All Episodes
Previous Next
March 22, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:41
March 22, 2011, Tuesday, Hour #1
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
All right, let's see here.
Where are we?
Knut, the cute killer polar bear, dead at age four.
Just up and died in the zoo.
Just got in a pool in there and then just keeled over in front of a bunch of children and visitors.
Knut, room temperature.
CBS says they want Charlie Sheen back.
Honest to God, they do.
CBS, now desperate, less moonvested.
CBS says, let us handle a guy.
Said that to Warner Brothers.
Let us handle a guy.
We want Charlie Sheen back.
Must be impressed by all these sold-out live shows that Charlie Sheen's going to do.
Modern mothers.
You remember that story we did in the Wall Street Journal about tiger mothers?
Well, there's another story.
And another mother has written a story about women who came to the feminist era with free sex, free love, did all that stuff, now worried that their daughters are dressing for sex.
And they're terribly worried about it, and they don't know what to do about it.
And it's a big, long story.
And if you care, I might get into it.
Because we got some more feminazis now concerned that their daughters may live the lives they lived.
And they don't like it.
One of these feminazis is actually quoted as saying, if I could live my life over, I would never have had premarital sex, even with the guy I ended up marrying.
Snerdley is saying, thank God for feminism then, right?
Radiation in Japan.
Never mind.
It's just not as bad.
And finally, it's what?
Oh, there's radiation and food everywhere.
My point is, it's not the apocalypse.
It's not the Armageddon it was reported to be.
And more and more people now reporting that the radiation was not involving the reactors, but the old spent fuel rods lying around in the pool, which we, you know, I told you last week, the New York Times had their first honest story about it.
Meanwhile, while all this other stuff is clipping, how do you get more clarity than CBS wanting Charlie Sheen back?
How do you get more clarity than modern mothers worried that their daughters are dressing for sex?
How do you get more clarity than Knut the polar bear does?
In the meantime, nobody knows what we're doing in Libya or why.
There are theories all over the place.
And there are experts and middle experts and rank amateurs coming forward trying to tell us what Obama is doing.
I sent out a test email to a bunch of friends.
He said, look, I've kind of been out of it.
I got to play golf with Jack Nicholas yesterday, by the way, at the Ernie L's for Autism charitable fundraiser out here at PGA National, where they played the Honda Classic.
Well, I had my moments in my game.
Yeah, I had them.
It was fun.
It was a good day.
So when I got in, I sent a note.
The problem with Japanese food, Snerdley, is there's not enough food.
It's not that the radiation in it.
But I sent a bunch of people, a test email.
Hey, you guys, I kind of been out.
Can somebody tell me why we're in Libya?
Nobody knows.
The regime's put out two or three different reasons why.
Well, why do you think we're in Libya, Snerdley?
Why do you think?
By the way, greetings, folks.
Great to be back with you.
El Rushbo here at 800-282-2882.
We got Farrakhan saying, who the hell do you think you are?
We got a bunch of liberal Democrats demanding the Nobel Peace Prize be withdrawn from Obama.
A bunch of leftists are saying, gosh, she's no different than Bush.
This is a final insult after not closing Abu or Cob Gitmo and so forth.
Why do you think?
Why do you think we're in Libya?
Not pressure from the press, not pressure from the press.
That's where you're wrong.
He was not getting pressure from the press.
I hold in my formerly nicotine standpoint.
I love this.
At Harvard, they are discombobulated.
They do not, their whole worldview has just been turned upside down.
This is a piece by David Rodham Gergen.
After conversations with top players in Washington last week, mostly as I accompanied a group of Zuckerman fellows, boy, I wish I was part of that group, the Zuckerman fellows, from Harvard on a field trip.
Here are some brief reflections on the mood there at Harvard.
We got a whole CNN piece on what they're thinking at Harvard.
Remember now, Harvard grooms people to do this, quote unquote, the right way.
That's the purpose of Harvard and the purpose of Yale and Princeton and Brown to train people to do this the right way, meaning the liberal right way.
The head-snapping change in policy toward Libya has everybody guessing where the Mideast is heading, whether the U.S. has a good handle on it.
And most of all, what Obama's trying to achieve.
Get this next, see?
Get this next.
One irony, as a female friend put it, is that for many years, many of us believe that if only more women could gain power, the world would surely become more peaceful.
Yet, we now see that the three people who talked Obama into using force are women.
Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, leading male advisers were opposed.
Perhaps we should be less...
We were talking about male liberals.
Of course they were opposed.
It's the new Castrati.
Of course the males were opposed.
They're sissies.
And here's the number one, well, the leader of the club.
And he happens to sit in the oval orifice.
And his big problem, Stanley Kurtz lays this out in a just-posted piece at National Review Online.
Stanley Kurtz lays it out.
The problem with understanding this is, is like everything else, Obama doesn't dare tell you what his real reason is.
He doesn't want it debated because the American people would oppose it.
The American people does not want the U.S. military used for meals on wheels.
Look, we've gone into Libya.
We are in Libya for a purpose of protecting innocent civilians, right?
Now, that's one of the reasons we've been told.
Well, there are a hell of a lot more innocent civilians in Darfur.
Ask George Clooney, who's probably fuming about now.
He'd been working for years to get this taking place in Darfur.
We're in Libya.
He was barking up the wrong tree.
If he'd known to go to Hillary and Samantha Power Susan Rice, who knows?
He could have another house in Darfur now.
But no, we're in Libya.
We have, you talk about protecting innocent civilians.
How about Zimbabwe and Mugabe or North Korea for Krang Islands?
We're looking where civilians are mistreated and we want to go places to protect them.
There are a lot of places that have more of them than in Libya.
For that matter, folks, we have more innocent civilians under attack in Arizona than are under attack in Libya.
And Barack Hussein Obama has been talked into going into Libya by three women while filing suit against another woman, the governor of Arizona.
So now they're really stepping in it with all of these.
And then he, you know, if you go back to 2002 and you look at Obama explaining why he opposed Iraq, he's doing everything here that he stated he opposed.
He even laid out, I think it was in 2008, I'll have to check this, but he laid out the case for impeachment of a president.
And by gosh, if he hasn't followed suit with his own stated views on presidential impeachment, David Rodham Gergen, what is the president's endgame in Libya?
What is his strategy for the Middle East more generally?
Who can say for sure?
You don't understand, folks.
For them to ask this, to admit they're asking it at Harvard, this is the place all the answers.
This is the place where half the State Department went to school.
This is the place where the Pentagon went to school, other than various war colleges.
Their president, our president is from this place.
And they just can't figure it out.
They're distressed.
So we got, okay, well, protection of innocent citizens.
And then they said, we're going to get rid of Qaddafi.
They said, no, we're not going to get rid of Qaddafi.
The Pentagon has a whole different stated reason than what the White House says we're doing there.
They're going to get rid of Gaddafi.
No, we're not going to get rid of Gaddafi.
Some have argued we're going in there to save Obama's face because he said two weeks ago, Gaddafi's got to go.
There was a problem.
Gaddafi didn't go.
And you don't diss Obama.
American president doesn't say, you are out.
And the guy stays there and counts his money.
But whatever, folks, is going on, I'll tell you this.
It's patently obvious that this entire operation is spearheaded by people who do not believe that the United States is the solution to problems in the world.
We are being led and a policy or a series of policies have been put together by people who believe that the United States is the problem in the world, not the solution.
And we will be right back.
Let me read a little bit to you of this piece just posted at around 10.30 this morning by Stanley Kurtz at National Real Online, Review Online, for people trying to figure out why we're doing this and why there's such murkiness.
There's a reason.
There's a reason for the murkiness.
And Kurtz has written a, I forget the title of it, but I interviewed him for an issue at a Limball Letter, a great book on Obama and what motivates him, who inspired him and all that for years.
And Samantha Power, now you just heard her name, David Rodham Gergen writing at CNN, Samantha Power, Hillary, and Susan Rice.
These are the three people wearing jockstraps in this regime that encouraged action, military action in Libya.
And he was stunned.
Everybody thought that women in power would make a more peaceful world.
I mean, how ridiculous is that?
How ridiculous has every tenet of feminism always been?
And this is from Harvard, the supposed citadel of unique intelligence.
What an insulting thing to say more women in power would lead to a more peaceful.
What the hell does that mean?
Ask any kid who had a mother about peace growing up for crying out loud, who was the disciplinarian most of the time.
I just, I marvel at the presumptions and the narratives these people have.
Remember, these are the people that believed it was how young children were raised to determine whether they ended up masculine or feminine.
So it's people like this.
And he gave little Johnny pink rooms, Barbie dolls and all that, and gave little Sally G.I. Joe and all the military stuff to see what would happen.
And guess what?
Little Johnny turned out to be a Hellion on Wheels little boy, despite the fact they put him in a pink bedroom with a bunch of Barbie dolls.
And these are the smartest people among us.
These are the elites.
These are the ruling class.
For years, writes Stanley Kurtz, Samantha Power, a prominent advocate of humanitarian military intervention and a keybacker of our action in Libya, has been a powerful member of Obama's foreign policy team.
In 2005, Obama contacted Samantha Power after reading her book on genocide.
There followed a long conversation after which Power left Harvard to work for Obama, quickly emerging as his senior foreign policy advisor.
Well, it seems reasonable to conclude from his long-term relationship with Samantha Power that Obama shares her interest in making humanitarian military interventions more common.
Think Meals on Wheels.
Yet the president has said very little about this, and the obvious policy implications of his ties with power are rarely drawn.
In other words, this is probably the first time you're hearing why Obama likes Samantha Power.
There's an ideological link.
Think of Linsky.
In his biography of Obama, David Remnick describes the beginnings of the power-Obama relationship thus.
Obama did not strike power as a liberal interventionist or a Kissingerian realist or any other kind of ideologicalist except maybe a consequentialist.
In foreign policy, Obama said he was for what worked.
Well, here we have the classic protective presentation of Obama.
The future.
Oh, speaker, where did I put this?
Where did I, oh, I talk about the classic presentation of Obama to him.
Oh, don't tell me.
What did I do?
Oh, I got to find this.
Oh, gee, it's the most syrupy.
I'll have to print it out again.
I got lots of stacks here.
But it is the most syrupy explanation of what Obama is doing and how brilliant he is at it and how he can multiply.
Oh, he was at a dinner someplace and was getting updates on that American jet that was shot down.
It is a story about how there was a liaison duty officer that was on the phone to somebody, and this somebody was alerting a duty officer who would then report to Obama while he was dining at this official dinner, the status of the downed U.S. military jet.
And whoever wrote the story was talking, this is an example of how Obama multitasks.
This is an example of the Obama competence.
What the hell is this?
What kind of special intelligence does it take to sit there at dinner and have somebody update you on what's happening with anything?
So, this is this is a great illustration.
I'll find the exact story, read it to you.
It's a great illustration of this so-called protective presentation of Obama.
What Kurtz is referring to here is David Remnick in the book.
Protective means these people all know he's incompetent, or they all know that he is an unacceptable leftist ideologue.
They got to protect that.
Whatever, be it his incompetence or his extremism, his vast ultra-liberalism, they have to protect it.
He wouldn't get elected otherwise, he wouldn't be supported.
It's why Pelosi said we ought to pass the bill to find what's in healthcare.
It's why Obama never did have a plan.
Because the whole objective, as it is, with all prominent liberals, is to protect them, to deny knowledge, to make sure people don't know who they really are, what they really believe.
So, here we have this association with Samantha Power.
She is an ideologue, military intervention for humanitarian purposes.
The future president reads a book by her, a passionately ideological humanitarian interventionist, quickly hires her as his key foreign policy advisor.
Yet, the obvious ideological implications of this are left entirely unexplored.
Instead, we're quickly reassured Obama is nothing but a pragmatist.
He knows what he's doing, and he's so smart, you couldn't keep up.
You don't have, none of us have the ability to understand what Obama's doing.
You're just going to have to accept it.
He sees a vision unlike any of us, and he is such a pragmatist.
So, don't explore any of these ideological relationships he's got.
Don't explore the relationship with Reverend Wright, for example.
And there might be a germ of truth to the pragmatism claim Obama doesn't seem to have a single overarching strategic perspective.
Instead, he pragmatically juggles competing sensibilities on foreign policy.
I would disagree with Kurtz there, but I don't have time to get into that.
Most of the commentary on the Libya has focused on the tension between Obama's apparent desire to displace Gaddafi and his reluctance to admit that that's what he wants to do.
But the chief reason for this intervention is the one that's staring us in the face.
Obama dithered when it was simply a matter of replacing Qaddafi, yet quickly acted when slaughter in Benghazi became the issue.
What Samantha Power and her supporters want to solidify the principle of responsibility to protect in international law.
Yet Obama has so far been reluctant to fully explain any of this to either Congress or the public, perhaps because he realizes the ideological basis of his actions would not be popular if openly admitted.
If Obama were a different sort of president, we would have all heard about this responsibility to protect long ago.
Not establish freedom, not do the, no, we're there to protect the downtrend.
Well, as I say, folks, if that's what we're doing, if that's the primary motivation, why aren't we in Darfur?
Why aren't we in North Korea?
Why aren't we in Zimbabwe?
In fact, somebody ought to tell the innocent civilians in Arizona that we send in the military to protect innocent civilians because they're under assault in Arizona.
And this regime is doing nothing.
So there's an ideological tie here.
It's intervention in military meals on wheels, something the U.S. population wants no part of.
Yeah, yeah, I just love, ladies and gentlemen, reading about how we are only in Libya for oil.
It was Ed Markey from Massachusetts who said, and we're only in Libya for oil.
I wish we were in Libya for oil.
I'm still waiting for our oil from Iraq at below market prices.
So what if I can't?
I had to laugh when I said, Mark, yeah, we're only there for the oil.
I don't know.
Folks, CNN over the weekend, reporter said that everybody she had talked to on the ground in Libya was grateful to America for the air attacks.
She then specifically mentioned how impressed the Libyan rebels were with the presentation by Ambassador Rice, Susan Rice at the UN.
You've seen pictures, right, of these ragtag rebels watching television, watching the proceedings of the UN.
Yeah, I have too.
I've seen a lot of video, a lot of video of these rebels, whoever the heck they are, watching, C-SPAN, watching, or maybe it's Al Jazeera too, who knows, show us what's happening at the United Nations.
Very happy.
The rebels are very happy, by the way.
CNN says so.
To the audio soundbites, we go.
Here's a sampling of American presidents soberly informing and explaining to the American people how and why they have decided to send Americans into harm's way.
December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.
At 7 o'clock this evening Eastern Time, air and naval forces of the United States launched a series of strikes against the headquarters, terrorist facilities, and military assets that support Muammar Gaddafi's subversive activities.
Just two hours ago, Allied air forces began an attack on military targets in Iraq and Kuwait.
Our mission will be limited, focused, and under the command of an American general.
My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger.
Hello, Rio de Janeiro.
Hello!
Sidashi!
Mara Viloza!
American presidential war announcements, great American presidential war announcements in American history.
What was that?
That was cold?
That was cold?
No, no, no, it was.
Here, Ed, play it again.
I realize that snuck up on people.
December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.
At 7 o'clock this evening Eastern Time, air and naval forces of the United States launched a series of strikes against the headquarters, terrorist facilities, and military assets that support Muammar Gaddafi's subversive activities.
Just two hours ago, Allied air forces began an attack on military targets in Iraq and Kuwait.
Our mission will be limited, focused, and under the command of an American general.
My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger.
Hello, Rio de Janeiro.
Hello!
Sidashi!
Maravilios!
And accompanying that, I have a story here from the New York Daily News.
First Lady Michelle Obama dazzles Chile with her fashion sense.
You know, this is, it's pathetic.
Pathetic.
Michelle Obama, known for her innate sense of style, make this job more and more challenging every day.
They really do.
With leads like that, Michelle Obama, known for her innate sense of style, once again dazzled the world during the official trip to Chile.
First Lady looked stunning, as always, as she stepped down the jet in a textured frock, along with her husband and her two daughters, her mother and the nanny.
So let me count them up.
The first lady and her mother.
So you got, well, Obama's, he's got four women traveling with him.
Nothing about his fashion sense.
A renowned fashion icon and a role model for women.
Michelle Obama has been featured in the list of best-dressed women in a number of fashion publications across the world.
She's often seen opting for clothes by designers like Calvin Klein, Oscar De La Renta, Narcisco, Rodriguez, and Maria Pinto, and has become a fashion trendsetter for women across the globe.
Start the slideshow to get an exclusive glimpse of the First Lady during her Chile trip.
This is, when's this from?
It looks like it's from today.
Yeah.
Known for her innate sense of style.
Well, I don't know what I think about it.
I just marvel at the What did I tell you last week about my theory involving all this sympathy?
That's what I think about.
They feel sorry.
They feel sorry.
And there's just certain things that accompany the template with the First Lady is they're all fashion trendsetters.
And this one is obviously no different.
It's the way the style book says you report it.
You just do it.
Back to the audio sound bites and the land of safety.
For your host late yesterday afternoon in Santiago, Chile, during a state visit, joint press conference, the Chilean president, along with Obama, Obama says this about what U.S. policy is toward Libya and Colonel Muamar Gaddafi, who, if he survives this, can we make him a general, please?
It's been years.
It is U.S. policy that Gaddafi needs to go.
And we've got a wide range of tools in addition to our military efforts to support that policy.
There are a whole range of policies that we are putting in place that has created one of the most powerful international consensuses around the isolation of Mr. Gaddafi.
And we will continue to pursue those.
But when it comes to our military action, we are doing so in support of UN Security Resolution 1973 that specifically talks about humanitarian efforts, and we are going to make sure that we stick to that mandate.
As we launch the missiles, what?
Into his compound.
In a, you might say, reenactment of Ronald Reagan.
So we are launching missiles into the Colonel's compound on a humanitarian mission.
Here's Obama again late yesterday in Santiago during a state visit with the Chilean president, whose name is Sebastian Piñera.
Obama said this about how long we should expect the attacks on the Libya to take place.
Let me emphasize that we anticipate this transition to take place in a matter of days and not a matter of weeks.
And so I would expect that over the next several days, we'll have more information, and the Pentagon will be fully briefing the American people as well as the press on that issue.
Pentagon will.
Okay, fine, cool.
Nito.
I watched television this morning here prepping the show, and the attorney general has waded into these.
You see that?
The attorney general Eric Holder said that Gaddafi's a bad guy.
He's a bad guy.
He doesn't deserve to be there, and we've got to get rid of Gaddafi.
What happened to humanitarian?
What happened to all the other stuff?
That's a different, I guess it's a different one.
So it doesn't matter who you talk to in the regime, you get a different rationale for what we're doing.
Wolf Blitzer bending over backwards to excuse the fact that Obama has no clue how long this will really take.
Had he been formally, finally briefed by his military commanders that there was no way this transition could take place over a few days.
It's going to take a few weeks.
Those are questions we're going to have to now work on to see if when the president says it will take days, not weeks, and then he said several days for the transition to take place, whether he was up to speed on what's going on, because earlier in the day we had been getting indications that it was going to be weeks, no longer days, as Admiral Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, suggested yesterday.
Oh, oh, we didn't know whether he was up to speed or what's going on.
Oh, damn.
So he's being sabotaged again by his own people, not bringing him up to speed.
You believe that?
CNN bending over backwards to tell us that poor Obama, he may not be properly advised here.
He may not, it isn't going to take days.
That's what Wolf wanted us to do.
It ain't going to take days.
Obama said days, maybe weeks, but it's going to take longer than days.
And when the president says it's going to take days, not weeks, then he said several days take place, whether he was up to speed on what's going on, because earlier in the day, so you see this no bounds, ladies and gentlemen, no boundaries to cover for this guy.
And yet, don't forget now, we have this story where Obama's a brilliant multitasker.
In fact, it's part of who he is.
He can have dinner and be informed of the status of the American pilot on a downed jet and still eat.
And that is long been Obama's secret.
And yet, Wolf Blitzer says he may not have been properly informed here.
Going to be weeks, not days.
And then, of course, Obama talks about our powerful international consensus.
I'm sure you've heard by now that we have far more countries with us in Iraq after spending, what, 14 months before the United Nations.
Remember, George W. Bush went up there, General Powell went up there, Dominique de Villiper hit everybody at the UN Security Council.
And we tried to put together a coalition, and we had one and more countries in Iraq as a coalition than here.
And they told us that the Bush coalition was a phony consensus.
We'll be back.
Don't go away.
Now that we've told you a little bit about who Samantha Power is, she wrote a book.
Literally, she wrote a book while at Harvard that impressed Obama.
Oh, he hires her.
And a woman who writes a book at Harvard becomes one of the top-ranking people in the Obama foreign policy apparatus.
But she wrote a book, and that's who she is.
And therefore, she'd been with Obama in a long time.
And here's a quote, what she said about Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential campaign.
Quote, she's a monster, too.
That's off the record.
She is stooping to anything.
If you're poor and she's telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it'll be more effective.
The amount of deceit she's put forward is really unattractive.
That quote got her in trouble.
This woman has said so many anti-Israeli things in the course of her, since Obama discovered her as an author and as the press, everybody got to know Samantha Power.
She really had some virulent things to say about Israel.
But none of them registered at all.
But that quote on Hillary, that got her in trouble.
You remember that?
Got her big, yes, sir, got her in big, big trouble.
And yes, you're right.
I don't recall Laura Bush being called a fashion plate.
You're right about that.
So it makes it even more pathetic.
I got a note from a friend.
Let's talk here about consensus building and coalitions and all that.
Friend says, you know, Rush, the fact that the war in Libya is opposed by Minister Farrakhan, Dennis Kucinich, Gerald Nadler, Michael Kinsley, Ron Paul, and Pat Buchanan proves that Obama knows how to bill a consensus.
In a week or two, when the mainstream of both parties fully embrace the anti-war coalition, the president will have forged a wartime national unity not seen since World War II.
Get ready for it.
This is the template that's being developed.
Anytime you can unite Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan with Minister Farrakhan and Dennis Kucinich, you can put together a consensus.
There isn't anybody like you.
Audio soundbites.
We continue.
October the 2nd of 2002.
This is Obama's famous speech against the Iraq war.
I don't oppose war in all circumstances.
And when I look out over this crowd today, I know there is no shortage of patriots or patriotism.
What I do oppose is a dumb war.
Aha.
Aha.
So that must mean that we are in a smart war.
And isn't that what the liberals say?
They got to do everything smarter.
So we must now be in a smart war.
That's right.
If you don't understand the policy, you're not smart enough.
You don't have Obama's.
Well, they have to clarify it because there's too many different policies out there.
So they're having to clarify.
And there are too many policies because Obama's so smart, his advisors can't even keep up with him.
He's so visionary, he sees so much further than the distance, even his best advisors, that it's just impossible for the rest of us to keep up.
So I'm thinking maybe if he chooses foreign policy advisors by virtue of their books, somebody get Obama the book Foreign Policy for Idiots, if there is one, so he can hire the guy.
And while we're at it, somebody get him the book Domestic Policy for Idiots.
Maybe he'll hire that author too, if that's how he's putting all this together.
I don't know.
It may explain why Hillary's leaving.
A lot of people are wondering that, because she was pretty definitive.
She doesn't want to be VEEP.
She doesn't want to be Secretary of State.
I mean, Secretary of Defense.
She doesn't want to run for president again.
She doesn't want any part of it.
Obama, yeah, you go back, all this stuff.
I think it really is interesting because the reason for the dithering in the first place was Obama knew all this stuff that he had said about Iraq could be looked up and it would be used to remind him.
And so he'd be appear hypocritical.
That was one of the reasons for the dithering.
At some point, it was, if we're to believe David Robin-Gergen, it was the women.
You can't worry about that, man.
We've got a real problem here.
So, anyway, it's pathetic, folks.
It's scary.
It really is.
Here it is.
It's a politico story.
This intersection of a formal dinner in Chile and an effort to stay updated on the pilot's safety reflects both the multitasking nature of Obama and the consequences of his decision to go on the trip.
▲
Export Selection