RUSH: I want you to sit down, folks, if you can, while I share with you the details of the latest story from CNN. The headline: ‘Monumental Expectations for Obama’s Inauguration Address — President-elect Barack Obama’s inaugural address is one of the most anticipated speeches in decades, with many expecting his words to be chiseled into marble some day.’ (laughing) This is just comical. To watch what was a once-great major institution descend into pure groupie-ism. ‘Obama has said he has been studying previous inaugural addresses — including President Abraham Lincoln’s and the speeches President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave [during] the Great Depression. Given the nation’s current economic crisis, Errol Louis, a columnist for the New York Daily News, was looking for Obama to echo Roosevelt’s famous 1933 inauguration address when [FDR] said, ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’
”He’s got to calm the nation. I think he’s got to reassure the nation and let people know that we are in it for the long haul. If you look at that 1933 speech, that is pretty much what FDR did,’ Louis said.’ That’s right, and we were ‘in it’ for another seven years with FDR at the helm! ”He wants to lift us up … and all the aspirations we have, all the hope,’ Louis said. ‘But at the same time, he has some very practical problems that start at 12:01 p.m., and he starts to own them at high noon. There are no easy answers.’ … ‘He’s got to give that great, soaring speech.’ CNN contributor David [‘Rodham’] Gergen said. ‘I think the pressure is really on because of the historic nature of this presidency and also because of the extraordinary moment in which we find ourselves with this terrible recession.”
‘[M]any expecting his words to be chiseled into marble some day.’ They have drank the Kool-Aid, folks. We’re at Jonestown. Remember Jim Jones and that cult? We are at Jonestown. We’re near the Hale-Bopp comet here with the Drive-By Media. Now, this is the second such story of this type I’ve seen. Parents in Wake County, North Carolina, at an elementary school there, kids ‘will be required to eat in classrooms on Tuesday so they can spend two hours watching the [immaculation] on TV.’ Another school is going to force the kids to eat lunch at 10:30 so that they can watch this uninterrupted. They’re then going to be required to write a paper about the historical significance of this. These will be displayed on a bulletin board somewhere. This will make sure the project is carried out, and some parents are saying that they’re going to keep kids home if the school doesn’t show it. Some say they won’t come if it is shown. I thought we were all together in this. This has never before been a requirement at schools that I know of, not Reagan, Bush, Clinton, or Bush. But the oath of office doesn’t seem to be the thing. But no, they’re going to watch the whole thing, the parade and all that. They must, and they’re going to write essays about it.
All right, people have been waiting patiently on the phones. Fontana, California, Gail, great to have you. Welcome.
CALLER: Hi, Rush.
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: Nice to speak to you. Thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: It’s my pleasure.
CALLER: I want to say to you, I’m so proud you’re the Last Man Standing. (chuckles)
RUSH: Well, one of them, anyway.
CALLER: Yeah. There is lots of us out here. We’re just not being heard. One of the comments I wanted to make about all of this endless hoopla that’s upon us and that the taxpayer is picking up the tab for, I find it so abrasive that our President Bush is being treated as though he doesn’t exist. I think it really diminishes all that we’ve done in Iraq to try to bring democracy and to stabilize that area, which in the big picture I felt was very, very necessary and supported our efforts to do that. But it also really is a slap in the face to all of our people that are there working so diligently and so hard at doing this and sacrificing.
RUSH: Bush is not being ignored, Gail. He’s being trashed. Even today, he’s being criticized.
CALLER: I know.
RUSH: He’s being ripped to shreds by the same people who are telling us we need to shut up —
CALLER: I know.
RUSH: — and to get on board.
CALLER: We’re not going to, are we?
RUSH: No! Not unless he earns it!
CALLER: Exactly. I think that the reaction, when we really maybe find out who the wizard behind the curtain is in all of this, I don’t think we know. I think right now we’re looking at something that we’re all sort of overwhelmed with because I didn’t think that the racial component would be the only thing that there is to this man, and at this point we’ve not seen anything come forth yet. We’ll see what he does as president. But my point is —
RUSH: No. Wait a second. See, this is an interesting point that you’ve raised. There are going to be two, at least two assessments of how he has done as president. One assessment will come from the Drive-By Media. You just heard that CNN thinks —
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: — that his words in his inaugural address tomorrow will be etched in stone or chiseled in marble. But the point here is that no matter what he says in this speech tomorrow, he’s going to be praised. No matter how he says it, no matter what he says, get ready: This is going to be a speech that needs to be chiseled in marble. No matter what he says. And then there will be those who listen to the speech and will hear some of the plans that he’s got and will say, ‘This is not good. This is not what’s best for the country.’ They will be ignored. They will be called Obama naysayers. They’ll be accused of being unpatriotic and not getting on board the great celebration.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Seriously here, folks: Gail from Fontana, California, our previous caller, is exactly right here. For the past, what, six months? For the last few months, anyway, the Obama people have been treating Bush as if he’s not president. The media has been treating Bush as if he’s not president. The media has been doing it because Obama is doing that. Obama is saying that he got the bill passed for the extra 350 TARP billion. Obama is a profoundly arrogant man, folks. He’s actually done nothing but run for office. I don’t know how he can compare himself to Lincoln, other than they’re both from Illinois. How can he compare himself to Lincoln? He can only do so symbolically, and what is that worth? Isn’t anybody offended by this? In fact, he’s going further than comparing himself to Lincoln. He’s telling us he’s trying to create the notion that he is also Lincoln, that he is also FDR. Look at this barf-inducing story from CNN that the words of his inaugural address will be chiseled in marble and quoting FDR: ‘The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.’ They’ve got this guy being somebody other than who he is because who he is is… Well, who? He’s done nothing but run for office. He is good at that. He’s already running for his next term, but they’re trying to create the impression that whatever is bad, he inherited; and whatever is good, he already did, even though he is just the president-elect.
Norman in Anderson, Texas, nice to have you on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. It’s great to be on. It’s great to talk to the Last Man Standing, the omega man of the conservative movement.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: I have a question. Where are all the left-wing groups, the Cindy Sheehans, the Code Pink Tuscaderos of the Democrat Party? I think they’re being silenced by the media. They don’t want them to have any voice in this matter.
RUSH: Well, frankly, that doesn’t bother me. I had enough of Cindy Sheehan to last me a lifetime. She was always a nonfactor anyway. I mean, Cindy Sheehan this a poor woman who’s lost her mind, and then that fact was used by the Drive-By Media to further drive her crazy into making everybody and her think that she was relevant, only because she was willing to accept enough money from a California PR film to build and occupy a little shack across the road from Bush’s house down in Crawford, Texas. The criticism of Obama, if there is any criticism, believe me, it’s going to be aimed at the critics. They’re the ones who are going to be questioned, whether they’re on the left or on the right, they will be the Obama naysayers and they’ll be positioned as, you know, one of the many challenges that Obama has in bringing everybody together. But they will be institutionally… Well, they’re just going to be wrong. They’re not going to have any credibility. I want to go to audio sound bite number 29. This is Sally Quinn this afternoon on DNCTV live. Anchor Tamron Hall said, ‘I want to get your thoughts on what you’ve seen in the last few days here. How is the Obama [immaculation] different?’
QUINN: It is different from anything that I have ever seen, and I was here during the Kennedy inauguration. And I — I can’t even tell you there’s no comparison. The number of people who have come, the excitement not only among Democrats, but Republicans. I don’t know a — a single Republican who is not just thrilled, and so —
HALL: That’s fascinating.
QUINN: — on fire to see this new president elected.
RUSH: Well, you know, Sally, he is elected. You meant immacculated. She doesn’t know a single Republican who’s not excited. This reminds me of the New York Times or New York theater critic Pauline Kael, who, after Richard Nixon was elected in 1972, couldn’t believe it. She lived in Manhattan. She couldn’t believe it. ‘I don’t know anybody who voted for him.’ Sally Quinn doesn’t know any Republican who is not excited. Now, inside the Beltway, she may have a point. It may be hard to find a Republican willing to speak out. Back to the phones, to Buckeye, Arizona, and Brett. It’s great to have you on the EIB Network, sir. Hey.
CALLER: It is truly an honor, Mr. Limbaugh.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: From the Arizona Cardinals, our next Super Bowl champs.
RUSH: Thank you very much for the call. Don’t get so confident yet.
CALLER: Well, listening to you, sir, has inspired much confidence in me. So I must ask the freshman in the back of the class, this Kool-Aid reference details of what you mean by that.
RUSH: Okay, I’d be happy to… I need to know your age or approximate age if you don’t want to be precise about it.
CALLER: Thirty-two.
RUSH: Thirty-two. Mr. Snerdley, this stuff happened in the eighties, twenty years ago or so. Well, you went to the public school system. I can understand you might not know about it. A Kool-Aid drinker is a cult follower, and it has its nomenclature historically tied to a cult leader by the name of Jim Jones. He was a nutcase, but he was a cult leader who was able to persuade hundreds of people to follow him wherever he went. He fled the United States with his cult to a lonely outpost in South America called Guyana, and when the authorities were… The parents had gotten children to go with him, whatever. I forget now what he was leading them to do, but he had busted up so many families and left the country, that the authorities closed in on him. He’d set up a town down in Guyana called Jonestown, after himself. And when the authorities were about to close in and shut down his operation, he gave his cult followers, hundreds of them, poison-laced Kool-Aid and told them to drink it; and they did, and they died.
CALLER: Wow. That really brings some insight to a lot of your points. Thank you, sir.
RUSH: You bet. You really didn’t know what Kool-Aid drinkers were?
CALLER: I’ve heard it used a few times, but I must admit I missed the day you explained that or I had not heard that before.
RUSH: That’s the exact root of it. Snerdley, do you remember what Jones’ cult belief was? This was not to be confused with this nut in Southern California who convinced a bunch of people that they were going to go on some spaceship to the Hale-Bopp comet. The point is that there are a lot of people whose lives are so meaningless that they are susceptible to cult-like figures, people of personality and symbolism and no substance. I think we got a lot of it going on with Obama here. What he stands for, who he is, none of it matters to these people. Oh, that’s what Jim Jones did. He had built a socialist paradise, and they believed that he was the first successful communist, the best guy, the guy that finally put it together, and everybody was going to be equal. That’s right. I knew there was a political component to what Jim Jones had done.
And he had convinced people that there would be no suffering, that there would be no pain, that there would be total bliss and contentment. Everybody would be equal. Everybody would have the same as everybody else had. And if there was misery, that would be shared equally, too. And, like all communists, in order to survive, they end up having to kill their own people, except Jones went down with the ship as well. He also drank the Kool-Aid. Yeah, he killed a congressman who was investigating this, because there were a lot of children raided from their own homes to join the cult. Now, Obama is not Jim Jones, don’t misunderstand. It’s just there are so many people in this country with so much emptiness in their lives, and they are so lonely that they’re willing to glom onto something that they think is meaningful, and thus they will have meaning and their lives will have meaning.
And they’re unable to see what is right in front of them. There’s no such thing in their world as being objective. There is no reality. It’s difficult to reason with. Well, you can’t reason with cult followers. You just can’t. They do not want to hear the truth. They live in a cocoon of safety, and reality is their biggest enemy. It’s like Snerdley was telling me at the break. Last night he was talking to some of his best friends from over the years, and he actually said, ‘You know, I tried one of your lines on them, Limbaugh.’ And I said, ‘What was that?’ He said, ‘I told them — they were going on and on about Obama, and I said — ‘Well, I hope he fails.” Snerdley says his friends were just stunned, and shocked. They were then outraged, and they said to him, ‘That’s a new low even for you. That’s a new low even for you.’ and they couldn’t relate. They don’t understand.
Even when you tell ’em reasonably, ‘Look, he’s not a cult figure to me. He’s not black. He’s not white. He’s the president. He’s in charge of the direction this country’s going to go, and based on what he said, I don’t want to go there. I hope his policies fail.’ You know, when you’re asked, ‘Do you want Obama to succeed?’ Not to pull a Clinton here, but the word ‘succeed’ can have multiple definitions in this case. Now, in one sense, do you want Obama to succeed…? Well, in his policies? Yeah, you want him to succeed. Do you want Obama to succeed? Yeah, I hope he succeeds by being like Reagan. Yeah, if he’s going to start touting other presidents he wants to be like, I hope he succeeds by doing the right things. Yeah, if he does the right things, I hope he succeeds. If he’s going to do what he says he’s going to do, I hope he fails. So success can have a varied definition here.
By the way, Brett, here’s the down low on Jim Jones. His commune there was 900 people, Jonestown, and it was 1978 that he convinced everybody to drink the Kool-Aid. So over 900 people died, and his cult was a socialist-type community. He was a godlike figure, and most cult leaders, folks, are. Even if they’re not political figures, when you strip away what it is about them that makes them godlike, it is their socialistic approach to people. Everybody is going to be the same. Everybody is going to be prosperous. There will be no pain. Everybody is going to get what everybody else gets. Everybody is going to be equal. There won’t be any disparities, inequality, this sort of thing. Plus the cult leaders makes you think that he’s going to do everything for you. All you gotta do is get up and walk around in your white robe and put your hands together and pretend to be a monk and pray — and, of course, do what he says at every moment. A cult leader is essentially a power freak and in Jones’ case, a mass murderer.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The Kool-Aid that Jim Jones convinced his cult followers to drink was laced with cyanide, a number of sedatives, including liquid Valium, Penegram, and chloral hydrate. Other victims appear to have been murdered by poison injection, but he got rid of everybody down there. The Guyanese coroner said hundreds of bodies showed needle marks indicating foul play. Still other victims were shot, although Plaxico Burress was not seen in the vicinity. Very few fled into the jungle and survived. In all, 914 died, 633 adults and 276 children at Jonestown in Guyana. Some sources say 911 died. Their bodies were in a state of extensive decay when the authorities arrived. There was really not much time to conduct a thorough investigation. TV station KTVU San Francisco has a collection of photographs of the People’s Temple Agricultural Project. Some are quite disturbing.
Unfortunately their website implies that all the dead committed suicide. So it was the cult leader, and he had a socialist-type personality, 1978. So when you hear Kool-Aid drinkers — hey, look, we passed out grape Kool-Aid to the Democrats arriving at the 1992 Democrat convention at Madison Square Garden, and they eagerly took it. Our Kool-Aid was not laced with anything. Lo Bianco was out there doing it. Last seen Lo Bianco was eating at Patsy’s nine nights a week. Haven’t seen Lo Bianco in a while, but he was out there passing out the Kool-Aid. He even found where the C-SPAN cameras were hidden in the bushes and got in front of them passing out the Kool-Aid to arriving Democrat delegates.