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Rush Limbaugh

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RUSH: Clearly, President Obama not happy with all this stuff: 20% of the American people think he might be a Muslim. So he’s in Albuquerque, a backyard town hall event. Was this the first or the second backyard town hall event? Did he do another one somewhere, or was this…? Seems like there was two of them; maybe this is the one and they’re talking about it twice. Anyway, one of the audience members said to Obama, ‘Why are you a Christian?’

OBAMA: I’m a Christian, uh, by choice. Um, you know, my family didn’t — frankly, they weren’t, uh, folks who went to church every — every week. Um, my mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew, but she didn’t, uh, raise me in the church. Uh, so I came to, to, uh, my Christian faith later in life, uh, and it was because the, the, the, precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead — being my brother’s and sister’s keeper, treating others as they would treat me.

RUSH: Now, ladies and gentlemen, you have to forgive me here, but — and not disputing — President Obama says he’s a Christian, that’s good enough for me. And there’s a lot of people who do not know details of their own religious belief. But the Golden Rule is not a precept of Christianity. I hate to point this out, but the Golden Rule does not emanate, originate, from Christianity. And this brother’s keeper business? That’s not Jesus. I hate to say this, but Jesus Christ did not talk about brother’s keeper. That is from the story of Cain and Abel, and even that story is misunderstood. The story of Cain and Abel — my brother’s keeper does not mean, ‘I’m going to take care of my brother or take care of my sister’. The story of Cain and Abel, Cain killed Abel, and then he said he had no idea. He denied it. He denied killing Abel, and then said to God, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ Meaning, ‘What, is he my responsibility? He’s not my responsibility, I didn’t kill my brother.’ Now, a lot of people misunderstand all this, but the Golden Rule doesn’t come from Christianity, and Cain and Abel is not, ‘I’m going to take care of my brother and I’m going to take care of my sister,’ and Jesus Christ has nothing to do with either one of them.

Besides that, and I reluctantly point this out, ladies and gentlemen, but Obama’s brother is still living in a hut — a six-by-nine-foot, un-air-conditioned, no running water, no electricity hut in Kenya, outside Nairobi, somewhere over there. Twenty dollars. Guy lives on a dollar a year. Twenty bucks would be the equivalent of winning the lottery. And Obama has not reached out to keep his brother. It’s his half-brother. But I mean, he hasn’t even sent a sign over there, ‘Hut, Sweet Hut,’ ‘Home, Sweet Hut’. (interruption) Aunt Zeituni? Yeah. Aunt Zeituni is in public housing in Boston. Now, there is an Obama relative in Kenya who is apparently queen bee over there, they just did run electricity and water lines to her hut, but…

‘Mr. Limbaugh, why are you doing this?’ What do you mean, why? I prefaced all this by saying I don’t doubt — if he says he’s a Christian, that’s enough. I’m not going to argue. It’s just there are a lot of people who think they know a lot about their religion that don’t. The early incarnations of the Golden Rule are found in the Code of Hammurabi: an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. I remember my dad telling my brother and I, me, all about justice in the legal system. He explained, ‘Do you believe an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth? The Code of Hammurabi? The Hammurabi Code?’ Nothing to do with the Bible, Christianity, nor does my brother’s keeper business have anything to do with Christianity.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The code of Hammurabi is from ancient Babylon. Many people’s first experience to the Golden Rule is actually… like my brother, David, told me that he first heard of the Golden Rule when he opened up a fortune cookie at the Purple Crackle Club in East Cape Girardeau, Illinois, and the fortune cookie had the Golden Rule in there as a fortune. How many of you have you seen the Golden Rule as a fortune in the fortune cookie? Now, the code of Hammurabi is from ancient Babylon, which is modern Iraq. Ancient Babylon is modern Iraq. You could even find the story of Cain and Abel in the Koran — sorry — the Holy Koran, as Mrs. Clinton points out. And so was the Golden Rule. I’m getting a lot of e-mails that the Golden Rule is in the Old Testament, that it’s in the New Testament, but it’s the Code of Hammurabi, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, do unto others. But the point is, I am my brother’s keeper. There is an effort — the reason why this is important, there’s an effort by the left to say that Jesus was a socialist, and they are using this to turn many evangelical people into global warming people. We are the stewards of the planet and so forth.

There’s an ongoing effort here to corrupt Christianity and the Cain and Abel story is a classic illustration of how it happens. Cain and Abel had nothing to do about being my brother’s keeper. What was happening was Cain was in trouble for killing his brother. That’s the story of Cain and Abel. Now, I’m only pointing this out because I’m reacting to what the president said. He’s explaining to people why he’s a Christian. His grandmother didn’t take him to church and it was a choice he came to later in life. Here’s more. And this is where Obama now says that public service is part of an effort to express his Christian faith, that Christianity is socialism, that Jesus Christ was a socialist. Jesus Christ was apolitical. He got involved in no political ideology whatsoever. Anyway, here’s the next sound bite of President Obama.

OBAMA: I think also understanding that Jesus Christ dying for my sins spoke to the humility we all have to have as human beings, that we’re sinful and we’re flawed and we make mistakes and that we achieve salvation through the grace of God. But what we can do, as flawed as we are, is still see God in other people and do our best to help them find their own grace.

RUSH: Yeah. Yeah.

OBAMA: And so — that’s what I strive to do, that’s what I pray to do every day. I think my public service is part of that effort to express my Christian faith.

RUSH: Right. How is his Christian faith guiding the way he’s dealing with Republicans? I mean he’s urging everybody not to listen to Republicans, don’t make arrangements with Republicans. Now, his explanation here — I’m just being factual — his explanations here do not match what he said in Dreams from My Father about why he’s Christian. They don’t match. So we’re just putting it out there, ladies and gentlemen. I’ve heard a lot of people explain why they are Christians, a lot of people who don’t know why they are try to explain why they’re Christians, a lot of people who do know why they are explain why they are Christians. This explanation Obama just gave had to be very, very tough because he doesn’t think he’s flawed. But he had to admit that he’s flawed, as we all are. Well, he didn’t say we all are. He said we are, meaning us. It’s very tough for Obama to admit that he’s flawed. But he did so in this case. Now, no discussion of religion can be complete for Obama without a shout-out to the atheists.

OBAMA: I’m also somebody who deeply believes that part of the bedrock strength of this country is that it embraces people of many faiths and of no faith, that this is a country that is still predominantly Christian, but we have Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, and that their own path to grace is one that we have to revere and respect as much as our own and that’s part of what makes this country what it is.

RUSH: Okay. So I’m a Christian but, but, but don’t hold it against me. ‘Cause I understand a lot of people aren’t, and they have their own pathway to grace. They clear the forest in their own way. I’m perfectly fine with whatever anybody else wants — kind of like Mario Cuomo, huge Catholic, believes every shred of Catholicism that there is. And then they ask: ‘Governor Cuomo, if you are a devout Catholic, then how can you be pro-choice?’ In a big speech to Notre Dame, Governor Cuomo said, ‘I can’t impose my religious views on other people.’ But of course he had no trouble imposing his political views on anybody, and the political view happened to be pro-choice. He was fully willing to impose that or his view on taxes, whatever, perfectly willing to impose that, but his religion, no, I’m not going to impose my religion. And that was thought to be brilliantly scholarly as a way of slithering out of the apparent contradiction.

Now, here is Obama, Chapter 14, page 131, Dreams from My Father: When I asked for other pastors to talk to [for help with his community organizing], several gave me the name of Reverend Wright, the same minister Reverend Philips had mentioned that day at his church. Younger ministers seemed to regard Reverend Wright as a mentor of sorts, his church a model for what they themselves hoped to accomplish. Toward the end of October I finally got a chance to pay Reverend Wright a visit and see the church for myself. [A] small sign spiked into the grass — FREE SOUTH AFRICA in simple block letters… [Reverend Wright] had grown up –‘ now, he didn’t say any of this to people in Albuquerque, no, it was his grandmother or his mother who never took him to church. He never said a word about Reverend Wright mentoring him. Obama has said the thing that animated him the most, of all the things that Reverend Wright ever said, Reverend Wright, when he came out with this bit that cruise ships throw away more food in a day than shows up in a Haiti in a year, ‘white folks greed runs a world in need.’ Obama said that resonates with me.

Of course, the reason why there’s no food in Haiti had nothing to do with the fact that a bunch of communist dictators and authoritarians have run that country and had deprived people of food and had deprived them of an economic political system that would have produced wealth, and given the opportunity, no, no, it was the cruise ship’s fault, it was capitalism’s fault. That’s what Obama has said was really instrumental in guiding him to Reverend Wright. That whole notion, white man’s greed runs a world in need, that cruise ships throw away more food than Haiti sees in a year. We didn’t hear any of the reverence for the Reverend Wright from Obama, and in fact again in Albuquerque, during the Q&A an audience member said, ‘As far as the mosque in New York, I’m a Christian, but we base our faith on free will and that’s what we’re founded on was freedom, and thank you for taking a stand.’

OBAMA: I appreciate that. You’re exactly right. We were founded on freedom of religion. That’s how this country got started. That’s why people came here because there were a bunch of other folks who said you can’t worship the way you want. And we have to constantly, I think, reaffirm that tradition, even when it sometimes makes us uncomfortable.

RUSH: So here you have the politically correct way of proving your goodness is to sacrifice everything you believe and be in deference to somebody else. In other words, let ’em whipsaw you, let ’em slap you upside the head, let ’em turn you over their knee and spank you just to show you’re fair. This from the book: ‘[Reverend Wright] had grown up in Philadelphia, the son of a Baptist minister. He had resisted his father’s vocation at first, joining the Marines out of college, dabbling with liquor, Islam, and black nationalism in the sixties… He learned Hebrew and Greek, read the literature of Tillich and Niebuhr and the black liberation theologians. … Afterward, in the parking lot, I sat in my car and thumbed through a silver brochure that I’d picked up in the reception area. It contained a set of guiding principles — a ‘Black Value System’ — that the congregation had adopted in 1979 … A sensible, heartfelt list… For [Reverend Wright and the Trinity parishioners], the principles in Trinity’s brochure were articles of faith no less than belief in the Resurrection.’ That’s fine. That’s what he wrote in the book about Christianity and how he arrived at it. In Albuquerque, not a word of that. It was his mother who didn’t take him to church inspired him to want to find out what Christianity was all about. So, as for Reverend Wright, are these the precepts that Obama is referring to when talking about those who have guided him spiritually?

WRIGHT: Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people. Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger. Bill did us just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty. In white America, US of KKKA, black men turning on black men. I am sick of Negroes who just do not get it. Not God bless America. God (bleep) America. It’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God (bleep) America. And now we are indignant because of stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America’s chickenssss are coming home to roost.

RUSH: And now we got a big terror threat out there and it’s not that big a deal ’cause we can absorb it, we can absorb it. Now, this is Obama, the audio sound bite book version of the Audacity of Hope, Senator Obama talking about a sermon by Reverend Wright.

OBAMA: The painting depicts a harpist, Reverend Wright explained, a woman who at first glance appears to be sitting atop a great mountain. Until you take a closer look and see that the woman is bruised and bloodied, dressed in tattered rags, the harp reduced to a single frayed string. Your eye is then drawn down to the scene below, down to the valley below where everywhere are the ravages of famine, the drumbeat of war, a world groaning under strife and deprivation. It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere, that’s the world on which hope sits. And so it went, a meditation on a fallen world.

RUSH: That, my friends, is what Obama has said moved him the most in terms of guiding him to Christianity, those words of Reverend Wright. (interruption) What? What? I know, he said he wasn’t listening. I know, he said in 20 years he didn’t hear any of that stuff. We didn’t believe that. And now he quotes it, of course, in the book, The Audacity of Hope, so we know we heard it, we know he heard it. Now, I know a lot of you people are probably uncomfortable: ‘Rush, challenging somebody’s religion…’ No, no, no. I’m not. The man is the president of the United States. He says a bunch of things here, explains why he’s Christian, and I’m simply doing what we do here on a daily basis: factually analyze and comment. I didn’t bring it up, folks. I’m minding my own business here.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: March 18th in Philadelphia, Barack Obama, the famous speech on race. Here is a portion of what he said about Reverend Wright and his white grandmother.

OBAMA: I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother, a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed her by on the street and who, on more than one occasion, has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

RUSH: Yeah, and he went on.

OBAMA: She is a typical white person who, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know, you know, there’s a reaction that’s been bred into our experiences that — that don’t go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way.

RUSH: So the first was March 18th, the race speech in Philadelphia. The second bite, three days later on the radio in Philadelphia, clarifying what he meant about his white grandmother. Typical white person, sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know, there’s a reaction, she runs the other way, the nation bred that into her. Now, I do recall it was the Reverend Jackson, was it not, who also said this? Some civil rights leader did.

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