RUSH: So Snerdley walks into my palatial broadcast studio this morning and says, ‘How long is this AIG stuff going to go on?’ I said, ‘As long as they need it to go on to distract us from all the other things they’re doing.’ The big point about this AIG business, as I mentioned to you people yesterday, the big point here is to poison as many minds in this country as possible to capitalism and to corporate America. This is exactly the kind of thing Barack Obama and his team love, everybody hating corporate America, hating Wall Street, hating CEOs, hating executives. This is from an AP story today: ‘Merrill Lynch paid $3.6 billion in bonuses to its executives while its sale to Bank of America Corp., a big recipient of bailout money, was pending.’ Greetings, folks, great to have you here, El Rushbo behind the Golden EIB Microphone, the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. So everybody, ‘Oh, Geithner, he’s a dead man, Geithner’s finished.’ It’s all a distraction.
But let’s listen to Jonathan Alter. You know, the conventional wisdom in Washington, the wizards of smart, the elitists, the Ivy Leaguers, be they in government or media, are brain-dead idiots. Here is Jonathan Alter who basically takes dictation from Rahm Emanuel. Alter’s got Chicago roots. Jonathan, I’m sorry, I know I’ve met you a couple times, but you’re just a stenographer, my friend. It is more and more obvious to those of us who study the behavioral practices of the Drive-By Media on a daily basis. Jonathan Alter, January 13th, was on MSNBC. The question he got, ‘Is this another Zoe Baird situation?’ Geithner not paying his taxes. ‘Is this another Zoe Baird situation where somebody is going to be tossed out, or do they seem to have been honest mistakes, and — maybe more importantly– is there sort of a bipartisan feeling that this guy Geithner is just too valuable to even let ordinary rules apply to him?’
RUSH: Uh-oh.
ALTER: Seven hundred billion dollars. We cannot afford at this point, unless there’s gross malfeasance, to take him out of the picture.
RUSH: There you have it, and that was the conventional wisdom. He’s the only guy, Geithner is the only guy that understands TARP. Geithner’s the only guy that could fix this. Geithner knew about the bonuses, despite what they’re saying. Geithner was involved in the first bailout of AIG. All these eggheads are incompetent. They’re not up to the job of running the private sector. This is all a giant distraction and it’s working, too, it is designed to get as many Americans as possible with pitchforks storming the gates of American corporations and CEOs. This is a godsend for the Obama administration. I know you’re reading, ‘Oh, it’s a backlash, Obama risking a backlash.’ Hey, he’s not even been president 60 days, folks. He’s not going anywhere, and there’s nothing Republicans can do to stop him. ‘But, Rush, but, Rush, there are stories about how the Democrats are upset at what he’s doing.’ Maybe they are, but he’s moving ahead at lightning speed. While everybody is talking about AIG, Obama is already on to other things. I’m going to give you a little rundown of some of these things as the program unfolds before your very eyes and ears.
So $3.6 billion in bonuses to Merrill Lynch and nobody said a word because the captains of outrage did not manufacture it at the time. This whole thing is a manufactured bunch of BS. Yeah, I called it yesterday about them knowing. By the way, Chris Dodd is saying, ‘Hey, I did not put that in there. I didn’t exempt these bonuses.’ Somebody else did and he’s dumping on Geithner. Well, I don’t care who put it in or who didn’t. The fact is nobody knew it was there, because nobody read this. This was in the stimulus bill. Only after the fact did they discover that it’s in there, but now everybody, all these Democrats are passing the buck, and we’ve got Barney Frank and Chris Dodd saying they now want to run AIG and we have clear evidence these clowns are the ones that got us into this mess in the first place. They don’t know how to run any of these things; government’s not supposed to do this. This is bad, folks. We can sit here and laugh about it, but it’s bad.
I ran into a guy — this was sad to me, and it made me a little mad — I ran into a guy, strong conservative, just whining and moaning about these bonuses. I said to him, ‘I don’t care about the bonuses. What are you mad about the bonuses for? Why aren’t you mad about the mortgage bailout, 75 billion? Why aren’t you mad about cap and trade, which may end up costing two trillion that we are told today? Why aren’t you mad about all these other bailouts that are going on?’ What’s happened here is that Obama and the media have successfully distracted people and channeled their outrage away from his outrageous expansionist ideas and on to corporate fat cats. He’s got everybody revved up. I saw a picture of people, average, ordinary Americans lined up outside the hearing room today where Barney Frank’s committee is looking into this, investigating these bonuses, figuring out what to do, maybe tax these people. Barney Frank wants names now. Your congressman wants names of the people who received the bonus. It was in the law that they get the bonuses. And there’s average Americans — well, wait a minute, now. Those could have been Obama robots, come to think of it.
He’s got these giant community groups out there like ACORN, Code Pink, and others, who would probably storm — we don’t really know how much national outrage there is over this, we just assume that there’s a lot of it. I’m going to accept the fact that there is because it fits the bill. My problem here is that people keep saying these things are distractions. They’re way more than that. These things are not just distracting people. These things are rechanneling people’s rage to things that don’t or shouldn’t matter, and while all that’s happening, Obama gets to march on and keep doing what he’s doing with impunity. Not because they’re distracted but because they’re mad about the wrong things. AP-Obama story by Adam Geller: ‘Taxpayers Vent Against AIG Bonuses.’ And if you read far enough, you’ll find a quote from George Ayoub of Toronto, Canada, an American who was visiting Los Angeles when the Drive-By Media caught up to him. Here’s his quote: ‘We’ve created this mess. Everyone’s responsible for allowing executives to receive these bonuses. Probably every company needs to be nationalized, and the government will own the corporations instead of the corporations owning the government.’
That’s the point. That is what the objective here is. Take this AIG business, which they knew about, they knew about the bonuses, re-channel everybody’s anger to corporate America and CEOs away from government. Once again the people, the architects of this get to sit around as though they were innocent bystanders and spectators, who are now the white knights being called in to save the day. Obama, by the way, the teleprompter pulled a mean trick on our president last night at the White House. Did you hear about this? It was such an embarrassment. The teleprompter embarrassed the president so much that the Drive-By Media has not released the video of what happened. We know what happened, we’ll pass it on, plus in Missouri, my home state, the police, the state police have been issued warnings. Wait ’til you hear this. ‘In Missouri, a new document meant to help Missouri law enforcement agencies identity militia members or domestic terrorists has drawn criticism. The Feb. 20 report called ‘The Modern Militia Movement’ mentions such red flags as political bumper stickers for third-party candidates, such as US Rep. Ron Paul, who ran for president last year; talk of conspiracy theories, such as the plan for a superhighway linking Canada to Mexico; and possession of subversive literature.’
So the state police of Missouri have been told that if you see a car with a bumper sticker that opposes the so-called creation of the North American Union, the superhighway, that you are probably following a militia member, that you are following an anti-government radical and you need to take precautions. I’m not making this up. It’s right here in the AP. If you see a car with a bumper sticker that says ‘Ron Paul for President,’ you might be dealing with a violent radical. Exercise extreme caution. I am not making it up. This is the Associated Press. There’s no byline on this. ”It seems like they want to stifle political thought,’ said Roger Webb, president of the University of Missouri campus Libertarians. ‘There are a lot of third parties out there, and none of them express any violence. In fact, if you join the Libertarian Party, one of the things you sign in your membership application is that you don’t support violence as a means to any ends.’
‘Lt. John Hotz of the Missouri State Highway Patrol said the report comes from publicly available, trend data on militias. It was compiled by the Missouri Information Analysis Center, a ‘fusion center’ in Jefferson City that combines resources from the federal Department of Homeland Security and other agencies. ‘All this is an educational thing,’ Hotz said of the report. ‘Troopers have been shot by members of groups, so it’s our job to let law enforcement officers know what the trends are in the modern militia movement.” Third-party bumper stickers indicate a militia member, man prone to violence. Be extremely cautious when following such a car in the state of Missouri. Now, let’s not forget something that happened in Missouri during the campaign. Remember, there was a lawyer there, maybe a couple lawyers who announced that they were going to prosecute anybody who criticized Obama, remember that? And Obama’s got this mad marching army out there that he’s mobilizing to pass his budget bill, the omnibus budget bill, some of the other things.
All this kind of stuff, advancing cap and trade, $2 trillion more, there’s a story here today that to really fix the banks may take another $750 billion. All this happening under the radar, and everybody focusing on this goon Geithner who is just a nerd, just a dweeb, he’s a total dweeb, everybody in the White House in over their heads in this respect. They’re in over their heads in fixing this. They are perfect to destroy this, perfectly timed, perfectly programmed, perfectly educated to destroy capitalism, and that’s their expertise, and they’re in the process of doing it. And while they’re doing it, they’re making you think it’s a good thing, ’cause you now hate the CEOs, and you hate the executives, and you hate these bonuses, while all this other rigmarole is going on that is really damaging.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: A lot of people say, ‘Rush! Rush, come on. What do you mean? What is all this anger at AIG and corporations? What about all the tea parties out there angry at Obama?’ Oh, I know the tea parties are out there, and they’re swelling and they’re growing. That’s my point. The objective is to get you people at the tea parties having tea parties against AIG and against corporations and against capitalism. Now, while you people are out at the tea parties (and God bless you) understand that there are a whole lot of other people who are being worked into a frenzy. You know how easy it is to gin up this mob mentality. You know how easy it is, especially in a recession — and it’s working.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Associated Press today, Julie Hirschfeld Davis: ‘Cue the Washington Outrage.’ It is so obvious that not even AP-Obama can ignore this. ‘For months, the Obama administration and members of Congress have known that insurance giant AIG was getting ready to pay huge bonuses while living off government bailouts. It wasn’t until the money was flowing and news was trickling out to the public that official Washington rose up in anger and vowed to yank the money back,’ and I still maintain to you that this is not the true AIG outrage. The true AIG outrage is how AIG was used by Geithner and Henry Paulson to send money to foreign banks, as well as Goldman Sachs and a couple of other domestic banks — in addition to what they got in the TARP bailout, the first phase. Yesterday the number was $93 billion. It’s over a hundred billion now that went to places like Deutsche Bank, a French bank, a couple of other banks in Europe.
Goldman Sachs, which is where Paulson came from, got $13 billion. Now, this is the real, real outrage of what has happened, and all of this other stuff is simply a distraction. I’m not going to be totally distracted by this. This is Wednesday and we’ve spent a lot of time talking about this — except on this program, where I, your host, am not, ladies and gentlemen, subjected to the tug of popular sentiment. I resist it, always have. So I am not spun here into a phone outrage over what everybody else is mad about.