It’s not really hard to understand that he doesn’t understand it because he’s never been in business, and nobody in his administration ever has! They’re a bunch of theoreticians who hate it. Professors, a bunch of professors who deal in theory all the time. Did you ever see the Rodney Dangerfield movie, ‘Back to School’? One of my favorite portions of that movie, got this stuffy, pipe smoking professor, arrogant, condescending, the leather patches on the tweed jacket on the elbows, has this British accent, the air of superiority about him and he’s putting down theory on the chalkboard of how businesses work and Rodney Dangerfield is a successful waste management guy who is going back to school to try to get closer to his son who’s at the same school. You gotta watch this. Sam Kinison has a pretty small role but it’s hilarious. So this guy, the professor also hates Rodney Dangerfield, because Rodney Dangerfield’s made a move on the professor’s girlfriend, Sally Kellerman, and she kind of likes Rodney Dangerfield. He’s a standard, ordinary businessman, a little rough around the edges. He’s got a sleazy, slick-looking chauffeur. He brings in Kurt Vonnegut to write his finals papers because he doesn’t want to do the studying. And Vonnegut gets a D, by the way. (laughing) Rodney Dangerfield chews him out and fires him.
But during this business class, this stuffy, arrogant, condescending professor is describing on the chalkboard how business works and how you go get money to start it and the capital here and capital there, and after he finishes, ‘Any questions, class?’ And Rodney Dangerfield puts his hands up and says, ‘You left a whole lot of stuff out here.’ ‘You want to enlighten us, sir?’ ‘Well, yeah, before you can do any of that, you gotta go talk to the people who are going to take your trash away and if you think that’s easy, you gotta be prepared to do some stuff under the line and you gotta be able to go behind closed doors because if you don’t get those people on your side your business is never going to open.’ And he says, ‘We don’t run businesses in our classroom like yours.’ He just kept making mincemeat out of the professor because the professor — it’s great — it’s funny as hell because it was a clear illustration, even though it’s a movie, of somebody in the business world telling a professor who drives his cheap, little, tiny MG around smoking his pipe, who doesn’t have the foggiest idea how business works, he’s teaching it, versus a guy who’s in the business world, is a multi, multimillionaire success at it. And of course the professor tells the businessman he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And this is what we face now. Obama is that professor. When you read this interview at Bloomberg, it’s dangerous, it is really dangerous. The people that elected this guy owe us big time.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, I need to correct myself, a rare error but it will not subtract from my accuracy rating. Thanks, by the way, Francis, for the call. I made an error of fact. Rodney Dangerfield is not in the waste removal business in the movie Back to School. He runs a big and fat clothing store, a men’s big and tall shop, a series of them all over the country. Now, we have tracked down that segment of the movie. It’s a ribald movie, and Rodney Dangerfield is a ribald comedian, we’re going to have to bleep out just a few expressions that he uses in it but we’re preparing it right now and you’ll be able to hear it very soon here on the EIB Network.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is the scene where real life meets the economics professor, Rodney Dangerfield’s first economics class with the elite professor in The Movie Back To School.
PROFESSOR: First off, by looking at construction costs of our new factory.
DANGERFIELD: Uh, what’s the product?
PROFESSOR: That is immaterial for the purposes of our discussion here, but if it makes you happy, let’s say we’re making tape-recorders.
DANGERFIELD: Tape-recorders? Are you kidding? That’s (bleep) gonna kill us on the labor costs.
PROFESSOR: Okay. Fine. Then let’s just say they are widgets.
DANGERFIELD: What’s a widget?
PROFESSOR: It’s a fictional product. It doesn’t matter.
DANGERFIELD: Doesn’t matter. Tell that to the bank.
SON: Easy, take it easy. It’s the first day.
PROFESSOR: On the board you will see a cost analysis for the construction of a 30,000 square foot facility which will encompass both factory and office space and is fully serviced by all utilities, a railroad spur line, and a four-bay shipping dock.
DANGERFIELD: Hold it, hold it. Why build? You’re better off leasing at a buck and a quarter, a buck and a half a square foot, take your down payment and put it into CDs or something else you could roll over every couple of months.
PROFESSOR: Thank you, Mr. Melon, but we’ll be concentrating on finance a little later in the term. For the time being, let’s just concentrate on the construction figures, shall we? You will see the final bottom line requires the factoring of not just the material and the construction costs, but also the architect’s fees and the cost of land servicing.
DANGERFIELD: Oh-ho, you left out a bunch of stuff.
PROFESSOR: Oh, really? Like what, for instance?
PROFESSOR: That will be quite enough, Mr. Melon. Maybe bribes and kickbacks and Mafia payoffs are how you do business, but they are not part of the legitimate business world, and they’re certainly not part of anything I am teaching in this class. Do I make myself clear?
DANGERFIELD: Sorry, just trying to help, that’s all.
PROFESSOR: Now, notwithstanding Mr. Melon’s input, the next question for us is where to build our factory.
DANGERFIELD: How about Fantasyland?
RUSH: Rodney Dangerfield. That professor, that’s Obama. When you read this Bloomberg piece, Obama doesn’t even know that much!
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Laura in Erie, Pennsylvania, you’re next on Open Line Friday. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Professor Limbaugh. Thank you for educating us on conservative values.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: It’s a benefit to individuals and society.
RUSH: Thank you. Thank you very he very much.
CALLER: Well, you’re such a hero to us. Anyway I wanted to give you two examples with regard to Mr. Obama, President Obama, saying that small businesses aren’t hiring because they’re not getting loans. One example is a friend of mine whose husband owns a business, and he is saying that he is not going to be hiring because he doesn’t know what the health care bill will demand as an employer for how many people he has to cover. I don’t know what the specifics are, but over 25-employee businesses have to come up with more money for the health care. Along with another example that in our clinic, we were going to merge with — like a satellite clinic, we were going to merge — with a bigger business doctor, OB-GYN and the person that was looking at the merger said, ‘We’ve gotta be very careful because as this health care bill is coming up we will only hire a certain amount. We are not going to be increasing employees until we know what’s in the health care bill.’ So two timely examples that Mr. Obama does not know what he’s talking about and that you are right on that issue because there are plenty of small business people that are waiting to hear what new taxes, what new burdens they’re going to have in this health care language. And you’re right again.
The guy, when you read this, you can’t escape that he thinks he’s the best thing that ever happened to this country and that he knows exactly what he’s talking about, knows what businesses ought to do. And it’s clear he’s clueless, combined with this arrogant superiority conceit that he’s got. It’s just amazing. ‘Two things troubled President Barack Obama as he greeted Bloomberg BusinessWeek on Feb. 9 for a wide-ranging interview in the Oval Office. First was the snowstorm that had crippled Washington. ‘I can’t believe I have to shut down the federal government for a week for this,’ said the president.’ He didn’t. The Office of Personnel Management is in charge of this. But still, oh, woe is me! ”I can’t believe I gotta shut down the federal government because of this.’ … Obama’s second concern is more frustrating and far less likely to melt away: the impression that his Administration — and he personally — is anti-business.
‘At least on this day, business and the economy topped Obama’s agenda. Twenty steps from the Oval Office, GE’s (GE) Jeff Immelt, Honeywell’s (HON) David Cote, and several other CEOs huddled with White House officials to provide industry input on climate change.’ Here might be, ladies and gentlemen, our first clue: There is no reason to take these people out of their businesses and have them wasting time on a stupid crap-and-tax bill because it is all based on a scam, a scam being run by Obama to tax businesses even more for breathing! How anti-business can you get? He says he’s not anti-business and he’s got these guys in there advising him on how to get his cap-and-tax thing passed. ‘With his economic council waiting outside, Obama repeatedly expressed his disappointment that policies he believes are overwhelmingly pro-business have been misunderstood.’ Oh, cool.
See, once again, ladies and gentlemen, you and I are too stupid to know what he’s doing only because he’s not said, ‘Let me be clear’ enough times. ‘Let me be clear. Let me be clear,’ as he clouds and murks things up. And he has this favorite guy he talks about, his straw man. ‘There are those who say that we just must do nothing,’ when nobody is saying we should do nothing! ‘There are those who say’ blah, blah, blah. He makes up these people that don’t exist to bounce things off of. ‘…Obama repeatedly expressed his disappointment that policies he believes are overwhelmingly pro-business have been misunderstood. Obama even had a staffer send a follow-up e-mail to a question about CEOs he admires with additional names, including Cote, Verizon’s (VZ) Ivan Seidenberg, and John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.’ Okay! Damn it, folks, that proves it. A staffer e-mail is all I need to know that Bam loves business. How about you? He has a staffer send some e-mails to some CEOs. Okay, Obama digs business! Then it starts with the excerpts of the conversation — and I, frankly, as I said I’m looking for a really, really relaxed and peaceful weekend and I don’t want to go any further than this. We’ll link to it at RushLimbaugh.com. But you’ll conclude what I have, and that is that he’s clueless. Dangerously, dangerously clueless.