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March 23, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:50
March 23, 2011, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Greetings, greetings, my friends.
Welcome.
I am America's favorite commodity, Rush Limbaugh, and this is the one and only Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Great to have you with us.
Our telephone number, if you want to appear on the program, 800-282-2882.
And the email address, El Rushbaugh at EIBNet.com.
Ladies and gentlemen, I want to clarify something.
Yesterday when I opened the program, soon thereafter, I'm not exactly sure when it was, but I commented on the media and their overwhelming praise of Michelle Obama's fashion sense.
Remember that?
And I may have said some things that some might consider a little look, maybe I was wrong to question all the media reports calling her a fashion trendsetter.
I mean, if you've seen some of the stunning outfits that Gaddafi is wearing lately, maybe she is having an impact.
And I really, I did not give that impression yesterday, and I wanted to get it right.
How are you folks doing other?
Donald Trump's going to appear at an Iowa Republican dinner in June.
That's his first Iowa appearance as a presidential prospect.
June 10th, headline speaker for the Iowa Republican Party's Lincoln Day dinner.
This is announced by Republican officials in Iowa to the Des Moines Register.
I mention this only because so many of you in this audience just...
conniption fits when Trump's name as a potential Republican nominee comes up.
Elizabeth Taylor has passed away.
That's number two.
Canute, the polar bear's number one.
Have you heard they're going to stuff Knut?
They are.
taxidermy on new they're gonna stuff canute at the uh and what's what don't what's wrong with that What's wrong with stuffing Canute?
My question is, what with?
Baby Seals?
That's what Knut would like.
Well, I mean, it's just the way it is.
Our president, ladies and gentlemen, I don't know why Trump just doesn't buy Iowa and make him vote the way he wants.
Messing around like this.
Here we go.
This is Barack Obama.
This was late Monday afternoon in Santiago, Chile.
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.
It's U.S. policy.
Gaddafi has to go.
Monday afternoon, late yesterday afternoon in San Salvador, El Salvador.
President Obama and the president there held a joint press conference.
Unidentified reporter, President Obama.
You mentioned a few minutes ago how this mission in Libya was narrow in scope, limited in duration, but potentially it seems quite open-ended in the sense that as long as Gaddafi remains in power, civilians presumably will need protection from him.
My question to you is, what is your exit strategy for U.S. military involvement if Gaddafi does not succumb to the international pressures to leave?
Are you saying essentially U.S. will hang in there militarily in Libya if Gaddafi hangs in there?
Long as Gaddafi remains in power, unless he changes his approach and provides the Libyan people an opportunity to express themselves freely, and there are significant reforms in the Libyan government.
What?
Unless he is willing to step down, then there are still going to be potential threats towards the Libyan people.
What?
Does anybody understand?
I know when I hear Obama, I'm now according to the media.
I need to question my own intellect.
I need to question my own ability to understand here.
He's so far ahead of us, you know.
He's so much brighter.
He's all the nuances.
I mean, forget them.
You know, I think I can read the stitches on a fastball.
This guy can stop the fastball.
We just, we don't have the ability to keep up.
It sounds to me like he's saying Qaddafi can stay.
He must go unless he needs to go.
Said that on Monday, he needs to go, but he can stay if he doesn't go.
And yeah, as long as he remains in power, unless he changes his approach and provides the Libyan people an opportunity to shout at him and whatever else they want to do, if he's willing to step down, fine.
We're going to be, but he can stay.
He's got to go, but he can stay.
This is our policy.
You got Gates, the Secretary of Defense, saying, we've never done this before.
We have never had a foreign policy on a flylight.
Grab audio sound by number 11, Ed.
This is our defense secretary in Moscow yesterday, Robert Gates, speaking to reporters and had this to say about Libya.
This command and control business is complicated.
We haven't done something like this kind of on the fly before.
And so it's not surprising to me that it would take a few days to get it all sorted out.
Well, is that not reassuring?
Here we are in the old Soviet Union, in Russia.
And the KGB reporters are asking us what's going on.
Well, we don't really know.
We've really never done anything on the fly like this before.
It's going to take a few days to get it all sorted out.
Obama says we're going to be gone in a few days.
Wolf Blitzer says, no, he's just getting bad advice.
He's going to be there a little longer than a few days.
Obama says, he's got to go.
No, he can stay if he wants to stay as long as he lets people yell at him.
A question, Mr. Snerdley?
What?
Right.
That's a good, that's a good question, and you've asked the right person.
Snerdley said all of his life, he has heard when it comes to military action, that, I mean, there's five rings in the Pentagon.
There are a lot of people in there.
And I asked Secretary Rumsfeld, is there one person?
I mean, you were the Secretary of Defense, is there one person who knows everything going on in that building?
He said, no, it's not possible.
Now, stop and think about that.
Not one person knows everything going on.
And by the way, this is not related to classified action or top secret stuff.
I mean, that, of course, is a factor, but you would think that there would be somebody who knows everything going on.
I once asked a former DCI, director of central intelligence, did you know everything going on?
No, no.
Not one person in there who knows.
And it's not that they're all rogues.
It's just massive.
It is complex.
It's like asking, is there one person who knows what's going on in the Department of Health and Human Services?
Is there one person who's going to know everything going on in our health care?
No, there isn't.
And yet the citizens assume that there is this all-knowing, all-present entity somewhere who knows everything the government's doing.
So the question is, Snerdley says, I've been told that we in the Pentagon have contingency plans on virtually every situation that might erupt around the world.
And when Snerdley asked me that question, I said, well, I have thought that too.
Okay, you've got Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.
It's hard to believe.
He's been there.
How what?
How many decades?
How long has he been a colonel?
Folket, 40-something years, the guy has not had a promotion.
That's got to tell you something.
And he's in charge of promotions.
47 years.
You would think, you know, we keep hearing about the Libyan desk at the State Department or the Soviet desk or whatever.
You would think that there would be contingency plans.
If this happens here, what does this mean for events in Libya?
What will we do to counter if this happens?
You know, one of the ABCs here.
And our defense secretary is saying, we've never kind of done this on the fly before, which is stronger than an implication.
It's basically we're not doing anything we had planned here.
In other words, all the contingencies that we've ever had, we're doing something we've never contemplated.
This isn't in our plan book.
So it is on the fly.
Now, remember yesterday, David Rodham Gergen at CNN wrote that he was miffed, puzzled, that it was women in the regime who were determining our military action.
And he was surprised by that because he had bought into this notion that if women had more positions of power, that there would be a less contentious world, be a more peaceful place, which I, I've never understood that, just by virtue of real world experience.
I've never, where did that, that's, that's an offshoot of all these stereotypes that women are soft, fragile, nurturing, understanding.
Gee, yeah, relationship builders and all this, watchers of chick-flicks.
It's not the real world.
Does anybody, come on now, look, does that stereotype even survive when we were contemplating Hillary Clinton being president?
So anyway, now there has been blowback, if you will, from this whole notion that the women are running the show.
People don't like that aspect of it.
It's in Time magazine, a woman is running the U.S. air war over Libya.
Time magazine picks up this obsession with gender in our Libyan policy.
And in the Atlantic, somebody here named Garant Frank Ruta on the idiocy of framing the Libya intervention as a battle of the sexes.
This author is really miffed at the idea that only the women of Obamaville have any guts.
It's, you know, it's, well, it's funny and it's harrowing to read this stuff about what's going on in this administration, how it's happening.
The defense secretary's, no, we've really never done this.
He says it to the Russians.
Oh, we'll get it figured out a few days here.
We're doing this on the fly.
We've never really done this before.
That's because we've never had a commander-in-chief like Obama before.
I wonder what, you know, should his nickname be Obama or Oscrama?
Depends on the day.
Seems to be a little bit of both, depending on what day it is.
One thing true, and this is probably more salient than anything, with Gates out there saying, well, we've never done anything like this before.
Doing this on the fly, not surprising to me, it'd take a few days to get it all sorted out.
We know what that means.
That means the Pentagon has never had a contingency plan for a president like Obama.
That's what all this.
The answer to your question certainly is: State Department, Pentagon, the one thing they've never planned on is a president like Obama.
That's the scary thing.
And we've got to take a brief time out.
We'll do it.
We'll be back after this.
Your guiding light, Rushlin Boy, and every square inch of my glorious naked body serving humanity behind the golden EIB microphone.
Mrs. Clinton, last Thursday in Tunis, Tunisia, at a town hall meeting.
Yep, we did a town hall meeting in Tunis, and she said this about Colonel Muamar Gaddafi.
If you don't try to take him out, if you don't support the opposition and he stays in power, we cannot predict what he will do.
Well, we don't have to remove Gaddafi.
If you don't try to take him out, if you don't support the opposition, he stays in power.
Oh, I guess we will have to take him out.
Then she, a little bit more relaxed about it, last night on Nightline during a discussion about the attacks on Libya.
Got the question, I think it was from Diane Sawyer.
Qaddafi, will this intervention be a success if he's still in power?
The United Nations Security Council resolution was very broad but explicit about what was legally authorized by the international community.
And we are 100% committed to enforcing it and helping others enforce it.
There's nothing in there about getting rid of anybody.
What has happened?
What in the world changed?
He's got to go.
No, he doesn't have to go.
Well, if he doesn't go and he doesn't let people yell at him, well, it's not going to be fun.
Then he's got to go.
No, he doesn't have to go.
What in the world changed?
Did somebody say, look at you can't sit here and say we're going to target a world leader and get rid of what?
You know, this is amateur hour.
There's even a story here in Politico in search of the Obama doctrine.
Why are they searching for one?
Because they're desperately trying to craft it.
There isn't an Obama doctrine.
They want to make it out like there is one going on here, and it's so deep that we can't see it.
It's so special, so unique.
It is so above all of us that we can't see it.
In fact, the story says it's difficult to succinctly describe the intellectual framework for Obama's approach.
It's so nuanced.
Another way of, well, this is just, it is lethargy.
It is journalistic malpractice.
This is pathetic and embarrassing.
At a briefing for reporters last Saturday, as U.S. Tomahawk missiles slammed into the Libyan coast, a top aide to President Obama was asked to define the Obama doctrine to explain why the U.S. was suddenly pursuing a third conflict in a Muslim nation.
Ben Rhodes, deputy national security advisor, one of Obama's most highly regarded speechwriters, ticked off the factors that led his reluctant commander-in-chief to act.
Gaddafi's threat of a massacre against his own people, support from an international coalition, and the provision of humanitarian assistance.
All good.
It's the old, it's the old human rights of Jimmy Carter resurfacing here.
Meals on wheels.
That difficulty in succinctly describing the intellectual framework for Obama's approach to foreign policy and national security issues has long bedeviled anyone trying to impute a concrete agenda from Obama.
That difficulty in succinctly describing the intellectual framework for Obama.
How about there isn't one?
How about there isn't an intellectual framework?
We got the Defense Secretary saying it's on the fly.
We've never done this before.
And we have to sit here and be so insulted by the media constantly telling us that we're too stupid.
We're just a bunch of hayseeds.
We don't have even, even if we were smarter, we still don't have the ability to comprehend the intellect, the intellectual framework in Obama's approach.
Republicans, especially the neocons, who gave enthusiastic support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, have sought to paint Obama's nuanced approach as fundamentally weak.
This is goblin.
What we have here are people who understand that we have an embarrassment as president of the United States, an embarrassment that they promoted and foisted upon us.
And now they have to engage in a profound cover-up.
So, the way this is all going, and the whole purpose of this, in search of the Obama doctrine, at the end of the day, the purpose here is to be able to say that Obama wins regardless what happens.
He can claim success or deny responsibility.
That's why the Obama doctrine is open-ended.
And that's why the difficulty, the difficulty in succinctly describing the intellectual framework for Obama's approach.
I have seldom encountered, and we've all seen media bias and we've all seen media cheerleading.
I have seldom seen the media so eager to prostate itself, prostrate itself in order to portray somebody in a light that they don't deserve.
This is unprecedented, I think.
I got a brief time out here, folks.
There's a lot more in this story, more of the same, too.
Be right back: a man, a legend, a way of life, and half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
You know what's amazing about this political story?
Who do they go to?
Who do they go to to find out what the Obama doctrine is?
They went right to a speechwriter.
They went right to a speechwriter, Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security advisor, one of Obama's most highly regarded speechwriters.
They sidestepped a teleprompter.
No, they didn't go to the teleprompter.
They went to the guy who puts it in the teleprompter.
They did not go to Obama.
The difficulty in succinctly describing the intellectual framework for Obama's approach to foreign policy has long bedeviled anyone, trying to impute a concrete agenda from Obama's soaring pronouncements about supporting democracy and fostering international human rights.
Soaring pronouncements.
Soaring intellectual.
It's an empty suit.
He doesn't really care.
That's the big thing.
I don't think he cares.
Other people think he has to care.
They have to present the impression that he cares.
Other people are coming up with the ideas, the implementations, the policies.
He doesn't care.
By the way, he did cancel the trip to the Mayan ruins.
Part of the spring break vacation.
Much hell and the girls are going to go and visit the Mayan ruins.
Obama heading back to Washington to deal with the Libya thing that they've all tried to make out to be not too big a deal.
But what's changed here?
Gaddafi's got to go.
He's got to go.
No, he can stay.
No, he's got to go.
No, he can stay.
As long as he lets people yell at him, he can stay.
Why the flip-flop?
Could it be?
Maybe it's one of two things.
Maybe there's internal polling data.
Maybe there's Libyan polling data.
Maybe a majority of Libyan citizens actually favor Gaddafi over the rebels.
Maybe.
Maybe, I mean, Al Jazeera has got a poll that 65% of the Arab world likes what we're doing outside of Libya.
Believe that Al Jazeera does have a poll.
62% of the street, the Arab street, supports what we're doing.
But what are we doing?
It's too nuanced.
And we don't have the brains to figure it out.
He can stay.
He doesn't have to go, or he's got to go.
I want to take you back to a moment of deep contemplation on this program.
March 17th, six days ago, I, your host, raised a possibility.
In Libya, it's a tough call, which is why Obama is by no means qualified.
In Libya, the opposition probably largely influenced by Al-Qaeda.
The rebels, remember, we went through this.
It's a tough call.
What do you do?
The popular consensus is we've got this colonel, he's wiping out his own people.
Starting to talk about it as a genocide now, by the way, on the left.
So, okay, he's got to go.
But then, who are these rebels?
Some of them, I speculated, might be al-Qaeda.
Others might be agents from Iran.
Well, I hold here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers a Reuters story.
Al-Qaeda commander backs Libyan rebels in message.
Abu Yahya Alibi, not to be confused with Scooter Al-Libby.
This is Abu Yahya Alibi, urges anti-Qadhafi forces not to retreat.
Reports of mutiny among Qaddafi forces slowing attack on rebel-held Misrata.
A senior member of al-Qaeda urged Libyan rebels to continue their fight against Gaddafi and warned of the consequences of defeat in a videotape message posted on jihadi websites.
This from the Qatar-based Gulf News.
The message from Libyan native Abu Yahya Alibi marked the first time a top-ranked al-Qaeda commander has commented on the uprising in Libya.
Qaddafi has repeatedly blamed al-Qaeda for inciting the unrest against him.
He's been saying so.
Now, if you are in the regime, if you are Samantha Power, Susan Rice or Hillary Clinton, and you're part of the group taking this seriously.
If I can find out that the rebels are linked to al-Qaeda, certainly they can.
What do you think the challenge would be for them in the White House?
Remember now, everything's focused in the prism of re-election.
All of this is about 2012.
Make no mistake.
Everything they're doing is about that.
That's why it's on the fly.
That's why there isn't a contingency.
Everything is through that prism.
And the way liberals see things, okay, here's a madman, Muammar Gaddafi, wiping out his own people.
We have pictures on television about it.
The American people saying it's horrible, it's horrible.
It's not enough.
We don't want to see it.
This is not what we don't.
We don't support leaders running around killing their own people.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Okay, that's one thing.
Then here comes the human rights meals on wheels aspect of the Obama foreign policy.
But we find out that the people trying to overthrow Gaddafi happen to be friends with Osama bin Laden.
So what do we do now?
And the question becomes, is there anybody in this regime anything other than a faculty lounge theoretician who could answer that question?
And what about where's the Muslim Brotherhood in all this?
You know, they're lurking around and they're lurking around in Egypt.
And we know that it is the objective of militant jihadis to have Sharia throughout the Middle East.
Now we learn, as I asked last, because I pointed out the good possibility that the rebels are al-Qaeda, either al-Qaeda-sponsored, paid-for, whatever.
Now what do we do?
We've made this case, Gaddafi's rotten SOB has got to go, but no, no, he doesn't.
Why the change?
Why the change?
What can Robert Gates say?
Well, we just figured out here that the people we're supporting are Al-Qaeda.
We can't say that.
We can't say that the people we're launching Tomahawk missiles for and doing this no-fly zone are al-Qaeda.
We can't say that.
So what do we do?
Meanwhile, it's left to the theoreticians inside the White House placing themselves back in the faculty lounge at Harper's.
What would they do if this came up when somebody else was in the White House?
And now they're there trying to devise a strategy.
Meanwhile, Obama's off in Rio, dancing the jig or whatever it is, and deigning to allow himself to be interrupted for updates while at a state dinner.
Great example of Obama multitasking.
The women of the regime seem to be the impetus behind it, so much so that their people say, yeah, we're offended by that.
Time magazine, sorry, Washington Post, President Obama's muddled Libya policy.
They say that it lacks a coherent strategy, the Obama-Libyan policy.
But that just means that the Washington Post is too stupid to understand Obama as well.
So how does it feel, Washington Post editorial writers?
You're in the same boat we are.
You're just not smart enough to see the nuance.
You just don't have what it takes to see what's going on here.
And then another story of politico, reform versus regime change.
Obama says Gaddafi could stay.
Time magazine: a woman is running the U.S. air war over Libya.
The Obama regime is pushing back hard that it was women, specifically Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power, who exhorted the White House into war with Libya.
But they can't deny that it is a woman for the first time in U.S. history running the American slice of the air war now happening over liberal or Libya.
It was a spectacular display of airmanship watching this coalition come together the way it did to execute the airstrikes on behalf of the Libyan people, said Major General Margaret Woodward.
So that's the fourth female involved in peaceful, peace-like military action the United States taking against Libya and here in the Atlantic by Garon Franke Ruta, the idiocy of framing the Libya intervention as a battle of the sexes.
As I said earlier, this writer really miffed at the idea that only women in Obamaville have any gonads.
It's really amazing how a factual sociological observation can quickly devolve into the most ridiculous story imaginable as it moves down the media food chain.
I speak, of course, of the absurd idea there was some sort of geopolitically important gender gap within the regime on the question of backing a no-fly zone over Libya.
And the bombing campaign needed to implement one because a handful of president's more senior female aides argued in private meetings, according to reports, on behalf of an interventionist posture.
Note to anyone still playing with this idea.
You might as well title your story, Hello, I'm an idiot who has not been paying attention to politics for the past 15 years.
And yet away we go as the story trickles down from a totally fair and balanced observation, an unlikely alliance between a handful of top administration aides into a kind of shorthand.
Obama agenda, the women versus the men.
This woman does not like the way this has been shaped, but nobody shaped it.
This is what happened.
She doesn't like that the template for the story is that it was the women who nagged him to attack Libya until he came in, gave in, or only the women of Obama land have any gonads.
Hello, she writes.
Hillary Clinton pushed for intervention in Libya, not because she's female, but because, cautious as she may be, she's also among the more historically hawkish members of the regime.
It has nothing to do with the fact that she's female, it's just that she's a hawk.
That's why she.
How about the fact that her president wasn't doing anything?
How about the fact that there was dithering going on here?
Again, as somebody here who's disengaged, you have a this.
This is not, this didn't what he signed up for.
He signed up for getting even with the United States.
He signed up with reordering and transforming the U.S.
He signed up to take us down.
He didn't sign up to make us act like a superpower.
He didn't sign up for this.
He didn't sign up for this kind of distraction.
So the babes had to get in here.
Somebody had to act like somebody knew what was going on.
That's the impression.
That's why she's ticked off.
That's why she's ticked off because every one of these people bought into this notion that we had a Messiah.
That we had somebody unlike anyone we had ever, ever seen.
Somebody.
Bottom line is, the women decide somebody has to wear a pantsuit in this White House.
From Der Spiegel, German magazine, Gaddafi, facing a coalition of the unwilling.
The international press, Gaddafi facing a coalition of the unwilling.
Nobody knows who's running it.
Folks, you know, I don't, none of this makes me happy.
None of it makes me comfortable.
Nobody knows what this is totally on the fly.
And you know what?
It's like I said 25 or 30 minutes ago.
Whatever happens in Libya, whatever happens, Obama's going to claim success or deny responsibility.
That's why they're all over the board here.
Oh, yeah, he can stay.
No, he doesn't have to stay.
He can go.
It doesn't have to go.
He's got to go.
No, he can stay.
Well, Al-Qaeda in there.
Yeah, it changes it a little bit.
We don't know.
We'll have to wait and see.
Allied Washington Post, Allied strikes pummel Libya's Air Force, but do not stop attacks on civilians.
We're bombing again from 15,000 feet, not stopping the killing.
People in the Balkans already know this.
Gaddafi's actually advancing.
Gaddafi's gaining ground.
Genocide happened underneath our no-fly zone in Bosnia.
This is all through the rubric through the prism of 2012.
Mrs. Clinton, by the way, not happy.
Not happy with the notion that it's the babes running the show.
Last night on ABC's World News tonight, anchor Diane Sawyer talked to Hillary Clinton.
By the way, have you.
Damn it, here I go.
You've seen, I'm sure you've seen recent photographs of our courageous Secretary of State.
You've seen them.
You know damn well looking at those, she's making the decision.
She's the one answering the phone at 3 in the morning.
just know it.
Did Diane Sawyer, I don't know if she saw Hillary recycling anything when she interviewed her.
You know, Diane Sawyer over to Japan.
Look, recycling.
I don't know if she saw the recycling bin in Hillary's office.
I don't know if Hillary, despite what's going on in Libya, is still recycling.
I don't know that Diane Sawyer talked to her anymore.
Why did she talk to her?
Well, here's sort of a question.
We have read repeatedly that you were decisive in this.
Did you persuade President Obama?
Was yours the voice that turned around his opponents?
That is absolutely, you know, I think part of a storyline that needs to be corrected soon and decisively.
There was a broad debate and discussion within the administration, and that's one of the riggates opposed.
Well, I'm not going to characterize anybody's opinion.
You know, I think it was a very thoughtful process.
Yeah, right.
It was this answer.
Was yours the voice that turned it around?
You know, she's wanting to say yes.
She's wanting to say yes, but that's absolutely, you know, oh, geez.
Can't write it.
Well, it's a part of a storyline that needs to.
Yes!
Damn it!
We need to correct, but there was, she said it was a broad debate here.
She did it right here.
A very broad debate and discussion within the administration.
We know what that means.
Very broad debate.
One more.
Will you stay until the election?
Oh, I will stay until the beginning of the next term because I know it takes a while for people to get, you know, appointed and confirmed.
I mean, obviously, there needs to be a seamless transition with whomever President Obama decides to appoint after he is re-elected, which I am confident he will be.
Broads are calling the shots.
Broad debate, broads call the shots.
Mrs. Clinton hanging in there until the next confirmation.
You can tell, folks, she's calling the shots.
Really is.
We got to go.
Sorry, fastest hour in media, but there's more.
This SEIU guy revealing a secret plan to destroy J.P. Morgan.
And I want to talk about this because this is fascinating to me.
Back in a moment.
If you're on hold on the phones, stay there.
We'll get to you quickly.
Appreciate your patience.
Former SEIU official reveals a secret plan to destroy J.P. Morgan, crash the stock market, and redistribute wealth in America.
Business Insider had this on their blog yesterday, and it's a fascinating read.
And I want to share some highlights of it.
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