RUSH: Obama said that he didn’t want to negotiate with Republican hostage takers, but he had to. Remember, this is the same guy who’s still bending over backwards to negotiate with Iran and North Korea, and he has no problem negotiating with them. But the Republicans are hostage takers. And that mantra has been picked up. We have a montage of this, and, you know, if a talk show host says 
Imam Obama, or makes a joke about Driving Miss Nancy, it becomes national news; it’s horrible; it’s insensitive; it’s rotten. Well, where’s the outrage over this? All these Democrats, elected and media types, referring to Republicans as terrorist hostage takers.
AXELROD: Now they want to hold those middle-class tax cuts hostage.
SCHWARTZ: Republicans are holding these middle-class tax cuts hostage.
MATTHEWS: Holding hostage the unemployment benefits.
PAYNE: Hold that hostage in order to keep tax breaks going.
STABENOW: They’re willing to hold tax cuts for middle-class families hostage.
BLITZER: Holding the Senate hostage.
MCCASKILL: Will they hold the middle-class hostage?
RATIGAN: The GOP is holding key legislation hostage.
SANCHEZ: We’re held hostage over here.
SCHUMER: Hold it hostage. Hold it hostage.
JOHNSON: Extension of these taxes have been held hostage.
SPITZER: We are being held hostage, every one of us, we are hostages being held hostage.
PELOSI: Those initiatives are being held hostage.
SANDERS: The Republicans are holding hostage.
Van HOLLEN: Republicans were holding middle-class taxes hostage.
MENENDEZ: If you allowed yourself to be held hostage, do you negotiate with terrorists?
OBAMA: It’s tempting not to negotiate with hostage takers, unless the hostage gets harmed. In this case, the hostage was the American people and I was not willing to see them get harmed.
RUSH: That’s been going on in recent days. But you see this is identical to the press all saying that the addition of Cheney as vice president was gravitas. Now it’s Republicans are hostage takers, holding everybody hostage. Yet they get mad at talk show hosts making jokes about Driving Miss Nancy or Imam Obama. So this morning on Scarborough’s program, Mr. Joe ‘No Label’ Scarborough, Tom Brokaw appeared, and Scarborough said, ‘Hostage? Negotiate with terrorists? Do you negotiate with terrorists?’ What is this all about, Mr. Brokaw?
BROKAW: That didn’t happen by accident. Obviously they did a lot of polling around the country, and that word popped up for ’em. I think it flies over the heads, frankly, of people out there who are getting up every morning trying to pay their bills and find a job and worrying about their mortgage. I think that’s another disconnect, and it happens on both sides.
RUSH: It’s not a big deal. It’s flying over the heads of everybody. Word just popped up for ’em, didn’t happen by accident, tested it and so forth. Of course they tested it. F. Chuck Todd last night on Hardball, Matthews says, ‘The fiercest fights are always within your own party. The toughest shots come from behind you, go after your character. All this talk about manning up, being tough and wussing, Bill Maher going after him, I think that would be tougher to take than Boehner taking some shots across the aisle at me. I could laugh at that.’
TODD: The White House is pretty happy with this performance today. I think they feel like this was the president showing that he’s in charge, it’s his town, he’ll do what he has to do to get some of these things through.
RUSH: Chuck is just in the tank. Chuck, you’re gone. There’s no rehab. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but what is hilarious is that Obama blew the metaphor. He’s saying he did negotiate with the hostage takers. He said he did. You’re not supposed to negotiate with hostage takers. But he went out there and he said he did for the good of the American people. He negotiated with hostage takers to make sure the American people didn’t get harmed. It’s tempting not to negotiate with hostage takers unless the hostage gets harmed. In this case, the hostage was the American people. I was not willing to see ’em get harmed. I talked to the terrorists, said Obama. So he even got the whole thing wrong.
Bert in St. Louis. Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program, sir.
CALLER: Oh, Maha Rushie, you got me wound up tight.
RUSH: (laughing)
CALLER: Hey, talking about hostages, let me tell you who the hostages are, Rush. Me, you, our children and our children’s children who these Democrats are holding hostage with $13 trillion in debt they can’t pay.
RUSH: Amen, bro.
CALLER: There are your hostages. Now, I’m a little tired of this demonization of the rich. You know what? The rich’s money belongs to them. That’s their private property. If they want to sit on it, that’s their prerogative.
RUSH: Damn right.
CALLER: It wasn’t the rich who promised shovel-ready jobs.
RUSH: Damn right.
CALLER: It wasn’t the rich who promised green jobs.
RUSH: Hear, hear.
CALLER: It wasn’t the rich who promised hopey changey. You know what, these people want a job, go out and get some of them hopey-change jobs. You don’t need unemployment insurance.
RUSH: Amen.
CALLER: And let me tell you what I don’t believe in, Rush, and then I’ll tell you what I believe in. What I don’t believe in is the communist manifesto. The second plank calls for a progressive tax. The third plank in the communist manifesto calls for an inheritance tax. I don’t believe in that. Now, let me tell you what I do believe in. On the Supreme Court of the United States building it says, ‘Equal justice under law.’ Tax is law. If you make a dollar or a trillion dollars you pay 15% because if it’s important enough to raise taxes on one single American, it’s important enough to raise taxes on every single American.
RUSH: Hear, hear.
CALLER: And, you know what? When you hear the Democrats talk about the rich or corporations, just replace those words with the bourgeoisie or capitalist pigs and you’ll know exactly where they’re coming from.
RUSH: Boy, you are on a roll. I wound you up, maybe, but you’re certainly unwinding here in fine form. That’s Bert in St. Louis. Bert, thanks very much for the call. I want to add something else to this. He’s talking about the rich, it’s their private property, and for the vast majority of them, they earned it. Now, I ask, every time there’s a revelation of an unfunded pension in a state or massive indebtedness in any state or federal, local bureaucracy, and I look at how well people have been living, is anything real? Well, what people who work have earned is real. I don’t care whether they’re rich, upper middle-class, lower middle-class, that’s real. It’s all these other people who are getting paid for not working. I’m not talking about the unemployed. I’m talking about you work 15 years and get paid for the rest of your life plus health care and so forth. That’s not real. And as such somebody’s gonna have to pay it because the person receiving it is not earning it.
Now, what really worries a lot of people with all of this indebtedness — I’ll remind you, the Reverend Jackson ten, 15 years ago, before it was known that all these pensions were underfunded, that’s where he wanted to go to get money to fund the civil rights cause and movement. Where is the money? Where is the money? It’s with people who have earned it. And what a lot of people are afraid of with this guy and the Democrat Party is that with this indebtedness, they’re never gonna be able to pay it all off but they’re gonna have to make it look like they’re trying, and they’re gonna have to do it with real money. At some point you can’t just do QE2, QE3, print money and so forth. Where are they gonna go to get the money? They’re gonna have to go to where people have it, who those people are. Will there be a wealth tax? Will they institute small to start, one and a half percent of your wealth, after you’ve paid your income taxes, after you’ve paid your capital gains, at the end of all that, we’re gonna tax you a third or fourth time, one and a half percent on your wealth, your net worth, or maybe your gross worth and then that won’t be enough, that will become 2% next year, two and a half percent along with Medicare, FICA, Social Security, all of these things.
They don’t have the money that they’re spending. The people who do have the money they’re spending are those who have earned it. Now, you can say that you’re gonna deny pensions to the people whose deal is to get a pension, but there’s not the money to pay them. Where is the money? And then you put political people asking this question: Who do they hate having money? How do we target those people? Do we do it with tax audits? Do we use the IRS to separate them from their money? This is what people are afraid of because they are the only things that are real. They’re the only ones whose money is legit. They have to be the targets, in their minds. That’s what bothers them. More and more people are asking, ‘Where can I park my money offshore legally?’ meaning where can I invest it? Not illegally. Where can I put it that it’s gonna keep growing, not gonna be targeted, not gonna be taken, where can I put it? It’s a question that’s bouncing around among an increasing number of people.
Folks, you had a lot of pictures on your computer. You know what backing up your computer means? Do you know why you back up your computer? Your computer has a hard drive in it. That’s where all the pictures and everything else that’s important goes. And what happens if something happens to that hard drive or your computer and everything on there gets lost? Where are you then? You can’t recreate it if you don’t have it backed up. That’s where Carbonite comes in handy. And believe me, when this happens to you, and it will, it’s the worst feeling in the world, knowing, whatever you put on there, your birth certificate or your — your marriage document, what — whatever it is, all of your pictures, when they’re — they’re gone, they’re gone unless you’re backed up. Carbonite backs up to an off site server every time you’re connected to the Internet. You can access those backed-up files from your BlackBerry or iPhone with an AP, free AP that lets you do that. You can restore when you have to replace your computer. It happens every time you’re connected and you don’t know it, it’s just it happens in the background. It’s $55 a year, unlimited backup, PC or Mac, 55 bucks a year, Carbonite.com. That’s just 15 cents a day. You get a genuine 15-day free trial. And use the offer code Rush, two free months when you decide to buy, which you will. Back it up, get it back, never, ever lose it. Carbonite.com, offer code Rush.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
Take a look. Look at what the Democrats think is the single greatest gift they could give to the American population: Another year of unemployment compensation benefits. The Democrats do not understand that the rich get their money the same way everybody else gets their money: In exchange for doing something useful…or do they? You know, the vast majority of wealth in the US government is in the hands of Democrats, and they know how they got it. Some inherited it, some married it, some earned it. So it’s all just class warfare, envy, stoking hatred and division among people to get what they want politically.