RUSH: Here's David, Tampa, Florida. Dave, welcome to the EIB Network. Great to have you with us.
CALLER: Hey, Rush! It's an honor and a pleasure to speak to you. First-time caller.
RUSH: Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
CALLER: Yeah, I just wanted to talk about the grumpy grams you're getting about the Allen Brothers gift you gave away, and first of all I think that you use every product that you promote on your program, and I have tried several of them, and they're...

RUSH: Here's that story on Barack Obama' wife. It's Thomas Lifson in the AmericanThinker.com.
"Poor Mrs. Barack Obama! 'My income is pretty low compared to my peers' she says. How much is she scraping by on? 'According to a tax return released by the senator," that would be her husband, Barack Hussein Obama, "this week, the promotion nearly tripled her income from the hospitals to $316,962 in 2005 from $121,910 in 2004."'" So she basically tripled her income. "Her income coincidentally jumped...

RUSH: TIME Magazine caved. They have destroyed the whole franchise of Person of the Year -- and I think it was a joke for the longest time anyway. Their Person of the Year is everybody because of the new ability of everybody to contribute to media, average Americans (bloggers, the YouTube people, the MySpace people) we are having the ability to you no create our own media within our own universes, and so everybody is Person of the Year. I'll tell you what it is: the people at TIME Magazine are...

RUSH: This is David in upstate, New York. He doesn't want to identify exactly where out of fear of Mrs. Clinton. Hello, David.
CALLER: Yes, good afternoon, Rush. I've been a previous caller under more financially fortunate times, and I take great umbrage at Senator Kennedy's comments. The wife and I are currently on Social Service and Food Stamps, and we have been for two years. You have to be, oh, I would say anything from unintelligent to downright stupid to go asleep hungry. We get $284...

RUSH: Now, this next sound bite, this has made some news. It has nothing to do with Iraq. Senator Kennedy was asked if welfare reform has worked.
KENNEDY: Your figures are wrong in terms of child poverty.
CHRIS WALLACE: I'm not --
KENNEDY: Your figures are absolutely wrong as we've had increase now in the last five years of the number of children that are living in poverty in the United States of America increased by 1,700,000. We have 36 million Americans that are going to bed hungry...

RUSH: I want to start with audio sound bites today, folks, and another in a never ending, long line of illustrations of how it is that I (in this case) and many others are taken totally out of context, on purpose, by the Drive-By Media, and this happened on Reliable Sources yesterday on CNN, hosted by our old buddy Howard Kurtz. He plays an audio sound bite from me and this program last week that makes it sound like I think Hillary Clinton should loosen up, but that was not the case. We'll play...

RUSH: This is a great story: "California State Minimum Wage Increase to Drive Up Prices; California Raises Wage for First Time in Five Years."
"Stockton - Enjoy the sales this holiday season, because starting Jan. 1, California businesses that pay minimum wages or thereabouts say they have no choice but to raise prices on everything from pepperoni pizza to dry cleaning to a sack of potting soil. For the first time in five years, California's minimum hourly wage will increase... [by] rise 75...

RUSH: Remember, I told you last week, broke the story that Bill Nelson, Senator from Florida, went over talking to Bashar Assad against the wishes of the White House. It's typical: Democrats go meet with the enemy. He said that Assad was totally open to the Baker-Hamilton Surrender Group report talking about using help from Iran and Syria to alleviate our problems in Iraq.
Well... "A state-run Syrian newspaper on Saturday criticized remarks made recently by Senator Nelson, accusing him of...

RUSH: There is beginning to be a split in the Democratic Party. It's becoming pronounced now and obvious -- and, by the way, this is a See, I Told You So. I was able to predict after a presidential press conference that the Iraq Study Group, the Surrender Report, was doomed for the ash heap of history. I said, "If you ask me, I'm hearing from experts everywhere -- military, civilian -- we need more troops in Iraq." Now Hillary's come out opposing it; Dingy Harry's come out in favor of a temporary...

RUSH: So I watched The Nativity Story on Friday, and I told everybody that I would have my thoughts on it today. I'm going to be honest with you about one aspect of it. None of these releases that they send me -- it's interesting how they all do it. They imprint my name in a very faded, white font or graphic, fairly large, right in the middle of the screen. After awhile you forget it's there. So when I was watching Rocky Balboa, he's at the cemetery visiting the grave of his deceased wife, Adrian,...

RUSH: Poor little Katie Couric was in Esquire magazine last week, complaining that there are vultures out there. She admits that her new gig as anchor at the CBS Evening News has been "a little harder than she thought it would be," quote, unquote. "Some people out there are rooting for me to fail," she said to the guys at Esquire in the January issue. "You have to be unwavering in your convictions that you're doing something good because there are a lot of circling vultures that will eat you...

RUSH: Well, the commissioner of the NBA, David Stern, has handed down the punishment here for the brawl in the Garden of Evil on Saturday night, Madison Square Garden. (Well, you know, "Malice at the Palace," "Garden of Evil." These things have to have their names.) Carmelo Anthony who is a Denver Nuggets star and is the scoring leader of the NBA was suspended for 15 games today. Six other players were penalized as well. Nate Robinson and J.R. Smith each got ten games. Four other players were...

You're Missing Out on Thousands of Rush Quotes! Join Rush 24/7 NOW!"Can you believe, Evan Bayh pulled out? My gosh, I was stunned! (Laughing.) He was never in! Really? No kidding! Evan who?"
"TIME Magazine caved. They have destroyed the whole franchise of Person of the Year -- and I think it was a joke for the longest time anyway."
"Let's see, World War II didn't quite go as long as this war, but what was the total American casualties, deaths and so forth in World War II? Try 300,000."
"There...

RUSH: Snerdley, you're a big Cowboys fan. Okay. Tell me: T.O. spits on the defensive back for the Atlanta Falcons, DeAngelo Hall. (interruption) Snerdley's excusing it! "The guy was in his face and wouldn't let..."
You walk away. You walk away! You don't spit on somebody!
Of course, I was watching the pointless ESPN pre-game show yesterday, and the mock outrage from these guys, Michael Irvin and Tom Jackson. Really, five-minute lectures on how spitting on somebody is bad and there's...

RUSH: Nancy Pelosi is going to have a four-day inauguration gala. "Speaker-Elect Nancy Pelosi has big, expensive plans for commemorating her ascension to the head of the House of Representatives in early January. She has slated a four-day gala of pomp and circumstance that will make the installation of Pope Benedict XVI seem absolutely skimpy by comparison." I'm reading this, a column written by John Lillpop at the CanadaFreePress.com. "To begin with, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and...

RUSH: Here's David, Tampa, Florida. Dave, welcome to the EIB Network. Great to have you with us.
CALLER: Hey, Rush! It's an honor and a pleasure to speak to you. First-time caller.
RUSH: Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
CALLER: Yeah, I just wanted to talk about the grumpy grams you're getting about the Allen Brothers gift you gave away, and first of all I think that you use every product that you promote on your program, and I have tried several of them, and they're...

RUSH: Here's Kimberly in Dayton, Ohio, as we go to phones. Kimberly, Merry Christmas! I'm glad you called.
CALLER: Thank you. Merry Christmas. I just wanted to call -- and I don't want this to sound like a rude call so I apologize if it does. But you really underestimated Hillary. Everything you said made sense when she ran in New York. She shouldn't have won that. You go up there and you run, you don't even live there; you buy a house to run. She shouldn't have won -- and everything that...