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Aug. 19, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:14
August 19, 2010, Thursday, Hour #3
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Time Text
The views expressed by the host on this show documented to be almost always right 99.6% of the time.
And I am your beloved host, the all-knowing, all-caring, all-sensing, all-feeling, all-concerned, Maha Rushi.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program 800-282-2882 and the email address illrushball at eibnet.com.
So, Bill Clinton was the first black president, and that was a compliment, and Clinton never denied it, by the way.
What's wrong with saying that Imam Obama is the first Muslim president?
Well, I mean, what's wrong with that?
Now, about this USA Today story, where they're thinking now, maybe getting rid of the home mortgage interest deduction, because it's costing the government too much money.
Let's put this in proper context.
The Democrats and Imam Obama want to bail out all of those who are not paying their mortgages.
The rumor that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are going to forgive all of those underwater mortgages.
And the regime has put forth a number of programs to help people with their mortgage.
They haven't worked, but I mean, they've put them out there.
So the regime wants to bail out all of those who don't pay their mortgages, while at the same time, they want to remove the tax deduction from those of you who are paying your mortgage.
And this is exactly how they work.
They put impediments and obstacles in the way of the achievers.
They remove obstacles and impediments to dependence.
So if they want to bail out people who are not paying their mortgages and take away the mortgage tax deduction, why would anybody ever make another mortgage payment?
Why?
The regime's going to bail you out if you don't.
And if you do, you're going to lose your tax break.
What a bunch of people.
Now, here's another step I understand this.
Bill Kristol said that we should shut up about Charles Wrangell.
Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, says that we should shut up about the mosque.
Lindsey Gramnesty says that we should shut up about illegal immigration.
Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana, says that we should shut up about the social issues.
And Mitch Daniels isn't alone.
Almost every ruling class Republican tells us we need to shut up about the social issues and forget them.
So I guess, folks, we should just shut up.
Just shut up and leave everything to the politicians to fix what they've made a mess of.
I mean, they've made the mess.
Let's just, we'll shut up.
We're being told to shut up.
Don't talk about the mosque.
Don't talk about Wrangell.
Don't talk about, don't talk about illegal immigrants or the immigration.
Don't talk about, and don't talk about Muslims and Obama.
Don't talk about that.
Don't talk about the social issues.
We'll just shut up and let them fix everything.
Dan Lothian, CNN, preemptive story on Obama's sixth vacation.
Criticism likely to follow Obama on upcoming vacation.
See this.
Preempt it before it happens.
Admit the problem, and then have you ever, I was, this struck me the other night, and it struck me often.
It struck me in a different way, though.
I've said it before, but somehow it reared its thought here, reared its head again.
When I watch CNN, and when I watch MSNBC, we're watching networks that no longer have any audience to speak of.
I mean, if you look at the country as a whole, the MSNBC audience could be put in a thimble, and CNNs could be put on the head of a pin compared to the country at large.
Newsweek was sold for a dollar, and all the big names at Newsweek are leaving.
The only one left is Howard Feynman.
The New York Times circulation is down.
Same thing, Washington Post, USA Today, LA Times, they're all down.
When I watch these networks, or when I read Cheryl Gay Stallberg's piece today on the panic that set in, both at the New York Times and at the White House, over the numbers of people think Obama's a Muslim, it just struck me again.
They have no connection with you or anybody else outside of their realm of media.
The American people are not their audience.
When you turn on MSNBC and watch anything on that network, you get the sense that they're doing that show not for an audience, but for fellow journalists and for people in the White House and for elected Democrats in Congress.
That's their audience.
That's who they're doing their shows for.
Same thing, CNN.
Same thing, New York Times.
There is really a gulf.
The media in this country really do look at the people of this country as an enemy.
Not just, we're not just a bunch of rubes, folks.
We're not just a bunch of unsophisticated Neanderthals, but we are that to them.
But we're now actually the enemy.
When they get this poll from Pew that says the number of people that believe Obama is a Christian is shrinking, the number of people who think he's a Muslim is increasing.
They do not look at the media themselves for maybe an explanation.
They don't look at the White House or Obama to try to find an explanation for this.
They knee-jerk conclude that we are a bunch of imbeciles or reactionaries or racists, bigots, or what have you.
I think the divide between media and public is as stark as it has ever been.
Stop and think about this.
The relationship that the media has with the people of this country is adversarial.
It used to be that their relationship that was adversarial was with people in power.
It used to be that people in power were those that had to be examined, had to be accountable.
But now, since they're leftists, they're not really media people, they're leftists first, we know that.
We are the enemy.
We are a bigger enemy than Iranian nukes.
We are a bigger enemy than Middle East peace.
The American people, particularly American conservatives, but I think the American people at large, you read one of these newspapers, read Cheryl Gay Stolberg's piece today.
She's not writing it for you.
She's not writing it to inform you.
New York Times is not concerned with informing you.
Neither is MSNBC concerned with informing you.
When F. Chuck Todd does his stand-up at the White House, F. Chuck Todd is talking to other White House reporters who he hopes are watching his work and making sure that they approve of what he's saying.
He's also hoping they're watching in the White House and approving what he's saying.
And when Chip Reed of CBS does the same thing, the same thing is happening.
And whoever the ABC White House corresponds, whenever that guy goes and does his stand-up of the White House, he's thinking of all the other correspondents at the other networks and the White House and making sure they approve of what he or she's saying, not us.
So we have this, these two issues, this mosque business.
What is it?
68% of the American people oppose the mosque being built there.
We have this what religion is Obama story.
In both of these, the media profess not to understand the reasons we think what we think.
And they thus assign the reasons that we have to bigotry or a lack of sophistication or ignorance or what have you.
It really just, it's kind of striking me more profoundly than it ever has.
I think the key word is adversarial because they're just Democrats.
They're just leftists.
And when they fail to persuade us, when they fail to control us, when they fail to properly affect our opinions, then they get mad at us.
Not at themselves.
MSNBC has one audience member they care about, and that's Barack Obama.
They exist to please him and to do his bidding.
Everything else is a distraction.
MSNBC, New York Times, CNN, ABC, doesn't matter, the professional left, but Robert Gibbs thinks need to be drug tested.
Everywhere it is a battle between them, the professional left, whether they're professors or media people, politicians, versus us, the amateur right.
They're the professionals.
We are the rank amateurs.
The media used to claim that their job was to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.
It's just the opposite now.
The media exists to comfort the comfortable and to make them even more comfortable, to please them, to promote them.
So when things aren't going well for the regime, then of course there's got to be an explanation for it.
It can't be that the regime is bumbling around making all kinds of mistakes and doing stupid things.
It has to be that we amateurs just don't get it.
El Rush Ball serving humanity.
We'll be back.
Don't go away.
No, I have not forgotten.
I'm going to get to the St. Louis Small Business OSHA story.
I'm going to get to it.
I have a companion story to go along with it today.
And we'll get to it before the program comes to a screeching halt.
First, I promised it yesterday, and it's going to happen today.
I promised yesterday it would happen today.
It's going to happen today.
Here's Judy in Winslow, Arizona.
Winslow, Arizona.
Great to have you on the program.
Ditto, Rush.
Glad to be on your program.
Thank you.
Been calling, trying to get through for a week.
I wanted to talk to you about Obama and his jobs programs.
If he would just let it, you know, I don't know about the other states, but the state of Arizona, they have what they call a retire-rehire program.
You can retire tonight, don't even clean out your desk, and come back in in the morning, and then you're not only getting your salary, but you're also getting your pension.
So you're getting paid twice for the same job.
We have heard this.
We have heard that this was something similar that was happening during the census hires.
The same thing, and it was being done to pad the employment, unemployment numbers.
The double dipping of federal and state employees.
Yes, we are well aware of that.
Thanks very much for that update, Judy.
This is Eric in Sutton, Nebraska.
You're next on the Rush Lindbaugh program.
Hi.
Hi.
I wanted to comment about what the governor said.
Our state has to cough up between $520 and $760 million for Medicaid funding for the health care plan.
Wait, start at the beginning here.
You're mad at your governor?
No, our governor's mad at the president.
Well, who isn't?
What's your governor mad at the president about?
See, this is Medicaid funding we have to cough up with for next year's budget.
Oh!
Well, everybody knew that was coming.
That's how Obama gets to this fiction that his health care bill is reducing costs.
He's ramping up the state's required spending on Medicare and Medicaid.
Did your governor just now figure that out?
Yeah.
Well, I think he knew it was coming, but he didn't.
Yes, I think he knew it was coming.
I think all these governors knew it was coming.
But he was mad.
He said, last time he checked, this is still the United States, and he didn't want to be dictated by the president, you know.
What a day!
What a day.
The governor of Nebraska says that's still the United States.
It's still the United States, and we're not going to be dictated to by the president.
You know, in Colorado, they are fast-tracking an illegal immigration bill that's almost a dead ringer for Arizonas.
I mean, there's some states where this issue is devastating the state that they're looking at Washington and saying, you sue us too.
People are throwing down the gauntlet.
Wait till these other governors figure out who are already broke.
Their deficits are already unmanageable.
And wait till they learn what the federal government, the regime has for them in store for them with the increased Medicare spending.
Okay, here's the small business story.
St. Louis Post Dispatch on Wednesday, small business owner stands up to government.
It's a great example here of your government working for you.
The same government that wants to be in charge of your health care and your housing and your student loans and your internet, your transportation, your food, your telephone.
Gary Heffernan has been a truck, a tuck pointer, sorry.
Gary Heffernan has been a tuck pointer for 35 years.
For the last 20 years, he's been in business for himself.
He operates Heff's Tuck Pointing out of his home in South St. Louis.
His is a small company, two employees, himself and his nephew.
But it's a successful operation.
Two employees.
We stay busy.
We have about all the work we can handle, and it's all referrals, Heffernan told a St. Louis Post to scratch.
It's almost all residential work.
The occasional commercial job is usually a small storefront business.
In April, Heffernan and his nephew were working on a house.
They had just finished rebuilding the chimney.
His nephew was finishing up the job when Heffernan left to bid a job in West County.
While he was looking at that prospective new job, he got a call from his nephew.
There was some kind of a problem with an inspector.
Heffernan returned to the site and found that an inspector for OSHA had shut down his site.
In other words, the inspector, a she had told Heffernan's nephew to stop working.
Hefferden was taken aback.
I've been tuck pointing for 35 years.
I've never seen an OSHA inspector before.
He said the inspector had written several citations.
The first thing she told him was that his scaffold wasn't level.
He said he pulled out his level and put it on the scaffold to show that the scaffold was level.
He said the inspector then wrote down the brand name of the level as if there might be something wrong with his equipment.
Truth is, you could have put a horse on that scaffold, Hefferden said.
He said he offered to let the inspector walk on the scaffold, but she declined and said she was afraid of heights.
The inspector told him his nephew needed a helmet and a safety harness.
Well, we have safety harnesses.
If the job requires it, we wear them, Hefferden said.
But my nephew was only about 11 feet off the ground.
I told the inspector I didn't know what I was supposed to attach the harness to.
She told me I could rent a lift and run the main pole above the chimney and have the safety line from that hooked to my nephew.
Well, a lift costs about $750 a day.
It would make no sense.
Eventually, the inspector left.
Three months later, in the middle of July, Hefferden received notice in the mail that he had been cited for three violations.
He had not developed, implemented a hazard communications program for employees.
He has one using such products as, but not limited to, Portland cement, sand, Solomon Colors, concentrated mortar, miracle mortar lock type S Mason's lime.
Nor did he maintain an inventory list of these items.
That fine, $1,050.
This goes on, so stick with me.
The saga continues.
A man, a legend, a way of life.
El Rushball mined over chatter.
All right, back to St. Louis.
And the sad tale of Mr. Heffernan, Gary Hefferdan, and his tuck-pointing business.
He was cited three times.
The first site was he had not developed, implemented a hazard communications program for employees.
He has one.
Engaged in tuck point operations using such products as but not limited to Portland cement, sand, Solomon Colors concentrated mortar, and Miracle Morta Lock Type S, Mason's Lime.
Nor did he maintain an inventory list of these items.
That fine, $1,050.
The second violation was employees, there's only one, were not protected by protective helmets while working in areas where there was a possible danger of head injury from impact or from falling or flying objects or from electrical shock and burns.
That fine also $1,050.
Finally, the employees were not protected by guardrail systems, safety net systems, or personal fall arrest systems.
That fine, $1,500.
Heff's tuck-pointing is a successful business.
35 years he'd been out there.
Not one visit ever from OSHA.
But Gary Heffernan can't afford $3,600 in fines.
I got good credit.
I could borrow the money, but this is ridiculous.
I'm very safety conscious.
Also, my insurance agent said that my rates for workman's comp might go up if I have these violations.
So Heffernan requested a meeting to contest the violations.
He said that he spoke with an OSHA compliance officer who offered to drop the first violation and reduce the fines of the other two by 40%.
Heffernan refused the offer.
He's now requested a formal hearing.
The reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch called the St. Louis OSHA office and spoke with William McDonald, the agency's area director.
He said he couldn't discuss specifics because the case was being contested.
I asked him, could you tell me how the OSHA inspector got on the case in the first place?
Well, generally speaking, somebody calls.
We had a referral here.
I can't say much beyond that.
Who would refer?
There's one employee, the guy's nephew.
So who's the ratfink here?
Who's the ratfink?
Some neighbor inside just.
Snirdly, let's not even go down that road.
Inside job.
The nephew turning in his uncle.
So what happens next?
If an informal conference doesn't resolve the problem, the case gets referred to an administrative judge.
The great majority of cases get worked out before there's an actual hearing.
Perhaps this one will get worked out, but at the moment, Heffernan seems determined to fight it all away, and he has a safety record with which it's hard to argue.
So that's the Obama-OSHA.
Tuck point business, 35 years, no problems, no violations, and now fines that are unaffordable for a job being done 11 feet off the ground.
The companion story from the Wall Street Journal, and it's actually from yesterday, small firms see the bulk of job losses.
This goes along with the unemployment news.
The bulk of job losses at the end of last year were concentrated in the smallest firms, underscoring how small businesses are lagging in the economic recovery.
Damn it, there is no recovery.
Businesses with fewer than 50 employees encountered for 61.8% of all job cuts in the private sector in the fourth quarter.
The Labor Department reported yesterday, while they created 54.1% of new jobs, small companies employ roughly 29% of all workers.
The numbers represent a reversal of the situation a year earlier.
Small businesses made up a larger share of jobs added than jobs lost.
But that was last year.
This is this year.
This is Obamaville, Imam Obama, Hoover, or Barack Hoover, Obama.
Back to the Pollens to Iowa City, Iowa.
Paul, welcome to the EIB Network, sir.
It's great to have you here.
Thanks for taking my call, Rush.
You bet.
I was telling Serbia, I remember an interview, a one-on-one interview with Brian Williams on NBC.
And I can't tell you when it was, maybe last December, maybe in the fall.
Yeah.
But Brian had presented a question, and Obama's answer right off the top of his tongue was, you know, Brian, my Muslim faith tells me.
And Brian cut him off and said, wait a minute.
He says, you mean your Christian faith, don't you?
And he goes, oh, yeah, yeah, that's right, my Christian faith.
And then it continued.
Wait a minute now.
Are you sure?
Live TV.
Live TV, I watched it.
So that's the second instance of this?
Yeah.
And I can't tell you what it was because I don't really watch his interview.
Well, no, it happened with George Stephanopoulos.
No, this is Brian Williams.
I saw Brian Williams cut him off and say, you mean your Christian faith.
What?
What color hair does Brian Williams have?
What's that?
What color hair does Brian Williams have?
Dark hair, brown hair.
Well, it's sort of blondish.
Yeah, I know Brian Williams.
I'm wondering if you're confusing Brian Williams with Stephanopoulos.
I can't believe this happened twice.
NBC.
I know it.
I jumped up off the sofa and I said, see, I knew he's Muslim.
What time of day was this?
Well, I couldn't tell you, Rush.
I didn't watch the whole thing, but I caught that part of it.
Well, I'm just being a nitpicker here because we played an audio soundbite today of George Stephanopoulos correcting Obama when Stephanopoulos.
I watched it on television.
NBC.
Well, Stephanopoulos was live, too.
But he was ABC Good Morning America.
No, no, this was, no, this was Brian Williams for sure, NBC.
We're going to have to double-check it.
Check it back.
And I can't tell you.
I'm sure he was president by this time, but I just remember that to this day.
And now all this Muslim stuff comes up.
And I kind of go, see, I told you so.
Well, whether is Brian.
I don't know.
Okay.
Well, I know I'm right.
It's this week, but the question is, did he do it?
Was there a second time?
How can you confirm that there wasn't a second time?
Were you.
Oh, well, wait a minute now.
Snerdley, you can't Google Brian Williams and Muslim faith.
Google would scrub it more than...
They didn't scrub it with Steffi?
Okay.
Well, look, I just, I'm being precise here because we know there's one time, and we played the audio today.
It's 42-second audio, and we have to go through about 35 seconds to get to the payoff.
But Obama does say, my Muslim faith teaches me, and Obama says, Christian faith, Christian.
Yeah, right, right, right.
My Christian faith.
If it happened with Brian Williams, that makes twice that it has happened.
All right, a brief timeout.
We'll take it.
We'll come back and continue as though nothing went wrong right after this.
Hey, by the way, Ed, standby audio soundbites 16 and 17, didn't you, Harry?
Are we having fun out there yet, folks?
Get this.
From the Boston Globe, Bush t-shirts are outselling Obama t-shirts in Martha's Vineyard.
A story sorrowfully done by Milton Valencia of the Boston Globe.
One barometer of the plunge in excitement.
Obama's arrival has been the sale of Obama-themed t-shirts, which designers had been banking on after the craze of last year.
Clothing labeled with the president's name sold by the thousands, helping to salvage a tough economic year for the island residents.
But this year's t-shirt sales are much less brisk, merchants say.
Last year, Obama gave you goosebumps, but I don't think you're going to see that this year.
Said Alex McCluskey, co-owner of the locker room.
They sold more than 4,000 I vacationed with Obama t-shirts last year.
So far this year, he said, the hot item is t-shirts of former President Bush asking, Miss Me Yet.
Bush Miss Me Yet t-shirts outselling Obama t-shirts on, wait for it, Martha's Vineyard.
You know, every time they say Obama's going on vacation, they always say, and Bush did too, Bush did it too.
The difference is Bush went home.
Bush went home to a little shack in Crawford, Texas, and Bush was always president when he was on vacation.
Obama has yet to start being president.
Well, in one way of looking at it, here's Dingy Harry.
I've had this in the roster for a couple of days.
It's time to use this.
Harry Reid, then and now on Anchor Babies.
He's out there saying, these Republicans, I don't know how any Hispanic could ever vote for a Republican.
Why, they want to change the 14th Amendment.
Let's go back to 1993.
On the Senate floor, Senator Harry Reid said this about birthright citizenship.
If making it easy to be an illegal alien isn't enough, how about offering a reward for being an illegal immigrant?
No sane country would do that, right?
Guess again.
If you break our laws by entering this country without permission and give birth to a child, we reward that child with U.S. citizenship and guarantee a full access to all public and social services this society provides.
And that's a lot of services.
Is it any wonder that two-thirds of the babies born at taxpayer expensive county-run hospitals in Los Angeles are born to illegal alien mothers?
Harry Reid, 1993, 17 years ago.
Boy, this guy sounds like he's a bigot, doesn't he?
I mean, he sounds like he really has a prejudice against illegals.
And he sounds like he really doesn't like the kids of illegals.
That's Harry Reid, a Democrat.
All kindness, all patience, all tolerance, all compassion.
He's really ticked off.
Why, look at all the services they get in L.A. and look at, like, it's citizenship.
We're paying them to be illegal.
He doesn't like it at all.
No sane country would do it, Dingy Harry said 17 years ago.
No sane country would do this.
Here he is, August 3rd of this year.
They purposely chose an objective standard of citizenship, birth, that was not subject to politics.
Reconstruction leaders established a firm, sound principle.
To be an American citizen, you don't have to please a majority.
You just have to be born here.
So he went on to say about two Republican senators.
They're either taking leave of their senses or their principles.
A week later in Las Vegas, Dingy Harry said this.
I don't know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican.
Okay?
Do I need to say more?
That's Dingy Harry.
17 years ago, he sounded like you and me.
In fact, he sounded a little angrier than you and I are about this.
And no sane country would do it.
Now, of course, I don't know what's changed.
Well, Harry Reid says he apologized in 2006 for his comments.
Yes.
A low point in my legislative career.
I went on to tell the assembled senators his wife had chastised him for the move.
Can't believe you've done it.
But he did it nevertheless.
The point is that, you know, pure politics.
Everything's politics, and they always lie.
That's all you have to take from it.
Pat in Northern New Jersey.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Rush an honor, pleasure, and privilege, sir.
Thank you, sir, very much.
I just wanted to run this theory by you.
I've concluded that President Obama realizes that he can't win re-election in 2012.
So what he's done, and I think he knew it all along, and so he went, got his health care bill through.
He's going to get everything he can through that he hasn't gotten through between the elections and January.
And then he's going to step aside, let Hillary run, hoping that she can run more to the center as if she'll take some of the stuff back that he put into place, but try to somehow win re-election.
And then, you know, then she can run, you know, basically unopposed on their side.
And that's why he's having all these parties and playing golf and doing having fun because he wants to go off and have fun while he's in office.
Well, it does make you wonder.
It really is.
I think I got this one.
Well, you might.
It does make you wonder.
But then on the other side, I would doubt, sir, that you have run into an ego like Obama's.
I mean, I told a joke earlier, but it's really not a joke.
Why would you waste, if you're Obama, why would you waste time going to church to pray to yourself?
We'll be back.
Don't go away.
Frankly, I don't think Obama's going to give up being president without the perks alone.
I just.
Anyway, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, or enter that mosque when we come to it.
Today's iPad winner, Brent N of Grand Rapids, Michigan, facebook.com/slash rush limbaugh.
We've got five iPads to give away yet.
A drawing every Monday, Wednesday, Friday through August 30th.
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