RUSH: There's also another aspect of this takeover of General Motors -- and the timing of this, by the way. You know, Obama leaves for the G20 tomorrow in the UK. And there have been stories over the weekend about the large traveling party. Obama is taking 500-plus people on his trip to the G20. It's going to take both Air Force Ones, both 747s. They'll have a separate press charter. And, of course, the military aircraft to take the limousine and the SUVs to travel around, and White House cooks to prepare his food. That stuff's pretty normal. I checked into this 'cause a big deal was made of this yesterday over the traveling party. What is unusual, what is not the norm is the size of the traveling party. Out of 500 people, 200 of them are Secret Service and other security. But 500-plus people, that's a little excessive, I am told, from what previous presidents took with them on international trips like this.
But regardless, the G20 starts now and that's got his own problems. Angela Merkel of Germany said to Gordon Brown (paraphrased), "To hell with your plan! We are not raising taxes and we're not going to commit to a whole bunch of new spending around the world on some global New Deal. We're just not interested in it." Our partners in Europe are well aware of it problems of spending and spending and spending money that you don't have. So Obama is headed over to the G20 and also he's got some PR problems. A lot of our allies in Europe are not happy about his Afghanistan plans. (More on that later.) But he does have now a feather in his cap as he goes to the G20. He wants to outdo the Russians over there, and so now look what he can brag. He can go to Dmitry Medvedev, the president of Russia, and say, "Hey, look, Dmitry. I got the car companies. I got the car companies, Medvedev. What've you got?" Story #2: Obama Success Story: St. Louis Bank CEO Resigns
RUSH: I have a story here from the St. Louis Business Journal, ladies and gentlemen -- and this is another Obama success story. "Don Davis, president of Centrue Bank in St. Louis, has resigned because his income will be severely restricted by new federal limitations on bank executives. In January, Centrue accepted $32.7 million under the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program, commonly called TARP. Later the federal government imposed restrictions on the bonuses of top executives at banks and other financial institutions that took TARP money. 'My salary and bonus isn't going to work -- TARP isn't going to allow it,' Davis said in an interview Monday. Davis, for example, is paid $350,000 in base salary, but also receives 10 percent of the profits of the St. Louis branch of Centrue.
"In 2008, that amounted to about $750,000 for Davis." So he made over $1 million. "'TARP doesn't like me getting that,' Davis said." TARP, which is the government. The government doesn't like me getting this. The comments at the end of this article indicate this is a good guy who did not want any TARP money, but like the CEO of Wells Fargo was forced to take TARP money. So why is this a success story? Because a successful CEO at a bank quits! "I don't want any part of this." That means the Obama administration gets to repopulate institutions like this with its own people because who's going to want to take over banks like this with all these limitations on what you can earn and your bonuses? This is just unbelievable, to sit here and watch this. Story #3: Gaffe Machine: Biden Thanks Zapatero for Iraq Help
RUSH: Oh, speaking of Spain, did you hear what Biden did over the weekend? Biden thanked President Zapatero for all of his support during our war with Iraq. Zapatero, after being newly elected, cut and ran, got out of Iraq. They had a terrorist attack in their big Madrid train station over there, which led the population to elect Zapatero, who is a touchy-feely leftist, anti-war guy, and Zapatero is over there getting thanks from Biden for all the help in Iraq.
Now, maybe Biden meant, "We really appreciate what you did, backing out of Iraq. It helped us make the case that Iraq was a disaster." Who knows how this guy meant it? When old Joe opens his mouth, you don't know.
RUSH: Here's another little interesting bit. This is from March 27th, the Bloomberg press wire: "Subsidizing renewable energy in the U.S. may destroy two jobs for every one created if Spain's experience with windmills and solar farms is any guide. For every new position that depends on energy price supports, at least 2.2 jobs in other industries will disappear, according to a study from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid. U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2010 budget proposal contains about $20 billion in tax incentives for clean-energy programs.
In Spain, where wind turbines provided 11 percent of power demand last year, generators earn rates as much as 11 times more for renewable energy compared with burning fossil fuels," but it cost jobs. It destroys two jobs for every one created, going green in Spain. If that's the experience we have here, well, then you've been warned. I still maintain that the Obama administration wants all this chaos. You know, there are ways to solve problems that we have. This is not it. The Obama administration is not solving anything. They are compounding problems, making them worse. Story #5: PETA to Hire Michael Vick as New Spokesman?
RUSH: This is from March 25th: "Today the nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) published documents online showing that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) killed 95 percent of the adoptable pets in its care during 2008." Ninety-five percent of the adoptable pets in its care wiped out, murdered by PETA. How about making Michael Vick the spokesman for PETA? Sounds like a good mix. Story #6: Women Move from Wall Street to Pole Dancing
RUSH: I can't help but mention this, folks. I'm sorry. There are other things out there so we're moving on now from the General Motors fiasco here, the Obama fiasco. Fox did a story just before the previous hour concluded about all of these women who worked on Wall Street and other places who are now pole dancing or stripping, working in strip clubs, pole dancing and so forth, and apparently there's a lot of them. I'm sitting here thinking, well, that happened fast. It didn't require a whole lot of training, did it? From Wall Street to the pole in one weekend? Leave your job on Wall Street, show up Saturday night at some strip club? Why go to Wall Street in the first place, if it's that easy to go to a pole dancing place or a strip club?
And what about this? You lose your job on Wall Street, and the first thing you think of is stripping and going to a pole dance place, lap dance place? And now we're running stories on how wonderful it is, how exciting it is? They had one of these babes on being interviewed about it. I wasn't able to listen to it, obviously. I didn't spend the time to read the closed-captioning. Why even mess around with going to college? Why go to college, why get a job, just go to the strip club? Apparently you can replace your Wall Street job with tips in the strip club. (interruption) Oh, is that right? It's in college where some of them start the training for that? So there is some training. Apparently there's some training necessary for this. I just got a note: "Actually, at some local gyms here in our area, they're teaching strip dancing." Really? Uh, you want to name the gym, or do you just want to give the neighborhood? Can anybody walk in off the street and watch the lessons being given? Oh, Can't? Strip dancing lessons at the local gym. [snip]
All right. All right. I have to... (sigh) I have to admit my ignorance on something. I find it very difficult doing this, because as you know I am the world's foremost authority. But there are things I have to admit that are going on out there in full view of millions of Americans that I do not know and have never heard of. Now I'm being inundated with e-mails from women in the audience. "What? Rush, what are you talking about? Pole dancing, it's..." Somebody sent me four pages of the books on pole dancing and stripping that you can buy on Amazon. Pole dancing and stripping are now taught as workouts, as you told me -- how to strip, how to pole dance -- as a fun way to work out. I'm entirely ignorant of this. If I know a woman -- and I know women that go to health clubs and work out. I have never had one tell me that pole dancing or stripping as a workout. I have this view -- and I'm going to go to my grave with this view -- that women are just clean and pure as the wind-driven snow, and the ones that are not have been corrupted, or are just a very, very small minority. (interruption)
I know it's old school. It's just... (interruption) I know it's... (interruption) Don't give me that! Now it's just for cardio? Pole dancing and strip dancing is for cardio? (sigh) I would think that it's not for cardio. I would think it's probably a way to get more women to pay to come to do the workout because there's some, um... what? ... "component" to it that goes beyond just doing your average, ordinary Jane Fonda workout. That's probably the allure. It just (sigh) depresses me to find out what's happening to our culture. It just lets me down. I mean, it seems like once a month I learn of something going on out there that I don't know about that tells me, "Yeah, we lost it. We're losing the culture." (interruption) What...? (sigh) When -- when -- Snerdley (interruption) Snerdley, yeah, see, to a smut king like you, this is good news: Women leaving Wall Street and going to the strip clubs and pole dancing. I, frankly... (sigh) I have never been to one of these places. I wouldn't go to one of these places. I've only seen it on the Sopranos. But I just wonder: Why even go to Wall Street at all, then? Story #7: NY Times: Compact Fluorescent Bulbs Don't Work!
RUSH: By the way, you know those exact fluorescent lightbulbs? Remember the compact fluorescent lightbulbs that all of you people ran out there, just had to put in your homes, save the planet, just like you had to turn off your lights on Saturday night for an hour? Guess what? Let me just read to you the headline of the New York Times: "Do New Bulbs Save Energy if They Don't Work?" They don't work! "It sounds like such a simple thing to do: buy some new light bulbs, screw them in, save the planet. But a lot of people these days are finding the new compact fluorescent bulbs anything but simple." We warned you. We warned you at the outset of the mercury in these things, of the hazmat disposal risks when you have change one or when one breaks, how you dispose of them, you don't just throw them away. We warned you.
"A lot of people these days are finding the new compact fluorescent bulbs anything but simple. Consumers who are trying them say they sometimes fail to work, or wear out early. At best, people discover that using the bulbs requires learning a long list of dos and don'ts. Take the case of Karen Zuercher and her husband, in San Francisco. Inspired by watching," Algore's hoax movie -- and, by the way, Algore left his lights on Saturday night. There were spies outside his estate in Tennessee. Algore did not turn his lights off Saturday night between 8:30 and 9:30. So these people, the Zuerchers, were inspired by watching his movie, "they decided to swap out nearly every incandescent bulb in their home for energy-saving compact fluorescents.
"Instead of having a satisfying green moment, however, they wound up coping with a mess. 'Here's my sad collection of bulbs that didn't work,' Ms. Zuercher said the other day as she pulled a cardboard box containing defunct bulbs from her laundry shelf. One of the 16 Feit Electric bulbs the Zuerchers bought at Costco did not work at all, they said, and three others died within hours. The bulbs were supposed to burn for 10,000 hours, meaning they should have lasted for years in normal use. 'It's irritating,' Ms. Zuercher said." Yeah, I know, it is, Ms. Zercher, it's always so irritating when you fall for a scam because you're too dumb to know you should never listen to anything Algore says on the environment.
"Irritation seems to be rising as more consumers try compact fluorescent bulbs, which now occupy 11 percent of the nation's eligible sockets--" I wonder how that sounds to people in Rio Linda, 11% of the nation's eligible sockets "--with 330 million bulbs sold every year. Consumers are posting vociferous complaints on the Internet after trying the bulbs and finding them lacking. Some experts who study the issue blame the government for the quality problems, saying an intensive federal push to lower the price essentially backfired by encouraging manufacturers to use cheap components." (laughing) You gotta love that paragraph. They don't work because of the government! Pretty soon your car's not gonna work because of the government! Pretty soon your health care is not gonna work because of the government! Pretty soon your bridge isn't gonna work because the government supposedly fixed it. You know what you ought to do? This is a New York Times story from Saturday, they buried it on Saturday: "Do New Bulbs Save Energy if They Don't Work?" We're going to link to this story at Rushlimbaugh.com and I want you to do something. I want you to link to this story, I want you to read it, and every time they mention lightbulbs I want you to substitute "health care."
For example: "It sounds like such a thing to do. Enroll in government health care, screw 'em in, save the planet. But a lot of these people are finding that the new health care is anything but simple. Consumers who are trying government health care says it fails to work or wears out early. At best, people discover that using health care requires a long list of do's and don'ts." Just substitute "health care" or then put "General Motors" in there. "Consumers are supposed to be able to protect themselves by buying bulbs certified under the government's Energy Star program. But experts and some environmental groups complain that Energy Star standards are weak, permitting low-quality bulbs with too high a level of mercury, a toxic metal contained in all compact fluorescents." It doesn't matter how much or how little there is, if one of them breaks you gotta call somebody, you gotta go to great pains to clean up the mess, and keep your dog or cat out of this mess. You know how little animals run to things that fall out on the floor. The last line in the story, Mrs. Zuercher, talking about her and her husband. "We're both college-educated and pay attention to labels we read. It feels like someone forgot to put a place to find the information." Two of the problems: we're both college educated and we pay attention to labels. Story #8: AIG Chiefs Pressured to Donate to Senator Dodd
RUSH: We have also found out, ladies and gentlemen, that AIG executives were pressured to donate to Christopher Dodd in the 2006 election cycle. This is the Washington Times: "As Democrats prepared to take control of Congress after the 2006 elections, a top boss at the insurance giant American International Group Inc. told colleagues that Sen. Christopher J. Dodd was seeking re-election donations and he implored company executives and their spouses to give. The message in the Nov. 17, 2006, e-mail from Joseph Cassano, AIG Financial Products chief executive, was unmistakable: Mr. Dodd was 'next in line' to be chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, which oversees the insurance industry, and he would "have the opportunity to set the committee's agenda on issues critical to the financial services industry," so donate to him. And they did! They did, and look what the hell happened to them. My God, sometimes I want to go stand on top of the Empire State Building and shout as loud as I can, "Wake the hell up!" I know how you feel to be surrounded by such ignorance, by sheep who cannot resist the tug of popular sentiment. I understand out there.
RUSH: This is from the UK Telegraph in the Sunday edition: "Barack Obama Hands More Senior Jobs than Ever Before to 'Sisterhood' of Black Women -- President Obama has engineered a quiet racial revolution in Washington, giving more power to black women than at any point in American political history." Well that's all well and good, but why do it...under cover? Why not do this out in the open? Why not do it with great pride? Why not have a ceremony? Why not have a ceremony with all of these "'sisterhood' of black women" up there and have them noted and recognized as joining the quiet racial revolution in Washington? Why do this on the quiet? Why do this on the down-low? "Obama has engineered a quiet racial revolution, giving more power to black women than at any point in American political history." Why have to do this quietly? (interruption) He doesn't need a whole lot of black men. He'll handle that himself. He got Holder over there. He doesn't need a quiet revolution of black men. He's got that handled, Snerdley. This is "a quiet revolution of black women." Why be quiet about it? Why not just sing it from the mountaintops. Big ceremony! Story #10: Telegraph: Rise in Seal Levels "Greatest Lie Ever Told"
RUSH: Also from the UK Telegraph -- you know, the UK is so outdoing our own journalists. Their journalists are so much better, because they have nothing invested in Obama personally. Get this from Christopher Booker. The headline is really all you need to know: "The Rise of Sea Levels is the Greatest Lie Ever Told." The subhead is: "The uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story." "The Rise of Sea Levels is the Greatest Lie Ever Told," this from Saturday in the UK Telegraph. Story #11: Watching NFL Team Lose Super Bowl Could Kill You
RUSH: More details on this tomorrow, but I just want to read you the first line of this story from Health Daily News. Remember last week, a giant sun storm is going to wipe us out by 2012. "Watching your favorite NFL team lose in the Super Bowl could actually end your life, according to a new study." Every day there is a new apocalyptic story that tells us that by things we do to enjoy life we can die. If this were true, Buffalo should be a ghost town. They lost the Super Bowl four straight years. It's not a ghost town, Snerdley, and don't say they were big in Buffalo. In fact, we own Buffalo.
*Note: Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time.
Story #3: 
RUSH: I can't help but mention this, folks. I'm sorry. There are other things out there so we're moving on now from the General Motors fiasco here, the Obama fiasco. Fox did a story just before the previous hour concluded about all of these women who worked on Wall Street and other places who are now pole dancing or stripping, working in strip clubs, pole dancing and so forth, and apparently there's a lot of them. I'm sitting here thinking, well, that happened fast. It didn't require a whole lot of training, did it? From Wall Street to the pole in one weekend? Leave your job on Wall Street, show up Saturday night at some strip club? Why go to Wall Street in the first place, if it's that easy to go to a pole dancing place or a strip club? 
