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March 3, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:16
March 3, 2011, Thursday, Hour #3
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Okay, we did it.
We have some Al Jazeera news here that we're going to share with you.
Went to the Al Jazeera site, and Mrs. Clinton says Al Jazeera is real news.
So we got it.
We got Al Jazeera stuff here.
And we will get to it in due course.
In mere moments, I want you to sit tight and eagerly await the Al Jazeera news update.
What Mrs. Clinton says is real news.
Better than our news.
Our news is a bunch of pundits arguing and talking to each other, but Al Jazeera doesn't do that.
They have real news.
I'm El Rushbow.
You all knowing, all caring, all sensing, all feeling, all concerned, all everything.
One harmless, lovable little fuzzball bundle, El Rushbow, Maha Rushi, at 800-282-2882.
All right, here's an update on Judge Vinson and his ruling.
And it ain't bad.
It isn't as bad as the original slug that we got from Reuters.
And our clarification here comes from ABC news.
Judge Vinson clarifies his ruling, maintains entire health care law is unconstitutional.
In a harshly worded opinion, Judge Roger Vinson, the Florida federal judge who struck down the entire health care law in January, gave the regime seven days from today to appeal his ruling to the 11th Circuit in a 20-page ruling.
Judge Vinson is critical of Justice Department lawyers for waiting nearly two weeks before filing a motion to clarify.
While I believe that my order was as clear and unambiguous as it could be, Vinson wrote, it is possible the defendants may have perhaps been confused or misunderstood its import.
Oh, that is a slam, folks.
That's why when I saw that first Reuters thing, I refused to get depressed.
I knew what they were trying to do with that first slug.
Vinson said he expected the government lawyers to immediately seek a stay of the ruling.
It was not expected that they would effectively ignore the order and the declaratory judgment for two and a half weeks, continue to implement the act, and only then file a belated motion to clarify.
He was telling them, I didn't expect them to sit around for two and a half weeks and ignore my ruling, but that's what they did.
So in effect, what Vinson has done, he's issued a seven-day stay of his previous ruling.
I say, in effect.
And if the regime does not appeal within seven days, it looks like the regime is going to be forced to stop implementing Obamacare.
So the original post that we got on this, the slug from Reuters, judge refuses to stop implementation of healthcare law.
Well, it turns out, ladies and gentlemen, that's not quite the intent of Judge Vinson's ruling.
Now, PMS NBC is saying that if the regime does not appeal in seven days, the 26 states that sued can consider the law invalid.
That's not insignificant.
You slubs at Reuters, you've got to try your tricks with other people.
It's just not going to work here.
Judge refuses to halt implementation.
Judge refused.
That's their first slug.
Judge refuses to halt a regime in implementing health care law?
Hardly.
So Judge Vincent has maintained, again, the entire health care law is unconstitutional.
He can't believe that he was unclear.
He was totally clear.
He can't believe they waited two weeks before filing a motion to clarify.
He expected the government lawyers to seek a stay of the ruling immediately, that they would effectively ignore the order and judgment for two and a half weeks and continue to implement the act and only then file a belated motion to clarify.
That was not expected.
He thought he had been perfectly clear in what he said.
And we thought we were perfectly clear in our analysis.
He said it's unconstitutional, and he has stayed the thing.
He has vacated the law.
And they continue to implement it as though he didn't exist.
And now, according to MSNBC, which cannot be happy about this, by the way, if the regime doesn't appeal in seven days, he's given them seven days.
What Vincent's done is essentially stayed his own ruling for seven days.
A nice guy.
All right.
I'll give you another week, you regime guys.
And if you don't do anything in seven days, if you don't file this appeal in seven days, then the 26 states that sued can consider the law invalid.
Throwing down the gauntlet.
Happy to be able to pass that on to you.
Okay, Al Jazeera news from Madison, Wisconsin.
No.
Wait a minute.
Wait, this is not Al Jazeera news.
Why'd you put this in the Al Jazeera stack?
I thought this couldn't be Al Jazeera news.
It makes too much sense.
Okay, first, here's the news.
Madison, Wisconsin's AP, the Wisconsin State Senate, has approved a resolution that would set a deadline of 4 o'clock today for Wisconsin's 14 Democrat state senators to get back home.
If they don't, they will be held guilty in contempt of the Senate and guilty of disorderly conduct.
The law enforcement could go out with a warrant and detain them, possibly with the use of force.
So the Wisconsin Senate...
Now, this is another thing.
We just had a story from another source today working on a compromise here.
Maybe, it doesn't sound like it to me.
Wisconsin Senate has moved to bring back the Wisconsin 14, possibly by force.
According to Channel 4 in Milwaukee in Madison, senators could be picked up, they could be held against their will, chained, and brought back to Senate chambers to vote on Governor Walker's budget repair bill.
Chained!
Chained.
I wonder if our caller from Fairfax, Virginia is still with us as enslaves.
Chained, my friends.
Wow.
Senators could be picked up, held against their will, chained, and brought back by the use of force to the Senate chambers to vote on Governor Walker's bill.
That's the latest out of Wisconsin.
And from Al Jazeera.
Israel, where the hell are you?
Well, the Arab world joins together in a call for democracy.
Israel's democracy is unraveling.
As the Arab world demands accountability from its leaders, Israel's leaders are facing investigations and indictments.
As the Arab world demands greater social mobility and economic opportunity, Israel's gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen.
That's, folks, that's their tease for the whole story.
That's the opening paragraph, sort of like the slug line.
Israel, where are you?
While the Arab world calls, joins in a call for democracy.
Oh, my gosh.
Israel's democracy is unraveling.
This tells me that it is not democracy what is happening over there.
This tells me that these uprisings in Libya and Egypt are not if Al Jazeera is calling them democracy movements, they are not just that simple.
Next Al Jazeera story, Israel's sole enemy of Lebanon.
Iran's ambassador to Lebanon, Ghazan Far Rakhnabudi, has underscored the importance of mutual understanding between Lebanese parties against Beirut's ark.
Iran's ambassador has urged all Lebanese groups and political factions on Tuesday to reach an understanding and spare no effort to confront the Israeli regime.
U.S. policy on nuclear Iran underscores bias towards Israel.
That's our third Al Jazeera story.
United States affirming it certainly pays to be a nuclear power.
You get things done on your terms.
With more than 200 nuclear weapons and the capacity to deliver them against its enemies or use them to buttress its policies, Israel refuses to join the non-proliferation treaty or to open its nuclear facilities for International Atomic Energy Office inspection.
And the next story from Al Jazeera, Israel die.
Well, Mrs. Clinton says Al Jazeera is real news.
Unlike the news, I'm not making it up.
That's all here.
We'll link to it.
Israel, where are you?
Israel's democracy is unraveling.
All right, let me see.
I'm going to take a brief time out here.
Our morning update today is on Ruth Marcus being unhappy with Obama.
Remember that one's nerdlies?
Well, she's shown up on MSNBC today to discuss it.
They went and talked to her.
They don't like it.
When a member of the state-run media runs out, criticizes the ones and they went out and, what are you doing, Ruth?
What's going on here?
They brought her in for interrogation.
And we have the soundbites coming up.
Look, basically, what Obama was trying to do is run out the clock on the judge.
He's basically trying to run out the clock.
He's trying to run out the clock on pretty much everything.
So it gets to the point that nothing can be done to reverse anything.
Clock was clicking on the appeal.
Obama wanted to appeal the decision on the last day allowed with the 11th circuit.
In the meantime, he wanted to keep implementing the law while watching the clock tick.
The judge is saying, you are disrespecting my ruling.
You are playing the cameler.
You've got seven days to file your appeal motion, bud, or that's it.
You've got seven days to follow a motion with the circuit court, or you're going to get a stay.
I'll close down the law.
I might even hold you in contempt or do what's necessary to deal with your games.
That's what the judge is saying.
This judge is ticked off.
Patently obvious here.
You people at Reuters, you need to be ashamed.
What do you mean that you have this ruling from the judge?
You've got it.
And your first take is judge refuses to stop implementation of law.
You might be able to get away with that with the newspapers in this country, stupid websites and stupid cable news networks, but not here at the EIB network.
Roof Marcus, columnist et Infobabe, Washington Post.
Recent column complained that Obama can be a strangely passive president.
She cites his reluctance to get involved in the details during the Obamacare debate, his inaction on entitlement reform, not speaking up forcefully on the Libya or the Wisconsin labor battle.
But her biggest beef with the regime is Obama's slipperiness on economic matters, his refusal to specify which part of his own deficit commission's recommendation he agrees with.
She also faults Obama for seeming more like a passive bystander in the current budget battle with House Republicans.
She says that he's unclear about what spending cuts that he'd be willing to accept or fight for.
And unlike Clinton, isn't sending cabinet members and other flacks out to blame Republicans for hurting families and children, which he wants the Democrats to do.
Why isn't he doing that?
She writes, he's too often more reactive than inspirational, more cautious than forceful.
You know, she's in the state control media.
This is not supposed to be done.
You don't go off the reservation like this.
Little Indian lingo there.
And the certain facts, Roof, the economy is stuck in low gear.
Unemployment taxes.
Our unemployment is still rampant, and taxes overall are too high.
Spending levels beyond belief.
Have you considered any of the real facts on the grave?
Have you considered Roof?
He may just be incompetent.
Well, anyway, over at PMSNBC, this did not sit well.
So they call her in.
They sent a subpoena out.
They're probably sent an armored car to go get her.
Bring her to the set for an interrogation, which happened on the Daily Rundown show today with F. Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie.
Savannah Guthrie got in the first round.
Ruth getting a lot of attention for saying this is a Where's Waldo presidency.
You think the president's deliberately staying out of sight on important issues?
I agree with him on the goals.
It's a question of tactics and strategy.
And on each one, the White House can give you a very complex and sometimes convincing explanation.
Well, it doesn't make sense to weigh in at this point because of this consideration, and we don't want to spend our political capital here because this is more important goal.
But when you connect the dots and you step back and you look at the totality, the White House has this bully pulpit, and it is choosing not to use it.
In fact, its strategy more often than not is to step back, let the congressional leaders work this out.
We're not going to get immersed in the details on health care.
And you want to say, where's the president?
F. Chuck Todd took his turn.
Well, they'll argue our job is to be the mediator.
Our job is to bring both sides together.
And if this is their operating principle, whether it's Egypt, Libya, dealing overseas, whether it's dealing with Senate Democrats and the House Republicans, who the hell are you, Ruth, to disagree with it?
I would argue with that job description.
Sometimes their job is to be the mediator, but the president is, they don't call him the mediator of the free world.
They call him the leader of the free world for a reason.
He is the person to whom congressional Democrats look.
There's a lot of frustration about where's the White House on the continuing resolution.
Well, you see that the state control media not happy with roof markets going off the reservation, ripping the one.
Not supposed to do that.
Here's Greg, Sacramento.
Great to have you on the program, Greg.
Hello.
Hello, Rush.
I'm a little tired, like you are, of being accused of being a racist because we oppose Obama's agenda.
Yep.
And so I've developed a real simple response to that, and it is, I actually like the black half of him.
He's funny.
He's well-spoken.
And we kind of like that.
It's the white socialist European Marxist half that I cannot stand.
Now, that is very clever.
Have you actually used that in public, say, in a restaurant with your friends out in Sacramento?
Carefully, yes.
Yeah, just carefully.
So you like the black half.
It's the white socialist European Marxist half that you don't really dig.
Yeah, that's the agenda side that's really ruining our country.
You know, the other half is what we like about the man.
Yeah, interesting.
Well, I have to applaud you.
Very creative.
Thank you.
Very creative.
Still racist, of course, in the eyes of the left, but very, very creative nevertheless.
Of course.
Yeah, because, see, you're still, in their view, you're still, what would be the word, subordinating him to powerful white people.
Correct.
Yeah.
Over in Europe.
All right, Greg, thanks for the call.
I appreciate it.
We don't have time to get into the soundbites right.
We'll do it.
We come back from the, by the way, I saw a white racist has been shot in Sacramento, Citrus Heights, actually.
You know, I lived out there.
Sacramento, my adopted hometown, Citrus Heights is where this white racist was shot.
Drudge has the story, and it says it sent shockwaves through the white supremacy movement.
You got to be, Greg, you got to be very careful out there when you start articulating your theorem.
At any rate, Obama weighed in on the potential NFL players' lockout, the owner's lockout of players today.
He was asked about the NFL and Libya, and he answered the NFL portion of the question first.
I don't know what he said.
I've got the transcript here.
I haven't read it.
Do that and play it for you when we come back.
Okay, we are back.
Great to have you here, my friends.
Rush Limbaugh, as always, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
So the question came from Ben Feller, who is the Abe, I'm sorry, the AP White House correspondent.
He asked this long question.
The question is longer than Obama's answer.
I'm not going to read the question to you.
I'm just going to tell you that 90% of the question is about Libya.
And then the throwaway second part of the question is about the NFL on the brink of a complete shutdown tonight over the labor dispute.
And he wants to know if Obama will be willing to personally intervene.
And if not, why not?
My working assumption at a time when people are having to cut back, compromise, and worry about making the mortgage and paying for their kids' college education is that the two parties should be able to work it out without the president of the United States intervening.
I'm a big football fan, but I also think that for an industry that's making $9 billion a year in revenue, they can figure out how to divide it up in a sensible way.
My expectation and hope is that they will resolve it without me intervening because it turns out I've got a lot of other stuff to do.
Oh, yeah, a lot of other stuff to do, like wrecking the U.S. economy for everybody else.
By the way, that $9 billion is not profit.
He said make.
Industry making $9 billion a year in revenue, generating $9 billion a year in revenue.
And they're fighting over how to divvy up.
That's the gross.
That's the gross.
One team.
Here's the problem that the owners have.
And I'm not really taking sides in this thing because at some point it's going to get settled.
Everybody knows this is a big, big business at its peak of popularity.
And at the end of the day, which is September, they're not going to destroy it.
It's going to get settled at some point.
But here's the deal.
These teams are being valuated on average at a billion dollars.
But that's when you sell it.
One team, what was it?
I forget which.
Packers.
Green Bay Packers, the only team, quote-unquote, publicly owned.
So they release their books.
And the Packers' operating profit was $9 million.
Now, a $9 million profit on a $1 billion industry, that's very small.
Now, it's $9 million in profit, and that's nothing to sneeze at, but you're not buying that business to live off of it.
That business is, you buy that for resale.
And as these things keep escalating in value, the pool of people individually, the NFL does not want corporate ownership.
The pool of people have that kind of money to buy these teams is not all that large.
Now, that $9 billion currently, there's a billion taken off the top.
The owners get that for stadiums, infrastructure, investment, modernizing facilities, just the operational money.
So that takes it to $8 billion.
And they split that $60-40.
Players get 60, owners get 40.
Now, the owners are asking for another $2 billion off the top and a revision in the 60-40.
The players are saying, wait a minute, it isn't 60-40.
When you take the billion off the top, we're basically looking at 50-50 of $9 billion.
You get the first billion.
We're talking $8 billion we split, not $9.
So, yeah, we're getting 60% of the remaining eight, but you'll get the first billion.
So it's really a 51-49 proposition players right now, where the owners want an additional billion.
So the way that'll end up is the owners will get $1.2 to $1.5 billion instead of the two.
The owners will probably cave on the 18 games, maybe go to a 17-game schedule with a couple bye weeks.
It's all going to get worked out.
They're not going to miss any games that matter.
This isn't going to happen.
Mark my words.
And you're probably, well, Rush, you're the only guy saying that's right.
Conventional wisdom is, of course, otherwise.
The conventional wisdom.
Look, I've talked, and I'm a powerful, influential member of the media.
And I've, over the course of my life, I've gotten to know a lot of the players here.
I've been told for two years by a number of players by the owners.
Yes, there's going to be a lockout.
And I've had, I'm going to stop there.
But I think a lot of that has been positioning.
Today's the day for the lockout.
We'll see.
What do you think the odds are there's a one-week or two-week extension of the current deal?
That's $11.59 tonight has dropped dead time.
I don't pretend to know.
And even if there is a lockout, players can then decertify their union, but they've got to do that today.
If they don't do it today, they've got to wait six months.
It's labor law.
All the conventional wisdom that you've been reading about up to now, generally it's always wrong, especially when the herd is right in the same.
You can't find a different interpretation of events no matter where you go.
I don't care what website you go to.
I don't care what writer you go to.
They're all of the doom and goom brigade that we're not going to see football maybe all of next year.
Maybe a shortened season.
The number of guys that actually think this is all going to get settled in time for a full season this year.
It's a very small number of people.
Now, four years ago, the Green Bay Packers reported a profit of $34 million.
Last year, it was nine.
Some players make more, teams make more than that.
Others don't.
But it's expensive business.
It is a hugely expensive business to run and to be part of.
Let me grab a quick call.
People have been patiently waiting.
I want to grab Bruce in Wichita.
I really appreciate your patience.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello.
Hey, Rush, first-time caller, 23-year listener.
Great to hear you.
Thank you very much, sir.
Congrats on that tenure, man.
Rush, I called yesterday.
Unfortunately, I had to leave the call, and that was hard to do.
But you're definitely superiorly informed and entertaining, but being on hold of you is a hoot.
I got to get a copy of that Obesity Today book.
Is it still in print?
All right.
That Democratic activist that called earlier, what a smart guy.
I mean, that guy was smart.
Unfortunately, he's lost.
How does a guy like that get saved?
He's an activist, and he had a job to do.
Yeah, I suppose you're right.
But you made a comment about the subprime crisis and CRA and congressional forcing of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae irresponsibly.
That's exactly right on.
Not why I called.
In fact, when I was on hold yesterday, you were talking about the Coke in Wichita.
And we certainly are proud of Charles Coke.
He is a brilliant guy.
And if your listeners haven't read his book on market-based management, they need to get it from Amazon.
They didn't call the Give a Coke commercial, but that guy has got it going.
He does.
The reason I called.
By the way, let me spell that.
It's K-O-C-H.
K-O-C-H.
K-O-C-H.
Many people pronounce it cooch coach coach.
They pronounce it Coke.
It's Coke.
Right.
I've met Charles.
I don't know him well.
I've heard him speak.
He's brilliant.
He's a brilliant guy.
And, you know, his market-based management talks about virtue, et cetera.
I mean, this is an oil guy talking about resource management, the virtues, et cetera.
Smart guy.
That's not why I called.
Simple question, Rush.
The question is, where is the outcry?
When George Bush and Dick Cheney were in the office and we had oil doing what it's doing, the dem outcry was almost unbearable, almost unbearable.
And now that the magic, well, I won't go to the magic.
Now that Obama is off.
I raised this question yesterday.
In fact, I was in the third hour of yesterday's program.
Last February, the average price, $267 per gallon.
This February, $367.
$276.
It's not up a dollar, but it's close.
And it's close to $4, which is what everybody was just panicking.
And I asked, where are the news stories about this?
Because that price was inching up toward $4.
All you heard was the gasoline price and the harm it was causing people and the economic damage that it was wreaking and the whole woe and stuff.
Every day we got where are those stories now?
Well, somebody must have been listening.
Investors Business Daily unrest in the Middle East has hit American consumers hard, driving up gas prices that had already been above $3 a gallon since December 23rd.
The national average for gasoline hit 336 on February 28th.
Yeah, that's what it was.
It was 270-something a year ago, 336 this February.
But the amount of network news coverage of rising gasoline prices didn't reflect it.
All three broadcast networks together averaged just one story about rising gas prices per day.
In contrast, when gas prices rose about the same in 2008, the networks averaged more than one story per network per day.
The bottom line is there were 50, the ratio of stories linking Bush to rising gas prices to stories about the rising gas price today, period, are 15 to 1.
For every story about rising gas prices today, there were 15 about Bush causing it, being responsible for it in 2008.
And of course, it was my superior superb instincts that led to the question, where are these stories?
I mean, the price is inching up at 330, that's 70 cents away from $4.
And $4, we know is the tipping point.
So where's all this catastrophic reporting?
It just isn't there.
And there's no point about it other than it is what it is.
The media is not interested in reporting it.
This is Obama re-elect time.
There's a story.
I just said the story here, but where is it?
Well, it's a story about three guys in the Republican Party who decided not to run for president.
Christie, Mike Pence, and somebody else.
Thun.
Thun.
And the story is, well, see, this just goes to show you how much tougher these guys know, how much tougher it's going to be to win.
Now the economy's coming back.
These three guys may be the smartest of the Republican potential.
They know there's no prayer.
That's the tone of the story.
Well, Pence decided not to run because he wants to go governor.
Christie is a first-term governor who said repeatedly he's not ready to be.
He's never said he's running for president.
And Thune toyed with it.
It's a non-story.
And so here we have three, in terms of presidential politics, obscure candidates.
They were never really that serious about it.
But yet we got this big story today.
They bombed out.
Yeah, they're quitting.
They're not running.
They know full well they can't win.
The economy's coming back.
You think we were getting economy coming back stories with all these 15 stories a day on gas prices going up with Bush?
Ha!
Journalistic malpractice is what's going on.
Kathy in Coopersville, Michigan.
It's great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Hi, it's a real honor rush.
Thank you.
I'm thrilled to speak to you.
My quick question is, if the public workers in Wisconsin are laid off because they cannot get the Democrats back into the state, does that mean they get 99 weeks of unemployment?
Hmm.
And if so, doesn't the unemployment, isn't that partially federally funded through the Stimulus Act?
So doesn't that mean we are paying for that?
I'm trying to figure out why a public employee.
You mean if the senators don't come back and vote, if the teachers get laid off, you mean?
Well.
Well, any of them, from what I understand, if they don't come back and vote on this bill, then the teacher layoffs begin to fall off.
Do those people then get unemployment?
Right, right, right, right.
Oh, yeah, you're right.
When you said public employees, I'm thinking of dishwashers.
I don't know why.
My problem.
So you're talking about the teachers.
The teachers and whoever else in the government that works there.
I mean, the people who sign the welfare checks, the street cleaners, or whoever.
Well, but that's it.
Right now, it's the teachers.
Okay.
And it's primarily teachers.
But would they be eligible for unemployment compensation?
I think so.
I don't see why they wouldn't be.
Okay.
And is not the unemployment in most states right now federally funded through the Stimulus Act?
Well, it keeps getting extensions.
Yeah, the extensions are.
Yeah, the extensions are.
I see where you're going with this.
And that is, we get shafted no matter what happens.
By the way, by the way, just to put this in perspective, the teachers and so forth, their whole package with benefits and health care salary is around $80,000,000, I think.
The senators, all the senators make is $49,000 a year, which is probably less than what the teachers make on average.
A paler shaded blue, Prokoharm, and from the Wisconsin State Journal, sheriff's deputies find live ammo outside the Capitol, dozens of rounds, live ammunition found outside the Capitol this morning, 11 rounds near the State Street entrance, said UW-Madison Police Chief Susan Riesling, 29 rounds found near the King Street entrance.
Now, who would have brought ammo to the Wisconsin Statehouse?
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