| Stack of Stuff Quick Hits Page |
|
November 18, 2009 |
|
 |
|
Story #1: McCaskill: Putting Off Climate Bill Will Cause Anger
RUSH: : "Senate To Put Off Climate Bill Until Spring." Claire McCaskill, Democrat Senator, Missouri, "It's really big, really, really hard, and it's gonna make a lot of people mad." (interruption) That's what I'm wondering, is she talking about the climate bill there or what? It's really big, really, really hard, and it's gonna make a lot of people mad. So they're putting off a climate bill 'til the spring.
 Story #2: "Plugs" Biden Bullies Way onto Vegas Golf Course
RUSH: Would you like to hear an interesting little Biden story? He was in Las Vegas recently, where corporate executives have been discouraged from going by President Obama; getting on their planes, flying to Vegas -- those days are over. But "Nobody Messes With Joe [Plugs] Biden" -- was in Las Vegas to do a fundraiser for some Democrat out there, and had an aide call a local members-only golf course, a pretty exclusive members-only golf course. The club pro who answered the phone said, "No, no, no. Sorry. We like the vice president and all that, but this is a members-only club," and they hung up the phone.
A short while later another phone call came, this time asking for the manager of the club. The message was: "Look, [Plugs] Biden really wants to play your course." The call came in at 7 a.m., and he wanted to play that day. The second call came in before 8 a.m., I'm told. The club manager, realizing what he was being told, relented, and Plugs Biden showed up with some Secret Service guys at 11 a.m. to play the course.
Now, keep in mind, ladies and gentlemen, that corporate executives and the entire hospitality business have been under assault by this very president and vice president. They can't go to Vegas, they're not supposed to hop on their planes and go to Vegas, they're not supposed to play golf at exclusive members-only clubs. I will guarantee you, if a Republican vice president had done this, the media would right now be scouring the membership to find out how discriminatory it is. Are there any blacks in this club that the vice president played? Are there any Jewish members of this club? Do they allow women? That's what the media would be doing right now.
The only story we're getting out of this is a local Las Vegas newspaper, and, of course, this is how the elites do it: They want to go play golf where they're not a member, they want to angle themselves in using the force of federal power and intimidation, they do it. The media doesn't say a word about it. They say, "Old Joe is out there playing golf before a fundraiser, there's Joe Cool." Republicans try that and the media takes on the club trying to find out who belongs, who was not admitted, and why. And then they would also be doing stories about, "Here we are in a recession, 10.2% unemployment, we got Marines dying and military people dying in Afghanistan, we're dithering on whether we should win the war over there, nothing is going right, the president's out of the country, the vice president wants to play golf and all?" -- that's what we'd be getting if Plugs were a Republican. But we're not getting anything of the sort.
Story #3: More AP Layoffs. So What? No Palin Fact-Checks?
RUSH: Layoffs begin at the Associated Press, which means there are probably no more Sarah Palin books to fact-check out there.
Story #4: Palin Follows Algore, Locks Media Out of Speech
RUSH: Sarah Palin at the College of the Ozarks December 2nd, a speech. She has locked out the media. No media allowed. They're going to be fit to be tied. But don't forget, Algore never permits the media into any of his speeches, either, and they don't cry a tear about that.
Story #5: Oprah-Palin Gets Highest Ratings Since Osmonds
RUSH: Well, look at this, folks. Sarah Palin on with The Oprah gave The Oprah her highest ratings in two years. And I don't think there was a tear shed in that show, was there? I didn't see it. The Oprah's interview with Governor Palin scored its best ratings in two years. The show hit a 7.2 rating/18 share, in a "weighted-metered-market average" for all telecasts on Monday, November 16th. "That's up 36% from last year's 5.3/13 time period average… The last time The Oprah did as well was when the entire Osmond clan appeared on November 9th, 2007." So I guess it worked out.
Story #6: Americans Oppose Abortion Funding in Health Bill
RUSH: CNN, it must have killed them to report this. "Six in 10 Americans favor" -- that's 60%. Sixty percent sounds much better than "six in 10" -- "[60%] of Americans favor a ban on the use of federal money for abortion, according to a new poll… A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Wednesday morning indicates" -- that's today -- "that 61% of the public opposes using public money for abortions for women who cannot afford the procedure" 37% in favor. "And by a 51 percent to 45 percent margin, those questioned in the survey think that women who get abortions should pay the full costs out of their own pocket[s.]" Gosh, this had to kill them to report that! Can you imagine?
But of course, it doesn't matter what we think because the final health care bill will fund abortions. It won't pass if it doesn't. All it needs is Democrat votes, and if it -- Well, what do you mean it won't pass if it does? You mean in the Senate? If it doesn't have federally funded abortions in the House, it doesn't have a prayer. They gotta take out the Stupak language, you gotta take it out. And they've said they're going to take it out, and Axelrod said he's going to take it out. And Stupak said (paraphrase), "Whoa, wait a minute! Wait a minute, Axelrod! You're not a legislator! You can't tell us what you're going to do here." 'Cause Axelrod did go out and say (paraphrase), "We're going to have to take that out of there." Now, if it's in there now, it passed the House. But the Senate, no. So either way they go, it's not gonna pass if it's in there and it's not going to pass if it is in there. The Democrats -- they've got -- how they going to "Chicago" their way out of this one? Reconciliation. Reconciliation in the Senate is how they'll "Chicago" their way out of this one.
Story #7: FDR Tried Limiting Pay for Fat Cats. It Failed
RUSH: There's a fascinating story. Fortune Magazine today about "Fat cat pay -- Then and now". "When it comes to public outrage over executive compensation, history does not repeat itself, but it just might rhyme." I did not know that this has been done before in this country until I read this story. And it didn't work, and it was during the thirties with FDR. "It's unprecedented for the nation to be outraged about corporate pay, right? Not exactly: In the 1930s, as the Depression gripped the nation, furor about compensation rose to fever pitch, and Washington applied shears to salaries. In an article soon to be published in the University of Richmond Law Review, Harwell Wells, an assistant professor of law at Temple University, says the decade exposed 'deep tensions' about the issue.
"A big difference between then and now is that the 1930s fury was directed not at financial institutions but rather at 'excessive' payers among industrial and consumer companies -- like Bethlehem Steel, American Tobacco and GM. Similarly, when the government moved in 1933 to both provide financial aid to certain key industries and put a ceiling on salaries within them, it was railroad, shipping, and air transport companies"-- which were fledgling then -- "that got both the help and the hurt. In 1936, Fortune weighed in on the red-hot pay issue by asking in a national survey, Do you think that in general the officials of large corporations are paid too much or too little for the work they do? The verdict: 55% of the respondents said the officials were paid 'too much.' The public's war cry in the 1930s" -- according to this Harwell Wells guy at Temple -- "was 'No man can be worth $1 million a year.'" That was the public war cry.
"That campaign -- along with a sick economy and a few 'corporate waste' lawsuits -- seems to have worked. In 1929, Eugene Grace, the autocratic president of Bethlehem Steel, ruled the nation in pay, earning an amazing $1.62 million, which in 2009 dollars equals $20.5 million. By 1936, Grace was just an also-ran, pulling in $180,000 ($2.8 million in 2009 dollars). The top earner that year was GM's Alfred P. Sloan, with $561,000 ($8.7 million in 2009 dollars). After the 1930s, executive compensation largely dropped out of the news for decades. By the late 1970s, however, the $1 million threshold was again crossed (by Henry Ford II, among others). Since then, executive compensation has never ceased to rise or attract anger. The latest volley of the rage is aimed at the financial companies that received government help beginning in 2008."
So we have a pay czar now. And let me ask you something. After all these people are going to get their compensation slashed to the bare bone, I want to ask you a serious question: Is your life going to be any better? If some Mr. Fat Cat on Wall Street gets his salary cut from two million down to 150 or 200,000, is that going to make your life better? Could make it worse. It's the same thing as asking, "Okay, when the rich get a tax increase, does that make your life better? Does that improve your life?" See, the Democrats are counting on satisfying you simply by fulfilling your desire for revenge. So when the pay czar goes out there and starts slashing salaries, does it make your life any better? Does it find any of you who are unemployed a job? Probably might make it harder to get a job. I would venture to guess that the pay czar has not saved a single job. You see, this didn't work in the 1930s, and it's not gonna work now. The only point of it -- well, I don't know. The point in the thirties was class envy, Roosevelt trying to get, you know, keep his polls up. New Deal was destroying everything, in truth. I think Obama has the same motivation, but another one -- and that is the destruction of the US economic system as we have known it.
Story #8: New Strain of Common Cold? Get Zicam Now!
RUSH: This is a story from Reuters from yesterday: "Runny nose, fever, cough, even pneumonia -- the symptoms sound like swine flu but children hospitalized at one US hospital in fact had a rhinovirus, better known as a common cold virus, doctors said on Tuesday. Hundreds of children treated at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia had a rhinovirus, and federal health investigators are trying to find out if it was a new strain, and if this is going on elsewhere in the country. 'What began to happen in early September is we started seeing more children coming to our emergency room with significant respiratory illness,' said Dr. Susan Coffin --" that's a hell of a name for a medical professional, "-- Dr. Susan Coffin, medical director of infection control and prevention at the hospital. Doctors and parents assumed it was the new pandemic H1N1 swine flu," but it was not. It was just a potentially new strain of the common cold.
I remember suggesting that a lot of swine flu might be cold. And there's one way to find out. Zicam. I'm serious about this. The first moment you think that you're coming down with a cold, or flu, whatever, take Zicam. And here's how you'll find out which is which. Zicam, if you take it very soon after you feel symptoms, if it's a cold, it will knock it out. Well, it won't knock it out but it will severely impact the degree to which it affects you. It will shorten the duration. It will keep the cold from taking complete control of you. If you take Zicam and it gets worse, then you know you've got the flu. And that's what the fortuitousness of this news story, a new use for Zicam to find out whether you have a cold or flu, because it does work. It comes in a variety of forms, a variety of flavors, and it works if you catch it early. You'll be amazed at how great this stuff is at reducing the severity of a cold. Zicam, it's everywhere, you can't miss it.
Story #9: Heritage: $2.2T Closer to Cost of Pelosi Bill
RUSH: Okay, all this health care talk reminds me, folks, if you're waiting for this Congress to reform the health care bill passed in the House a couple weeks ago, there's a better way to go here. Put some time and interest into your membership to the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation is leading the charge in exposing the details of this takeover. It's worse than you know. One visit to AskHeritage.org will give you access to their analysis of how Nancy Pelosi's bill will actually cost this country some $2.4 trillion over the next decade, not the $900 billion that has been widely reported. ...
You can start by going online to AskHeritage.org, sign up to become a member with a contribution that starts at $25 annually, which is chump change for what you're going to learn. What you're going to get out of AskHeritage.org would cost you $18,000 a year at some Ivy League school, versus $25 a year. You can't afford not to become a member of the Heritage Foundation. AskHeritage.org.
|
|
|
|
|
| *Note: Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time. |
|
|
