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May 24, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:55
May 24, 2011, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
You know, it's a real treat to watch a professional at work.
Really is.
Benjamin Netanyahu is about to wrap up a speech for a joint meeting of Congress.
I know that it's about to wrap up because he knows when this show starts.
He's getting near the end.
It has been great, just fabulous speech.
It's indescribably good, particularly in the climate and context of what we hear from most politicians today.
Hiya, folks, how are you?
Great to have you back.
Promised we're here, as I said we would be 21 hours ago.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network, is not a job.
It's an evocation.
It's a mission.
It's a commitment.
We're here at 800-282-2882.
The email address, Lrushbaw at EIBNet.com.
I could not help myself all through Netanyahu's speech, and we're cutting it now.
Cookie is going through it now.
Wait till you hear this, if you haven't heard it.
It's inspiring, and it's just great.
Throughout this speech, I kept shouting at the TV, run, BB run.
We can find a birth certificate for you somewhere.
Philadelphia, Hawaii, or what have you.
He spoke without a prompter.
He's got some notes.
He leans on the podium.
What we're hearing, what you see, here is somebody who is very at home behind the microphone.
He's entirely comfortable.
It's easy when you actually believe what you are saying.
When you believe what you're saying, that's the best way to overcome.
If you are one of those people that has a fear of public speaking, the best cure for it is to have total belief in what you're saying.
Because that is what breeds confidence.
And confidence is what you need in a public setting when you're making a speech.
And if you believe what you're saying, that's 80% of it.
Maybe even more.
Because then you can say what you actually mean without having to worry that you'll reveal too much about yourself, never be able to get re-elected or what have you.
Leans on the podium, injects his text with personal stories.
Somebody from Code Pink got in there and protested for him.
What has to be Code Pink?
Somebody John Conyers probably gave Jody Evans a ticket to get in there.
Code Pink protested Netanyahu last night in his APAC speech.
But he turned it right around on him.
He said, you know, this is great.
This is the essence of democracy right here.
This could not happen in the farcical Republic of Iran.
It could not happen in the Arab nation, the Middle East.
And of course, he's gotten a lot of standing O's.
He's got a lot of unadulterated, full-throated applause in his speech.
And he also happened to be the first world leader to address the citizens of Joplin, Missouri.
Ladies and gentlemen, that would be Benjamin Netanyahu.
I'm going to cross up the broadcast engineer.
Grab audio soundbite number one.
This is last night, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee dinner, APAC, Benjamin Netanyahu about the tragedy in Joplin, Missouri.
I want to say something about the scenes on television that I saw today and you have been seeing as well.
When tragedy strikes America, Israel feels an immediate identification.
And tragedy has struck America.
In recent days, floods and tornadoes have claimed the lives of hundreds of Americans, including today in Joplin, Missouri.
All I can say is America, we're with you on this day and every day.
Netanyahu, last night in Washington, the APAC dinner, while Netanyahu was making his remarks about Joplin, here is Barack Obama at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.
My name is Barack Obama of the Moneygall Obamas.
And I've come home to find the apostrophe that we lost somewhere along the way.
Now, is that where it is?
Some wise Irish man or woman once said that broken Irish is better than clever English.
So here goes to Ahis Autumn, Van Adam.
This is what Obama was doing instead of speaking to America about the war he started in Libya, March 20th, 2011.
He was in Rio on vacation when the bombing started in Libya.
Hello, Rio de Janeiro.
Hello.
Sidashi.
Mara Vilos.
By the way, Bibi, just as I knew he would just wrap up, Netanyahu just finished his speech to a joint meeting of Congress.
Then this morning in London, after being told that Netanyahu had addressed the citizens of Joplin, Obama said, well, okay, guess I should too.
I want everybody in Joplin, everybody in Missouri, everybody in Minnesota, everybody across the Midwest to know that we are here for you.
The American people are by your side.
We're going to stay there until every home is repaired, until every neighborhood is rebuilt, until every business is back on its feet.
That's President Obama this morning in London at the Winfield House, speaking about the tragedy in Joplin.
Netanyahu spoke about it last night.
By the way, for those of you in Joplin, some comfort for you who have been ravaged by tornadoes over the last few days, President Obama has announced that he will personally tour Joplin, Missouri after his European vacation is over, maybe as soon as Sunday.
This is Tuesday.
Maybe as soon as Sunday, those of you in Joplin, President Obama will personally tour your region.
We certainly hope here at the EIB network that you are not too distracted trying to put your lives back together to give the president a suitable welcome.
Because that will be what the media is looking out for, making sure that you are appreciative that the president has taken time out.
Well, he's not taking time out.
He's going to wait until he's vacation as normal.
Five, six days from now, he'll show up.
And just make sure that you give him a suitable welcome.
I saw, by the way, Obama, we ought to start calling him Patty Obama, P-A-D-D-Y, Patty Obama.
He's up there.
Of the Obamas of Moneygall.
I mean, even there's a, I think the UK Telegraph today has a fabulous story about how ridiculous it is Obama tried to pass himself off as an Irish guy.
And when he goes to Africa, he tries to pass himself off as a Kenyan.
And if he goes to the Middle East, he tries to pass himself off as Barack Al-Obama.
And if he goes down to Selma, he tries to pass himself off as a guy down from the street.
Totally disingenuous guy.
It's a great, funny piece of great lines.
Did you hear Obama tell the audience in Ireland he felt like he'd come home?
You know, a lot of people said, what is he doing in Ireland?
What is he really doing there?
Folks, do you not know, Snerdley?
You certainly, you certainly know what he's doing in Ireland.
It's a campaign stop.
It is a campaign stop for the Irish vote.
The Irish vote in this country, particularly in New York City, is plentiful.
And he's got problems.
His re-elect numbers are down.
This is nothing more than a campaign stop for the Irish vote.
I mean, why make a big deal out of having some great, great, great-grandfather he probably never heard of until this week that's from Ireland?
Why make a big deal out of Irish roots?
What does it matter to statecraft?
What does it matter to the job?
It's a pure campaign stop.
The Irish vote in America is sizable, pretty large.
You'd be surprised.
And he's angling for it.
Pure and simple.
So he goes over there and he says to the Irish people, he feels like he had come home.
Well, let's examine.
Ireland has a real unemployment rate of about 20%.
Ireland's deficit's about 15% of its GDP.
It is teetering on the brink of financial ruin.
So it's no wonder Obama thinks he's home.
He's visiting a place with similar economic challenges as here in the United States.
And I got a note yesterday.
The stock market was down 170 points about this time yesterday, maybe a little bit before the program started.
It was down 170 points.
A friend of mine sends me an instant message.
Why?
Normally the stock market goes up when he leaves the country.
And I said, because they know he's coming back.
That's why the market is down.
They know he's coming back.
And did you hear, ladies and gentlemen, the preacher, the preacher who said that the world would end on May 21st, now saying his calculations were off by five months.
And the world will now actually end on October 21st, not May 21st.
Now, I was going to give this old guy Harold camping.
I was going to give this guy the benefit of the doubt.
Now, folks, he sounds crazy.
Yeah, yeah, I was, well, you know, we're here very, very tolerant here at the EIB network.
We're open to all points of view.
And particularly stories that women and children, minorities are hardest hit.
And certainly that would be the case if the world ended.
But now, in fact, he's starting to sound just like Timothy Geithner to me talking about the debt limit.
We know that really the debt limit was supposed to be May 14th.
Now the debt limit's August.
I mean, if we didn't solve it, it's the end of the world.
It's the end of the country.
And of course, the preacher is now saying, well, not May 21st, October 21st.
It's just like Geithner.
Still, the preacher may have a point about October in a way.
If the National Football League lockout continues and there is no football by October, Ray Lewis, great middle linebacker, the Baltimore Ravens, said that he thinks no National Football League games might lead to the beginning of a nationwide crime spree.
Here's what Ray Lewis said.
I'm paraphrasing.
He said, if there are no NFL games on TV, what else is there to do but commit crimes?
He said, with nothing to do, there's too much to do out there, and all kinds of evil will surface if there aren't any NFL games.
So a crime wave will erupt in this country.
I don't know if he's talking about NFL players with nothing to do resorting to crime or if he's talking about fans resorting to crime because there won't be anything to do.
So there you have a Ray Lewis 52 Baltimore Ravens, a rising crime wave if the NFL is still on lockout, not playing any games.
How can you argue with logic like that?
I mean, that's going to really put pressure on the owners to settle this thing, right, so that there's not a crime.
I've really, some wags think he's talking about the players with nothing to do.
All right, a brief timeout here, ladies and gentlemen.
Lots to do, plus your phone calls, of course, here on the one and only EIB Network Sit-Tight, and we'll be back right after this.
Okay, those of you trying to watch the program on the Ditto Cam, dial it back for a second.
Second day in a row, we've had some streaming problems with the DittoCam.
I'm totally unaware of them, by the way.
I have to be told, as I was during the just recent commercial break, that we had problems with the Ditto Cam.
Not only streaming, but there were some audio problems.
Apparently, there was a lot of reverb on my voice.
And people think I did it on purpose to make fun of Obama.
And some of the comments in the email are very caustic.
Okay, we get it.
You can cut the reverb now.
We get it.
I didn't even know that there was a problem.
I don't watch the Ditto Cam.
I don't stream the Ditto Cam.
I don't listen to the Ditto Cam.
I don't have the fortune, the good fortune you people do.
And I can't watch it while it's happening.
So if there's a problem, I never know about it until, at least after the problem surfaces.
And normally they don't tell me about these things until program segment ends.
Benjamin Netanyahu, an epic speech today before a joint meeting of Congress, not a joint session.
Joint session, as a title or as a term, is reserved for a presidential appearance before Congress.
So this is a joint speech.
There have been about 100 of them, a little bit more than 100 of them over the course of the history of the country.
And the most frequent speaker, Winston Churchill, did more joint speeches before Congress than anyone else.
There are a lot of things in this speech.
It went on for about 45 minutes.
And I really do not want to try to paraphrase or repeat it.
You really have to hear this speech as given.
It's a lesson in commitment.
It is a lesson in confidence.
It is a lesson in statecraft and leadership.
This was an epic, epic speech.
It was a lesson for Republicans in dealing with President Obama, even though all Netanyahu did was praise President Obama today.
That's all he did.
There was nothing partisan in the speech whatsoever other than his obvious love and support for his nation of Israel.
But it was filled with humor.
It was filled with goosebump seriousness.
It ran the emotional gamut.
It ran the intellectual gamut.
Timing was flawless.
Just a fabulous speech.
a lesson that is there for people is to say what you mean, to say it confidently, to be fearless, and don't feel the need to excuse what you think, make excuses for how you feel.
I guess fearlessness and confidence are the two characteristics of this speech in terms of attitude.
The content also was flawless.
I'll tell you something else.
Netanyahu offered to give up some Israeli settlements.
He understood.
He said he understood what is necessary for peace, that Israel is going to have to give up a little more, willing to do so.
Made it very clear he understands what's needed for peace, made it very clear that Israel willing to compromise again and thereby putting the onus back on the Palestinians.
Where is compromise on their part?
And I can guarantee you that CNN and MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, USA Today, they are going to seize on that.
And that's all they are going to have heard in the speech.
And the way they're going to spin that is Netanyahu appearing in joint speech to the United States Congress admits past errors.
That's what they're going to say.
You mark my words, if that doesn't happen.
Netanyahu admits previous stance too rigid.
Or Obama agreed with by Netanyahu.
Or Netanyahu in public speech to U.S. Congress acknowledges points made by President Obama.
It's going to be like that.
I guarantee you, if they're willing to go all smarmy and treat this Irish stop,
this Ireland stop the way they did, I guarantee you they'll be totally willing to shift and cherry pick things from this speech to make it look like what Netanyahu was doing was desperately pleading for forgiveness from President Obama for the unfortunate disrespect accorded to the young president last Friday in the Oval Office.
I guarantee you, this is what it's going to be.
It's a shame.
If I'm right about this, it's going to be maddening to me because this was, for the times in which we live, an epic and great speech.
And I'm going to tell you, I would urge all of you, if you have time, sometime later today, later this week, to get a copy of the video or the audio of this thing and listen to all of it, particularly.
Well, period.
But particularly if I, and I always am about these things, am right that the press will twist this as a total capitulation by Netanyahu to Obama.
Show prep for the rest of the media, which follows.
Telephone number 800-282-2882.
Okay, we have some malcontents on the phone, Snurdley tells me.
You described them as malcontents.
All right, well, we're going to start with Walter in Edgewater, New Jersey.
Great to have you, sir.
You're malcontent number one on the EIB network.
Good afternoon, Russ.
Yeah, just a quick question.
If President Obama is doing such a bad job, then why are a lot of Republican candidates dropping out or don't want to run against him?
Don't they care about the country?
The two don't necessarily go together.
Obama did a bad job and people dropping out of the Republican race.
There are plenty of people still in the Republican race.
The two things don't have anything to do with one another.
Yeah, but I'll tell you why, because no matter who drops out of the Republican race, there's still people in it.
And no matter who drops out of the Republican race, Obama's still doing a lousy job.
Well, I don't, well, that depends on who you ask.
I think he's doing a fabulous job.
And it's going to be very, very hard to beat him.
Hey, Walter.
Walter, I'm genuinely curious now.
Tell me what you think constitutes a great job Obama's doing.
What is it that he's doing?
It's great.
Fabulous.
What do you like?
That he's not doing a bad job.
I've never seen a president yet, yet do a good job at being president of the United States.
So I'm going to take it as they're not doing a bad job.
Interesting.
So you've never seen a president do a good job.
No.
But Obama's not doing a bad job.
No, he's black.
So he's the reason why he's fabulous because he's not doing a bad job.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, that's a good idea.
He wasn't a bad job.
Totally helpful.
Explains a lot of things.
Is that the way you vote?
There's no president that's ever done a good job, and so you're looking for somebody who you don't think will do a bad job.
Exactly.
And President Obama had something else on the other candidates that were running when he won.
For me.
And the fact that he was black helped a lot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Gee, I knew that.
I didn't.
I didn't want to say that, but I knew that.
That's probably it.
What is it that as a black, Walter, what is it that you like?
All the unemployment?
Black unemployment's like up in the 40s.
Is that what you like?
You like the collapse?
Well, I mean, that don't concern me because I work.
I got a job, so I'm not concerned about people.
Okay, so you don't care about it.
All right, fine.
You don't care about anybody else.
What about the collapse of the housing market that's been brought in?
That's something else you like?
I have a house, and it's paid for, and it's not affecting me, so I have no concern over that as well.
All right, so you couldn't give a rancher in about anybody else.
What about the high gasoline prices that Obama's brought about, their high price of food?
I guess you make enough money that the price of gas and food doesn't matter to you.
And so that's also part of Obama's success story.
Yes, and I'll tell you one thing else.
When President Bush was president and the gas prices was $5, I didn't remember that like it was yesterday.
It didn't affect me, so I wasn't mad at him for that because I figured it wasn't his fault.
When President Bush was president and the gas prices were $4 and $5, I didn't blame that on him.
This is why, ladies and gentlemen, if you're new to the program, so many of us are just literally scared to death for the future of the country.
You've just at this point, I, your host, have determined we're dealing with something here that's not salvageable.
The value here is entertainment, pure and simple.
But in terms of substance here, I think we've about wrung this for as much as it's worth.
I want to thank you out there, Walter.
I was going to ask him if he gets a discount on gas prices.
Get his agent.
You know, they say we stage phone calls here and we hire actors.
Get this guy a bonus and make sure we get his agent's phone number.
Who's next?
The Malcontent number two, Greg in Lul.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hey, Rush, Malcontent number two here for you.
You bet.
How are you doing today?
Good, good.
I'm a libertarian.
I agree with you on a lot of economic and tax issues.
I don't agree with you on Israel.
I think we need to stop borrowing money from China to give handouts to Israel.
They don't do anything for us.
It's a pretty one-sided deal.
For the last 30 years, we give them $4 billion a year or so, plus almost the same amount to Egypt to broaden them out to fight each other.
Frankly, I don't see why we need to prop up Israel.
They're the biggest welfare queen in history.
Conservatives generally support self-sufficiency, but they just go all gooey over BB.
Did you?
Wait a minute.
Did you hear Yahoo's speech today?
Yeah.
You hear the line where we don't need to send U.S. troops.
They'll defend themselves.
No, it's in the money.
Lots of people.
Well, I know, but we do a lot more for a lot of other countries.
What do we get for it?
Nothing.
We get $4 billion a year handouts to Israel.
I disagree.
We have a cultural alignment, which is worth a lot.
They're the lone democratic outpost in that region.
They do a lot or have done a lot of dirty work in that region that we won't do, can't do, and much of it we'll never hear about because it would divulge their involvement.
But taking out the Iranian, or rather the Iraqi nuclear reactor way back is a socialist economy.
We don't like socialism out here, but we love it over there.
Well, it's, you can look at this in any number of ways.
I happen to love Israel because I love the people there.
I have met them.
I have been there.
I have a person.
I'm going to send some money, but don't take it from me to send them.
I want to send them.
We're going to start talking about it.
I want to contribute to them.
Do you want to see Israel wiped off the map?
That's the alternative.
You want to see them wiped off the map?
They have nuclear weapons.
They're a modern country with a great army.
They're not going to be wiped off the map.
And, you know, I just don't think they're going to be able to do it.
But no, according to you, they only have all that because we funded it.
And you don't like that.
We gave them a lot.
They built their own nuclear weapons.
We did that for a reason, and it's going to go a long way toward...
The alternative here is abandoning them and having them wiped off the map.
Yeah, that's...
I think that's a good idea.
Of course it is.
Of course it is.
But there's far more to this relationship than that.
You want to start calling.
This is where I start having problems with you libertarians.
You have no.
Everything is just black or white when it comes to money and what's worth it and how's it worth, how's it being spent and so forth.
Calling Israel a welfare queen compared to the kind of money we waste domestically in this country.
There has to be a value attached here.
There has to be.
You talk about there's no value.
We don't get anything for it.
They don't do anything for us.
I just profoundly disagree with that.
I think they're a great ally.
We've, as the superpower of the world, have to do these kind of things to maintain our own position as a superpower.
But there are a lot of other reasons why I support our relationship with Israel.
It's not just a conservative biblical association.
I think that's what you're getting at, too, that there's some biblical attachment to Israel based on conservatism and religion.
And for me, that's not it.
It has nothing to do with that.
It's far more real world.
The value that we get from having a diplomatic and almost a brotherhood relationship with Israel.
Anyway, I'm glad you called, Greg.
I appreciate it.
Must take a brief time out here.
We'll continue on the EIB network right after this.
Okay, so you're upset at the money we spend or give Israel every year.
Try this.
Thousands of companies.
And by the way, this is an AP story, and they are totally unfazed by this.
And this, to me, is one of the stories of the day.
If it weren't for Netanyahu being, if it weren't for Obama going to Ireland and Europe, if it weren't for the tornadoes in Joplin, this would be a huge story.
Thousands of companies that cashed in on Obama's stimulus package owed the government millions in unpaid taxes, according to congressional investigators.
You see, in terms of the way AP wrote this, Obama didn't give these companies, these organizations, money that they should never have gotten.
They cashed in.
That's how you write about slush funds.
They cashed in.
So the slush fund, the stimulus bill, directed money at organizations and companies that owed back taxes.
In other words, the government, the regime, forgave these organizations and companies their back taxes by paying them the money that they owed.
The government accountability orifice, in a report being released today, said at least 3,700 government contractors and nonprofits that received more than $24 billion from the stimulus owed $757 million in back taxes as of September 30th, 2009, the end of the budget year.
So 3,700 contractors and nonprofits, organizations, owed a grand total of $757 million and collectively, they got $24 billion.
So they got enough money to pay their back taxes and then, and then some, and then some more, and then some more.
And it's $24 billion to pay off $757 million.
So they still had $22 billion left over to play with.
Government contractors and nonprofits.
Wonder what they had in common besides being tax cheats.
Might they have been contributors to the Democrat Party?
Maybe they had been foot soldiers.
Maybe they helped get out the vote.
Maybe they were part of the re-elect effort somehow.
And so their back taxes were not only forgiven, but they got your taxpayer dollars given to them so they could pay their back taxes.
I suspect so because none of them are named in this story.
We don't know who.
Why aren't we told the names of these companies and these nonprofit organizations by this unfazed Associated Press?
And I'm telling you, my guess, and it's a good one, is that we're not getting the names because we would learn that they are major contributors to the Democrat Party.
I'll bet you some of the people who got money from the stimulus to pay their back taxes have names that rhyme with SEIU or Acorn or Planned Parenthood or AARP.
Given that so much of the stimulus money went to public sector unions, and we now know it did, we've given you the numbers out of Wisconsin.
80% of the money Wisconsin got went to public employee unions through stimulus money.
Well, we were all told that this was to create private sector jobs, roads and bridges, schools, infrastructure, a giant snow job.
And what we learn keeps making it worse.
Now, according to this report, it isn't even illegal for companies that cheat on their taxes to get more government money.
AP made sure to find out.
AP made sure to find out and they made sure to report.
Hey, by the way, if you're thinking this is illegal, no, no, it's not.
President Obama, clean and pure as the wind-driven snow on this.
There's no way they got to be here.
Let's move on.
Sometimes the most criminal things are the things that aren't criminal.
Now, do you know anybody who got a government contract or a grant from the stimulus?
I don't.
I don't know one person.
Now, I may know them, but they haven't told me.
But to my knowledge, I don't know anybody who got a government contract or a grant from the stimulus, personally.
But note this.
Only 13 out of these 3,700 organizations are going to get any further investigation of the IRS.
We have 3,700 tax sheets.
They were given aggregately $24 billion in stimulus money.
They only owed a total of $757 million that they got $24 billion added together.
And only 13 of them are going to be further investigated.
13 out of 3,700.
And where was Sheriff Joe and all this?
Vice President Bite Me.
He was put in charge of making sure there wasn't any corruption in the way the stimulus money was doled out.
How could this have gotten past such a razor-sharp mind as Plugs Biden's?
But if it wasn't before, it is now painfully clear that Obama really did use the stimulus to rebuild the infrastructure of the Democrat Party and to make sure that people who donate to the Democrat Party didn't lose their jobs.
That's what it was.
We're in the middle of a recession.
Obama utilizing panic and Armageddon in order to get this stimulus bill passed, in effect, creates a slush fund to help his buddies pay him back for their work in the campaign.
A lot of these great Americans owed back taxes.
They don't any longer because they got stimulus money.
Well, that's a good point.
We don't know that they didn't use the stimulus money, that they used it to pay the back.
They may still owe the taxes.
They may not have paid back their taxes.
I'm just assuming if it were me, I would.
But knowing full well that I am being forgiven and forgotten at the same time, why pay the back taxes?
The report said that the tax delinquents accounted for nearly 6% of the 63,000 contractors and grantees examined.
Caution, the real number might even be higher because the known tax debt does not measure such factors as income underreporting.
IRS called it extreme case of non-compliance.
So there you have it.
Just to sum up, thousands of companies, 3,700 of them, government contractors and nonprofits, owed a total of $757 million in back taxes.
Those 3,700 companies received a total of $24 billion from the stimulus that you thought was being spent to help you find work, create jobs in the private sector.
$24 billion given to 3,700 companies that owed $757 million in back taxes.
Tax cheats got $24 billion from Obama's dash.
That would be the story of the day.
Were all these other things not happening to hide this news and make it bottom of the barrel?
Back after this.
Okay, so while Israel gets between $4 and $5 billion a year from the United States, Obama supporting tax cheats got $24 billion from the stimulus plan, and they owed back taxes.
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