RUSH: Phil in Cincinnati, you’re next on the Rush Limbaugh program. Great to have you here. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you today?

RUSH: Fine, sir. Thanks much.

CALLER: Mega dittos, and congratulations on your 20 years. A longtime listener since the late eighties when I first heard you on my car radio, I went, ‘Wow, here’s somebody that believes the way I do.’

RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.

CALLER: Hey listen, on this whole thing with the media not understanding after all the great coverage they’re giving Obama and making him presidential and messianic why the poll numbers aren’t going up, I think they’re unwilling to acknowledge, I mean they probably know it, but they’re unwilling to acknowledge the power of conservative talk radio, guys like you and Sean and Mark. Millions of people listen to you every day and you’re exposing him continually with all the —

RUSH: You know, that’s an excellent point, because I don’t have a extraordinarily large ego and don’t think about myself much. When I was reading that story about why the press is so puzzled, why Obama’s numbers are not higher, you’re right, there is an alternative media out there now that has a different perspective for people on everything the Drive-Bys try to put forth as mainstream.

CALLER: Yeah, I agree. And millions of us are not looking to them, their ratings are dropping continually because we gave up on them a long time ago as being truthful and we’re looking to folks like you to give us the real truth and —

RUSH: Well, I appreciate that. I think there’s also been a loss of respect for some of the Drive-Bys, there’s certainly a lot of distrust.

Here is Larry in Bend, Oregon, a cell call. Larry, I got about a minute here, but I wanted to squeeze you in before I had to go.

CALLER: Mailman dittos from a second-time caller.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I just appreciate what you’ve done. It was the late eighties when I first heard you on KPNW out in Eugene. I was hauling hogs in the coast range of Oregon, and I remember exactly where I was at first time I tuned you in, and I was so worried I wasn’t going to hear this guy again, because he was so right on, and just every point he hit he was right on, and I was thinking, ‘Man, who is this guy?’ And it’s been a great 20 years.

RUSH: Now, why were you afraid that you might not hear me again, because you think they’d frog march me to jail after somebody heard me?

CALLER: Well, you know, good things don’t last. I guess you’re an exception to the rule.

RUSH: I guess so. Well, look, it’s very nice of you to say. I appreciate it. I’ve never had anyone say he was afraid — well, actually that’s what ditto means. Ditto means don’t ever go away. I hope this show never ends. But to have his first thought being, ‘My gosh, I hope I can listen to this guy again!’ I know that a lot of you think the government’s not going to allow this, the Democrat Party is not going to allow this. They’re going to take care of this guy.

RUSH: This is Pat in Washington. You’re next. Great to have you on the program with us. Hello.

CALLER: Dittos, Rush. My name is actually Patsy. I grew up and still live southeast of Pittsburgh. I was telling your screener there, I remember the first time I heard you. I was listening to you on the radio, and I thought you were a local person on KDKA radio in Pittsburgh, and I was doing something round the house and I had the TV on; and all of a sudden I heard your voice, that unmistakable voice, and I ran in and you were on the Donahue show.

RUSH: Oh, I remember.

CALLER: That’s the first time I realized that you were actually syndicated, but I had been listening to you for years and of course I’m thinking, ‘Here’s a man that articulates things that I’ve been thinking for a long time,’ and I was tickled to death to see you on there. And I remember they were trying to set you up there. Of course they had the big liberal audience stacked I think on purpose that day, and I remember thinking how you handled yourself and probably end up showing Donahue up there as much as he tried to get you.

RUSH: I remember that. They had asked me on that show and the taping of the schedule did not coincidence with the time I had to be on the radio. So actually when I finally did it, I think I had to take a day off of the radio to do it. I’m not sure. They taped, I forget when. It was sometime near noon in the morning, or shortly after three o’clock in the afternoon, but when I finally got over there and did it, I met the producer. His right-hand woman that was the producer, and was as nice as she could be: ‘Oh, we’re so happy to have you. Ohhhh, this audience is going to just love you,’ blah, blah. I had had enough experience in greenrooms and pre-interviews by them to understand what that was really all about.

That was to try to relax me and set me at ease for what was coming, and Donahue finally showed up and he said, ‘The only thing is you gotta let me get a word in now and then. You talk and you never shut up. You gotta let me get a word in,’ and of course the whole program, most of it was about abortion and related subjects, ’cause, you know, Phil was huge back then on his feminist rantings. It was kind of fun to do, and he kept telling me what I was going to say when asking the questions. I said, ‘Phil, let me answer. I know what I’m going to say. Would you let me answer the questions?’ He had a habit of doing that, trying to put words in your mouth to steer you in a direction or else to get you into some sort of confrontation, but, yeah, it was fun. That was back in the days when doing television shows was fun, but that wore off. It didn’t take long for it not to be fun anymore.

CALLER: Well, you figured ’em out pretty quickly. Rush, I go back further than that. I remember you as Jeff Christie out of Pittsburgh. In fact, way before that, even, I guess.

RUSH: That was KQV.

CALLER: That was back in the DJ days, right?

RUSH: That would have been out in McKeesport, yeah.

CALLER: (laughs) McKeesport.

RUSH: McKeesport. McKeesport, yes.

CALLER: (laughing) Rush, thanks for all the good work you do.

RUSH: Okay, Patsy.

CALLER: I listen each and every day. It’s the first time I ever got through. I’ve been calling for years I got lucky.

RUSH: I’m glad you got through. What are you doing in Washington?

CALLER: I’m a salesman. I’m on the road. I still live in Fayette County up there on the mountain.

RUSH: How is the economy treating you in your sales?

CALLER: Well, I’m in the housing industry, and of course housing is off now, as you well know. We sell building products.

RUSH: Doesn’t matter! You just got bailed out, everybody is fine. Everybody is cool.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: (laughing)

CALLER: You know, I’ve going to have to look my mortgage up here. I just built a house two or three years ago. I might be able to get free bailout here or something, huh?

RUSH: You know, it turns out — I have been reading about this bailout bill, and it turns out — that a lot of fewer people are going to get any benefit from it than what people think. There’s a story that part of this bill deals with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Remember we had the little detail about Freddie Mac? I think it was Fannie Mae had made political donations to the, uh, Reverend Jackson over the years that totaled like $1.25 million? It turns out that the only way Harry Reid would allow some legislation to go forward is if the provisions that allowed Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to make political donations was kept. In there were people that wanted to take that out.

So here you have two agencies, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae — which are ostensibly there to help stabilize the mortgage market — and are actually just vehicles for liberals to make federal donations of campaign money from a supposed private business, owned by the US government. What a scam this has turned out to be! What an absolute scam! They run in a fraudulent manner. Franklin Raines, Clinton’s budget director had to be thrown out of Freddie Mac — or I think it was Fannie Mae — after there was six billion plus dollars in fraud found. And there was hardly any penalty for it. It’s just classic. I don’t understand how you can have a ‘private business’ run by the government anyway, but that’s what those two things are; and they have been making political donations and other kinds of donations, and that provision will stay as part of this bailout legislation.

RUSH: This is Bava in Brooklyn. You pronounce this Ba-va?

CALLER: That’s right.

RUSH: Hi, Bava. It’s nice to have you on the program.

CALLER: First of all, I would like to congratulate you on your 20 years.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I remember ten years ago when I first listened to you. Before that I read a book that today I consider really, really stupid. It was about you and it was called ‘Rush Limbaugh is a Big, Fat Idiot.’ But I wasn’t really involved in politics, I was busy, with kids and home, and, you know, and things like that. But then I started working with my husband, and every day I listened to the radio, and I turned it onto your program, and I heard you talking about Israel — and I’m an Israeli; I was born in Israel — and I went, ‘Oh, my gosh! I wish all Jews would talk about Israel the way you do,’ and I started listening to you on that day, and I realized — you actually helped me realize — that I am a conservative. I wasn’t really serving any party before that, but on the day that Hillary Clinton announced that she’s actually running for senator from the state of New York, I became a registered Republican.

RUSH: (laughter) (applause)

CALLER: So… And, you know, since then I have been listening to you and more and more. I am a conservative, more than a Republican.

RUSH: Good.

CALLER: I’m really very, very conservative in every possible way.

RUSH: Excellent. I love hearing you say that. I love hearing you say, ‘I’m a conservative,’ because you’re saying it with pride, and you’re saying it with conviction.

CALLER: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I have to tell you, I work in the health care industry, a small part. I collect money from insurance companies, and every day I’m convinced more and more that socialized medicine is going to be a disaster.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: An absolute disaster.

RUSH: You know, especially if you look at the economic climate that we’re in. The growth is happening, but you look at the credit crisis, the mortgage problems and the housing industry, imagine piling socialized medicine on top of that.

CALLER: I shudder to think about it.

RUSH: I tell you what’s going to happen. The sympathy play that the Democrat Party will mount upon the death of Senator Kennedy will read to the push for one of his signature issues, which is socialized or nationalized health care.

CALLER: That’s right. Mmm-hmm.

RUSH: And they’ll probably call it Kennedy Care or some such thing, and they’re going to really be tugging at people’s heartstrings emotionally, it’s going to be tough for elected members of Congress to resist this. ‘How could you deny the one thing Senator Kennedy devoted his life to? Have you no heart? And what about the children?’ Be prepared, Bava, because it’s going to be an onslaught.

CALLER: And it really scares me. It really scares me. I see what’s happening today, and people are not going to get health care. They’re just not going to get it. Exactly what’s happened in England is going to happen here and you’re not going to have doctors. You’re not going to have people going into medical schools.

RUSH: It’s already starting to happen. Doctors are already opting out, and they’re setting up fee-for-service-business. If you give them a retainer like a lawyer —

CALLER: Mmm-hmm.

RUSH: — then you can go see them off insurance, off Medicare, off this kind of — doctors are already opting out of this.

CALLER: I heard on the Brit Hume show two nights ago that doctors are signing in patients that they’re not going to go to a lawyer if something wrong is going to happen, they’re going to go to an arbitrator, and they are going to be bound what the arbitrator says, and I think there’s a limit to what the doctors can pay, like a quarter million dollars or something, in these arbitrating agreements.

RUSH: Well, that highlights another problem is the medical malpractice insurance.

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: Courtesy of the tort bar, led by estimable people such as John Edwards.

CALLER: Yes, yes.

RUSH: When he’s not hiding out in the basements of hotel bathrooms avoiding reporters from the National Enquirer.

CALLER: That’s right.

RUSH: Bava, thank you so much. It’s great to hear from you.

CALLER: Thank you, and —

RUSH: I appreciate it.

CALLER: Please do the great work.

RUSH: Thank you very much.

CALLER: It’s absolutely terrific listening to you.

RUSH: Thank you so much. I appreciate that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Jason in Philadelphia. Jason, thanks for calling. It’s great to have you here.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Super mega dittos. Quick little story for you to kick it off.

RUSH: Yeah?

CALLER: My father passed away about 20 years ago, and this was about the same time I started listening to you. So you’ve been sort of a father figure to me over all these years, which, I mean, it’s just incredible. I’m so happy that you are out there, inspiring people like myself. It is just incredible, and thank you for everything.

RUSH: Well, thank you, sir, but please do not eliminate yourself from the achievements that you’ve had. You’ve played a major role in them, more than I have.

CALLER: Oh, absolutely. And, you know, it really does. It rolls into why I called in, which is because of the call yesterday and this lady saying that her blood pressure was being caused by you, and I would actually say that you’re the one that’s been my blood pressure medication over the years. I have high blood pressure as well, and you’ve been one of the things that’s helped keep it down by keeping me smiling and laughing when things get tough. Like I say, I really appreciate everything you’ve done. You know, you really are the perfect blood pressure medication for us out here who think that the Congress is just insane.

RUSH: Well… (laughing) I know. It’s maddening some of the stuff we have to put up with from public figures and what they say and what they do, and what makes it maddening is that there’s no oversight of these people, particularly the Democrats. The Drive-By Media will just amplify whatever they say or ignore the really embarrassing things, like Obama and inflating your tires and getting a tune-up in order to save us from the trouble of having to drill for additional oil.

CALLER: Well, I can’t afford a tune-up now because I spent that money yesterday in my gas tank. So I guess I’ve gotta pick one or the other, either gas or tune-up.

RUSH: Well… (laughter) I know, ’cause with Obama you can’t have it all.

CALLER: That’s right. And with the Democrats, you won’t have any.

RUSH: You can’t eat as much as you want, you can’t drive as much as you want because the rest of the world is mad at us for these things.

CALLER: Well, under the Democrats we won’t have to worry about that. Because if we just give them everything they will fulfill our dreams.

RUSH: Well, that’s Charles Rangel’s plan, he’s got a new tax plan called: ‘You make it; we take it.’

CALLER: Sounds perfect.

RUSH: It’s an alternative to the AMT.

RUSH: Here’s David in Sacramento, my adopted hometown. Nice to have you on the program, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. Thank you.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I wanted to tell you an interesting story I know you’ll be interested in. It’s the first time I heard your voice. It’s way before. I’d never heard of you, and you were local in Sacramento. I happened to have been reassigned up here in Sacramento with the defense department, and I had just finished doing a big investigation on a huge scandal in the Bay Area where I was confronting liberals at all levels, political, clergy, and all. And it just turned into an amazing big scandal — international, actually — and so I came up here, and then I was doing some surveillance on the pipeline calibration. The young operator was listening to you. He was a young black guy, heck of a nice guy, a Democrat, but he was listening to you — and that’s the first time I heard your voice. And I thought to myself… Well, the first thing was, ‘This man is understands everything I went through in the Bay Area,’ confronting all these crazy liberals that could not see what was going on in this major scandal. And it was just stunning because I finally found somebody who understood. Everything you were saying was what I was trying to tell people and how blind they were to see what was going on. For nine years I did this investigation. Actually the scandal was Jim Jones.

RUSH: Oh, the Kool-Aid!

CALLER: Yeah, and I know that you had mentioned and hinted at that. Well, I went through the whole thing in the Bay Area. But the key thing is when I first heard your voice, two things happened. What you were saying was just like a… I was so relieved I found somebody who could understand. Secondly your voice, and one of the reasons you really made it big I think is your voice is so distinctive and compelling, and that drew me also. But this young guy that was listening to you, he was inspired by your motivational aspects, too. He ended up leaving the job shortly thereafter and went out and did his own thing and did very well. And here is a young, black Democrat who turned me on to you.

RUSH: Imagine that.

CALLER: It was just astounding.

RUSH: What a story. It’s 1984, 25 years ago, and —

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: — it sounds like you remember it like it was yesterday.

CALLER: Well, I coauthored the definitive book on Jim Jones. It was published by put Putnam.

RUSH: So you had a major publish for this.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: Well, you know, this is very nice of you to call and tell me this. I appreciate it — and you know what? You have helped me to once again explain to people the reason for this program’s success. The critics of this program this said that people in this audience are just mind-numbed robots and I’m sort of like a pied piper, Svengali and you’re sitting out there starved every day until I tell you what to think and what to do.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: And the truth is you already knew what you knew. You already had the opinions and feelings that you had. What you didn’t have was somebody in national media validating and reflecting what you thought. Everybody you thought was against you.

CALLER: Exactly. I confronted Willie Brown’s office out here. They told me that it just didn’t happen, that he didn’t pave the way for Jones. And of course he was the major instrument that paved the way for Jim Jones. And of course, people, they just lied up a storm. I found the document that tied him to it. But anyway it was just astounding to find somebody that understood approximately. Well, actually I’ll give your screener an article that I wrote on a website out of San Diego State University which you will really appreciate.

RUSH: Well, thank you. I appreciate it. You gave Snerdley the heads up on that?

CALLER: No, I haven’t yet, but I will.

RUSH: Oh, okay. Well, we’ll put you on hold. I gotta take a break here anyway so we’ll put you on hold.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: Thanks, David, very much. I appreciate that.

CALLER: Well, thank you. It’s a pleasure to finally talk with you directly.

RUSH: I understand. (laughing) Have a wonderful weekend. We’ll be back here in just a second. Get on the phone there, Snerdley.