MSNBC has suspended Keith Olbermann indefinitely without pay.
Well, he contributed to three Democrat political campaigns in violation of NBC's ethics rules.
NBC prohibits employees from making political contributions to candidates, and Oberman did.
I don't know why we're just now learning about this.
This is one of these kind of things that you think we'd learn about prior to the election.
And I'm, you know, I wonder if this is, folks, Oberman's numbers ratings, of course, nothing to write home about.
They really never have been.
I wonder if this could be.
I know MSNBC is an in-kind donation to Democrats, but not cash.
He actually wrote the maximum amount, whatever it is, $2,200, $2,300 to three Democrats, which is against the NBC bylaws.
And I guess they enforce those when they want to.
So I was going to say, I just was wondering if this may not be an excuse just to punch his ticket because his numbers over there are nothing to write about anyway.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's open line Friday.
One hour to go on the fastest three hours in media.
And we go to the phones, the program's all yours.
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Here it is.
Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, who says they are not liberal.
You notice that all these liberals will never admit that that's what they are.
Oh, they might want to say that they're progressive, but they never want to admit it.
Oberman, he can always get a job at NPR.
They don't mind political contributions over there.
CNN might hire him.
Never know.
Regardless, Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, said, I became aware of Keith's political contributions late last night.
Mindful of NBC news policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay.
Who did he camp?
He gave the, it was first reported by Politico.
He gave $2,400, the maximum individual amount allowed to each of the campaigns of Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway and Arizona Republican Raul Grijalva and Gabriel Giffords.
Those are the three.
Conway lost to Rand Paul.
Grijalva eked out a win over the Tea Party-backed candidate Ruth McClung.
And I wasn't the other one.
I can't find the other one.
Anyway, as I say, I'm always amazed that we find this stuff out after elections.
You know, these liberals are on these campaigns and they write books and they have all this inside information that happens during campaigns and they publish it after the election.
They save all the juicy and good stuff for their books, for their back pockets.
They believe, they want everybody to believe that they do what they do because of the goodness of the cause, the calling, the importance of journalism, the seriousness, and the meaning that it means to preserving our republic when in fact they, like everybody else, are doing it for the money.
Well, I know that the other news is they have ethics at NBC.
That's the stunner here, that there are ethics laws.
So I say, I guess there's some times enforced.
This is the, you think Olbermann's the first?
Do you think Olberman's the first NBC employee to donate to somebody?
I mean, I don't know.
Hard to believe it's the first.
But regardless, I do think, I do think here that this could be an excuse to punch the ticket, given that it's not working.
Nothing at MSNBC.
When you look at their election night ratings, I mean, they're very close to CNN, and CNN had nothing.
And we'll explain in one way why in just a moment.
I want to expand on this.
I wish we'd have gotten to this caller yesterday because it was a snot-nosed caller who thought that he was going to really put me in an embarrassing situation.
He was going to call, he was going to say, because it was up there on the monitor, I could see it.
He was going to say, and you guys always think that conservatism wins in elections like this.
I mean, you know, people didn't vote because of ideology.
And I was going to say, for the most part, you're probably right.
That needs to change.
I'm convinced, folks, that the vast majority of people who elected Obama didn't do it on the basis that he's liberal.
And there are two reasons for it.
Two reasons for knowing this.
If they had voted for him because he's a liberal, they would not have abandoned the Democrat Party this week.
They'd have hung in there.
That energy for Obama would not have waned.
It would have been in there.
The people that voted for Obama, or the majority of them, put him over the top, voted on other reasons, for other reasons, feel-good stuff.
He was new.
He was black.
He was going to get rid of racism.
He's going to assuage our guilt.
He was going to lower the sea levels.
He was going to make everybody like us.
He wasn't George Bush.
He was going to bring about unity.
It was going to be kumbaya.
He's going to fix the economy.
Everybody was going to get a job.
Everybody was going to get a new car.
All of those things.
Hope and change.
Yeah, all that meaningless, platitudinous stuff.
I mean, if it was really liberals that had elected Obama, the Democrats would not have gotten shellack Tuesday because the liberals would not have changed.
I mean, they'd have shown up in droves just to keep conservatives from winning.
By the same token, you have to be honest and say that you cannot chalk up the Republican victory on Tuesday strictly to conservatism, although a greater emphasis can be placed on it.
Tea Party is conservatism.
There is a conservative ascendancy.
And I believe that because of this conservative ascendancy, we have this shellacking defeat that Obama and the Democrats experienced.
Now, the way to prevent, people ask me all the time, well, how do you get past this rush?
How do you keep people from constantly being fooled by smooth talkers like Obama?
Well, there's one thing that we're never going to be able to change in this, and it's very simple.
One reason Obama got elected and why so many Democrats get elected is that the watchdog media simply refuse to tell us anything about them.
Democrat candidates are not vetted.
And to the extent that things are discovered about them that would harm them, they are covered up.
They're ignored.
They are not reported.
And when the opposition tries to bring them up and report them, i.e. Reverend Wright, you know what happens to the people who bring it up?
Ah, that's racist.
Or that's paranoia.
Y'all look at you going after Reverend Wright.
He didn't have anything to do with Reverend Wright.
Bill Ayers, they barely knew him.
So the people that find the damage, find the baggage and bring it up, are assaulted, while the watchdog media ignores it and covers it up.
We're not even asking the media to do any investigations.
We simply would like them to tell us how the candidates stand on an issue.
And they wouldn't even do that about Obama.
They are the ones that promulgated this hope and change crap.
They're the ones that promulgated a new era of bipartisanship and the sea levels lowering, a new era of post-partisanship and post-racial America.
The media promulgated all of this.
They refuse to explore the issues of Democrat candidates because they know it will hurt Democrats candidates.
They will refuse.
The media will refuse to identify the ideology of any Democrat candidate other than in a Boston or in a California, in the case of the Kennedys or well-known liberal enclaves, and they're happy to identify them as liberals, but that's an exception.
They know that calling a candidate a liberal will always hurt him.
Look at Dukakis.
The Bush 41 campaign ran against a liberal, Mike Dukakis.
Look what happened.
He lost.
Plus the Willie Horton ad.
The media spends all of its time reporting on the horse race.
Who is ahead?
Who's behind?
What's the latest poll say?
And even if they could know that Fox News is as guilty of the horse race aspect as everybody else is.
Fox News, everybody talks about the horse race day to day.
Do you realize how meaningless a poll?
We're going to get polls starting tomorrow on the presidential race in 2012.
Do you know how meaningless it is?
Do you know how meaningless, look at the Sharon Angle dingy Harry race.
All of the polls up until election day had her up three to four.
How meaningless were those polls?
In the dingy Harry race, the votes really were the last thing that mattered.
It was how they were bought, how they were coerced, and where they were found.
You have a state of Democrats and people who admit they hate Harry Reid, and yet they voted for him.
You have a state with the highest unemployment, the highest foreclosure rate.
They don't like Harry Reid, yet they voted for him.
Did they really?
Or did they find votes for Harry Reid?
When you got the culinary union from Harris being forced, management forcing the rank and file, you get out there and you do what you can in Washoe County.
I mean, that's Reno.
They despise Reid there.
He wins it.
It's like I said the other day, you're going to have a tornado go through town and it's going to take a swath of town away and it's going to go right by a house and leave it undamaged.
You know, how did that happen?
And nobody can explain it.
Well, how do you explain Reed?
Nobody can.
My only point in all of this, the media is not going to do its job.
The media is never, ever going to identify a Democrat as a liberal, and they're never going to identify him as a, hell, there's a story today, Bobby Rush in all kinds of problems in Chicago, some sort of ethics problem or a, I don't know, financial thing.
You won't find the word Democrat in the story.
And we know that that's commonplace.
So the question then becomes, well, how is it that if the media is not going to do its job, who's going to have to?
That's where the Republican Party comes into play.
And I'm telling you, everybody that asks me, well, Rush, how can we defeated Obama when you got the media not telling the truth about him?
And when you got all these platitudinous things being called, he's a messiah and this, how do you got to be?
Simply identify him as a liberal.
And you teach what liberals are.
We've got golden opportunity.
Do you realize the squandering opportunity that the Republicans are engaged in right now?
Let me illustrate this by going back to the politico piece of yesterday.
Here you have a giant, a huge, huge, beat-your-chest victory, a total wipeout, 63 seats in the House, six seats in the Senate.
And what does the Republican establishment do?
They make a B-line to their friends at the Politico to destroy the Tea Party.
They make a B-line to the Politico to say, we would have won the Senate if it hadn't been for the Tea Party, if it hadn't been for Sarah Palin, if it hadn't been for Sharon Angle, if it hadn't been for Christian O'Donnell, we'd have won.
We get a story in the Politico authored by the Republicans.
They got the, they wanted it.
The Politico is sitting around minding its own business, and they get a call from somebody, hey, we're going to, would you like a story about how the Republicans really lost?
And of course, the Politico is going to say, oh, yeah.
Okay, well, we'll let you talk to Lindsey Graham and Trent Lott, and they'll tell you how we lost.
And the Politico says, oh, well, we love that.
Instead, here you have a sweeping victory, a victory brought about because people have seen what liberalism does to their lives.
Is the Republican Party out taking advantage of this?
Is the Republican Party, I'm talking about the GOP establishment, the old guard, are they out there looking forward to 2012 and wanting to recapture the White House, say, okay, folks, we warned you this is what liberalism does to your economy.
This is what liberalism unchecked.
We had a Democrat House, a Democrat Senate, a Democrat in the White House.
Look at New Orleans.
Look at Michigan.
You had liberal total control unchecked in all these places.
Look at it.
Look at what happened to your economy.
Look what happened to your job.
Look what happened to the value of your house.
Instead of the Republicans running around and say, this is what liberalism does, instead of going out and saying, George Bush did not do this to you, the Republican Party didn't do this to you.
Democrat Party did.
Barack Obama did.
Ted Kennedy did.
Nancy Pelosi did.
Harry Reid did.
Liberalism did.
Instead of setting the stage now, instead of taking the steps necessary to make sure another Obama doesn't happen, what are they doing?
Running around trying to destroy Sarah Palin.
Running around trying to destroy Sharon Angle, Christine O'Donnell, Joe Miller, this poor woman in North Carolina.
What is her name?
No, no, in North Carolina, it's a congressional race in North Carolina.
They found a bunch of ballots.
This etheridge guy was on the ropes.
The RNC is not going in to help her because she's a Tea Party.
That race might flip to Democrat.
The RNC is not going in to help her because she's Tea Party.
I'll get her name here in the break in just a second.
But it's an opportunity being totally squandered here.
If you and I ran the Republican Party from Tuesday night to Wednesday morning through today, we would be telling people, yep, you see what happened?
When the public finds out what liberalism is, when voters find out what liberals do, when voters are told who liberals are and what happened.
Renee Elmers is her name.
Renee Elmers in North Carolina against Bob Etheridge, the incumbent Democrat.
She was ahead.
And now, of course, they found some ballots after the election somehow.
And they're all going to go to Etheridge and the RNC, the Republican campaign committee, nowhere near there to help her.
But more than that, it is, it's just, it's disappointing.
Such a goldmine opportunity, even before the election, such an opportunity here to educate and inform and to teach, to contrast who we as conservatives are with liberals.
Liberalism has destroyed.
Liberalism has spent this country into generational debt.
A golden opportunity to teach, to explain it, to say this is what liberals do went unchecked.
But no.
I'm just telling you, if we did that, if we made these elections turn on philosophy and ideology, then we wouldn't elect an Obama again.
Not after what we've seen liberals do.
No matter how smooth talking they are, no matter how much the media ignores the truth about them.
But this Republican Party's not into that.
They want to savage Sarah Palin right now.
And we will be back.
Sit tight.
All right, on Tuesday night, Renee Elmers in North Carolina, she is Republican, and she was leading by 2,099 votes Tuesday night.
The next day, Samson County, North Carolina elections officials discovered they hadn't reported totals from three of the county's four early voting sites.
This from Johnny McClain, the deputy director of the State Board of Elections.
So they found some votes, early votes that they miraculously hadn't counted.
Just like in Bridgeport, Connecticut, they found a bag full of votes uncounted in a tight governor's race.
And every time votes are found after the election is over, they all vote Democrat, and they all are only found in close races.
So you had Renee Elmers up, basically 2,100 votes.
She has asked for a recount now.
She's asked the NRCC, the National Republican Congressional Committee, to help her with the recount costs, which might amount to $50,000, and they have refused.
She's Tea Party.
Elmers also says that the GOP NRCC refused to help her with her campaign.
In fact, their spokesman told the press that the campaign wasn't ready for prime time.
Her campaign didn't deserve their help because she wasn't ready for prime time, which made it even harder for her to raise money in the first place.
She said all this in an email to supporters.
Now, these lost votes, these somehow newly discovered votes, they're always found by Democrats.
In the case of Renee Elmers, three out of four early voting sites, unreported totals.
Imagine that.
In Bridgeport, Connecticut, a bag full.
In Bridgeport, Connecticut, a bag of uncounted votes.
This is how Al Franken ended up in the Senate from Minnesota.
See, the Tea Party can't have the Tea Party.
The Republican Party can't take the time to explain to America, yeah, the reason you don't like Obama, the reason you don't like Democrat policies, because that's what liberalism is.
Liberalism is why your house value is non-existent.
Liberalism is why you don't have a job.
Liberalism is why we are in debt up to our eyeballs for generations.
It's liberalism.
This is what liberalism does.
This is what they believe.
No, instead, what are we doing?
We're running to the politico with Lindsey Gramnesty and Trent Lott to savage Sarah Palin and blame Sharon Angle and Christine O'Donnell and Palin for the fact that we didn't win our press senate.
That's what the Republican and telling Renee Elmers to go to hell.
All right, I'm told now that the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee is now going to go in and help Renee Elmers.
That's what it was Etheridge that asked for the recount, by the way.
Thank you, Mr. Snirdley, for that bit of information.
And the NRCC is now ostensibly helping Renee Elbers.
They had to be called out on it, but they are going in there.
Look, we're going to go to the phones here in just a minute, and I owe you people on hold an apology.
It is Open Line Friday, and we try to take more phone calls, but this really is important.
We are sitting here on one of the greatest political opportunities of our lifetime.
We have just, the American people have just rejected liberalism.
They need to be told that's what they did.
Too many people don't yet realize that what they voted against was liberalism.
They think they're voting against Washington not working.
So they think they're voting against Washington.
Again, Washington doesn't work.
They got to want Washington to work.
Why Washington doesn't work needs to be explained to them.
It doesn't work because of liberals running it.
It's just that simple.
It's not complicated.
It can be demonstrated.
Now, the minute inside the Beltway Republicans start trashing liberalism, that's the day that they are rejected from the ruling class.
The day they start talking, stop talking about bipartisanship and all that, that's the day they get kicked out of the ruling class.
Because they're just invited guests in the ruling class.
The Democrats control who's in the ruling class in Washington.
They control who's in the click.
But I cannot emphasize this enough.
I cannot say enough times the folly, a tidal wave victory, an utter wipeout, historic wipeout, and the next day, the Republicans think what they have to first do is trash the Tea Party and Sarah Palin.
Rather than seize this opportunity, if they want to win every year, if they want to be a generational winner, if the Republicans want to resign the Democrats to being out of power for 40 years, here's how you do it.
The Democrats just illustrated who they are and what they do nationally, if unchecked.
We've already got the example of Michigan.
We got the example of New Orleans and Louisiana.
We've got the example of San Francisco.
We've got everywhere liberals run the show in conjunction with liberalism or unionism.
You've got utter despair and destruction.
It's time it was pointed out.
All right.
Here's Scott in Chicago.
I'm glad you waited, sir.
I really am, and thank you.
I appreciate it.
Thanks so much.
You bet.
And by the way, ultimate mega healthcare entrepreneur dittos to you, sir.
Turn the volume up on the microphone on the EIB mic a little louder because I don't think Lindsay Graham is getting a clear signal.
Are you there?
Yeah, yeah, I just turned the volume up.
I had an idea about jobs, Rush.
Very simple.
There's about 10 million of us like-minded small business owner entrepreneurs in the United States.
All we need to do is, Mr. Obama, remove the yoke from our neck and the shackles from our ankle, and we will hire one employee each, and we'll create 10 million new jobs in no time.
That's how we create jobs.
No more government.
No, no, no, no.
What Obama's going to do is he wants you to invest in new infrastructure, and he wants you to invest in green energy technology.
He wants to give you a tax credit to invest in new equipment.
That's what he thinks is going to cause you to hire new employees.
His health care bill is removing the competition from health care, and it's making it so that only major hospitals hire and not entrepreneurs.
And we need competition back in health care, just like we need good, solid policy that, excuse me, or S policy so that all of us entrepreneurs can get back to doing what we do best.
Yeah, well, he doesn't want you doing new people.
He doesn't want you doing that.
He doesn't want competition.
He wants to wipe it out.
He wants the government to be the only entity that people go to for their health care.
Bourbon A. Illinois, Zach, welcome to the program.
Am I pronouncing that right?
Yes, you are, Rush.
Yes, you are.
Megan Didos, back from Kensinger Country.
Happy Friday to you.
I called in five weeks ago.
You probably don't remember.
That's okay.
I just wanted to ask, I think it's so obviously fishy why none of the mainstream media is covering the diversity that was elected into the 212th or the 112th Congress from the Republican Party.
Marco Rubio, Alan West, Jamie Herrera, Tim Scott, Raul Labrador, Susanna Martinez, and not one of them ran as a Rhino Rush.
Not one.
I know.
They ran as Republicans.
It's awesome.
It's absolutely awesome, but you will not hear it covered on any of the major networks.
Of course not, because the Republicans don't believe in diversity.
And therefore, when there is diversity displayed in the Republican Party, it's got to be ignored.
Just like the media will ignore negative aspects of a Democrat candidate like Obama and what he really believes.
Diversity doesn't really mean diversity.
When the Democrats say, or the media says that they want diversity someplace, they don't want diversity.
They want null Republicans.
When the Republicans end up electing a Hispanic mayor, an Hispanic senator, a black member of Congress, that doesn't fit the narrative or the template, and it will be ignored.
That just doesn't happen.
Republicans are all angry, rich white people, like Jay Rockefeller and Ted Kennedy and John Kerry.
If you look on the Democrat side, it is people of color who get shoved aside.
If you look on the Democrat side, it's always the white guy who ends up winning, including the Klansman.
It's always the white guy, the rich white liberal, plantation owner, that ends up winning.
Because the rich white guy and plantation owner happens to speak about being concerned about racism and poverty and so forth, he's thought to be a massive, compassionate, great liberal.
Diversity of thought is not what's wanted.
Diversity of ideas is not what is desired.
They just want diversity of skin color and only when it suits them.
They don't want a black Supreme Court justice if he is a conservative.
They don't want an Hispanic senator if he's conservative.
They don't want an Hispanic female as governor if she is conservative.
They don't want Alan West in the Congressional Black Caucus.
Alan West might not want to be in the Congressional Black Caucus, and they might not let him in.
We just have to wait and see.
Here's Timothy in Lompolk, California.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Good morning, Rosh.
Yeah, I just wanted to go back over to the what made Reagan so great was his eternal optimism.
He said that the problem with the country when he came in after Carter was the disease was pessimism, and the cure for pessimism was optimism.
And Barack Obama needs to have that presented to him as strongly as the Republicans can and never let up.
Well, no, let me tell you, I agree with that, and that's why the Republicans need to stop this pessimism about Sarah Palin and stop this pessimism about the Tea Party.
You are exactly right.
You know, Roger Ailes sends a memo out every once in a while.
He surveys the situation at the Fox News Channel.
He's done this wherever he's worked, wherever he has been a manager.
And everywhere you work, you people know it, and I know it.
You always have people who are perpetually negative.
They are perpetually pessimists.
And they're always trying to stir people up that way.
The depressed and the angry are always trying to get others to join them.
Ailes sends out a memo to these people, unnamed.
He says, you know who you are, and I know who you are.
Negative people make healthy people sick, and I'm not going to tolerate it.
Negative people make healthy people sick, and I'm not going to have a shop full of sick people.
And if I have to get rid of you pessimists and negative people, I will.
And that's how he shapes it up.
And I couldn't agree with that more.
Pessimism, negativity is the natural predisposition.
I'm convinced of human beings.
No, no, sturdily.
Why is it that you have to have a book and you have to go out and buy a book and you have to study the art of positive thinking?
How come a guy who writes a book, Norman Vincent Peatle, on the power of positive thinking, becomes a millionaire, a multi-multi-millionaire?
How come you don't need to go to the library or to Amazon or anywhere to find a book on how to be a pessimist?
Nobody has to teach you how to do that.
Optimism is something you have to work at.
Pessimism is the natural state.
I'm convinced of the human being.
Even in the midst of this week, I can't tell you how much pessimism I'm surrounded by.
I've gotten to the point I've shut off half of my email addresses.
I've set up filters in my primary email address to delete my email from over half the people sending me stuff because it's nothing but pure negative.
Anger at this, anger at that, anger at the media the way they covered the election Tuesday night, anger at the Republicans, anger here, anger there, anger at me.
I don't need to be surrounded by it.
So this guy is exactly right.
Reagan, you asked people back in the 80s about Reagan.
He made people feel better about the country.
He made people feel better about themselves.
If you can do that to people, you can write your own ticket.
If you can inspire happiness and optimism in people, A, you're a leader, but B, you'll have a lot of friends.
But if all you are is just seeing the negative in everything, in the midst of great glory, I tell you, you're going to drive people nuts.
And I'm convinced it's the natural state of the human being to be pessimistic.
You stop and think about it, and you will know that I'm right.
How many of you go through the day, and it doesn't take, you don't have to think about how many people are bitching about something every day.
Don't care what it is.
You don't have to stop and count them up because it's prevalent.
It's happening no matter where you go and no matter what you run into.
Somebody's always ticked off about something.
Now, I suggest that one of the primary reasons for it now is that liberals are running everything.
Liberals happen to make everybody sour.
Liberalism and what they do to the surroundings, what they do to the workplace, what they do to schools, what they do to government, what they do to the country would make anybody pessimistic.
And that's why it takes an effort to be optimistic.
And that's why optimistic people are noted.
You know, this guy is always smiling.
He's always happy.
He's always optimistic because it's unique.
Stop and think about it.
It's the natural state.
I'm convinced that it is.
Some people, you've heard the phrase, it's either happily miserable or miserably happy.
Forget which it is.
My mother told me once there are some people who are just happily miserable.
That if they're not miserable, something's wrong.
I play golf with guys.
Let me, you won't find more negativity on a golf course.
I play golf with guys, boom, a drive down the middle of fairway, and he's ticked off and mad because that means the next shot's got to be horrible.
Because he didn't deserve to hit that good a drive.
I mean, it's just, it's everywhere.
And I don't like being around it.
I just, I do not, it's the fastest thing to get me to lose.
I know you're all saying, well, what's Richall ticked off?
It's, oh, it's just something I constantly note.
Yeah, there's not going to be enough time to be fair there.
And it's just wouldn't be right to tell a rank amateur, okay, you got 30 seconds.
Now, this negativism, you wouldn't have believed it election night.
I was inundated with it during the election coverage as the returns were coming in.
And I had to almost shut off the email.
It was just overwhelming.
It was really starting to tick me off.
And I didn't want to hear any of it because there was no call for it, as it turned out.
Shirley McClain, that great philosopher, once said, dwelling on the negative simply contributes to its power.
And that's true.
I hope you all have had a great week.
I hope you understand exactly how triumphant this week was.
I hope you understand what a wipeout this week was and what a great opportunity it presents.
Thanks for a great week here, folks.
A wonderful week of broadcast excellence here at the Limbaugh Institute.
And it was made possible primarily, not entirely, but primarily by one man, Barack Obama, and who he is and what he stands for.
And there are a gazillion more like him in the Democrat Party, and they are all the same way.