RUSH: Joanne in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Hi, and welcome to Open Line Friday.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. First I need to apologize to Snerdley for calling him ‘royal’ when he put me on hold. I certainly didn’t mean to offend him.
RUSH: I appreciate that, and I’m sure he does, too.
CALLER: Okay, we… You know, we had that cute little stimulus they sent us last year, that $600 per person, $1,200 per couple?
RUSH: Exactly. We had two of them!
CALLER: Well, we got our $1,200 last year, and I thought, ‘What the hell, my insurance is due. I’ll just pay it for the year,’ right? My homeowners insurance.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Well, I did my taxes, and before I went ahead and checked that I had gotten the stimulus, I was going to owe $23 and change. Once I checked that I got the stimulus, I owe $1,223 and change because it put me into a different tax bracket!
RUSH: You mean you took the $1,200, and your taxes went up $1,200?
CALLER: That’s what I gotta send the government back, plus my $23 and change.
RUSH: That’s the first story of that type that I’ve heard, but this doesn’t surprise me because of what we’ve learned about the $13 a week.
CALLER: Oh, I’m just thrilled about that! My husband changed his deduction, because I work part time; he works full time; and we have a teeny, tiny mortgage. So we can’t write off the insurance. We don’t have any children so we have no regular deductions, and the interest that we pay doesn’t add up to the standard deduction. So we’re kind of screwed.
RUSH: Hey! Hey! I feel like I’m talking to a compatriot here. Welcome to the club. I sometimes feel alone on all this.
CALLER: I only started listening to you about two years ago when my high school sweetheart brought me back up here from Florida, after we’d been apart 29 years (he found me at Classmates.com) and I started listening to you, and I said, ‘You know, this man makes a hell of a lot of sense. He sounds like my dad.’
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: You’re welcome.
RUSH: Thank you very much. I really appreciate that, ma’am.
CALLER: But I’ll tell you what. I am fit to be tied, mad as hell (laughing) and I just don’t know what to do about it.
CALLER: Well, you know, Barney Frank… If I have to listen to Barney Frank one more time or look at Obama one more time, I’m just going to puke my lunch. (laughs) I’m just over it.
RUSH: Well, okay. That I can understand.
CALLER: He is funny. Your parodies are funny but the man is not funny at all, because he actually believes what he’s saying.
RUSH: You got to learn…
CALLER: And that’s frightening.
RUSH: …to laugh at it now and then.
CALLER: Well, I laugh at it. I laugh at it between one and two when I listen to you every day at lunch, and all day Friday.
RUSH: I appreciate that, ma’am. I’m going to play a Barney Frank sound bite, so you have about ten seconds to either turn the radio off or —
CALLER: Oh, I won’t turn the radio off. And you do great tomorrow, ’cause I’m going to turn you on at five o’clock on Fox and listen to you.
RUSH: Thank you very much. It’s a lot of pressure. I hope I do well.
CALLER: Oh, you’re gonna do just fine.
RUSH: All these television cameras there, and —
CALLER: Eh, don’t worry about it.
RUSH: — the largest crowd ever, and everybody is hoping I fail.
CALLER: No.
RUSH: Do you realize the Democrats are going to be hoping I make the biggest fool of myself? The liberals will be hoping I fail and stumble over an electric cord out there, or maybe the podium collapses in front of me.
CALLER: It’s not going to happen!
RUSH: I know, but I know they’re hoping it.
CALLER: Well, you know what? They can hope all they want. They show every day what idiots they are by opening up their mouths.
RUSH: Yes, ma’am. I agree a hundred percent. All right, here comes the Barney Frank sound bite. Thanks very much, Joanne. I appreciate it. Last night on Chris Matthews’ show, Barney Frank was the guest and Chris Matthews said, ‘What do you make of this big shift away from Bushism, if you will? Away from tax cuts, from people who make certain amount of money — and to begin a health fund, you know, national health care? What do you make of the big shift back to all this?’
FRANK: I think it’s what people voted for. There was no secret that this was going to happen. John McCain kept predicting that if Obama won, this would happen, and I think Obama felt an obligation to make an honest man out of John McCain — or to keep him honest. One John’s always been pretty honest. Of course the private sector is the engine to create wealth. But we also know, as Franklin Roosevelt knew and as others have known, that the private sector works best when it’s got a set of rules and a cooperative set of arrangements with the public sector.
RUSH: So during the campaign, remember now, the Democrats said that we –McCain, Joe the Plumber, we — were crazy for warning that Obama was a socialist! Now Barney Frank says everybody knew it? Everybody knew this was going to happen? I did! I guarantee you that a majority of people that voted for the Bamster did not know this was going to happen. He was talking tax cuts. He wasn’t talking about this. He was talking about lowering the sea levels four feet. He wasn’t talking all this detailed, massive spending. I ‘disagwee’ with Mr. ‘Fwank’ on this, folks.