.
We just are not capable of being within even the aura of Obama.
You know who they ought to poll?
Go poll the people that work at NASA and ask them if they think Obama's a Muslim.
Because he turned NASA over to a Muslim outreach program.
The guy holds an Easter egg roll.
The White House website promoting the Easter egg roll does not mention Jesus or Christ.
It talks about environmentalism.
Obama says he's a Christian, but where's the evidence?
Well, he went to Reverend Wright's Church.
Yeah, but he says he didn't hear anything that was said in there.
And by the way, Reverend Wright's Church is a weird brand of Christianity.
Reverend Wright's Church, black theology, is what comes out of that pulpit, which is not exactly mainstream Christianity.
The New York Times joins the media chorus, all upset about this, Cheryl Gay Stolberg, in defining Obama misperceptions stick.
And she says here that the White House is struggling with the perception of otherness.
And even Obama's Democrat supporters are confused.
A finding suggests that nearly two years into the Obama presidency, the White House is struggling with the perception of otherness.
That candidate Obama sought so hard to overcome in part because of an aggressive misinformation campaign by critics.
And in part, some Democrat allies say because Obama's doing a poor job of communicating who he is and what he believes.
He doesn't think he should have to stoop so low as to explain himself to tell us who he is or what he believes.
Gods don't answer letters.
Mr. Kohat also said that the numbers reflected that Obama had not made religion a part of his public persona as much as he did during his presidential campaign, so much so that even his own supporters are confused.
We're talking about the President of the United States and a poll that shows even his own supporters are confused about who he is, about his religion.
The White House says the public and the press are not listening.
Since taking orifice, Obama's given six speeches, either from a church pulpit or addressing religion in public life, including an Easter prayer breakfast, where he offered a very personal and candid reflection of what the resurrection means to him, said Joshua Du Bois, who runs the White House Office of Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships.
Obama is a member of the Democrat Party.
And those of you who are Christians know full well the Democrat Party has you in its crosshairs.
The Democrat Party impugns, makes fun of, criticizes, and attacks Christians and Christianity and their faith and their belief.
Make fun of them.
They're comedians and movies and so forth and so on.
It's not outside the realm of comprehension that some people might think that Democrats have it in for Christians.
And if Obama is the lead Democrat, he might also harbor similar opinions.
Now, moving on to the mosque for just a second here, ladies and gentlemen, here's a good transition.
Howard Dean yesterday on our New York flagship, WABC, said.
We have to understand that it is a real affront to people who lost their lives, including Muslims.
That site doesn't belong to any particular religion.
I think a good, reasonable compromise could be worked out without violating the principle that people ought to be able to worship as they see fit.
I think another site would be a better idea.
So another Democrat, a former head of the Democrat National Committee, in fact, off the reservation, put the mosque somewhere else, something else in his pew poll.
And I want to re-emphasize, over 50% of the people in this poll say, hey, look, I don't care.
You put a mosque two blocks from my house.
Fine and dandy.
Just don't put it at the World Trade Center.
Don't put it at ground zero.
There is no anti-Muslim bigotry in this.
Nobody wants to deny anybody their religious belief or freedom except the left.
The left routinely wants to impinge upon Christians and their practice of their faith.
But the very people who oppose the mosque being built at ground zero say, fine, two blocks from my house, I don't care, but don't put it at ground zero.
The developers behind the Islamic Center planned for a site near ground zero will not rule out accepting financing from the Mideast, including from Saudi Arabia and Iran, as they begin searching for $100 million needed to build the project.
You know how much money they've raised for this so far?
I read this morning $16,000.
What are we even talking about here?
$100 million for this?
I also found out this morning there's a mosque four or five blocks away.
And that is part of the story of Muslims saying, there's no mosques in this area of town where we can go worship.
There are.
I saw a Google map earlier today of all the mosques throughout the New York City area.
Many, many, many, many mosques.
But now you've got the Rawfgah, the Imam, it's going over and talking to the Iranians of Saudi Arabia.
We're paying for this.
We're paying him.
Wait, I confuse $16,000.
$16,000 is how much we've spent in sending him as an envoy over there.
State Department sending him Hillary.
But the amount of money the Imam has raised for his mosque is not much.
I mean, they're trying to get $100 million for this.
And he's going to get it from Saudi Arabia.
And if he has to get it, take it from Iran, he will.
Now, this is not tone deafness.
This is not.
I mean, this is thumb in the eye stuff, which is exactly what the whole project is.
And this is, I think, evidence of it.
The religious organization and the development company behind the center declined to say how much of the $100 million needed to build the facility has already been raised.
The number is $18,000.
And that's from the Cordoba people from their 2008-990 form, 18 grand.
By the way, has Obama ever called Muslims bitter clingers?
Well, he's called Christians bitter clingers.
He did that in San Francisco.
I'm just throwing these things out here, folks, because if people are questioning his Christianity, some think he's a Muslim.
I'm just saying there might be reasons why some people think this.
And the Cordoba Project's a 5013C charity, 501c3, and they've got a reporting 18 grand that they have.
Here's the New York Times piece on the Cheryl Gay Stolberg piece of Obama and Muslim.
But Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, said AIDS did work hard to push back against misinformation in a news media environment in which the tweets of discredited rabble rousers have as much credence to many as the pronouncements of the paper of record.
Rabble rousers.
Now think of that.
Rabble rousers having as much credibility as the always honest and patriotic New York Times.
What is the world coming to?
People are believing what they tweet and what they read on Facebook more than they're believing the New York Times.
The media is in utter shock and panic because they live with the daily fantasy and belief that they have the ability to shape and form public opinion to protect Obama, and they're in full protection mode today.
But they're being undermined when the Imam heads out the fundraise and won't rule out taking money from Saudi Arabia or even Iran.
Well, yeah, we'll look at all available options within the United States to start.
We're hoping to fund this predominantly from domestic donors.
That can be everything from institutions all the way down to personal contributors.
That's Oz Sultan, spokesman for the center now called PARC 51.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, of course, has called for an investigation into the funding of those who oppose it.
So she got a little flack for that.
So yesterday she said, okay, well, let's investigate the funding of those who support it.
So she wants to investigate all these people.
Hey, Nancy, you want to investigate the Iranians?
You want to investigate the Anti-Defamation League?
You want to investigate the 9-11 families.
You basically want to, in a Stalinistic move, investigate the American people, essentially.
Soft tyranny.
It's amazing to witness all this in the midst of a plummeting economy, and the White House wonders why they've got problems.
They wonder why people don't trust them, why they don't like the president, why his approval numbers are plummeting.
The economy is sinking fast.
There's no end in sight.
Obama's dumbling down on all the things that have caused it to plunge.
And meanwhile, seems more focused on making sure a mosque gets built at ground zero than he is on his own country's economy.
Yeah, 27, 28, 29, let's go back September 2008.
On this week, with George Stephanopoulos, before Christiana Monport took it over, Stephanopoulos said to Senator Barack Obama, the McCain campaign has never suggested you have Muslim connections.
John McCain said that that's wrong.
Well, look, listen, you and I both know that the minute that Governor Palin was forced to talk about her daughter, I immediately said, that's off limits.
John McCain said the same thing about questioning your faith.
And what was the first thing the McCain campaign went out and did?
said, look, these liberal blogs that support Obama are out there attacking Governor Palin.
Let's not play games.
What I was suggesting, you are absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith, and you're absolutely right that that is not my Christian faith.
Yeah, that's Obama, Senator Obama, September 2008 this week with George Stephanopoulos.
You're absolutely right.
John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith.
You're absolutely right that he's not come.
And Stephanopoulos said, Christian faith, Christian faith.
Obama said, yeah, yeah, my Christian faith.
No, we're not making a big deal of it.
I mean, just people are wondering in the media why Americans are concerned about who the guy is.
And they're saying that they're learning from television that they think he's a Muslim.
Again, I say, what's wrong with being a Muslim?
Why is everybody acting like that's some sort of big problem?
Here's what I heard Obama railing about this morning during a profit center time out here about this jobs bill that he says will not add a dime to the deficit.
We need another jobs bill, small business jobs bill.
We got two sound bites of what that sounded like.
For the last several months, I have been urging Congress to pass a jobs bill that will do two big things for small businesses.
Cut their taxes and make loans more available.
This legislation is fully paid for and will not add one single dime to our deficit.
I have no idea what he's talking about.
What jobs bill is this?
All I know is this.
When he talks about small business, substitute something for it.
$250,000 a year.
And this is because that's small businesses.
We've been through this.
They file their business taxes and their personal return as a subchapter S, double whammy.
But for several months, I've been urging Congress to pass a jobs bill.
That'll do two things.
We're 18, 20 months into this now.
We've had, I don't know how many jobs bills.
We don't have any jobs.
We're continuing to hemorrhage jobs.
And all this guy can do is talk about another jobs bill.
Here's the second soundbite.
This is a bill that makes sense.
And normally we would expect Democrats and Republicans to join together.
Unfortunately, a partisan minority in the Senate so far has refused to allow this jobs bill to come up for a vote.
Now, I recognize that there are times when Democrats and Republicans have legitimate differences rooted in different views about what's best for this country.
There are times when good people disagree in good faith.
But this is not one of those times.
Well, I have no idea what he's talking about.
Some jobs bill.
All I know is that if he gets it, it ain't going to matter, Hill of Beans.
We've already had jobs bill after jobs bill after jobs bill.
We're hemorrhaging jobs.
Quick phone call, Jeff in Indianapolis.
You're first today.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Thanks for taking my call, Rush.
Appreciate it.
Hey, I think the media in this case is really admitting their own failure that they have not vetted this guy.
And I know you have that one soundbite from Tom Brokoff from right after the inauguration saying that they really don't know who this guy is.
I mean, he's got two books out.
One of them called Dreams of My Father.
Does anybody in the media know what the dreams of his father actually are?
So it's almost laughable to me because they're admitting that they failed, that they don't know who this guy is.
And now they're panicking that the public has no idea if he's a Muslim or a Christian.
You may be right.
You may have a point that the media doesn't know who he is and that they're panicking because they can't convince the American people that he's not a Muslim.
I'm not sure they know, but you're not sure they know.
I think they do.
You say they didn't vet the guy, and they may not have.
He represents something that they desperately think the country has needed.
So maybe you're right.
They haven't looked into it, and maybe they're scared to death of what they would find.
Regardless, this is unbelievable.
We are talking about the President of the United States, who every day becomes a bigger mystery.
A brief break coming up here at the top of the hour.
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