RUSH: This is from July 6. This is our old buddy Tammy May from Pleasant Gap, Pennsylvania. Bob Casey, Senator from Pennsylvania, was on the floor of the Senate, and C-SPAN, was covering this. This is during Ben Bernanke’s delivery of the Semiannual Monetary Policy Report before the Banking Committee, and this is what Senator Bob Casey said about one of his constituents.
CASEY: Tammy May, a single mother of two in Pleasant Gap, Pennsylvania, probably said it best in just one line. I’m quoting here. She’s a single mother of two. Quote, ‘Pretty much we have reprioritized. The house payment is first, then day care, then we worry about gas, then food,’ unquote. In light of that economic misery that I’ve just highlighted, how do we deal with this question of what is a recession and what it isn’t; and do we need some new definitions and some new terminology to better define what’s happening to real families and real people?
RUSH: Asking this question of Bernanke, who is the fed chief, and he’s quoting from a newspaper story of the lovely and gracious Tammy May, the single mother of two, who has reprioritized. Now, I heard about this from just a friend of mine who sent me a note, a very sketchy note, did not explain any of the details, but I assume from the note that Casey had read a letter from a constituent. So that is what we went with. Then when I later found out during the show, ‘No, no, no. She didn’t send a letter to Casey. It was in a newspaper story that Casey found.’ I said, ‘Okay, now, we got it right.’ The point is that we then discussed the reprioritizing of Tammy May, and I did raise questions. She put food last; she put housing first. Now, it turns out she did not write a letter to the editor of the newspaper. She was quoted in a story. Well, this is July 6 this happened.
Last Friday, an info babe reporterette from the newspaper, the Central Daily Times, Anne Danahy (she wrote the original article, too) called the EIB offices at the EIB Building in New York and wanted to talk to me about this, from July 6 to July, whatever it was, 25th, 26th, whatever Friday was. I was on the way out. I didn’t have a chance to speak to her, and I knew it didn’t matter. It’s the Drive-By Media, local Drive-Bys. So here is the story that ran yesterday in the Central Daily Times, or Centre Daily Times by Anne Danahy: ‘Limbaugh Quotes Local Woman, Misrepresents Her Comments — When a mother of two in Pleasant Gap agreed to talk to a reporter about an article on rising costs, she didn’t know her comments would end up on the Rush Limbaugh show. Or that they would be misrepresented.
‘Tammy May was quoted in an article that appeared in the Centre Daily Times July 6. She talked about how she is trying to handle the rising prices of gas and food along with the cost of housing and child care. US Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., saw the article, and read May’s comments aloud during a July 15 hearing with Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke. From there it made its way onto Limbaug’s [sic] syndicated radio show. While Casey said he was quoting from a CDT article, Limbaugh initially said May’s comments were made in a letter she wrote to Casey…’ This is what I was originally told and we were at the seat of our pants with this ’cause the point was it didn’t matter, you know, how Casey ended up with this, whether she had written it or whether she was in a news story and we didn’t focus on this. We focused on what she actually said.
It was brought to our attention not by the Centre Daily Times, but rather by Senator Casey; and Senator Casey did quote her accurately, however and wherever it appeared. But what this story is about is correcting the errors that were made by me because we were on the fly here and didn’t have a chance to check out what we thought were not the unimportant details. What she said was what’s unimportant. So I said, in fact, May didn’t write a letter. ‘She was contacted by a reporter, and in response to the reporter’s questions said she is cutting corners where possible. ‘Pretty much we have reprioritized,’ May said. ‘The house payment is first, then day care, then we worry about gas, then food.’ Limbaugh jumped on that. ‘This constituent of Bob Casey’s put food last on her list of new priorities,’ Limbaugh said, according to the transcript.
‘While May is trying to save money, she didn’t say she isn’t budgeting enough for food. Likewise, she wasn’t asking Casey for help, as Limbaugh suggested. He also suggested she wrote the letter to tell others how to reorder their priorities.’ Well, what does ‘we need to reorder our priorities’ mean? What is this, we need to reorder our priorities? I don’t care if she said it in a letter to the editor or as a quote talking to a Drive-By info babe. ‘Limbaugh’s chief of staff, Kit Carson in New York, said while they regret the improper sourcing of the information, ‘our discussion of the issues, values and politics surrounding the story is something that he stands by,” and I do. ‘When asked about it May said, ‘It’s just a shame that he took that and made it into something it’s really not. He doesn’t even know me.”
Now, look. Their grievance, I’m telling you, their grievance here is with Casey because Casey is the one who read her comments to the Federal Reserve chief: ‘We need to reprioritize. Pretty much we have reprioritized, the house payment is first then day care,’ and Bob Casey was using her comment to try to convince Bernanke and anybody else who was listening just exactly how rotten the US economy is, how hopeless and horrible it is. A single mother with two is having to put food last, that was his point.’ And using people is something the Democrat party has excelled at. Usually they parade ’em up to the Senate or House of Representatives as visual and personal props.