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March 28, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
32:33
March 28, 2011, Monday, Hour #3
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Ha, how are you?
Great to have you back.
Well, back.
I know you don't go anywhere.
Once this program starts, you're here.
Five and a half hours, ladies and gentlemen.
Five hours to be exact, 24 minutes.
And Barack Obama will explain why we are in Libya.
Five hours and 24 minutes.
Wolf Blitzer will continue our countdown, starting with his show at 5 o'clock on CNN.
We're eagerly waiting.
President Obama speaking to the nation tonight at 7.30 to explain why we're in Libya and who's there and who we hope won't be there when we finish.
CNN eagerly awaiting breaking news, President Obama at 7.35 hours, 23 minutes and 15 seconds from now.
That's how it'll be.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, Russia has said today, the plot thickens.
Russia said that attacks on forces loyal to Muamar Gaddafi amounted to intervention in a civil war and were not backed by the UN resolution authorizing no-fly zones.
In the latest Russian criticism of military action by the Western-led coalition, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the resolution passed by the UN Security Council on March 17th had the sole aim of protecting Libyan civilians.
And yet there are reports, and nobody denies them, of coalition strikes on columns of Qaddafi's forces.
Reports about support for actions by the armed insurgents, Lavrov said.
There are clear contradictions here.
We consider that intervention by the coalition in what is essentially an internal civil war is not sanctioned by the UN Security Council resolution.
So the Russians are dissenting.
Hey, this ain't what you told us at the UN.
Hey, this ain't what you said when you went after that resolution.
Hey, we're going to call you on it.
And that's because it's about oil.
And the Russians know it.
And Libya is an oil competitor to the Russians.
We can't say this, folks.
We cannot say.
That's why the administration is willing to make itself look silly by saying this is about humanitarian meals on wheels or what have you.
It's why they're willing to contradict themselves and tie themselves up like pretzels is because they're a bunch of libs and they can't admit that they're doing this for oil or there would be a revolt on the left.
But that's what this is.
And everybody knows it.
It's just like I told you, and I hate using that phrase.
I really do.
But there was no way they're going to close Gitmo.
There was no way.
I told you they weren't going to secure defeat for themselves.
They're not going to lose the war on terror with themselves in charge.
They'll saddle it with somebody else if they can, but they're not going to lose it themselves.
They might put a moratorium on oil drilling in this country, but they're not going to deprive this country of oil from around the world.
We'll get it.
It's going to cost an arm and a leg, and they don't have any problem hurting our own domestic industry.
But Brazil wants oil.
Fine, here's $2 billion.
Go get it.
Cubans, you want to drill in the Gulf with the Chinese?
Go right ahead.
We're not going to stop you.
We'll stop ourselves.
Cameron Sarkozy.
Hey, look, this unrest in Libya, let me show you a chart, all the installations we have over there.
We got to protect our energy investments.
We say, okay, yeah, we get it.
We'll help you out with a no-fly zone.
We'll tell our people it's about humanitarian violations and so forth.
That'll play well with our people.
It's not what it's about.
And the Russians have now called everybody on it.
Hey, this is what you said, the UN resolution.
It's not in there.
Meanwhile, the Iranians, there's a video out to Saudan Drudge.
The Iranians say we're getting ever, ever closer here to the Islamic Messiah.
That'd be the 12th Imam getting ever closer.
Let's go back to the audio soundbites.
Mrs. Clinton on this week.
Yesterday, Jacob Tapper, during a discussion about the war against Libya, Tapper said, why not go to Congress for this?
Why not, you know, you demanded Bush go to Congress.
Why not do it?
No, each of these situations is unique, Bob.
The situation in Libya, which engendered so much concern from around the international community, had a leader who used military force against the protesters from one end of his country to the other who publicly said things like, we'll show no mercy, we'll go house to house.
That was my error.
The engineer played the right bite.
I introded it wrong when that was face to nation.
And that was Bob Schieffer talking about Syria.
Why not go into Syria?
And she said, each of these situations is unique, Bob.
Libya, blah, blah, blah.
Assad's a reformer.
Everybody knows Assad thought a reformer.
He's a murderer.
Bashir Assad is a murderer.
No, each of these situations is unique, Bob.
Situation in Libya, so much concern, international community leader, military force against Peru.
It's exactly what Assad's doing.
And then she called him a reformer.
Schieffer said, well, I mean, how can it be worse than what's happened in Syria over the years?
Bashur Assad's father killed 25,000 people at a lick.
They opened fire live ammo on these civilians.
Why is that different from Libya?
There is a different leader in Syria now.
Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he's a reformer.
Well, now, who's gone?
Pelosi went.
John Kerry went.
Remember all these guys going and talking to Bashur Assad?
They've been pretty quiet about it, but it was a long time ago.
It was a year, year and a half ago that they went to Syria, but I did remember they made the trek.
But now even the media, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's because we asked the questions first.
Well, wait a minute now.
Everything you're saying about Libya, you can say about Syria, North Korea, Iran.
Why are you choosing Libya?
And they haven't had an answer for it.
And so now when she forgets specific about Syria and asks it, well, it's a different Syria.
It's not.
Bashur Assad's the same as his dad, Hafez El-Assad.
But see, there isn't really any oil to speak of in Syria.
Folks, not to speak of.
So here is, let's go back to February 14th of 2007.
This is when Mrs. Clinton was a senator.
She's on the Senate floor.
And the subject is a possible attack on Iran.
This is what Mrs. Clinton said.
If the administration believes that any, any use of force against Iran is necessary, the president must come to Congress to seek that authority.
Okay, so Jake Tapper asks her yesterday, well, you guys go into Libya here.
Why not ask Congress?
I don't think that this kind of internationally authorized intervention where we are one of a number of countries participating to enforce a humanitarian mission is the kind of unilateral action that either I or President Obama were speaking of several years ago.
I think that this had a limited timeframe, a very clearly defined mission, which we are in the process of fulfilling.
This is a joke, right?
There is no clearly defined mission.
They're not telling the truth about what the mission is.
And we're going to be there the rest of the year now.
That was news yesterday.
Not weeks.
It's going to be months.
We will be in Libya the rest of the year.
Mark my words.
And she says, this is different from Iran because Iran, we were just talking about us, but this is international.
There's a whole coalition here, Jacob.
We were warning President Bush not to go into Iran all by himself.
What's the difference?
If you're going in to save people, what does it matter?
If the mission purpose is to stop suffering, if the mission purpose is to make sure that innocent civilians are not attacked, what does it matter who's going in there?
Are we not the leader?
So these people, this is how you get tripped up when you refuse to tell people the truth of your actions.
They just can't bring themselves to say that this is about preserving European energy installations in Libya.
They just, they don't dare say it.
So hey, I concoct all this do-gooder, Nambi-Pamby leftist feel-good stuff as the explanation.
But then that falls apart because you can use the same justification to go to Syria, to go to Iran, to go to North Korea, to go to Darfur.
But we don't go there.
So now Mrs. Clinton, this is why she did.
Do you know how ticked off she has to be?
She's having to go out there.
She's the one.
We're playing soundbites of Mrs. Clinton, who is putting herself in a pretzel position.
Obama, he's getting to pick his NCAA picks, and he gets to go make a speech to the country.
Five hours and 14 minutes, by the way.
Mrs. Clinton's out there having to justify all this in ways that are clearly not believable.
Mrs. Clinton is the face of the war.
Mrs. Clinton is the face of our policy.
Mrs. Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, running this whole show, Hen Hawk number one.
Samantha Power, Henhawk number two.
And Susan Wright, Hen Hawk number three.
It's a close contest there, number two, number three, but clearly Hillary Clinton is Hen Hawk number one.
And back in the Clinton days, Janet Reno was henhawk number one.
Time to invade Waco?
Call Janet.
Ruby Ridge, call Janet.
Now, Ted Koppel, friend of mine.
I haven't spoken to Ted in a long time.
We used to be friends.
I assume we still are.
Ted Koppel was on Meet the Press yesterday in a roundtable, and David Gregory asked him a question.
He said, we've just heard this discussion, Mrs. Clinton and Robert Gates.
Particularly, the Secretary of Defense say that this campaign in Libya is not in America's vital interest.
Pretty high stakes for the president who is about to address the nation.
And the Secretary of Defense says it's really not about U.S. vital interests.
What do you say about that, Ted?
The question hasn't yet been answered as to why it is that Libya, of all countries in that region, has won the humanitarian defense sweepstakes of 2011.
We have seen many countries, both in that region and throughout the world, where civilian loss and civilian suffering has been much, much greater.
Congo, for the past 12 years, we've lost about 5 million people.
Sudan, 2 to 3 million people.
Never any talk of military intervention.
Why?
Why Libya?
Hasn't been answered.
And there it is.
There it is, folks.
I'm holding the chart up again of European energy installations in Libya.
That's the answer.
And notice we were the first start asking, why Libya?
Darfur?
North Korea?
Iran.
He throws in Congo.
By the way, Calypso Louie raised Congo in that same speech where he asked Obama, who the hell do you think you are?
You don't tell a man to leave like that?
Who are you?
You're not careful.
Somebody's going to tell you to leave.
That's what he said.
Ted Coppel, why Libya?
Why not Congo?
Why not Sudan, Darfur?
Any other places?
Could have made George Clooney very happy going into Darfur.
Quick timeout.
What did the Republicans do in Iowa over the weekend?
Kind of interesting.
Don't go away.
CNN has a story.
They just can't believe Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is intensifying his request that Obama prove with a birth certificate his status as an American.
Trump, however, improbably claims to be considering a presidential bid, said that since his first public statement on the issue last week, a lot of facts are emerging that are making him question more seriously now where Obama was born.
I'm really concerned, Trump said during an appearance on Fox News.
You got no doctors.
You have no nurses who remember baby Obama.
I mean, I brought it up just routinely.
All of a sudden, a lot of facts are emerging.
I'm starting to wonder myself whether he was born in this country, Trump said.
In an interview with ABC last week, Trump claimed nobody remembered Obama as a child in Hawaii, a statement that was categorically false, says CNN.
His kindergarten teachers and others have previously given interviews with local Hawaii papers detailing their memory of Obama at that time.
Well, first graders and all that are not nurses and doctors at the hospital.
Trump is intensifying this.
And there's a piece.
I had relegated it to the possible stack until the Trump piece hit CNN just now.
The possible stack is if I run out of everything else when I delve into the possible stack.
There's a piece here by a guy named Dr. Gerald Stevens.
It's from Saturday Canada Free Press.
Obama, are you eligible or not?
Who among you is content with seeing the country go bankrupt with insane government spending, money taken from your pocket?
If Obama's not eligible to be president, the dangerous scam has gone on long enough with a rogue criminal organization running the most powerful nation in the world.
Why should you be concerned, simply put, because if anyone, white, black, or purple, was not eligible to be president, every act they would perform is illegal.
If Obama's not eligible, the horrendous list of acts he performed is illegal, criminal.
So Trump intensifies this, and other people now are giving it just when everybody thought the birther movement had been relegated over there to Kookville.
Here comes Trump.
It's back.
Okay, let's go to the Republicans in Iowa over the weekend.
Mississippi Governor Haley Barber, it is said this, a Wall Street Journal story, drew polite chuckles at the first extended forum for potential Republican presidential candidates Saturday when he said the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
But in an Iowa activist world where social conservatism has long dominated the First of the Nation caucuses, some people bridled at any suggestion that economic issues should take a front seat ahead of abortion, gay marriage, and other social issues.
The main thing Haley Barber said is economic growth.
Barber's low-key comments focused on energy production and the need to spur private investment.
When it was Michelle Bachman's turn, she stood up and practically shouted, social conservatism is fiscal conservatism.
The journal says that she brought the crowd at the conservative principles conference to its feet.
She called for abolishing the tax code and restoring freedom of choice in light bulb purchases.
If you don't start with values, the rest of it doesn't matter, said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
So, guess what, gang?
Despite the best efforts of the elite Republicans to get the social issues, i.e. abortion, off the table, it's back front and center.
And it's going to stay there because the social issues people say that you can't delink social from economic.
They are one and the same.
That was Bachman's point, and it's Newt's point.
And then John Bolton showed up, and he said the key here is foreign policy.
The key is it's all important.
Every one of these issues is important.
But once again, we're going to see the war that's going on in the Republican Party.
It's been going on for as long as I've been chronicling this stuff.
It's going to rear its head in these primaries.
Mark my words.
And we'll be there, folks.
Now, to be clear, I don't want anybody to be confused here.
Donald Trump says that he believes Obama was born in the United States.
He just wants to see the long-form birth certificate.
Everybody else has a long-form birth certificate.
Where is Obama's?
He's asked, what's he hiding?
What's on the long form he doesn't want anybody to see?
Just to be clear about this, Walmart today is announcing they're going to reopen their stores in Japan.
Walmart has 12 stores in Japan, and they are going to be reopened.
By the way, do you know how many stores Walmart has in China?
You know how many stores Walmart has in New York City?
Zero in New York City.
You know how many Walmart stores there are in Chicago?
Zero.
They're right across the street, the border, right across, get outside the Chicago City limits.
There are 329 Walmart stores in the workers' paradise of communist China.
There are no Walmart stores in New York.
They're going to open their 12 Walmart stores in Japan.
They are reopening them soon.
Vinny in Brooklyn, I'm glad you waited, Vinny.
Always a pleasure to have you here on the EIB network.
Hi.
Ditto's Gray One.
You are indeed a weapon of mass instruction.
Thank you, Vinny, very much.
Now, I seem to remember the administration's stated reason for going to Libya was to revert or to avert, and I quote, a humanitarian disaster.
In Syria, as we speak, the dictator has killed dozens of civilians protesting his government.
How do I notice?
Well, the New York Times reported this above the fold, mind you, on Saturday.
So when do the bombing start, bombing run start, great one?
When does President Obama pull the leaders humanitarian disaster?
And one more item, if I can add, if we won't, or if we don't, won't our interests in Iraq and other allies in the immediate region possibly suffer through Syria's instability as per Hen Hawk Hillary Clinton stated reason?
I ask you, great one.
Well, see, that's exactly I was just going to tell you here, Vinny.
Mrs. Clinton said that Bashar Assad is a reformer.
It's a different Syria now.
There's no reason to go into Syria.
There really is not a humanitarian disaster going on there.
She made it very, very clear.
There's no similarity whatsoever.
So the killings are what, then?
What would you say they are?
Just someone's figment of their...
Well, they're not happening from coast to coast.
She said that in Libya, they're happening all across the country in Syria, just in a limited part of the country.
I see.
That's what she said.
I'm just telling you, that's what she said.
Don't look at me that way.
It's what she said, Snirdly.
And she said that Assad is a reformer.
Right, right.
Vinny.
I'm as a U.S. citizen.
Right.
Okay.
What it all means is that they're not telling us the truth about why we're in Libya.
Because if this is the stated reason, you're absolutely right.
What's stopping us from Syria?
What's stopping us anywhere else where civilians are being killed, mass murdered, abused, or what have you?
Yeah, so, well, Rush, I thank you for your time, as always.
Vinny, it's always a pleasure.
I don't care whether you call from the Queens, the Bronx, Brooklyn, wherever you call from.
It's always a pleasure to talk to you, Vinny.
Thank you, sir.
All right.
Jeff in Atlanta, your turn on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, Rush.
Honored to be on your show.
Thank you, sir.
You had a caller a while back who was a loan officer, and you had asked him the question, how does the lender and how does that loan officer make money on a bad subprime loan?
And I was going to handle out in for you.
Right.
All right.
Well, basically what you have is there is the originator of the loan, and that is going to be the company that says ABC.
They're originating the loan.
The loan officer works for them.
They take the application.
They approve the loan.
They fund the loan.
And at that moment, at the closing, that's when their loan officer is getting paid.
And that's when that company that's originating the loan is getting the money.
Now, what happens is that's when the profit's made by them.
But then they take that loan as well as others they've created and they then sell them in a secondary market to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Now, let me stop you right there.
Because is it true that once you start selling, you package these loans and sell them, isn't it true that you'll package some bad loans with good loans?
In other words, you don't just sell a package of bad loans to people or what you think are bad loans.
It's a combination of things so that your investors are buying what they think are good loans, right?
Yeah, and at the time they sell them.
They sell them so quickly.
And you've maybe been through a purchase that you probably use cash, of course, which is smart.
But most people, they get the loan.
That loan is sold.
Sometimes, even before they leave that closing table, it's already been sold.
And so what happens is they don't know at this point whether these loans are bad or good.
So the real culprit here, of course, is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
What they did and what caused this whole problem is they allow, because if Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who set up the guidelines of what they will purchase, if they didn't purchase loans with questionable kind of guidelines that people would default on, then these lenders would never have originated these things to begin with because they sell them off.
And so it's Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who set up the guidelines.
It got to the point then that if a lender was told that his loan would not be bought by Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae, he wouldn't make the loan, right?
Absolutely not.
Exactly.
And, you know, to blame the lenders, that's a joke.
I mean, if that secondary market wouldn't have been there, those bad loans wouldn't have been originated.
Well, certainly some of them would have because they don't all get sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but certainly a large percentage do.
And so the blame rests squarely upon them.
And of course, hence the government who helps force, you know, pressure FMA, Freddie Mac to lower the limit so you get more people approved for homeownership.
Yeah.
I remember when this first happened to me as a I bought a house I had no business buying in Kansas City.
I believed a bunch of stupid advice twice.
I had no business buying it and then I should have sold it.
No, no, no, you never sell it.
That's your one asset.
Oh, I go broke paying it off.
Okay, which I almost, well, I did.
But I'll never forget six months after, and I knew the loan officer, and I'd spent a lot of time getting a loan.
And all of a sudden, I get this mail of, or in the mail, I get this book of coupons that I'm paying somebody else.
I said, what the hell is this?
So I had it explained to me, well, somebody bought your mortgage and a whole bunch of others.
I said, who?
That was somebody out of town.
I didn't know them.
I said, well, I don't like this.
A bunch of people I don't know, I'm now writing my monthly mortgage check to.
I kind of liked knowing who it was I had cajoled a loan from.
And that was the 70s.
So that's when I started learning about how all this worked.
And I still was in the dark about it for a while.
But anyway, look, I appreciate the call, Jeff.
That answers my question.
You get paid at the time the loan's made before somebody even pays it back.
But specifically, you know, when I was asking about this guy that called earlier in the program, there were loans made to people that everybody knew were not going to pay a dime on them was the whole point.
And they were forced to.
The lending institutions were forced to by federal government.
And I mean, some people were not even having to fill out applications.
They just signed it.
And it was an utter disaster.
And it was all the Democratic Party's idea of affordable housing.
It was how things are going to be made fair.
And if you think this sounds strange, folks, don't doubt me on this.
This is exactly how these people think.
It's just not fair that some people should be able to afford a loan to buy a house and others shouldn't.
And so the way to make that legal is to force the lender to give people a loan.
It can't pay it back.
And we'll figure it out later.
And here we are.
And I know it sounds ridiculous.
It sounds absurd.
And it sounds way too simplistic.
But it's what happened.
It's just, it's one way of creating social justice.
It's another way of redistributing wealth under the guidelines of within the system.
It's much easier to say that you're lending somebody some money as opposed to giving it to them when you go through the process of making them sign an application, get their payment booklet, and all that, when you know from the moment they walk out the door, they don't have the money to pay you a dime.
They don't have the money to pay their phone bill for crying out loud.
But they're going to go get a house.
By the way, all this talk about mortgages and payments.
As we speak, 13% of all American homes stand vacant.
13% of all American houses are vacant.
That's up from 12.1% in 2007, and it is only getting worse.
Caterpillar, all the way back to the early days of the Porculus Bill, Obama talking about Caterpillar.
He said, you'll be able to measure America's bottom line by looking at Caterpillar's bottom line.
And you'll remember that he erroneously included the Caterpillar CEO in a statement, supposedly approving of Obama's porculus bill.
The Caterpillar guy said, yeah, if this creates jobs, I forget specifically what it was, but the Caterpillar guy had never said it.
And then Obama went out to Peoria where Caterpillar is and went to a big fundraiser, a rally of some kind, and the Caterpillar people were not enthusiastic for Obama.
And then Illinois started raising taxes on people like crazy, raising taxes on some people as much as 66%.
So Caterpillar now says they may be forced to leave Illinois to stay in business.
That's what Obama has done for Caterpillar.
After suggesting that they were going to be a bellwether, you want to see how my stimulus bill works?
You keep an eye on Caterpillar.
Well, people have kept an eye on Caterpillar.
And Caterpillar is thinking of leaving Illinois.
Thinking of looking at Indiana is one of the possibilities.
Steve in Rockland, California.
I'm glad you waited, sir.
You're on the EIB network, hi.
Oh, yes, ditto's rush.
Good thing I'm not calling suicide prevention.
Anyway, thanks to Mr. Snerdley again.
I was Steve in Brooklyn, then Steve in New Jersey, and now Steve in Rockland, California.
It's always great to hear from you, Steve, wherever you happen to be.
Anyway, I spent most of my working life as a U.S. representative of European manufacturers.
I was the only American in the room.
I speak German, which did wonders for politeness.
Europeans may have a genetic inability to take responsibility for their actions.
In the former Yugoslavia, they had cheap vacations.
They went to business conferences.
They went to the beaches in Dubrovnik, skiing in Sarajevo.
We didn't.
And yet they were totally incapable of solving the problem in their own backyard.
And it's the same thing in Libya.
If you go to Jane's fighting ships and so on, you add up what Italy has, and you add up what France has, and you add up what Libya has, they could handle this on their own, but they're just not mentally capable of it.
Same thing in Hungary.
I'm of Hungarian origin, and I was there.
And the place is just full of Germans, German tourists.
My Scandinavian colleagues had business conferences there.
As far as NATO, NATO itself is not the problem.
It's just governments don't make the forces available to NATO.
The U.S. military trains to NATO procedures, as do the Canadians.
Okay, so the point is.
The point is that the Europeans are not capable of solving it on their own without Americans taking charge.
We walked away from our victory in World War I, and look what happened.
After World War II, we fixed it so the Germans would never do it again, and they have it.
In fact, maybe we went too far because the German military has a labor union.
But okay, so you're saying that the Europeans cannot protect their own oil installations in Libya?
That's no, they can't protect their own oil installations.
I mean, they're physically capable, they have the forces.
This may be one of the last times we're able to, if Obama's not stopped.
If this guy gets four more years, how often are we going to be able to go do this for the Europeans, much less ourselves?
Okay, it's about four and a half minutes, four and a half hours for Obama rather to speak to the nation.
It'll be interesting to see if he talks about the U.S. being a force for good in the world tonight.
Almost has to, given this is humanitarian, but he doesn't seem to believe it himself, so we'll see if he does mention it.
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