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Now, this politico piece, maybe it's an opinion piece.
I said it was a news story because it's bylined.
But it may well be a column.
The headline is the Tea Party's terrorist tactics.
Before I get to this, let me show you what a coordinated thing this is.
We have a media montage of Democrats and just Democrats, no media in here, talking about the Tea Party.
Listen.
The Republicans are holding hostage the credit of the United States of America.
Our Republican colleagues to hold our economy hostage.
The Republican Party is holding our economy hostage.
It didn't say hold America hostage.
Hold the debt ceiling hostage.
One party is holding the country hostage.
The debt limit has never before been held hostage.
Republicans are holding our economy hostage.
Willing to take hostage the debt ceiling.
Stop holding America's credit rating hostage.
The Republican majority continues to hold the American economy hostage.
Let's not hold the entire American economy hostage.
Ideological hostage situation.
The only belt they're really tightening is right around the neck of those hostages.
Holding the American economy hostage.
This president is being treated differently.
No other president has been stuck up, shook down, or held hostage.
That's the Reverend Jackson Jr. there bringing up the end.
I don't know what he means.
No other president has been stuck up, shook down, or held hostage.
And we come to this political terrorist piece, the Tea Party's terrorist tactics.
It's become commonplace to call a Tea Party faction in the House hostage takers, but they have now become full-blown terrorists.
They have joined the villains of American history who have been sufficiently craven to inflict massive harm on innocent victims to achieve their political goals.
This is William Yeomans writing to, Mr. Yeomans, what in the name of Sam Hill do you think Barack Obama is?
You want to talk about the real villain in this country?
It's Barack Obama.
Craven, sufficiently craven to inflict massive harm on innocent people to achieve their political goals?
What do you call a 1.3% growth rate this quarter, a 0.4% growth rate in the first quarter, and 9.2% unemployment?
What do you call that?
You call that the architecture of a craven villain, Mr. Yeomans?
And the people you're calling terrorists are trying to stop it and save the country.
That's what this is about.
This is about saving the country.
It's about preserving liberty.
And I don't care how corny that sounds.
It is exactly what's going on.
A strong America has always stood firm in the face of terrorism.
That tradition is in jeopardy as Congress and President Obama careened toward an uncertain outcome of the Tea Party-manufactured debt crisis.
Tea Party-manufactured debt crisis?
The Tea Party has been in office for all of six months.
I don't want to hear any more crap from Democrats about civility.
I don't want to be preached to one more time by these holier than now, better than everybody else, smarter than everybody else, craven villains about civility.
I have to tell you, folks, and I know that I am not alone.
I am mad as all get out.
The Democrats and their cohorts and the drive-bys have collectively ratcheted up this divisive, uncivil, reactionary language to trash the Tea Party and by extension, conservatives.
We're not terrorists.
We're not killing people.
We are Americans who disagree with you.
We are Americans who disagree with statism.
We are Americans who disagree with socialism, communism, and liberalism.
We're not holding anybody hostage.
We are the hostages.
We are equal time.
We are paying the ransom all the time.
We are the hostages.
Our country has been kidnapped.
And you're asking a ransom from us in the form of higher taxes and less liberty and less freedom each and every day.
And you dare to write pieces calling us terrorists.
We don't fly buildings or jet planes into buildings.
We're not killing people.
We're not putting people out of work.
We're not taking their money.
We're not destroying their savings.
We're not taking over the oil companies.
We're not taking over the car companies.
We are not the ones in the process of destroying the U.S. healthcare system.
We're not the ones setting up death panels.
You want to talk about terrorism and killing people.
Mr. Yeoman says, as we stumble closer to August 2nd, it has become clear that many in the Tea Party are willing to inflict massive harm on the American people to obtain their political objective of severely shrunken federal government.
Severely shrunken federal government is a pipe dream.
We are trying right now to stop the inexorable growth of this monster that is strangling and squandering every asset in this country, including its people.
Mr. Yeomans writes, their persistence in rejecting compromise, even as the economic effects of the phony crisis they've created mount, has taken their radicalism beyond tough negotiating, beyond even hostage taking.
As the markets dropped, families would watch their retirement and education savings and their dreams disappear.
Rather than reject the unthinkable, the Tea Party harnessed this potential harm as its weapon of mass destruction.
Oh, we're the ones.
We're the ones destroying our own retirement and their education saved.
We're the ones doing, I think that's Barack Obama.
You want to talk about craven villains look no further than the Oval Office.
Yes, Mr. Yeomans didn't get that memo after the Gabby Giffords memorial or service, whatever it was, about the new civility.
So now anybody who disagrees with Democrats are terrorists, racist terrorists.
What is this American economy that's being held hostage?
Isn't it us?
It's our money.
It's not Mr. Obama's money, Mr. Yeomans.
The liberals do not own the wealth of this country.
It's not theirs to distribute and redistribute.
Rather than reject the unthinkable, the Tea Party harnessed this potential harm as its weapon of mass destruction.
Weapon of mass destruction.
So, folks, they are cracking up.
The left is cracking up, and it's the Tea Party doing it to them.
We are now all Sarah Palin.
As far as they're concerned, we are all Sarah Palin.
They are scared to death of Sarah Palin.
They are scared to death here of the Tea Party people because the Tea Party in the House can't be bought, not concerned about re-election, not playing the usual game.
Somebody tell me now, why are we supposed to compromise with this?
We're supposed to compromise with people of the same mind as William Yeomans of Politico.
That's what we're supposed to do.
This is the name of the game.
We compromise with this so that we don't get blamed.
We're going to get blamed no matter what happens, even if wonderful, great things happen.
We're going to get blamed as it's rewritten and described as terrible.
We want to hold on to some of our money.
For that, we're called terrorists.
We oppose tax increases because we know that tax increases are not going to fix what's wrong with the country.
Taking more of our money is not the solution here.
Ain't going to happen.
Here's Obama lecturing us in Arizona after Giffords at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized, at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do.
He said, It's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.
Mr. Yeomans and the people at Politico apparently either didn't get that, didn't hear that, or don't want to act on it.
No, the truth is, Obama didn't mean it in the first place.
Craven villains.
Their language.
That's who we're up against.
All right, they got a brief timeout, folks.
We'll come back, and yes, we'll get to your phone calls shortly.
Stay with us.
By the way, speaking of civility, ladies and gentlemen, Obama has just sent around to his foot soldiers the tweet handles for House Republican members on Twitter so they can stalk and harass them.
So Obama's campaign is sending tweets out to the Republicans in the House.
And Boehner's doing the same thing.
Stop and think.
The Republican leadership is also tweeting.
Obama's out there asking for phone calls.
And you and I know that you're the ones that are melting the phone lines.
Before we get to the phones, one more thing here from, let's see.
Yesterday in the New York Times, I'm not sure when this happened, but to carry on the theme, Nicholas Christoph compared the Tea Party sympathizers in Congress to Al-Qaeda, and Thomas Lupe Friedman called the Tea Party sympathizers the Hezbollah faction in the GOP.
I kid you not.
So this is all a coordinated thing.
And today, today, the Politico, we are craven villains and terrorists.
So some questions here for Nicholas Christoph and Thomas Lupe Friedman.
Is the Paul Ryan plan more like Al-Qaeda or Hezbollah?
Is cut-cap and balance more like Al-Qaeda or Hezbollah?
Are you more like Al-Qaeda or Hezbollah?
Or are you more like Mamuadak Madini Zad?
Tell me, I want to know.
Give me the similarities.
You tell me the Paul Ryan plan, cut cap and balance, balance budget amendment plan.
Tell me, is it more like Al-Qaeda or Hezbollah?
Here is Ryan in Fulbrook, California.
That's where we're starting.
Great to have you, Ryan.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello.
Mega Rush Baby Dittos from Inside the Drive-By Media Road.
Thank you, sir.
I really hope that the Tea Party people in Washington realize they're going to get blamed no matter what they do.
Doesn't matter whether they pass something, whether they don't pass something.
They're going to get blamed.
So I wish that they would realize it's time to make a stand on something that's worth getting blamed for, i.e., cut cap and balance.
Well, if you're going to get blamed, make it worth it.
Exactly.
And I work in the drive-by media, which gets hard on a daily basis because I have to sit here and put together this crap that we put out.
And I can tell you, it doesn't matter what they do, they're already trying to figure out here how they can blame the Tea Party.
Well, I know.
I know.
That's what our side all ought to know.
This is what is so frustrating.
The brilliant brains on our side think they can escape this.
They think they can escape it.
It's beyond me.
I'm just telling you, operating out of fear guarantees you doing the wrong thing.
Again, back to Boehner 3.0, the thing that they're now debating, discussing, and perhaps we'll vote on later today.
The only thing they've done is add a balanced budget amendment to it.
It has to be sent to the states, but there's nothing specific about the balanced budget amendment or how you get there.
The balanced budget amendment could be written to include massive tax increases, for example.
But I've been checking emails during the breaks here, and one of the things I'm hearing, I've got people from Capitol Hill, I'm being, as you can imagine, folks, I am being swamped.
In fact, if you want to know, it's flat out amazing this show is making any sense today.
I am being swamped.
Everybody and their uncle who wants something out is finding a way to get it to me.
One of the things that I have, my synthesis of all of this, one of the things I'm told is that by adding the balanced budget amendment to Boehner 3.0, despite its lack of specificity, is going to give cover to a handful of the holdouts.
I've got a couple of soundbites.
Jeff Flake, for example, from Arizona, was a holdout.
The balanced budget amendment, I think, gives him cover.
I put this, yeah, grab soundbite 25 out there.
This was on CNBC's The Call today.
They interviewed Jeff Flake, Republican Arizona, about the Boehner Bill.
In question, Congressman Flake, do you think the speaker will go along with the idea of inserting a balanced budget amendment in a bill?
Do you have any indication that he's game for that?
Yes, yes.
There are a number of us who had discussions yesterday, last night, about this, and a number of us, you know, we want something that cuts and caps and balances.
The Boehner bill cut and capped, but it didn't balance.
And now if we add that element, then a number of us, I think, are fine to go with it.
In fact, enthusiastically, we'll vote for it.
So there you have it.
They're excited, enthusiastic to vote for it.
And believe me, there is enormous pressure that they are getting from Boehner and the conservative media pundits.
And folks, I just want to tell you that this balanced budget amendment addition to the Boehner bill, unspecified, there's nothing at all in this change that describes any element of the balanced budget amendment.
So it could contain massive tax increases.
It's well understood that in the end, this is going to lead to a Reed-McConnell bill that'll swell the debt even further.
That's version C. That's where this is all leading is version C. If you didn't hear the first hour of the program, you don't know what version C is.
Sorry, I can't keep going back and repeating it because I spent so much time on it.
But there's a third bill that's being privately negotiated between Reed and McConnell.
I think a lot of other people do too, but I'm pretty sure this is what's going on.
And that the insertion here of the balanced budget amendment is designed to get the recalcitrant Republicans to sign on to it.
Okay, this makes it okay for us.
And that gets sent over to the Senate.
And at that point, miraculously, Reed is going to have a come to Jesus moment and say, oh, what?
Guess what?
There is something we can work with here.
And that bill is going to become totally different.
It will be sent back to the Republicans in an entirely different form or remarkably different form.
Seems to be the plan now.
These Tea Party Republicans are just under enormous pressure to relinquish.
I can't tell you how much.
You know what, Snerdley?
You heard me right.
Snerdley is asking me, did I hear you say that these Republican holdouts are being tweeted?
That's right.
Now, follow me on this because it is kind of funny.
These Republicans, and we played the sound bites earlier today, Gloria Borger and F. Chuck Todd and Wolf Blitzer, and they know Anderson Cooper.
Why?
They can't believe these Tea Party people in the House.
Why?
Committee assignments aren't working.
Promises of campaign re-election cash not working.
They can't be bought.
Gloria Borger said, they can't be bought.
F. Chuck said these guys can't be bought in the traditional Washington way.
And Anderson Cooper said, that's kind of refreshing.
Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, but we got a compromise.
So a bunch of Tea Party people who can't be bought are now being tweeted.
Tweeting them is going to pressure them.
Is that not hilarious?
They're going to tweet, harass them.
They can't be bought off.
Promises of committee assignments are not changing their votes.
Okay, so we'll bring out the heavy artillery.
All right, we'll really get to them.
We'll start tweeting them.
That's going to do it.
Whole new way of doing business in Washington.
And it's roiling the old guys.
The old guys, including the old guys at Krauthammer Review Online and the Crystal Standard.
It's not so much what Krauthammer is saying.
It's that whatever he says is what National Review Online says.
I mean, so I've said it's Krauthammer Review Online.
They ought to rename it KRO.
Anyway, the Tea Party, folks, they are causing more shock and change to this 25 or 30 of these guys.
This is why.
This is why we need to keep winning elections.
It's amazing.
Now they're going to tweet them to death.
And it's why the Democrats and the drive-bys are trying to cast all of us as terrorists.
Their last best chance to change public opinion, which is uniformly against them.
Obama is in the 40s.
We are afraid of somebody polling in the 40s.
And I'm going to tell you something.
If it weren't for the Wilder effect or phony polls, he wouldn't be in the 40s and talking about approval numbers.
George Bush, they got him down to the 30s with only 5.7% unemployment.
And somehow, sitting here at a growth rate of 1.3%, 0.4% last quarter, 9.2% unemployment, and the president's in the 40s?
His approval?
I'm sorry, don't buy it.
Well, if there's no, it's an interesting question.
What happens if there's no deal?
It turns out Obama's got a secret plan anyway.
And Bill Daly, the chief of staff, gave it up to Wolf Blitzer on CNN.
I have the transcript here.
You want to hear it?
Okay.
From the transcript.
Now, Daly is the chief of staff.
So what you're saying is the president did present a plan to the speaker, John Boehner.
Daly, yes.
But he didn't, Daly, right, make it public?
Daly.
No, because both the Speaker and the President had agreed that these sorts of negotiations don't happen in public.
So Obama and Boehner are talking in public or in private.
Daly gave that up.
And then on the debt ceiling, on the debt deal, Daly tells Blitzer we're optimistic.
Here's a transcript.
Daly thinks there will be a deal before August 2nd, Blitzer.
But then they've got 40% of the checks that are supposed to go that won't go out.
Daly.
Well, that'll be the Treasury Department will lay out exactly how that would work after at a certain point between now and Tuesday, obviously.
But we're optimistic.
The four leaders of the Congress have said that the debt ceiling will be extended.
We're confident that they will come together.
The sense, look at the stock market.
The market's dropped over the last four days, like 3%.
Real people are losing money.
Pensioners, people who depend on their 401ks, the value of the stocks in those, they're losing money right now while Congress in Washington is kind of just dallying here.
Blitzer.
So the bottom line, you think there will be a deal between now and Tuesday somehow crafted.
But you're not convinced necessarily that the AAA credit rating will remain AAA.
Well, nobody can guarantee that, obviously.
The rating agencies which make that judgment will look at this and they'll look at what comes out of this effort and see whether or not two things.
Whether or not we have a serious attempt that's going to affect the deficit and reduce the deficit, get this cloud of another vote of another debt ceiling of uncertainty off the table for at least 18 months until it's not about the election, Wolf.
It's trying to give the general economy a chance to get healthier over the next 18 months.
Has President Obama spoken with the Speaker?
Well, he's not spoken to the Speaker in a few days.
The truth is, it looks as though the Speaker is rather engaged in putting together his bill, blah, blah.
You say the president has put forward a plan?
Daly.
Uh-huh.
But the CBO says that there's no plan that they can score because it's just a framework.
It's just a speech.
They haven't seen a document.
Daly.
Well, Speaker Boehner knows and Congressman Cantor knows the plan they both worked on, try to bring the debt down and get past this debt ceiling.
He doesn't have a legislative fix right now to this, meaning Obama, because there's a bill in the House.
There's a bill in the Senate.
And they'll deal with those two bills.
He's endorsed Senator Reed's bill.
He's very strongly that the bill that the House may pass tonight does not help the economy.
And what all of this should be about is trying to not only lower the debt, but at the same time, get this cloud of uncertainty off our economy.
And we thought we'd be right back in the same thing in four and a half months, blah, blah.
So you're saying the president did present a plan to Speaker Boehner?
Yes.
But he didn't make it public.
That's right.
Because the Speaker and the President had agreed that these sort of negotiations shouldn't happen in public.
I know.
I know, Certley.
I know.
Now, not through.
Not through.
So here's William Daly admitting that Boehner and Obama had a deal.
They've been talking.
But what?
I know.
Boehner told us that Obama has no plan.
And, well, Daly basically said Obama's plan is Reed's plan.
But they're talking as though Obama has a plan.
Just not going to make it public.
I guess one of the prerequisites here is that everybody knows Obama has a plan, but we're not going to make it public.
Republicans have agreed not to acknowledge.
Well, I don't know why we would do that.
I get out of fear.
Now, on Thursday, before that, Bloomberg has a story.
Headline, U.S. contingency plan gives bondholders priority.
The U.S. Treasury will give priority to making interest payments to bondholders when due, if lawmakers fail to reach an agreement to raise the debt ceiling.
This, according to an administration official, the official requested anonymity because no announcement's been made.
Treasury had said about $90 billion in debt and matures on August 4th.
More than $30 billion in interest comes due August 5th.
More than 500 billion matures in August.
The $90 billion in six-month Treasury bills maturing August 4th, paired losses after the comments.
Obama administration officials will brief the public no earlier than after financial markets close tomorrow on priorities for paying the nation's bills.
Look, I could read all of this.
The point is they have a plan to pay bondholders first, which is the definition of default.
Not paying the bondholders would be default.
They have a plan to pay them first.
There is a plan already in place at Treasury, a contingency, if the debt ceiling isn't raised.
There will not be any default.
So Daly gives up the fact that Obama has a secret plan that the Republicans know about.
Nobody's made it public.
This is why I said yesterday that we're being played as a bunch of saps.
I don't want to go so far as to say the fix is in, but these are all people from the Washington ruling class who want government to continue to spend money.
That's their job.
That's how they look at their job.
Look at these bills anyway.
$917 billion in cut $14 trillion in debt.
We're going to raise the debt ceiling up to $16, close to $17 trillion, and we're cutting $9 over 10 years of it's going to drop the ocean.
It's not serious.
And yet we're told by our own people, well, it's the best we can do, and it's a good start, and it keeps us from being blamed.
Okay, I'm going to take a break, and we're going to come back and more phone calls.
Promise you.
I'm getting tired of carrying this show, frankly.
The hardest working man in the no business.
Rush Limbaugh behind the Golden EIB microphone here at the Limbaugh Institute for Ideological Purity.
Michael in Hillsboro, North Carolina.
It's great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hello there, Rush.
How are you?
Very good, sir.
Thank you.
And I'd like to see Ryan's mega dittos and raise them to giga dittos.
I've been listening to you for many years.
Thank you, sir.
Appreciate it.
I have two comments, suggestions, actually, about taxes.
One is about Obama and his political donors.
He's going to have a birthday party next week.
He was going to have a fundraiser.
He should remove the tax exemption from the donations so that they're all taxable donations and see how his rich people like that.
That's suggestion one.
And suggestion two is about raising taxes on the rich.
If they want to raise taxes, raise them on everybody, the bottom 48% who pay no taxes as well as everyone else.
It can start at the low end.
I mean, really, the bottom, the bottom quintile.
Well, but you don't understand.
You're making too much sense, which means you don't understand the objective.
You're saying everybody ought to have some skin in the game.
Exactly.
Well, I wrote those words there.
Obama's objective is to take the money away from the only people who have any left and redistribute it.
I understand how that works.
He wants this country to become a European socialist welfare state.
Remember, he was dead buds with Chavez.
Yeah.
No, but I'm really being serious.
The low end, $100 a year, that's like $2 meals a week.
That's really not privation.
And it gradually goes up to the bottom 48% of the people who do not pay taxes.
I mean, what is the top end of that?
$30, $40 a year with a family of $4 or $5 or something like that?
They can pay $1,000.
I don't know.
Look, everybody agrees with you.
I mean, you're 48% don't pay taxes.
That's where his approval numbers are.
That isn't going to change for that reason.
Look, that's not in the Democrat playbook.
The playbook is class envy, tax the rich, corporate jets, all that stuff.
Anybody makes $250,000 a year or more.
The objective here for Obama is not to do the right thing or fairness or is not even to raise revenue.
That's not what he's about.
This is about the transformation of the country to a socialist democracy, a la European country.
14% unemployment.
Government is responsible for everybody.
Nobody really has much.
You have an aristocracy.
You have a few people who have a lot and a bunch of people who have anything.
And they're driving around little Ford focuses.
Or, you know, take your pictures on an electric car.
Parking spaces are no larger than what you can fit a golf cart in.
Narrow the streets so people can't drive their Cadillacs in them.
Or SUVs.
What is intended?
You've got a guy.
We've got the politics of grievance going on.
You've got somebody with a huge grievance against this country, a chip on his shoulder.
Time to get even.
I want to remind everybody, folks, this is not irrelevant.
This is our president in March of 2006, five years ago.
The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure.
It is a sign that the United States government cannot pay its own bills.
It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government's reckless fiscal policies.
Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally.
Leadership means the buck stops here.
Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren.
America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.
Americans deserve better.
That was Senator Barack Obama inveighing against raising the debt ceiling in March of 2006.
Contrast that now with Barack Obama, the President of the United States, who apparently wants to weaken us domestically and internationally, who no longer believes the buck stops here, who wants to shift the burden onto the backs of our children and grandchildren, who wants to continue and exacerbate our debt problem,
and who wants to fail to lead.
America doesn't deserve better, according to Barack Obama, July of 2011.
No, I'm sorry, folks.
He said it.
Words mean things.
What does it mean?
It means he's a political hack.
It means that he's a pure 100% partisan hack.
He is not a man of principle.
He's not concerned about anything but advancing his agenda.
Back in 2006, advancing his agenda meant stopping the Bush administration, embarrassing them, weakening them politically.
He sits up there and talks about typical Washington ways.
We got to get away from it.
He epitomizes everything that is wrong with our system.
Well, another exciting and busy broadcast hour is in the can and on the way over to the Limbaugh Broadcast Museum, the virtual version, which you can see at rushlimbaugh.com.
And it's cool.
If you haven't seen the Rush Limbaugh Broadcast Museum at our website, go check it out at rushlimbaugh.com.