RUSH IN A HURRY -- Flashback '05: Democrats Decried Nuclear Option

Wesnesday Quotes: Leader of the Opposition
February 24, 2010

Rush sucks! There's no difference between him and Keith Olbermann.

"You know what Harry Reid's campaign slogan is?
'Vote for me or my wife gets beat up.'"

"Does anybody doubt that Toyota has done their best to kowtow to the environmentalist wackos?
So why the Spanish Inquisition?
There's only one thing that Toyota does wrong, and that is they don't hire
UAW workers and pay 'em an average salary of 73 grand, including benefits."

"Time travel is now possible.
If you want to see America's future, book a flight to Greece."

"An organization is accused of selling a defective product that unintentionally harms the
people who buy the product; a product marketed and sold to keep millions of people safe.
Are we talking about Toyotas or are we talking about Obama's health care plan?"

"Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to step forward today and claim responsibility for Tony Kornheiser's comments.
How am I responsible for them?
Well, I don't know.
But anything wrong that happens at ESPN is just eventually going to be my fault."

"Maybe ABC doesn't have to lay anybody off. Maybe they should simply start
charging the Democrats for the advertising they give them that they call news.
I mean, do you realize how much free time ABC News gives the Democrats?"

"I spanked myself so hard that every element of my cochlear implant fell apart, and I now I have to put it back together."

"Remember those blizzards that shut down Washington for three or four days?
And they said nonessential people didn't have to show up, and nobody showed up?
To me, that was a tantamount admission that they're all unessential."

"The difference between Toyotas and Obamacare is that nobody is forced to buy a Toyota.
Also, the CEO of the health care plan won't be subject to a recall."

"You talk about watching sausage being made?
We are watching the death of the country by legislation and by executive order."

"All right, here we go. I'm now putting the microphone near my rear end,
and I'm going to spank myself for not making the Republicans do the right thing.
I hope this makes you feel better."

"Mary Landrieu said, 'I have a piece of paper on my desk that shows X-number of jobs have been created in Louisiana.'
Well, hey, Senator Landrieu, I have a piece of paper on my desk that says John McCain was elected president in 2008.
That doesn't make it true."

"College professors exist for the express purpose of converting you to their belief
system and making you, essentially, a mind-numbed robot. Pure and simple."

"Apparently a bunch of members of Congress are in a little tiffy here over the fact that there were nine lawyers
brought into the Department of Justice by Eric Holder who have represented detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
My reaction is, 'Only nine?'"

"We've got people running this country who really don't like the way it was founded,
who think that this country is to blame for all of the ill that has happened.
So the fact that we have a bunch of ACLU types wanting to defend terrorists who want to blow up the country makes total sense."

"Why do people never get that lowering taxes across the board would remedy our financial situation?
Just try it in one state!"

"Why doesn't Obama, since he's going to control the prices of these insurance companies,
just require that every household be given a free copy of the New York Times every day?
Well, it's his house organ. They're his PR agency."

"I think I know what's going on here, and that is that Obama has never been an executive.
He doesn't know how to manage anything and he has never managed anything."

"I'm going to make a prediction to you people in the UK, and I know you're out there listening on your international connections:
If you attach your neighbor's usage of electricity to your electricity bill, you're going to cause riots in the neighborhood."

"I got an e-mail: 'Dear Rush. You're being hacked!
Every once in a while we hear a buzzer and then your voice starts degrading the Republicans.'
We'll look into that."

"They seem to know exactly how many dogs are unlicensed in Los Angeles, but they can't tell us the number of illegals."

"If you're a Democrat and you read that Obama is demanding that you put aside your own reelection chances
in 2010 in order to focus on his health care bill while he's working overtime on his own reelection bid, you're going to say,
'This is not loyalty.'"

"The fact that the Obama administration keeps piling up mistake after mistake after
mistake makes it more and more difficult for me to believe that this is not purposeful."

"I wonder if some of these Democrats are asking themselves, as they listen to these Toyota guys,
'What would FDR do?' I mean, they are publicly humiliating these guys, and it is just pure political posturing."

"Now, this poor old Toyota guy has to go up there and say to the Democrats,
'Perhaps we grew too fast.' How come that's never said about government?"

Continually repeat ...

It's not about me.
I'm the President.

Past editions of "Rush In a Hurry"

Rush Hudson Limbaugh. Mmm, Mmm, Mmm!

Chutzpah! Democrats Grill Toyota
Who's selling a faulty product that will hurt people?
February 24, 2010

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Well, we're going on now the second day grilling of "Toyota" as Henry "Nostrilitis" Waxman refers to the company. Does anybody really doubt, ladies and gentlemen, that Toyota does a good job making safe, affordable cars? I mean there's so many of them out there, does anybody doubt they have done their best to kowtow to the environmentalist wackos? So why the Spanish Inquisition, why is this happening? There's only one thing that Toyota does wrong and that is they don't hire UAW workers and pay 'em an average salary of $73 grand including benefits, and that's why Toyota is being hung out to dry. And, folks, I have to laugh here 'cause this is a teachable moment. An organization is accused of selling a defective product that unintentionally harms people who buy the product, a product marketed and sold to keep millions of people safe. Are we talking about Toyotas or are we talking about Obama's health care plan? Toyota is being accused of careless, reckless behavior in producing a defective product, by Congress! By Congress! This is chutzpah.

At the same time, Obama and Congress have manufactured a health care product, Obamacare, that is a ticking time bomb of design flaws. I mean the difference between Toyotas and Obamacare is that nobody's forced to buy a Toyota. The difference is a tiny percentage of Toyota owners are affected whereas all Americans will be forced to buy a health care product that is riddled with design flaws, weakens the company selling them and puts the buyer at great personal risk. And the worst thing about it is, is that the CEO of this will not be subject to recall, meaning Obama. These hearings are taking place just as Obama's one-day-only political theater opens. I saw something hilarious this morning. On Fox, mere moments ago, here in the middle of show prep they had two guys on, a former Republican congressman, and some snooty, smug, just irritating former Obama campaign advisor who was just going on about (imitating former Obama campaign advisor) "how the public is being so ill-served by what's happening at the summit tomorrow. Why, people's lives are at stake and all that's taking place up there is theater."

Well! Holy cow! We're actually getting a Democrat with an honest assessment of this, and then the guy blew it. (imitating former Obama campaign advisor) "The Republicans are saying that they are going to come and crash the party. That is nothing but pure political theater. The Obama people have peoples lives on the line and in mind and they are trying to do something terribly desperate, and the Republican are going to --" everybody knows it's theater. Both sides know that nothing is going to come of this. It's all over the news today. Obama is pretending that he doesn't even know what the Republican plans are, but guess what? The House Republicans gave Obama their health care proposals weeks ago. He's had them. Rahm Emanuel has had them. And Obama keeps pretending he doesn't even know what they are. You talk about watching sausage be made. We are watching the death of the country by legislation and by executive order, and instead we got a bunch of Toyota execs up there groveling, bending over and grabbing the ankles and saying, "Yes, we're guilty. Yes, we grew too fast. How can we do this, how can we get out from under your bad vibe? We don't want to offend you anymore. What could we do? You want us to hire union work? Fine, we'll do it. Just leave us alone."

Meanwhile, we have to sit here and put up with this attack on the private sector, private insurance agencies, private everything is going under water. You've seen the new numbers on home sales. They are horrible. Home sales hit a record low in January. New home sales plummet 11.2% to an annual rate of 309,000. That's the lowest on record. Meanwhile, the recovery is going on and the CBO says, yip yip yip yahoo that the stimulus actually created a million and maybe two million jobs the fourth quarter. Nothing is real.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

Folks, I have to tell you something, this looks like a war crimes trial with these Japanese Toyota execs before an august committee of US Congress. Rasmussen, the latest approval numbers for Congress: 10%. Now, we are making a mistake by broadcasting pictures that look like for what they are, we are shaming these Japanese Toyota execs, we are publicly humiliating these guys, and the Democrats are doing this for pure political posturing, and this is a mistake. This is a foreign policy blunder to be handling this situation this way, to shame these people like this. There are a lot of Toyotas on the road in this country 'cause people like them. There are a lot of Lexuses on the road in this country because people like 'em, a lot of Nissans on the road because people like them. People like Toyota-made products and to shame them this way, you talk about not enhancing our image around the world, this does not look good because these guys haven't done anything to us, except they have done something to the Democrats. They don't have UAW employees. (kissing) That's what this is really all about.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Because the ChiComs sold off a bunch of T-bills the other day, the Japanese are now the largest holders of our debt. And this does not look good shaming these Toyota guys up there, and I'll bet the ChiComs don't like a bunch of Asian guys being shamed like this. Folks, the Democrats running this show, and we're looking at the board of directors of GM and Chrysler, essentially -- this committee -- grilling these Toyota executives. The Democrats are always looking for guidance from some of their respected elders in circumstances where it's not clear what the next course of action should be. I wonder if some of these Democrats are asking themselves as they listen to these Toyota guys, "What would FDR do? What would FDR do?" Let's listen to a little bit of this. This is Akio Toyoda speaking broken English to show respect to the board of directors of GM and Chrysler.

TOYODA: I'd first like to state that I love cars as much as anyone, and I love Toyota as much as anyone. I am here with my Toyota family of dealers, front team members, and friends. I take the utmost pleasure in offering vehicles that our customers love, and I know that Toyota's 200,000 team members, dealers, and suppliers across America feel the same way. However, in the past few months, our customers have started to feel uncertain about the safety of Toyota's vehicles, and I take full responsibility for that.

RUSH: Now, this next is what these guys know they have to do in front of American congressional committees (particularly this committee, the board of directors of GM and Chrysler). You have to go up there and have to admit mistakes. Americans love this. They gotta go up there and just explain how dirty, rotten they were.

TOYODA: Today I would like to explain to the American people as well as our customers in the US and around the world, how seriously Toyota takes the quality and safety of its vehicles. I myself, as well as Toyota, am not perfect. At times we do find defects, but in such situations we always stop, strive to understand the problem, and make changes to improve farther. In the name of the company, its long-standing tradition and pride, we never run away from our problems or pretend we don't notice them.

RUSH: By the way, we have one more bite to go, and this is the piece de resistance. This is a comment tailored to appease Democrats. They're basically blaming capitalism. They just grew too fast.

TOYODA: Toyota has, for the past few years, been expanding its business rapidly. Quite frankly, I fear the pace at which we have grown may have been too quick.

RUSH: So they're up there and they're groveling. They know the drill. They understand what they have to do in order to get out of there and get home. Remember, the Democrats on that committee are always seeking guidance from their heroes, and they're asking themselves: "What would FDR do in this situation?"

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, this poor old Toyoda guy has to go up there and say, "Perhaps we grew too fast," and the Democrats say, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah! (applauding) Too much capitalism! You grew too fast!" How come that's never said about government? Why is it never said that government is growing too fast and that's a problem, but it is for companies like Toyota?

END TRANSCRIPT

Read the Background Material...

• Wall Street Journal: House Committee Chair Blasts NHTSA, Toyota • Detroit Free Press: Toyota CEO Arrives to Face Congressional Hearing

Bev Scolds Your Host for Not Ripping the Republicans Enough
Okay. You're right. They suck. You want it? You got it!
February 24, 2010

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Bev in Willow City, North Dakota. Great to have you on the EIB Network. How are you?

CALLER: Hello, Rush, I'm great and I'm sure happy to be able to talk to you. But I got kind of a bone to pick with you. Last two days I've been listening to you and you kind of made me almost doggone mad. My family teased me because I listen to you so much. But how come on Monday you had to go after Glenn Beck because he's talked about the Republicans sharing the responsibility for this economic mess?

RUSH: Wait a minute, Bev. I didn't go after Glenn Beck.

CALLER: Oh, you did.

RUSH: No, I did not.

CALLER: Oh, yeah.

RUSH: I was simply asked: "What would you have said?" Some people want to know what I would have said. I simply said I would have gone a different direction. That's all.

CALLER: Well, you did. In your speech you gave -- I listened to you last year, and you gave a great speech. Glenn Beck also gave a great speech --

RUSH: I didn't say it wasn't a great speech.

CALLER: -- and you seem to be protective of the Republicans, and I happen to --

RUSH: See, here we go.

CALLER: -- believe that they share some responsibility for the mess this country is in.

RUSH: Let me tell you something, Bev. I was one of the first people to point this out, and I can't tell you the number of times I got calls from the White House saying, "Hey, could we come down and talk to you and try to get your mind right on this?" Medicare entitlement? I wasn't for it. Harriet Miers? No way. She wasn't qualified to be in the Supreme Court. All of the spending, "No Child Left Behind," working with Ted Kennedy on the education bill, compassionate conservatism? "No Child Left Behind," all this stuff, I was against it from the get-go.

CALLER: I know that.

RUSH: Well?

CALLER: But for some reason you're not getting the message across, then, because those Republicans haven't changed, they must not be listening to you for the last 20 years --

RUSH: What is --

CALLER: -- they won't change.

RUSH: What is --

CALLER: -- a lot of us have been writing them --

RUSH: Bev.

CALLER: -- we've been talking to our congressmen.

RUSH: Bev?

CALLER: We've been telling them what conservatism is. And they don't seem to understand it.

RUSH: All right. All right. All right. Bev, I don't think you've been listening to me closely enough.

CALLER: Yes, I have.

RUSH: You can't possibly have been listening to me as closely as you should have this week or even in previous weeks or whatever. But never mind. I realize that I have in many minds similar to yours, Bev, that I've gone astray. I somehow don't get it. I somehow am partially responsible for all this Republican spending. I'm partially responsible for the fact that the Republicans have not changed in 20 years, and I have not done enough to steer the Republicans in the right direction, that many of you think I'm just a lapdog for the Republicans. So, the only thing I can think to do is do to myself what I think you would like to do to me. Snerdley, are you yelling at another caller? Is it a caller who wants to get on my case about the same thing? Remember, Snerdley, you've been suspended for this. Be polite like I was polite here to Bev. But there's something that has to be done here. I'm just going to do to myself what I know many of you would like to do to me if you had the chance.

So I want to stand up, you watching on the Dittocam, this will be a treat for you. All right, here we go, standing up. I'm now putting the microphone near my rear end. I'm going to spank myself for not making the Republicans do the right thing. (crying and spanking) Okay. Now, I hope that has made you feel better. I really did hurt myself. I coulda made it easier by looking at a picture of Hannah Storm. But I didn't. Self-inflicted pain because I haven't done the right thing. I, in 20 years, have failed to change the Republicans. Hell, almost 20-and-a-half years, I have not done one thing to get the Republicans to stop being exactly like the Democrats. You're right, there's no difference in Mike Pence and Barack Obama. There's no difference in Eric Cantor and Nancy Pelosi. There's no difference in Jim DeMint and Harry Reid. And it's going to take me awhile to get my arms around that and join you in that view of things. I just want you to know I'll be working on it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT
(playing of Rush opera song: We Love to Hear Rush Limbaugh)

RUSH: (buzzer) The Republicans, all they do is spend and spend and spend and spend!

(song continues)

RUSH: (buzzer) We have to get rid of the Republicans.

(song continues)

RUSH: Your guiding light through times of trouble, confusion, murkiness, tumult, chaos, dissension, and even the good times, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

(playing of Thank the Lord Rush Limbaugh's On)

RUSH: (buzzer) There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Republicans and Democrats.

(continued playing of song)

RUSH: That is the Rush Hawkins Singers and Thank the Lord Rush Limbaugh's On. Now, Rush Hawkins Singers is great, great tune requested by a drive-by caller not all that long ago.

END TRANSCRIPT

Read the Background Material...

• Rush's First Televised Address to the Nation: Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Speech

Rush Accepts Responsibility for Kornheiser's Suspension by ESPN
Eventually, we get blamed for all this stuff anyway.
February 24, 2010

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Tony Kornheiser on his radio show said this recently and has been suspended for two weeks because of it.

KORNHEISER: I'd like to point out Hannah Storm in a horrifying, horrifying outfit today. She's got on red go-go boots and a Catholic school plaid skirt way too short for somebody in her forties or maybe early fifties by now, and she's got on her typically very, very tight shirt so she looks like she's got sausage casing wrapped around her upper body. I'm not supposed to be critical of ESPN people. I point out that, you know, people who say that they lost 50 or 60 pounds have actually gained all the weight back.

RUSH: That's Tony Kornheiser. ESPN didn't like that. They suspended him for two weeks. I, ladies and gentlemen, would like to step forward today and claim responsibility for this. How am I responsible for it? Well, I don't know. They're going to end up blaming me for it. Anything that happens wrong at ESPN, you know, eventually it's going to come down, it's going to be my fault. 'Cause I mean, after all, Kornheiser would not have a talk show if I had not blazed the trail. And so, you know, I get away with stuff like that, Kornheiser doesn't. So ESPN, I'm taking the blame. I'm not going to suspend myself, but I will take responsibility for this. The commissioner of the NFL weighed in.

GOODELL: Divisive comments are not what the NFL is all about. And so, you know, I would not want to see those kind of comments from people who are in a responsible position within the NFL, no, absolutely not.

RUSH: Now, he was not speaking about Kornheiser, but I'm going to take blame for that. And of course Kornheiser was not suspended for this three years ago.

WILBON: Rush Limbaugh reportedly said Friday night that the NFL too often looks like a game between the Crips and the Bloods without any weapons, close quote. Tony, what do you think of that?

KORNHEISER: I've said this before. That is blatant race baiting. He has done this before.

WILBON: That's bigoted.

RUSH: The real funny thing about this is that Kornheiser is so ugly he'd make a freight train take a dirt road and yet he's out there commenting on Hannah Storm. So I, ladies and gentlemen, will take responsibility for this. It involves ESPN and a guy on the radio who really doesn't know how to do radio, he's a writer, and I paved the way for all these guys who are now doing radio, and so they'll cite me as the example. I get away with this stuff, they'll say. So I'm going to go ahead and take the blame for it now before it eventually comes to me anyway.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Yes. I saw what Hannah Storm was wearing. (interruption) Yeah, I saw it! The red go-go boots and the short... (interruption) Yeah, I saw it! What's the big deal? Do you people know the audience of ESPN? It's single guys between 18 and 24. They probably can't get dates, have little zits on their faces -- and that's television. Of course I saw what she was wearing. It's not a surprise to me at all. You gotta understand who watches these shows.

END TRANSCRIPT

Read the Background Material...

• New York Post: ESPN Sidelines 'Sexist' Male Colleague

Liberals Attempt to Drive a Wedge Between Brown and Conservatives
Predictable libs want Scott Brown to think we hate him.
February 24, 2010

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Well, the Drive-Bys, ladies and gentlemen, are trying to stir up trouble between me and Scott Brown. I know this trap, trick, tactic. I've seen it employed countless times. What they're trying to do is suggest here... Well, they want to convince Scott Brown that he's now hated on the right because I "hate" him, and they're trying to turn him around on his vote for health care. They're trying to say, "Look, Brown! Look at what these evil, right-wing guys are saying about you. They hate you now! You have not voted their way, and they hate your guts, and they hate you," and they're trying to turn him around. Here it is. This is Sam Stein this morning on Morning Joe. Sam Stein is with the Huffing and Puffington Post. Scarborough said, "Maybe they do health care incrementally out there," Sam, old buddy, old pal.

STEIN: That's the fallback option now, if you can't get something big passed, is to do small bits that are sort of noncontroversial and build on there.

SCARBOROUGH: Mmmph.

STEIN: Scott Brown, how remarkable is that? (snickering) Within two days he's now hated by Rush Limbaugh.

RUSH: The question: "So you have Scott Brown, hero of the tea party movement a couple weeks ago, now villain number one with a lot of people on the right for voting for this jobs bill which is a collection of tax cuts."

STEIN: This is pure treachery, obviously. (snickering)

WOMAN: (giggling)

STEIN: You know, Scott Brown elected two weeks ago or whatever was, now he's the villain of the right. Uh, Rush Limbaugh is not a big fan, of course, this morning. But like you said, this is such a... You know, among the jobs bill, I mean, we had a hundred billion-dollar plus bill in the House that was supposed to be the basis for this. This is $15 billion --

RUSH: All right, stop it. Stop it because they're misrepresenting it. This is not a "jobs bill." This is Stimulus 2. Folks, do you realize how much unspent money there is from the original slush fund? There's about $500 billion from the original slush fund that's unspent. There's another one for this, but at no time did I say yesterday, "I hate Scott Brown." In fact, I said I'm not surprised by this. He's from Massachusetts. He's got to throw this out there. He's gotta do this occasionally. He's gotta get reelected up there in two years. You know, this is something that, speaking for myself, was not a surprise. And, by the way, he has said... You know, the House gets this thing now, because it passed the Senate. Thirteen or 15 other Republicans voted for it now on final passage in addition to Scott Brown. So, it goes over to the House.

Now, if those people lard the thing up with a bunch of earmarks and pork, Scott Brown has reserved his right to vote against it and said so. So they're trying to convince Brown, "See, these guys don't really love you. You may as well join us and vote for health care and so forth and so on, because these guys hate you." That's what they're trying to do, here. Make no mistake about this whatsoever.

END TRANSCRIPT

Read the Background Material...

• Politico: Suicide Tuesday • NewsMax: Limbaugh Blasts Romney, Brown

Flashback '05: Democrats Decried "Nuclear Option"
They Now Plan to Use to Pass Obamacare in Senate
Hypocrisy from Democrats isn't stunning anymore.
February 24, 2010

VIDEO at link below.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Do you remember, ladies and gentlemen, "the nuclear option"? You remember what that was? It's so fuzzed up now that no one remembers really what it means or for what it was intended. But overriding all of this is the Senate filibuster rule that outside of budget bills, the Senate requires 60 votes to stop debate and go to a final floor vote to pass a bill. We all know this. Now, trying to make sense out of filibusters and reconciliation, the so-called nuclear option, the bottom line is this -- and this is where the nuclear option began. Fifty-one votes is all that had ever been necessary to confirm a judge nominated by the president. Fifty-one votes. Fifty-one votes for a non-budget bill, the Democrats are out there saying (we've got these great audio sound bites from recent years) is arrogant, a power grab. Because the Senate has rules for legislation that takes over the private health insurance sector, for example. So in 2005 there was a question about how many senators were needed to give their "advice and consent" for a judge nominated by the president. There was a constitutional question in 2005 about whether 51 or 60 senators were needed. BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now back to what I was saying. In 2005, there was a constitutional question about whether 51 or 60 senators were needed to confirm a president's choice for the judiciary. It was about the appointments clause which reads thus: "The president ... shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law." That's Article 2, Section 2, clause two. Conservatives said that 51 votes were enough if the advice-and-consent clause of the Constitution meant anything. Liberals said that the Senate's filibuster rules superseded that. Now, Republicans ran the place back then, you must remember, and Bush was having a lot of trouble with his nominees, and this is where the Gang of 14 comes into play.

John McCain and the Gang of 14 were trying to stave off the nuclear option. The nuclear option was using 51 votes instead of 60 because we're talking here about something that's standard: The confirmation of judges. So now the nuclear option is now called "reconciliation." Nuclear doesn't sound too good, does it? "Reconciliation? Oh, yes! We'll reconcile. We'll come to an agreement." The point is that we've got audio sound bites from 2005 of all kinds of Democrat senators saying that this is a "naked power grab" to use 51 votes to confirm judges instead of 60. It's a naked power grab! We got Biden saying (summarized), "I'll tell you, you're not going to have this power forever, you Republicans. We're going to have it, and we're never gonna do this kind of naked power grab." I mean, it's on and on and on. We got Feinstein, we got Hillary Clinton, we have Senator Byrd, we have Chuck-U Schumer. We have all these people.

The thing about this is, to me, it's not a surprise. You know me. Liberals lie. Democrats lie. They do everything they accuse everybody else of doing. It's called "projection." So now they are going to use reconciliation. They are going to blow up the Senate rules. They're gonna nuke the Senate rules in order to get health care through the Senate. They were all against doing this precise thing back in 2005 to confirm judges. They -- all of a sudden, out of the blue -- wanted to require 60 votes to confirm judges because they didn't like Bush's appointments. There have never been 60 votes needed to confirm judges. So there were arguments back and forth: "Should we launch the nuclear option?" They were all set to do it, Bill Frist and these guys. They weren't crazy about doing it.

Then to save the day, along came McCain and Lindsey Grahamnesty and the Gang of 14. (New Castrati impression) "Which is a bipartisan group put together of 14 senators to make sure that the nuclear option was not used to protect the sacred rules of the United States Senate," and we have Hillary Clinton talking about how (summarized), "It's not efficient over here. It's not efficient by design. The Founding Fathers built the Senate this way so that we would not ramrod through legislation without taking careful time to consider it." All of that's out the window now. It's pure hypocrisy. It's deceit galore. It's typical of the Democrats and the libs. And when we come back from the bottom-of-the-hour break coming up, I'll let you hear it for the entertainment value of it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All right, to the audio sound bites.

May 24th, 2005, this is what I said about the Democrats and the then-described "nuclear option."

RUSH ARCHIVE: The one thing we know about the Democrats is that they can be trusted to not be trusted, meaning they're not gonna abide by any deal when they already refuse to abide by the Constitution and 214 years of history. This is another thing: Making deals with these people is like making deals with the old Soviet Union. This is nothing different than those old SALT talks. We'll abide by it; they'll break it.

RUSH: Yesterday in Washington, Dingy Harry had a statement. By the way, you know what his campaign slogan is? Dingy Harry's campaign slogan is "Vote for me or my wife gets beat up by me." "Save my wife, vote for me: Harry Reid. Yesterday he had a press conference. During the Q&A he was asked, "Is reconciliation the only way you have to get health care through Congress at this point?"

REID: My Republican friends are lamenting reconciliation. But I would recommend for them to go back and look at history. They should stop crying about reconciliation as if it's never been done before. It's done almost every Congress, and they're the ones that used it more than anything else.

RUSH: Now, it is done for budget bills. It's not done for what they're going to do with health care. Let's go back to April 25th, 2005 at the National Press Club. At-the-time-Senator Barack Obama spoke about changing the filibuster rule. This is when the Republicans were going to use the nuclear option to confirm some of Bush's nominees. Here is a portion of what Obama said. He was ripping the whole process, the process he now is preparing to use to pass his own health care bill.

THEN-SENATOR OBAMA APRIL 25, 2005: A change in the Senate rules that really, uh, I think would change the character of the Senate, uh, forever. [snip] Uhhh, and what I worry about would be th-th-that you essentially still have two chambers, the House and the Senate, but you have simply majoritarian, uhhh, absolute power on either side, and that's just not what the Founders intended.

RUSH: Oh, founders did not intend what Obama himself is now going to do!

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Hillary Clinton, Senator, May 23rd, 2005, on the Senate floor, spoke about changing the filibuster rule.

THEN-SENATOR CLINTON MAY 23, 2005: So this president has come to the majority here in the Senate and basically said "Change the rules! Do it the way I want it done," and I guess there just weren't very many voices on the other side of the aisle that acted the way previous generations of senators have acted and said "Mr. President, we are with you, we support you, but that's a bridge too far. We can't go there. You have to restrain yourself, Mr. President."

RUSH: Now, remember, the Democrats wanted at this time to us 60 votes to confirm judges. The Republicans said, "No, no, no, no. The clause doesn't say anything about it, the Advise and Consent clause. They've always done a simple majority here." Democrats said, "No, no, no! We want to get 60." The Democrats were saying, "Fifty-one votes? Why, why, that's a constitutional crisis!" The same thing they're trying to do now with health care, they said was going to destroy the country. Here's Chuck-U Schumer.

CHUCK SCHUMER MAY 18, 2005: We are on the precipice of a crisis, a constitutional crisis. The checks and balances which have been at the core of this republic are about to be evaporated by the nuclear option. The checks and balances which say that if you get 51% of the vote you don't get your way 100% of the time. It is amazing. It's almost a temper tantrum.

RUSH: And here's Harry Reid, who just yesterday told Republicans to "stop crying about reconciliation," the nuclear option.

HARRY REID MAY 18, 2005: Mr. President, the right to extended debate is never more important than the one party controls Congress and the White House. In these cases the filibuster serves as a check on power and preserves our limited government.

RUSH: Ohhhhh! Back then, remember, we were talking about "the tyranny of the majority" and how we had to "respect the rights of the minority," because Bush and the Republicans had the House of Representatives and had the Senate, and the Democrats were blocking all these judicial confirmations. So the very thing that the Democrats are going to do for health care in the Senate, they said was going to destroy our country. Here is Dianne Feinstein on the subject.

DIANNE FEINSTEIN MAY 18, 2005: The nuclear option, if successful, will turn the Senate into a body that could have its rules broken at any time by a majority --

RUSH: Hmmm!

FEINSTEIN: -- of senators unhappy with any position taken by the minority. It begins with judicial nomination, next will be executive appointments, and then legislation.

RUSH: Yep, yep, yep. She called it. (laughing) Look, it's not big news, I know, 'cause they're hypocrites every day of the year, but it is just funny to listen to this stuff. It's great to have this stuff on, and here's Joe Biden. This is even better, May 23rd, 2005.

THEN-SENATOR JOE BIDEN MAY 23, 2005: This nuclear option is ultimately an example of the arrogance of power. It is a fundamental power grab.

RUSH: Arrogance of power. A fundamental power grab. Dingy Harry again...

SENATOR HARRY REID MAY 18, 2005: No, we are not going to follow the Senate rules. No! Because of the arrogance of power of this Republican administration.

RUSH: Even Chris Dodd, "Friend of Angelo," VIP, getting real-favorable mortgage rates out there from Countrywide spoke about changing the filibuster rule.

SENATOR CHRIS DODD MAY 18, 2005: (shouting) Why have two chambers? What were the framers thinking about 218 years ago? They understood, Mr. President, that there is a tyranny of the majority.

RUSH: (laughing) Is this not great? (laughing) We're ramming it down their collective little Democrat throats. Dianne Feinstein.

SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN MAY 18, 2005: If the Republican leadership insists on forcing the nuclear option, the Senate becomes, ipso facto, the House of Representatives where the majority rules supreme and the party in power can dominate and control the agenda with absolute power.

RUSH: Yeah, exactly like is happening now. Of course back then they called it "the nuclear option;" today they call it reconciliation. Here's Hillary again.

THEN-SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON MAY 23, 2005: "You've got majority rule and then you have the Senate over here where people can slow things down where they can debate, where they have something called 'the filibuster.' Eh, you know it seems like it's a little less than efficient." Well that's right. It is. And deliberately designed to be so.

RUSH: And here's old Joe. (laughing) Nobody's messing with Joe. Listen to this.

THEN-SENATOR JOE BIDEN MAY 23, 2005: I say to my friends on the Republican side: You may own the field right now, but you won't own it forever, and I pray [to] God when the Democrats take back control we don't make the kind of naked power grab you are doing.

RUSH: (laughing) Oh, that's great! Joe Biden! You can count on him! No matter what day of the week, no matter what year, you can count on Joe Biden. Here's Chuck-U Schumer.

SENATOR CHUCK SCHUMER MAY 23, 2005: They want their way (banging podium) every single time! And they will change the rules, break the rules, misread the Constitution, so that they will get their way.

RUSH: Hillary, once again, May 23rd, 2005.

THEN-SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON MAY 23, 2005: The Senate is being asked to turn itself inside out -- to ignore the precedent, to ignore the way our system has worked, the delicate balance that we have obtained that has kept this constitutional system going -- for immediate gratification of the present president.

RUSH: (chuckles) What the hell is happening now? The immediate gratification of the present president. A freaking monument and all these Democrats are being asked to die on the sword in order for Obama to get that monument, and they're going to break the Senate rules in the process, constitutional crisis, a bomb. Here is Max Baucus.

SENATOR MAX BAUCUS MAY 19, 2005: This is the way (dramatic pause) democracy ends. Not with a bomb but with a gavel.

RUSH: Oh, wow! Democracy was going to end if they did the nuclear option in 2005! They were going to go to 51 votes to confirm judges! (gasping and gagging) Last but not least, "Sheets" Byrd comparing this to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

SENATOR ROBERT BYRD APRIL 1, 2005: For the temporary gain of a handful of out-of-the-mainstream judges, some in the Senate are ready to callously incinerate each senator's -- Each senator! Every senator's! -- right of extended debate. That is what the nuclear option seeks to do. Minorities have an illustrious past, full of suffering, torture, smear, and even death. Jesus Christ was killed by a majority. Columbus was smeared. Christians have been tortured.

RUSH: And, of course, the Klan has not been very nice to blacks.

END TRANSCRIPT

Read the Background Material...

• Breitbart.tv: Obama & Dems in '05: 51 Vote 'Nuclear Option' Is 'Arrogant' Power Grab Against the Founders' Intent

Stupak Says No to Obama's Bill
Party of No? It's Democrats holding up Obamacare.
February 24, 2010

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, to illustrate something, we've all heard, ad infinitum (sobbing), "It's those damn Republicans! The Republicans are the party of 'no.' That's why Obama can't get his monument! That's why Obama can't get health care, because the Republicans are the party of 'no.'" We heard Evan Bayh say, "I can't get along here, too much gridlock. There's no bipartisanship," and I was pulling my hair out. You guys have all the votes! Up until Scott Brown came along, and that's just a month ago, you guys had 60 votes in the Senate and who knows what kind of a majority in the House! The Republicans couldn't stop diddly-squat. So the purpose of this little meeting tomorrow, this theater, is to shift the blame to the Republicans.

That's all it is. That's all the effort is about. This is an easy call. But the dirty little secret is that Pelosi doesn't have the votes for a reconciled Senate version of health care. Eric Cantor is out there saying so. The Democrats, Pelosi and Obama, have asked too many of these guys to walk the plank for this, and a lot of them don't want to walk the plank because they don't think it's worth it. What's Obama done for them? Obama has done nothing but make their lives miserable. Their political lives are miserable. Here they thought they were going to enter the happiest time of their lives, supermajority control of the Senate, big time majority control of the House -- and, look!

This place is no different than a den of thieves and a pack of wild dogs. There's nobody on the Democrat side having any fun doing anything, and it's all Obama's fault. Yet he's asking them to fall on the sword, to take a bullet so he gets this health care thing passed. Well, they're not all on board. His problem remains the Democrats. Here's Bart Stupak. I don't know if he's going to go to Obama's summit, I don't know if he's going to speak, but this was this morning on America's Newsroom. Bart Stupak with Bill Hemmer. He's a Democrat from Michigan and Bill Hemmer said, "As it stands now with all these moderate Democrats saying, 'Hey, this is not the place we want to go right now,'" meaning the health care bill, "could it even pass the House, do you think?"

STUPAK: Despite the abortion language, no, there's other problems with this bill. The president has tried to bridge the House and Senate bill. But at least to the House members I've talked to -- probably about 15 or 20 of them in the last 24 hours -- they've said there are other problems with this bill. Remember, the House rejected the idea of passing health insurance plans. We just totally rejected that idea. But yet that's part of the bill. Parts of the bill doesn't kick in until 2018. We're saying, "Well, why are we passing the bill now that's not going to kick in for another eight, nine years?"

RUSH: You just heard a Democrat, Bart Stupak, not to be confused with Joe Sestak. This is Bart Stupak from Michigan. Sestak is from Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is run by "Fast Eddie" Rendell and Michigan is being destroyed by Jennifer Granholm. This is a Democrat, Bart Stupak (paraphrased), "Nope, not voting for it! I know fifteen or 20 others not voting for it and it's got to do with a lot more than just abortion. It kicks in for 2018? Why are we rushing to do this now?" They are beginning to realize it's all about Obama, and they're the ones that are gonna pay the price for it. He gets whatever credit there is.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Don't forget, the Republicans can't stop anything. They're not going to get health care in the House because they don't have enough Democrats who are going to vote for it this time. They do not. Murtha is gone, Abercrombie is leaving. Remember they only had three votes more than they needed. They had 218, they needed 215. Murtha's gone, he's not been replaced, Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii is retiring. Oh, yeah, Cao the Republican, he's not voting for it this time. He was the Republican that did in Louisiana. If you do the math right now it does not look like they've got the votes. And Stupak's not going for it and he says there's a lot of guys not going for it along with him not just because of the abortion stuff but because they don't even know what they're doing yet, it's going to be implemented in 2018 and they don't understand the reason they got to do this -- well, they do understand it. They have to fall on their sword for Obama. They're not going to say so publicly, it's all about giving Obama something to run for reelection, it's all about him and they're starting to resent this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

John Boehner was with Megyn Kelly on Fox this afternoon about Republicans going up to this health care summit tomorrow. This was the question, the first of two: "When I listen to you talk, I think to myself, all right, so nothing's going to get done, it sounds like nothing new will take place at tomorrow's summit, he'll say what he's been saying, you're going to say what you've been saying?"

BOEHNER: I guess we're going to have to see. I can't predict what's going to happen tomorrow. I mean the president invited the Republicans and Democrats to come to the White House. I think Republicans need to go. I don't see any reason to allow the president to have a six-hour infomercial about his bill.

RUSH: It's theater, it's nothing more than theater. It's more talk. So the next question: "Well, one Democrat source came out today, predicted this would be a, quote, 'career-ending vote' for those who vote 'yes' in favor of the bill that winds up coming out of the House or Senate, a Democrat source said that anyone voting 'yes' is ending their career. Do you agree?"

BOEHNER: I do. This is an issue far beyond any issue that I've seen during my legislative career, an issue that all Americans understand and have some feelings about. And after everything I've seen over the last six or seven months, the American people have been very loud and very aggressive about how bad this bill is, and the fact that we've got all these entitlement programs that are going broke and here they are wanting to create a new entitlement program that's going to cost a trillion dollars right at the beginning.

RUSH: That we don't have. So that's John Boehner on Fox this afternoon. Bill, about this, in Beaumont, Texas. Welcome, sir, to the Rush Limbaugh program. Bill, are you there?

CALLER: Yes, I am.

RUSH: Well, welcome to the program, sir.

CALLER: Thank you very much. By the way, I wanted to tell you that you really had some great moves at the pageant.

RUSH: Oh, the dancing at the pageant. Yes, I won the judges dance contest. Absolutely. Thank you.

CALLER: You did good. It's the perfect timing, I wanted to follow up with this thing that you just did from Boehner.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: You know, I get the feeling that everybody is just hoping that the Republicans -- that here we go, the Republicans are going to a nice little party at the Blair House, da-da-da-da-da. I hope as a Republican, independent, as conservative, my more than wish, my demand of the Republican Party and the people that represent us in Washington is that they have been rehearsing, that they have been playing out the scenarios. I mean, these guys are pros at this. This is what they do for a living. They know what's going to happen, they know what Obama's gonna -- you know, generally how his game plan is going to run.

RUSH: What do you think Obama is going to do?

CALLER: I don't know, but I think it's pretty clear what he's going to do. He's got a plan, he's going to say this is it, and he's going to try to start the negotiation with this thing that he's produced, this outline that he's produced. I hope they're Republican representatives have prepared their version of what they would like to see, and I hope they go in there and they are tough, they don't do what's politically correct, they do what's necessary to convey the position of the conservatives in this country. This is a very, very -- it's just insanity that we're talking about adding the kind of money to our deficit that this bill will add, under any circumstances, be it for the good of 31 million people that aren't covered by health care or anything else. This country is going down the tube financially. This is the greatest country in the world, we've got the greatest people, I just can't say enough positive things about the citizens of the United States.

RUSH: Look, here's what this is all about. And the answer can be found in what I just told you. Congressional approval is 10%. Obama wants to shift the blame for this not getting done to Congress. That's what this is about tomorrow. The Republicans and Democrats both know there's not going to be anything coming out of this summit tomorrow that's going to end up as a piece of legislation that a majority of Congress or the Senate will vote for. This is an attempt -- Obama is going to say, "I listened to what the Republicans said, I put some things in there that they want, this is a fully bipartisan --" he's going to say it, he knows he's got an echo chamber to repeat it, Republicans are going to be on defense, "No, no, no, the things we wanted are not in there," blah, blah, blah. I don't know how they're going to handle it, but I know what the objective is, and the objective is to shift blame to them and take the heat off of the Democrats. The only problem with that is that a lot of Democrats like Stupak are out there saying they want no part of it anyway. So I think the whole thing is a joke, it's theater, this is where Obama thinks he shines, it's an attempt to raise his poll numbers. Six hours here, six hours of Obama in campaign mode? That's the way they're looking at this. The Republicans know what they're getting into. They're just like Democrats. How could they not know?

END TRANSCRIPT

Read the Background Material...

• Wall Street Journal: Stupak: 15-20 Dems Can't Back Obama Health Plan • Rasmussen: Congressional Performance. 71% Give Congress Poor Rating • WE: Boehner to Obama: Why Not Invite Stupak to the Health Care Summit? • CNSNews: Rep. Hoyer No Comment On Tax Hikes in Obama Health Plan, Calls Idea 'A Suggestion'

Rush Baby's Professor Rips Rush
A typical story from the front lines of academia.
February 24, 2010

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Andrea on line two in Tampa, Florida. I'm glad you called. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Thank you so much, Rush. It's a pleasure to talk to you.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: I'm 25 years old, and I've been listening to you since I was nine, and you have been one of the greatest public speakers I have ever listened to ever. You have guided me politically, and you have helped inform me of things that weren't just on TV, 'cause you know everything on the news is biased and AM radio has definitely shown me a different way to think. And I wanted to personally thank you because every day I have to fight on the other side. Every day I go to school and have another teacher put down the Founding Fathers. Every day I have to listen to their opinions. Even in my history teacher put you down the other day. It was pretty offensive. He said that you "ran away from the Vietnam War."

RUSH: (stifling laughter)

CALLER: So I was kind of upset about that, but you can't really argue with your professor unless you want to fail.

RUSH: I know. Look, I appreciate your nice comments. These things like "ran away from Vietnam War" and so forth are in the long-ago-written Lexis-Nexis database. These professors are some of the most closed-minded, uncurious people -- and they're all left-wing ideologues. You're right: They're everywhere. They're all over the place. Actually they're not. See, Andrea, I made this point yesterday, and I want to drive it home again. They're not everywhere. They are everywhere in certain institutions. They are everywhere in academia. They're everywhere at all levels of education. They are everywhere in bureaucracies. But in terms of their percentage of this population, they are a minority. They are a small minority. But they have as an ally something huge, although it's shrinking, and that is Big Media.

And Big Media makes it look like the country is far left. Big Media makes it look like your professor is average and ordinary, just like every other American -- and he's not! Your professor is a kook. Your professor is an uneducated boob who is attempting to indoctrinate people like you into what he believes, not what he knows. It's like the Democrats are all mad, Andrea, at Evan Bayh. They're mad at Evan Bayh because when Evan Bayh announced he was leaving the Senate, he said, "I'm going to go do something. If I could create one job in the private sector, I would do more than Congress has done in six months," and Mary Landrieu is outraged at this. A lot of Democrats are. "How could he say that? Why, he sounds just like the Republicans!"

Mary Landrieu said, "I have a piece of paper on my desk that shows X-number of jobs have been created in Louisiana." Well, hey, Senator Landrieu, I have a piece of paper on my desk that says John McCain was elected president in 2008. It doesn't make it true, just like your piece of paper doesn't make it true. Your teacher, your professor, deals in a bunch of BS pieces of paper. So you think you're surrounded by these people but you're really not. If this country were made up of people like your professor, they wouldn't be having any problem at all getting health care passed last summer! If this country were made up of mostly people like your professor, we would have had Obama winning in a landslide. We would not be facing or looking at the possibility of the Democrats losing the House after two years of Obama or a year and a half of Obama.

We wouldn't be looking at that. So you need to take comfort in the fact that you're not the oddball, that you are representative of a majority of people in this country. It's just that at this stage in your life you have to surround yourself with these kooks, because they are teachers. You have to do your best to placate 'em and satisfy 'em to get your grade but not believe much of what they tell you, especially if they're teaching history or political science. Because everything with these people is an agenda, everything is political, and they exist for the express purpose of converting you to their belief system and making you, essentially, a mind-numbed robot. Pure and simple.

END TRANSCRIPT

Read the Background Material...

• Politico: Bayh's Exit Comments Irk Dems • Sweetness & Light: CBO: Stimulus Added 1?2M Jobs In Q4

Emulate Texas, Not California!
Lower taxes, less government works every time it's tried.
February 24, 2010

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Jason in New Braunfels, Texas, it's great to have on you the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, how are you?

RUSH: Fine. Thank you.

CALLER: I hereby volunteer Texas for that study.

RUSH: Oh-ho. Texas doesn't really need it, does it?

CALLER: No, and that's my point.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: I told Bo I'd get right to the point so I will. I wanted to ask you about two things, two key points.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: First one being, I think people are putting way, way too much faith in a Republican from Massachusetts, and I think people need to understand that when Republicans go up there tomorrow to meet with the president, and the thing that you just said about a state being an example on how things are done, I wanted to ask you if you would agree with the premise that for two generations now, California and New Jersey have been trying to perfect liberalism and failed.

RUSH: Oh.

CALLER: And Texas has tried to perfect Reagan conservatism and it's been wildly successful.

RUSH: There's no question about it. I've got a story in the stack somewhere here that some foreign country is going to start emulating California.

CALLER: Well, they're going to be in big trouble.

RUSH: They are. They're already in big trouble and they're going to get in worse trouble.

CALLER: Venezuela?

RUSH: It's Great Britain.

CALLER: Rush, can I just tell you one other thing? You did not need to spank yourself earlier. That lady has not been listening to the show. You mentioned earlier that CNN had 25,000 viewers the other night?

RUSH: Yeah, one night last week.

CALLER: I bet it wasn't that many. Right now as you and I are speaking from my spare bedroom in my house in New Braunfels, Texas, just for the sake of my friends and family, I'm broadcasting this call on Ustream.TV on my channel. I bet more people would be able to watch that that are listening to your show right now than were watching CNN the other night. Your show is basically presiding over the end of twentieth century media.

RUSH: Well, thank you for that proper perspective, finally, being enunciated here. I was going to put it into perspective by saying, I have 250,000 listeners at the corner of 5th and 62nd in New York.

CALLER: Can I tell people where I'm broadcasting so they can go see for themselves?

RUSH: Yeah, go right ahead, you deserve it.

CALLER: It's Ustream, like the letter U in university, Ustream.TV and just search eloquent, the word eloquent like what Rush Limbaugh is, Eloquent Online, and that's the name of my company, Eloquent Online.

RUSH: All right.

CALLER: I mean it blows me away that the first time I spoke to you, you were probably selling more than 25,000 Rush recorders. For Rush Babies who have no idea what that is, it was a device that you could set on your cassette deck to tape the Rush Limbaugh show.

RUSH: Okay, I gotta go. (buzzer) Can't trust Scott Brown, he's a Republican.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Just to close the loop on this, this is a commentary by James Delingpole in the UK Telegraph today, and just an excerpt here. What this is, it's an article on that crook, that greedy crook, Pachauri from India who runs the IPCC, the UN's climate panel, and how he got rich ruining the last steel plant in Britain and how the mainstream media in Britain has tried to quash that story. I don't want to read the whole thing to you, it prints out to five pages, but it has this little excerpt: "Meanwhile our prospective next prime minister David Cameron has come up with a whizzo new scheme to make our inflated electricity bills even more painful than before: He said: 'We need to apply gentle social pressure on people to bring down their energy use. So just as they’re doing in California, we will make each energy bill come with an illustration of how much energy people’s neighbours are using in comparison to their own usage, inspiring them to consume less in competition.'"

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what you Brits need to do is start copying our first failed state, California. I'm going to make a prediction to you people in the UK, and I know you're out there and I know you're listening here on your internet connections. If you do this, if you attach your neighbor's usage of electricity to your electric bill, you're going to cause riots in the neighborhood because of the mind-set that's been established that humans are destroying the planet and that we are wasting all of our great resources. You wait, you get a bill that shows somebody down the street from you is using twice as much as you and you're going to go down there and you're going to commit violence or you're going to commit vandalism or you're going to organize the other people in the neighborhood to organize against this person that's using so much more than you are. It's not going to go cause this guy to go use less in a competition.

This is where liberals do not understand human behavior in any way, shape, manner, or form. They believe that if you put everybody's electric bill usage on your bill, in your neighborhood, that you'll start a competition to see who can use less? That's not natural. That's not what -- (buzzer) The Republican Party is the same as any other political party out there, spend and spend and spend, debt, debt, debt, screw Bush. You put your neighbor's bill on your bill, I'm guaranteeing you, do it in this country, you're going to end up with wars inside neighborhoods over people using too much.

Now, I'm following a couple governors, as you know, on this program. We're following Chris Christie in New Jersey, and we're covering Bob McDonnell in Virginia. This is from Politics Daily: "Virginia's new Republican governor, Bob McDonnell, has ambitious plans for his state. He wants to put young Virginians back to work, make Virginia the first East Coast state to drill offshore, and to compete with California to become the wine capital of the United States. McDonnell made these points in his keynote address to the inaugural conference of the American Action Forum, which its Web site calls a new voice for 'center-right ideas and action.' With jobs as the focus of the conference, the governor said that 'the scariest unemployment statistic we face' is the hidden unemployment that is masked by Virginia's official jobless rate. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Virginia's unemployment rate in 2009 was 6.6 percent. But taking into account discouraged, marginally attached, and underemployed workers, Virginia's overall unemployment rate was 12.1 percent, or nearly double the official rate last year. The jobs problem goes deeper than many suspect. … McDonnell -- who won a landslide victory in November -- ran on the slogan 'Bob's for Jobs.'"

So basically here, what is McDonnell talking about? Oil, wine, jobs. You see how it works? Produce things! He's not talking about, "Oh, we're in such bad shape, we need more unemployment benefits. Oh, we need shovel-ready projects to rebuild roads." He's not talking about that. He's talking about oil, wine, jobs, producing things, make jobs, not jobs bills, but actual jobs. And then, of course, we go to Chris Christie. This is from a blog yesterday, Dan Cirucci blogspot: "New Jersey Governor Chris Christie today signed a sweeping executive order directing a comprehensive review of all state authorities, boards and commissions and taking immediate action to reform abusive fiscal practices at those authorities, boards and commissions by strictly limiting the hiring of lobbyists, eliminating 'golden parachutes' to departing executives and employees and capping travel expenses at $250. Executive Order 15 also institutes a wide review of all state authorities and requires recommendations by May 15 to the Governor’s Office on whether each such authority, board or commission should continue or cease to exist. In the case of those that continue, the review would further determine whether positions at such entities should be compensated in any way or operate on a strictly volunteer basis."

So this guy is rolling up both sleeves, he's putting on the overalls, and he is getting into the muck that is the State of New Jersey's fiscal situation, and he's going to fix it and this guy McDonnell in Virginia is doing the same thing. But I don't know, folks, what the hell am I talking about? See how easy I get fooled? These guys are Republicans, and they're no different than Democrats. I'm sorry. I'm so embarrassed. I just wasted your time praising those two guys in what they're doing. They're no different than Democrats. Oh, jeez.

END TRANSCRIPT

Read the Background Material...

• UK Telegraph: 'Global Warming': Time to Get Angry - James Delingpole • Politics Daily: Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell's Plans: Jobs, Wine and Oil • DanCirucci.blogspot: Christie Cracks Down On Authorities • AP: States Faced Declining Tax Collections in 4Q; More Budget Cuts or Tax Increases Likely Needed • AP: New home Sales Hit Record Low in January

Democrats Think You're Stupid
Your stupidity stands in the way of what they want.
February 24, 2010

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here is Dennis in Denver. You're next on the program, sir. It's great to have you here.

CALLER: Thank you very much. I've got a very simple question that I would love your opinion on.

RUSH: Sure.

CALLER: Does the president -- and Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and anybody that wants to support the health care bill in its current incarnation -- realize that if they ram it down the American public's throat, they are declaring war on the American public? Or do you think they realize it and really don't care?

RUSH: I think it's a little bit of both. When you're talking about Democrats... War is a little strong, but I know what you mean. They hold us in contempt. The fact they haven't been able to pass it, they blame on us. They blame it on the tea party people, which they call "tea baggers." They blame it on the "stupid people in this country who listen to talk radio and read blogs." Look, Joe Klein said it recently. Bill Maher said it on Larry King. You people are just too stupid to understand all the great things and the issues the Democrats are trying to do, and because your stupidity is standing in the way of their achieving it, they have contempt for you. So they're, in a sense, declaring war. But they also don't care. It's patently obviously. They're willing to lose the House over this.

CALLER: I travel around the country, I'm an over-the-road truck driver, and I see what their actions have done to this point, and it is dismal out here to say the least.

RUSH: You're talking about the job market and the economy overall or are you talking about people's attitudes?

CALLER: Yes. (chuckles)

RUSH: (laughing)

CALLER: Just follow that.

RUSH: (laughing)

CALLER: I mean, when you look at a warehouse in LA that a year-and-a-half ago was completely full and you go in there now and it's 80 to 90% empty? It's just the people's attitude. It's unbelievable. I've never believed I would see something like this in my lifetime.

RUSH: Well, you are, and it's not just you. A lot of people see it. It's like the story I just recently told about my staffer. After I told the story, the staffer added something else, and that is: In addition to every one of these people complaining about their house being worthless, there being no help -- they thought the government, Obama, was going to fix all of this and he's fixing nothing -- they say, "And there's no jobs!" They started saying, "There's no jobs!" and they were mad at the government. That's Obama. Look, I think it's even worse. I know that Obama has no experience. I know he has no executive experience. I know not one member of his administration has spent any time in the private sector as an employee or as a manager, and I know he's been educated to think the country is unjust and immoral as it's been founded. The fact that they keep piling mistake after mistake after mistake on this makes it more and more difficult for me to believe that this is not purposeful. And that, if you want to talk about... If people start to think that -- if people start to think this is being done on purpose for whatever reason -- then there is going to be, in November, an uprising like nothing you've ever seen.

END TRANSCRIPT

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