This commercial breaks are going by faster than they've ever gone in my entire star-studded broadcast career.
Which is not a bad thing.
I mean, don't misunderstand.
I'm just saying it's strange.
Anyway, great to have you back, folks.
Rush Limbaugh and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, the one and only Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, the largest free education institution known to exist in the free or oppressed world.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882.
The email address, El Rushbo at EIBneck.com, the Ground Zero Hamask developer, the Imam Sahib Skyhook Raouf, says that the Hamas could accommodate 1,000 worshipers.
1,000 worshipers.
How many pilots?
Did you say?
Snurdly, why do you, this is why these people do not have IFBs or microphones so that you can hear them.
Why would I, I mean, I wasn't even thinking, though, how many pilots?
Regardless of the numbers, it feels like a recession.
The Associated Press finally has to admit what we have known all along.
There is no recovery, and there never was.
We have the, oh, man, they tried to make it exciting.
Only 473,000 jobless claims this week, as opposed to 500,000 last week.
They tried to make it sound positive, but they're not even buying their own line of BS at the AP anymore.
Businesses are ordering fewer goods.
Home sales are the slowest in decades.
Jobs are scarce and unemployment claims are rising.
Perhaps most worrisome, manufacturing activity, which had been one of the economy's few bright spots, is faltering.
How many people believe that?
That manufacturing had been one of the few bright spots.
Most people believe that we've lost manufacturing.
It's all gone elsewhere because of NAFTA.
The odds of a double dip are rising and uncomfortably high, said Mark Zendi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, referring to the possibility.
The nation will tip back into recession.
Nothing else can go wrong.
There's no cushion left, he said.
On Wednesday, the government offered a latest dose of grim news about the economic recovery.
Companies cut back last month on their investments in equipment and machines, and Americans bought new homes at the weakest pace in nearly 50 years.
Earlier this week came news that sales of previously occupied homes fell last month to the lowest level.
Why buy one when you just move in?
I mean, the homeless is just moving into these things, squatters and so forth.
Why buy one?
The economy has grown for a full year now, many experts believe the recession technically ended in July of 2009.
But the pace of expansion has slowed significantly in the past six months.
There hasn't been any expansion.
You see, this is another example.
They can write this.
They can have their slaves report it.
The average American knows there is no recovery and there is no expansion.
And the American people are not surprised when any of this economic news is released.
The only people surprised are the experts.
Economists are predicting the government will announce today the economy grew from April to June even more slowly than previously thought at an annual rate below 2%, whatever they report is going to be revised down after everybody's forgotten the original number.
Of course, for most Americans, the numbers are strictly academic.
Well, AP finally getting to the nub of it.
For Tim Reardon, a sales executive of a small Massachusetts company installs kitchen counters and floors.
August is shaping up to be the worst month of business in 11 years.
His company cut a third of its staff, is placing factory orders a job at a time.
You definitely watch the pennies a little closer, everything from advertising to tools, he said.
It's feeling like another recession.
For the average household, whether the economy is growing slightly or not at all may not even matter.
This truth from AP: two gauges that matter more are the unemployment rate, stuck at 9.5%, and home values, which are down about 30% from their peak four years ago.
William Dunkelberg, economics professor, Temple University School of Business and Management, and the chief economist of the national, these people have more words in their titles than dollars that they make.
William Dunkelberg, economics professor, Temple University School of Business and Management, and chief economist of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, said, who cares if it's a second recession or double dip?
Either way, things are not going well.
He's right.
Dunkelberg's right.
Don't misunderstand.
Housing has never fully recovered from the recession.
Builders have been forced to compete with foreclosed properties offered at sharply lower prices.
So it's a truth that they, at least today, can't ignore.
Maybe they're just in bad moods, and next week they'll hop back on the positive gravy train.
But you can see how economists will be confused.
Recovery and recession both start with the letter R.
Well, you have to give them credit.
Housing prices peaked.
Did you hear that?
Housing prices peaked four years ago.
Now, what else happened four years ago?
Four years ago is about when the Democrats began to talk down the economy so they could win in November of 2006.
Four years ago is when the Democrat Party started launching into this assault on an economy where 4.7% was the unemployment number, where economic growth was still happening, and they were hell bit on creating in people's minds a depression if they could, not just a recession.
And lo and behold, housing prices peaked at that time.
Andrew Breitbart's big piece website has a story here from Andrea Lafferty.
We've heard this happening a lot, but it happened again at the rallies for the mosque on Sunday in New York.
She writes, On Sunday, I was honored to be a speaker at the rally against building the Hamask at Ground Zero, put on by the coalition to honor Ground Zero.
As the rally concluded, thousands of participants marched the one block from the rally site to the actual site of Ground Zero.
I noticed a guy in a black shirt with a phone camera aggressively questioning and haranguing a gentleman with the sign, no Sharia here.
He was very aggressive, this guy.
It was disrespectful, condescending.
Apparently, he didn't like the gentleman's answers about Sharia and pushed the point.
Why do you feel threatened?
What are you afraid of?
Why can't you answer my questions?
Ms. Lafferty writes, my instincts told me to document the scene.
I took out my camera.
I originally thought he was a supporter of the mosque.
They had gathered in smaller numbers a few blocks away.
Or he was some kind of fringe reporter for a small, even fringier leftist paper.
When I challenged the guy in the black shirt, asking him to tell me what media he worked for, he refused to answer.
He walked away.
But there was a cameraman standing nearby watching the scene play out.
When I asked, he said he worked for ABC News.
I then asked if the man in the black shirt was with him.
The ABC cameraman said yes.
Sure enough, a few blocks away, I observed the man in the black shirt getting into an ABC News truck and putting on the sound equipment.
When he saw me with my camera, he attempted to hide.
At that time, it became clear the man in the black shirt was an employee of ABC News.
The ABC cameraman also witnessed his colleague's aggressive behavior, did nothing to stop him.
Clearly, the ABC employee's role at the rally was to provoke a confrontation with participants so that ABC News cameras could record it and then use the footage.
The ABC employee was literally making news.
They have an ABC guy dressed up like a protester.
There's a picture of him here, long-haired that's been cut, maggot-infested, dope-smoking FM type.
And he's got a cell phone camera.
Nothing to identify himself as a member of the press.
He's engaging some guy carrying a sign in conversation and trying to provoke this guy into taking action that would look bad on television.
Trying to make himself out just to be an average protester.
When in fact, he was a so-called journalist at ABC.
ABC has been known to try things like this.
What was a supermarket chain in Georgia where they sent some people in there as disguised as customers?
King food, yeah.
They tried to go into the supermarket and create all kinds of havoc as customers when, in fact, they were undercover ABC journalists.
So there was nothing going on until they showed up, but they tried to create a scene and report it as though it was spontaneous.
And this is exactly what they were doing in the protests around the mosque area on Sunday.
Used to be the journalists would tell you, hi, I'm out to screw you from ABC News.
Now they just show up looking like you or trying to look like you and to get you to act in such a way as who you otherwise wouldn't if they hadn't approached you and then do a news story on what a complete wacko and creep you are.
Standard, standard drive-by media technique.
Major Garrett has announced he's leaving the Fox News channel.
He's going back to print.
He's going to work for the National Journal.
The National Journal publishes the hotline, a couple of other things.
And everybody in Washington is stunned.
He just got the primo chair in the White House briefing room because Fox News just got it.
That's a Herald, a Herald's on it, the Helen Thomas chair.
And he's leaving.
He used to be an AP, Major Garrett did, and he quit that.
It's Fox.
I think before Fox, he was at CNN.
Somewhere there, maybe MSNBC, whatever he ends up with Fox, now he wants to go to the print publication.
And they're stunned.
I don't want to be a reporter who goes on cable to talk about anything I haven't reported on specifically.
If I reported something, written something, Fox, CNN, MSNBC, or BBC deems it important and wants to talk about it, I'm happy to talk about it.
But that's it.
I have no interest in being on television simply to be on television.
Do you know how rare that is?
That is abnormally rare.
Fox did not get Helen's chair.
They just got moved to the front row.
Okay.
I thought they got Helen's chair.
Probably safer for Fox that they didn't get Helen's chair.
This is rare for somebody to say, I don't want to be on TV just to be on TV.
Everybody wants to be on TV just to be on TV.
Major Garrett wants to go back to print the politico of the story today.
Democrats privately fear house prospects worsening.
It's a fun read from the politico.
There's panic setting in.
We'll get to it and more of your phone calls right after this.
On the cutting edge of societal evolution, half my brain tied behind my back.
Just to make it fair, we go back to the phones to Marysville or Maryville, Tennessee.
Mary, nice to have you on the program.
Hi.
Thank you so much for taking my call.
I wanted your impression on the other storyline on the Mad Men episode Sunday night.
When I watched Roger Sterling's character's reaction to the Japanese delegation wanting Draper's agency to bid on their Honda account.
Yeah.
And the opposite reaction of his colleagues, it came across immediately to me as a thinly veiled, subliminal message to those opposed to the mosque in downtown New York as not being able to forget and forgive and move on and make nice with everybody regardless of what had happened in the past.
Let me explain the storyline and then comment on your analysis.
Okay.
1964, the advertising agency of Sterling, Draper, Draper and Sterling, whatever the name is, has just left and formed their own agency and they're struggling to get new clients.
Their largest clients, Lucky Strike Cigarettes, and they need more.
And the Japanese are prepared to let a huge advertising contract to start advertising the Honda in the United States.
And pretty much everybody at the agency is all for it.
The Honda people have set up rules by which all the competing agencies must make their presentation.
Roger Sterling, one of the founding partners, doesn't want any part of it because he hasn't gotten over World War II and the fact that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
He doesn't want to help them.
He doesn't want to take their money.
He doesn't want to diddly squat.
And in public meetings or in private meetings with the Japanese and other members of the agency, he comes in and insults the Japanese people who have a translator and tries to sabotage the deal.
His other buddies at the agency, you can't do this, Roger.
Get over it.
You know, we won this war.
Life goes on.
The world's a safer place, Roger, because people like you.
Sterling had been in the war.
Now, as far as it having a relationship to the mosque, that episode was filmed nine months ago before the mosque even became an issue.
This show, Mary, is not, I don't think they have one care in the world about relating to events today.
The guy that does this show, Matthew Weiner, is hell-bent on getting the time or the period nature of this show right.
And I got to tell you, Sterling, this guy depicted a fictional show, was not the only one when the Japanese wanted American advertising agencies to bid on the Nikon camera.
20 years after the fact, there were some American agencies that would not take it.
They would not get involved.
Sterling, a character in this show, was not unique.
There were a lot of people, particularly people that served in World War II, who wanted nothing to do with assisting the Japanese enter the U.S. commercial markets.
But I don't think it had anything to do with the mosque.
The mosque hadn't even arisen as a focal point issue when that episode would have been written and filmed.
It certainly was timely, though.
Well, it did.
Coincidentally, it did work out.
And I think what you're getting at is the show portrayed Sterling as a bigot filled with prejudice and hatred who couldn't get past.
Right.
And that's what you see as relating to you.
Roger Sterling was equivalent to the people who are criticizing the mosque today.
I think that just came across to me as what they were getting across.
And the fact that it was filmed nine months ago was something I wasn't aware of because now, you know, it absolutely looks like what goes around comes around and repeating itself.
But it just came across as it was absolutely very good timing and letting that be.
Another thing to consider here, Mayor, is that the Japanese had killed people all over the world.
They tried to enslave the people all over the world that they didn't kill.
I mean, that's no comparison to Islam.
Okay, well, thank you so much.
All right, Mary, thank you.
I appreciate they call this a Chuck in Long Beach, New York.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hi, Rush.
How are you doing?
Thanks so much for taking my call.
You bet.
I think that Mayor Bloomberg and the rest of America needs to be reminded that, in light of how questionable this imam is, that the first World Trade Center bombing was planned at a mosque at Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, the Al-Farouk Mosque and Refugee Center.
It was, are you sure it was a mosque in Brooklyn or New Jersey?
No, no, mosque is the one was in Brooklyn, according to Andrew McCarthy's book, Wolf of Blindness, but they were training terrorists throughout Moscow, New Jersey.
Well, no question about it.
Look, this is one of these things where if you utter the truth, you're committing a gaffe, political correctness.
The mosques are, some mosques are recruiting centers.
I mean, there's no question about it.
These guys, the first World Trade Center guys, they actually returned the rental card of one of their vans, and that's how they ended up getting caught.
The big lesson of the 1993 bombings is that nobody thought to think, well, they're going to come back again.
They thought we'd foil them, and that was it.
In 93, they just learned that their attempted way to explode the thing with the underground garage wasn't going to bring down the tower, which was their objective.
So they came back and did it a different way.
Correct.
But we still haven't learned that lesson.
We have a man who's obviously questionable in the world.
No, no, a lot of us have.
No, no, no.
And we have apparently no right.
A lot of what he's doing.
A lot of us have.
Some don't want to.
Some don't want to learn.
Some people, people, liberals, I don't care whether they call themselves independents and run on a Republican ticket.
Liberals are the same.
They're scared to death of our enemies.
They're literally, except of us.
They're scared to death.
They will appease.
They will do anything.
They will do anything.
Don't blame us.
Don't hurt us.
We're not your problem.
Limbo's your problem.
Go after Limbo.
It's not us.
It's not our problem.
We're not your problem.
They'll do anything because they're a bunch of cowards.
They'll do anything.
And they'll also do anything to make themselves feel like they are better people, that they don't suffer from prejudice and bigotry.
And so they will deny what's five feet in front of them in order to make themselves feel superior to other people.
Here was the food lion chain that ABC corrupted to their so-called behind-the-scenes report.
I erroneously said a food king, but the lion's a king of the jungle.
You can understand how I made that mistake.
That mosque, by the way, in Brooklyn, that did train the mission for the 1993 World Trade Center was also even more involved with raising money for bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
The same mosque in Brooklyn.
Here is George in Wayne Town, Indiana.
You're next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
How you doing?
Very well, sir.
Good.
Well, I've been thinking about a couple of things.
One of them is the Democrats keep calling Republicans the party of no.
Yeah.
Well, I say that that's a good campaign slogan for us.
The party of no, yeah.
We are the party of no, and they're the party of don't know.
And I think that would be a good thing to throw back in their face when they do that.
Well, I understand what you're saying.
The problem is they do know what they're doing.
They're doing it on purpose.
But I mean, the party of don't know conveys what I know you wanted to convey.
Party of no.
Our guys don't have the guts to be the party, you know.
They're very much afraid of being called the party of no.
Some of them are.
By the way, you've reminded me here of the political story.
Top Democrats are growing markedly more pessimistic about holding on to the House, privately conceding that the summertime economic and political recovery they were banking on will not likely materialize by election.
If they really think that, then they're stupider than I thought.
They really think there was going to be a summer of recovery just because Vice President Bitney said so?
They were banking on a summertime economic and political recovery.
In conversations with more than two dozen party insiders, most of whom requested an anonymity to speak candidly about the state of play, Democrats in and out of Washington say they are increasingly alarmed about the economic and polling data they have seen in recent weeks.
They no longer believe the jobs and housing markets will recover or that anything resembling the White House's promise of a recovery summer is underway.
They're even more concerned by indications that House Democrats once considered safe, like Betty Sutton, who occupies an Ohio seat that Barack Obama won with 57% of the vote in 2008, are in real trouble.
In two close races, endangered Democrats are even running ads touting how they impose a leadership of Pelosi.
Democrats thinking we're going to get better.
We're going to get better.
We're going to get well after the election, said one of Washington's best connected Democrats.
But as of this week, you now have people saying Republicans are going to win the House.
And now it's starting to look like the Senate's going to be a lot closer than people thought.
I wonder how many of these Democrats remember the pep talks they got from Don Clinton.
Right before the, in the middle of the healthcare debate and right before the vote, Don Clinton gathered them all in a room and he said, I just want to remind you people of something.
You know, we lost the house in 1994.
And everybody says we lost the house because we tried to get health care done.
And that's not right.
And I want to tell you, we lost the house because we didn't get it done.
We lost the house in 1994 precisely because we didn't pass health care.
I'm here to tell you the same thing is going to happen to you.
You're going to lose.
You're going to lose big time unless you pass healthcare.
If you don't vote for this, you have no prayer of winning reelection 2010.
This isn't going to happen.
And so now all of these people listen to Bill Clinton tell them they had to pass this or they were going to lose.
And they passed it.
And now what?
They're not only going to lose the House, they're going to lose it big.
They don't have any idea how badly they're going to lose it.
They are whistling Dixie if they think it's going to be close.
They have no idea the shellacking that's coming.
Drudge has a story on his page.
The Democrats are starting to joke that Pelosi is going to be dead next year.
There's a Democrat actually joking that Pelosi might die next year.
And it's because they're so afraid of what's going to happen.
They're so afraid, they're hoping Pelosi drops dead.
One Democrat is making jokes about it.
Now, if it were me or any of my colleagues out there joking about Pelosi, you know the excrement that would hit the fan.
But a Democrat can go out and do it.
And all that happens is that they get very, very concerned that things are that bad.
A Democrat pollster working on several key races said, the reality is the House majority is probably gone.
His data shows that the Democrats' problems are only getting worse.
It's spreading, the pollster said.
They talk like they've got a deadly spreading disease, like they thought they would get well with the recovery summer, but it's just spreading out there.
Chris Van Holland, the chairman of the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee, said, we have been saying for the past 18 months it's going to be a politically challenging environment.
That being said, we will retain the majority in the House.
All of what you're hearing is the inside the Beltway chatter.
A top House Democrat strategist who agrees with Van Holland conceded pessimism is spreading rapidly, but mainly in Washington.
This strategerist said the mood among individual Democrat candidates, many of whom enjoy a considerable cash advantage, is more upbeat.
It isn't.
It's not upbeat anywhere on the Democrat side.
Nowhere.
Even Wrangell is starting to mouth off at Obama for that dignity remark.
And the Russ Carnahan race, this is the funniest thing.
Town meeting or something, this is off the top of my head, and they asked Carnahan about the mosque, and he practically left his own meeting rather than answer it.
And there was a firebombing or something in his campaign headquarters.
They desperately wanted to pass it off as somebody, the Republican, did, and they dropped that story like a hot potato because they couldn't find a Republican that had caused the damage.
This guy, Russ Carnahan, typifies this part.
He's a glittering jewel of colossal ignorance walking around out there.
I mean, if he holds a rally, he sometimes can't find out where it is.
His own rally.
Jason in Syracuse in New York.
It's nice to have you on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Hi, nice to be here.
Did those Rush?
Thank you, sir.
I just wanted to say that this whole summary of recovery rhetoric might not be all bad.
I mean, if in people's minds, Obama's recovered the economy, then all the problems that come from here, because when it becomes clear to everybody that we're still in trouble, they'll have no choice but to call it a new recession.
And they won't be able to blame that one on Bush without getting really creative.
Well, they are going to blame it on Bush.
They're going to try to blame everything on Bush.
They'll try, but I mean, at some point, this has to become really obvious, I think.
Well, I think it already has.
I think it already has.
These guys are living an illusion if they thought there was going to be a recovery summer.
And they're living an illusion if they thought the recovery summer was going to change their fortunes.
Now, there are a couple of rumors, as there always are, about October surprises.
One of them is that Obama is going to surprise everybody and suggest extending the Bush tax cuts.
There are a couple other things that are being rumored as potential October surprises, and don't discount them, by the way.
They'll try to pull something out of it.
He's not going to willingly concede this.
They want to keep blaming Bush for that.
That's all they've got.
The guy that talked about Pelosi dying is from Alabama.
His name is Bobby Bright.
He's a first-term Democrat, the former mayor of Montgomery, was heard having a little fun at Pelosi's ⁇ yeah, heard having a little fun.
Imagine if I were overheard thinking she's going to die.
I think it'd be having a little fun at her expense.
It happened during his recent participation in the Montgomery Area Chamber of Commerce Eggs and Issues.
Bobby Bright, facing a battle against Montgomery City Councilwoman Martha Roby, joked that Pelosi might lose her own election, decide not to run for the speaker's job, or otherwise not be available.
He suggested, jokingly, of course, jokingly, insisted to his audience that Pelosi could fall ill and die in the coming months.
And the remark drew laughter among Democrats in Alabama.
He's got a reputation as the second most independent member of Congress.
He's been routinely blasted for voting for Pelosi to be Speaker.
Bright, the first Democrat since the 60s to represent the conservative district, which includes parts of Montgomery and southeast Alabama.
Russ Carnahan, this guy's a piece of work.
He ran away from a question about EPICS back in May.
So this is his modus operandi.
I know Bush isn't going to extend the Bush tax cuts.
That'd be giving the keys back to the Republicans.
That'd be admitting.
Anybody thinks this is going to happen?
I mean, that would be the act of desperation.
If Bush tax cuts are extended, what's Obama saying?
He thinks Bush policy is only going to save the economy.
There's no way Obama will let this economy totally implode before he will give Bush any credit for having any positive economic policy.
Chris Portage, Indiana, great to have you, sir, on the EIB network.
Welcome.
Mega Ditto's Rush.
Congratulations on your marriage, by the way.
Thank you very much, sir.
Appreciate that.
I was calling in regards to the nuclear rods in Iran.
The Russians were supposed to put them in there on the 21st of this month.
That's right.
And what do we do now?
Because the RAN now has an active nuclear plant.
Too late now.
Now, here's the story in this.
Supposedly, John Bolton said that the Israelis had whatever was the number of days prior to the 21st till the 21st to take it out.
Once they put the rods in there, you can't really hit the plant because of all the fallout that would happen.
After that, U.S. intelligence agencies told the Israelis, no, no.
You got about a year here.
We have about a year before they're nuclear capable and so forth.
So, and now, remember, these are the same people who gave us this faulty intelligence report some years ago saying that there was no nuke plan that the Iranians had.
It is clear to me, and I think it has to be clear to all of us, that the world has decided the Iranians having nukes is no big deal.
It wasn't worth trying to stop.
We made some half-baked attempts via sanctions and so forth, but nobody cared.
Nobody cared enough to stop it.
A lot of people were worried that if they did something to stop it, it made the Russians mad, didn't want to do that.
So it is what it is.
And if we're to believe what we're told, that the rods have gone in and they're now creating nuclear power.
Not yet plutonium for weaponry, but that's down the road.
It's only a matter of time.
Other reports say they've got enough plutonium for one or two bombs now.
So it sounds like from what we're being told publicly, nobody really knows.
Somebody has to.
I'm sure there's intel out there.
Somebody knows what's going on.
And there's always more going on, these kind of things, than we will ever know.
So drawing some kind of conclusion from it, it's risky at best.
But if, as a big if, if they're nuclear, if the rods have been inserted, so to speak, then the conclusion is that the world didn't think it was that big a problem.
We'll see.
Richie in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Welcome to Open Line Friday on Thursday.
Hi.
Hi.
Good afternoon, Russian.
You know, you mentioned about an hour ago an incident that happened by the mosque and an ABC news reporter.
Well, I was sitting on a chair and almost fell off of it because it gave me a flashback from 40 years ago.
I used to work in the downtown Manhattan area, and at that time there were a lot of anti-war and war protests in that area.
Of course, from the Stock Exchange on Wall Street.
Well, there was a young ABC News reporter, and it just so happens the same day that there was an anti-war protest, there was sort of a pro-military, pro-USA protest, with mostly construction workers at that end of it versus college students.
Wait a second.
I've kind of lost track here because I'm trying to figure out 20 years ago, you said.
40.
What?
40 years ago.
20 years ago, sorry.
No, no, no, 40.
40 years ago.
Oh, because I'm trying to figure out what war was being protested.
20 years ago.
Okay.
And there was a young ABC News reporter that did almost the same thing that you just mentioned an hour ago.
I think it's in the ABC Handbook.
Yeah, ABC Eyewitness News.
And basically, at that time, it was basically the NBC station Channel 4 versus 7, and they would try to outdo each other on news reports.
Right.
And this young ABC News reporter, about 37 years old, was in front of 40 Wall Street, which is diagonally from the New York Stock Exchange at 11 Wall Street.
And there was a protest going on, and sort of it ended very peacefully.
Well, this news reporter wanted to get some film video footage for his eyewitness news that evening.
And he tried to get together both the anti-war protesters and the protesters and the pro-military protesters together and wave their signs and start shouting at each other.