RUSH: No, no, no, I don’t think of it as courage. I don’t think of it as courage at all. Snerdley is talking to me here, people are telling him that they can’t believe how much courage I have speaking out against Obama. It’s not courage, Mr. Snerdley. It’s actually love. I’ll explain this here in just a second. Greetings, my friends, and welcome. It’s the Rush Limbaugh program. We’re back at it at 800-282-2882 if you want to appear on the program. This is the EIB Network and the nation’s most listened to radio talk show. Great to have you here. We have an exciting three hours straight ahead for you.
Snerdley says he’s got so many people saying, ‘I can’t believe how much courage Rush has.’ And I get this note from H.R. today before the program started, ‘A lot of reaction to yesterday’s show and particularly the first hour, hour-and-a-half.’ You know, we need to put that on YouTube. I forgot to tell Koko that. We need to encode that from the Dittocam video yesterday and put it out on YouTube. At any rate, I got this note from H.R., he said, ‘A guy I frequently talk to said, ‘Your boss wanted Obama to fail.’ The guy said that to me when I said Obama’s taking his lumps on the economy.’ H.R. told the guy, ‘Rush wanted the president’s plan to spend your great-grandchildren into debt to fail because Rush knew Obama’s plan wouldn’t work. You think Rush is happy about somebody not working? We’re spending money on shovels you won’t get paid to see on bureaucracies you don’t even know about, projects you’ll never see, and if you do see ’em, not until 2010, and you still have unemployment rocketing. How about giving the American people their money back so they can pay their mortgage, buy products from companies that employ you and your neighbor, hold onto jobs, create tax revenue for the blessed government you hold so dear. You want the private sector to recover, Obama’s throwing money down the rathole of government. Come on.’
By the way, ladies and gentlemen, at RushLimbaugh.com, I didn’t know that my acceptance speech receiving The Freedom of Speech award at Talkers Magazine Saturday was being videotaped, but Newsmax was there, Chris Ruddy and the boys were there and they videotaped it and we have linked to it now at RushLimbaugh.com, and it’s only ten minutes. I got a note from my brother, ‘How in the hell did you manage to keep your remarks to ten minutes?’ Brevity is the soul of wit. I’m speaking to about three or four hundred radio people in the audience, and I’m talking about freedom of speech and so forth, and it’s just ten minutes. You can listen to it whenever you have time. But this business of courage — and it was the linking of that video that reminded me of this — I’m not trying to diffuse or deflect a compliment with that. I don’t have to grab hold of myself and say, ‘Okay, it’s time to get your guts in order now, time to be courageous here, be brave.’ I don’t look at it that way at all.
I look at what I do here every day as a function of love. I love the United States of America; I love the people who make it work. I love the ability to speak. I’m in the free speech business. I don’t take
it for granted. I love being able to say what I think. You know what else I love? I love not being afraid of what people say about me after I say what I think. I love not being affected by critics. I love it. It took me awhile to learn it, but I now love it. My whole career, this whole radio program is a labor of love, if you want to call it that, but I don’t look at it as courage. Koko, the webmaster, said, ‘You really need to post this little speech of yours because so many people tell me they’re just afraid to speak out about Obama.’ I understand that. You’re surrounded by brain dead Democrats and liberals who voted for the guy, or people who are not even necessarily Democrats or liberals, they just voted for the guy, they still have this cult like devotion and love for him so you’re afraid to speak. Don’t be afraid. As I say in this speech, I don’t want to give it away because you ought to watch it, but the counter, the way to react to assaults on free speech is start shouting louder, more free speech. More speech, not cow tow; don’t respond to critics and this kind of thing.
Algore is going to find out here — you know, he’s got two of his journalists imprisoned, sentenced to 12 years of hard labor in North Korea. One of these is Lisa Ling’s sister, she used to be on The View, and Algore, I guess, is going to do something to try to get these journalists released. They work for his network, Current TV. I guess Algore is going to find out if global warming is more of a threat to the world than terrorism, as he claims. He claims that global warming is the bigger threat. These two reporters’ lives, he’s being sent to negotiate for, are not in danger of the ice caps melting. They are in danger of being worked to death and beaten to death by a communist tyrannical terrorist oriented regime.
I got this great e-mail from a guy in Gilbert, Arizona. His name is Tim. ‘Dear Rush: After finishing listening to your enthralling first hour yesterday, I hooked up my iPod to my powerful audio system, I turned up the volume, I opened all the doors and windows so my neighbors could hear, and I played it again. And hear it they did. My neighbors came out into their backyards to listen, and I can tell you many of them had never heard anything like that what you were saying. It was fantastic.’ I would love to have seen that. In Gilbert, Arizona, for a guy to hook it up to his massive audio system and blast it at all through the neighborhood.
You know, folks, one of the things I have done in continuing our discussion of yesterday about how President Obama is destroying the United States economy, whether by accident or by design he is destroying the US economy. By the way, polling numbers on the economy, he’s in trouble; he’s starting to lose some ground here; it’s starting to take hold I think. It’s no time to celebrate here. It’s time to keep up the pressure.