Rush’s Opening Monologue: Operation Chaos Inflicts Casualties

RUSH: Operation Chaos continues to inflict casualties, ladies and gentlemen, big time. Rampant confusion, arguments among Hillary and Obama big donors at private cocktail parties on Fifth Avenue in New York, with Howard Dean in the middle of the fight. This happened late last week, Thursday night, at the home of Maureen White and Steve Rattner, who is Little Pinch Sulzberger’s best friend. Yeah, greetings, my friends, and welcome, it’s Rush Limbaugh. We are here with broadcast excellence for three hours at the infamous distinguished highly respected and greatly feared Excellence in Broadcasting Network. I am your host, the highly trained broadcast specialist, Rush Limbaugh, showing how it’s done. Telephone number if you want to be on the program today, as always, 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

They are blaming me for Hillary losing, and they are blaming me for Obama not being able to wrap it up yet, on the cable news networks on CNN. Operation Chaos continues to unfold. Note what state Albuquerque is in. Albuquerque is in the state of New Mexico. You know who the governor of New Mexico is? Bill Richardson is the governor of New Mexico. ‘Hillary Clinton vowed a strong fight in the remainder of the Democrat presidential nominating contest. She brushed aside any notion of bowing out yesterday during a fundraiser in Albuquerque, which raked in about $150,000. ‘I’m going to campaign hard in all the remaining states,’ she said. She flew in and flew out of New Mexico for the fundraiser. ‘I want to tell you the campaign’s going well.’ She said anybody who believes that she should bow out of a race against Obama, who leads in the delegate count, should take a lesson from college basketball’s final four. ‘Why should anybody play North Carolina? You saw what happened last night,’ said Hillary, referring to Kansas’ upset win over the Tar Heels.’ No accident here that she goes out to New Mexico, flies in, flies out, does a fundraiser, saying that she is not going to leave the campaign. She is not going to get out.

Folks, I find it fascinating here that Mrs. Clinton, on the one hand, says that we have to get out of Iraq, we just have to, and so does Obama, we gotta get out of Iraq. Our country has a better chance of winning in the Middle East than she has of winning the Democrat primary, yet she wants to fight to the end in her campaign, but quit in Iraq. Did you hear about Nancy Pelosi over the weekend late last week? I think it was on Friday, the day I was off and went to the memorial service for William F. Buckley. Nancy Pelosi issued a warning to General Petraeus, who’s due to testify with the ambassador to Iraq, Mr. Crocker, sometime this week, and Pelosi said, (paraphrasing) ‘Don’t you dare come up here and give us good news, because we’re not going to believe it because there isn’t any. Don’t you dare.’ It’s a warning shot across the bow. Clinton master strategerist Mark Penn is no longer her strategerist. I’ve often wondered, ladies and gentlemen, just why the smartest woman in the world needs somebody to strategerize for her. Why does the smartest woman in the world need anybody on her campaign team? At any rate, typical Clinton fashion, he’s out doesn’t mean that he’s out. He’s out as a strategerist but he’s not out as her pollster.

Mark Penn owns Burson-Marsteller, which is a PR firm, and the problem is, ladies and gentlemen, that he consorted with our South American ally, Colombia, to help them get a free trade agreement passed. While the left is sucking up to the anti-trade unions, Mrs. Clinton will now do anything to win, dissing NAFTA. And so Penn, who’s got a side business, a PR agency and so forth, is out there actually lobbying for the free trade agreement with Colombia to work. And this is important. I don’t think a lot of people understand why this is important, I’ll get to that in a second. The Democrat Party, Pelosi on down, Dingy Harry Reid, are all standing with their constituents and the big unions and denying — and this is a huge ally of ours and it would make all kinds of great economic sense, plus it would provide a bulwark against Hugo Chavez and some of the other communist dictatorships in South America. But because of the campaign, we can’t normalize relations with Colombia. Democrats opposing free trade again — you could easily call this the Uribe or Chavez decision. If we weaken our ally of Colombia we strengthen the Chavez regime, and if we of course strengthen Colombia we weaken the Hugo Chavez regime. So the question: Do we want him to get stronger or weaker? Liberals in Congress are waiting and watching the union bosses for marching orders. All of South America is watching us for direction. Freedom or Hugo Chavez? And in this case, it’s up to the Democrat Party.

Now, while all this is going on with Mark Penn, he’s out, but not really out. This has not gotten much play. But this hit on April the 4th, and I’m flying back from New York Friday afternoon, and I’m watching TV. This didn’t get hardly any play at all. ‘A key adviser to Senator Obama’s campaign is recommending in a confidential paper that America keep between 60,000 and 80,000 troops in Iraq as of late 2010, a plan at odds with the public pledge of the Illinois senator to withdraw combat forces from Iraq within 16 months of taking office. The paper, obtained by The New York Sun, was written by Colin Kahl for the center-left Center for a New American Security.’ It’s a left-wing bunch. ‘In ‘Stay on Success: A Policy of Conditional Engagement,’ Mr. Kahl writes that through negotiations with the Iraqi government ‘the US should aim to transition to a sustainable over-watch posture (of perhaps 60,000-80,000 forces) by the end of 2010 (although the specific timelines should be the byproduct of negotiations and conditions on the ground).”

I guarantee you this is what’s going to happen, if either of these two win, we’re not pulling out of Iraq, despite what they say during their campaign. ‘This is not the first time the opinion of an adviser to the Obama campaign has differed with the candidate’s stated Iraq policy. In February, Mr. Obama’s first foreign policy tutor, Samantha Power, told BBC that the senator’s current Iraq plan would likely change based on the advice of military commanders in 2009. She has since resigned her position as a formal adviser. Mr. Kahl’s approach would call on the remaining troops in Iraq to play an ‘over-watch role.’ The term is used by Multinational Forces Iraq to describe the long-term goal of the coalition force presence in the country, Mr. Kahl said in an interview. ‘It refers to the US being out of the lead, largely in a support role. It doesn’t mean the U.S. does not do things like targeted counter-terrorism missions or continue to train and advise the Iraqis,’ he said. ‘It would not be 150,000 Americans taking the lead in counterinsurgency.” This is from the Obama campaign — and I know a lot of you liberals religiously listen to this program while never admitting it — is this clear to you? ‘Pulling out’ in the Obama campaign means leaving 60,000 to 80,000 troops on the ground in Iraq. It doesn’t mean total withdrawal.

A lot of reaction here to the Clintons’ income as reported in their tax returns. I’m not an accountant, by the way. I do not play one on the radio. But I think since some people are missing one of the real angles in the so-called Clinton income shocker, $109 million in seven years. Now, first, I don’t begrudge anybody making money. I don’t care, even those who get money thrown at them like Clinton does. I do not begrudge anybody who earns money. The $109 million, though, not the whole story. That $109 million is the money that went directly, to them, it doesn’t include the money, if any, that went to the Clinton Library and Massage Parlor. It doesn’t include any money that went to the Clinton family trust. Nor does it include any of the money that went to the Clinton Foundation. Just last year, the Clinton Foundation got contributions of $109 million, pledges of another $105 million and then some $3 million of other income, so that’s $132 million in revenues, $92 million in expenses, so you have a surplus there of $40 million. Now, the forms do not include any deferred income. Deferred income is money that’s earned and not paid in the present tax year.

Now, a lot of people are making a big deal out of the Clinton Family Foundation, because the large 10% charitable donation that’s reported in their returns went to the Clinton Family Foundation. That’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve seen something that a very small percentage of what they’ve donated to their family foundation has actually been paid out. The rules on foundations are quite simple. Anybody can set one up. And let’s use Clinton numbers, for example. Let’s say the Clintons wanted to set up a family foundation, which they did, and the year they set it up, let’s say they fund it with $10 million. They get an immediate tax deduction of $10 million in that year, but they only have to dole it out in small increments. I think you only have to give away, I’m guessing at the figure, 5% a year. And a lot of people do this. Now, they lose control of the money, don’t misunderstand, it’s not theirs when it goes to the family foundation. It’s a charitable donation. Then that foundation in turn donates to charities that the trustees are interested in. However, if you look at one of the donations from the Clinton Family Foundation, it went to a library in South Carolina, a local South Carolina library the day after Mrs. Clinton debated in the early primary there in South Carolina.

I’ll tell you what I think is going on with this presidential campaign. As much as the Clintons want to get their mitts on the country and bend it, shape it, form it, as liberals, the best they can, but if you have four more years of Clinton, or nine, whatever it is, the Clinton Foundation, the Clinton family trust, the Clinton Library and Massage Parlors, the Clinton speaking fees, can you imagine how much money they would rake in? This is a business as much as it is politics. It is Clinton, Inc., but these are the people who routinely run around and say, (doing Clinton impression) ‘We don’t need those Bush tax cuts. I never had any money before in my life, but I love telling you, because I know it bugs Limbaugh, I love telling you how rich Hillary and I have gotten. But you can see from these returns Hillary didn’t contribute diddly-squat. Ten million bucks. And I campaigned and brought in the rest. I’m the breadwinner, always have been the breadwinner. She’s adjunct. But we combine it all. The reason why we want to win, of course we want to turn the country into Moscow West, but we also want to keep earning the big bucks so we can tell people how rich we are, how we don’t need tax cuts and so forth. That way the little people out there think we love ’em, ha-ha, while we laugh at ’em as I go to bed every night in my bed and she goes to bed in hers.’