RUSH: Well, let’s see. Nicolas Sarkozy did not walk out of the G20 summit. Angela Merkel has made no news whatsoever. What was all the prepub? ‘Obama, he’s stepping into a hornet’s nest; Sarkozy’s threatening to walk out; Merkel put the kibosh on Gordon Brown’s spending plan. Wow, this is going to be a — ‘ folks, it’s already done. You’re not going to put 20 eggheads in a room and come up with thousand dollars of pages of agreements in two days. It’s already done, and Obama’s going to be the star, and that’s exactly how it’s happening right now. Greetings. Great to have you. Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network, Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. Here is President Obama saying he defied the pundits and achieved G20 success.
OBAMA: In the days leading up to the summit, some of you in the press, some commentators confused honest and open debate with irreconcilable differences. But after weeks of preparation and two days of careful negotiation, we have agreed on a series of unprecedented steps to restore growth and prevent a crisis like this from happening again.
RUSH: Now, it’s just hilarious. It was all done before he got there and the press teed him up. See, part and parcel of this is the press reporting. ‘He’s going to have problems; Sarkozy may walk out; Merkel’s put the kibosh on Brown. Oh, he’s heading into a hornet’s nest over there, this could be a disaster.’ The press teed him up, and now he’s giving his closing remarks. He overcame the pundits, he overcame the commentators, and now, after two days of careful negotiation, and weeks of preparation, weeks, sneaks that in there, we’ve agreed on a series of unprecedented steps — there’s nothing that hasn’t been done before, folks — to restore growth and prevent a crisis like this from happening again. Wanna bet? How many times in the nineties did Clinton say, ‘We fixed the business cycle problem?’ A lot of times. They haven’t fixed anything. Obama pledged to do everything he could to help the world economy revive by spending our money around the rest of the world. The fastest way to revive the world economy is to revive ours. Unfortunately, that’s not what’s happening. Here’s the final of our two sound bites from President Obama.
OBAMA: We made enormous strides in committing ourselves to comprehensive reform of a failed regulatory system. We agreed to increase transparency and capital protections for financial institutions.
RUSH: Wait a minute. Can I share with you a headline here from McClatchy newspapers? Recue that to the top. ”Treasury Won’t Disclose Bank Bailout Details’ — The massive programs designed to rescue the nation’s financial sector are operating without adequate oversight, with vague goals and limited disclosure of their details to the taxpayers who are paying for them, government watchdogs told a Senate panel Tuesday.’ This is the kind of transparency that he fought for, for us, over at the G20? Play it again.
OBAMA: We made enormous strides in committing ourselves to comprehensive reform of a failed regulatory system.
RUSH: Yeah.
OBAMA: We agreed to increase transparency and capital protections for financial institutions. We’re extending supervision to all systemically important institutions, markets, and products, including hedge funds.
RUSH: Hm-hm.
OBAMA: We’ll identify jurisdictions that fail to cooperate, including tax havens, and take action to defend our financial system.
RUSH: Stop the tape! This was all reported before this started. This is what Sarkozy wanted. This is what Sarkozy threatened to walk out over. Tax havens, hedge funds? They’re going to raise taxes, they’re gonna go out and create new tax cheats in order to get money — they’re going to spend and spend and spend and spend. This is a global socialist big-time maneuver. Here’s the rest of it.
OBAMA: We will reestablish the financial stability forum with a stronger mandate and we will reform and expand the IMF and World Bank so they are more efficient, effective, and representative.
RUSH: Okay. You’ve been warned. You have been warned. All of these global institutions just got much bigger, for all this talk that our sovereignty has not been ceded with this global regulator, I listened to that bite, and ‘we’ve done this and we’ve done that and we’ve identified jurisdictions that failed to cooperate’? Well, who’s going to determine who fails to cooperate? You’re going to need a regulator. Sounds like a global regulator to me. Meanwhile, again, the Treasury department will not disclose bank bailout details, despite Obama’s promise moments ago in London of all of this transparency coming out of the G20. There’s going to be such a giant backlash to this at some point. Trust me on this, folks. ‘Cause all these agreements, all these things that are happening, they’re going to have a practical reality. There will be practical applications of these things that will affect everybody’s lives in this country in ways that people can’t imagine yet, and it will have blowback.
Bank secrecy, I don’t know what they’re going to do. I think they’re giving themselves as many options as they can here. ‘We’re extending supervision to all systemically important institutions, markets, and products, including hedge funds. We’ll identify jurisdictions that fail to cooperate, including tax havens and take action to defend our financial system.’ He was talking about reforming and expanding the IMF and world banks so they are more efficient, not your own local bank. They’re going to fire the CEO of your local bank, or they’re going to make the CEO at your local bank quit because they’re going to put earnings limitations on your CEO.
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RUSH: I’m watching President Obama and the closing press conference he’s having at the end of the G20, and he’s stumbling along there. He doesn’t have the prompter. He’s now answering questions from the media, and he’s stumbling along, and he just really, really stumbled. I mean, just mere moments ago. I don’t know what the question was, but he was talking about what his is as president of the United States is. He’s gotta get involved in globalism, and he’s gotta make people less vulnerable to anti-American propaganda, which… That means he’s going to have to sort of change things he says now and then. Then he said one of his biggest challenges will be to convince us, citizens of the United States, that our self-interest is tied to the rest of the world’s.
He did say it. He did say it. He said, ‘to yours.’ He’s talking to a reporter. The reporter is obviously a European or a reporter not from America. And this is where he was stumbling around. He started to say something, and stopped dead in his tracks, and there was about a two- or three-second dead-air pause, and he started stuttering back into life again, and really, ‘What I — I have to — convince — I’m — well, what I. Uh, uh, huh… As president of the United States, president of the American people, I — I — I have to convince the American people that their self-interest is tied to yours,’ is what he said. Now, I don’t want to split syllables here, but our self-interest as a nation derives from our self-interest as individuals. Our self-interest…. We lead the world — or we have led the world.
The world follows our lead. This is all just getting so it’s frustrating, and it’s so dead wrong. Our self-interest is tied to who? Who? I get up every day and I gotta wait to figure out what somebody else in the world is doing before I decide whether or not what I’m doing is gonna work? Is good for me or my country, our self — what? Our self-interest? That must be alternative fuel. So we gotta get rid of oil, so somebody else can come up with a new ‘green’ technology? What is all this socialist gobbledygook? It sounds just brilliant. It sounds just unified and compassionate. It doesn’t… When you start analyzing it, you can’t… Well, you don’t want to figure it out because you know what it means. I mean, if our self-interest is tied to the world’s, that means we gotta be cut down to size.
All right, Michelle in Orland Park, Illinois. I’m glad you waited. You’re next on the Rush Limbaugh program. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Yeah, Rush. My question was: I’m just wondering what can average Americans do to stop — first, maybe ‘slow,’ I should say — the administration’s agenda? I know next year we have the midterm elections, but in the meantime, we have all these changes coming. What do we do? I mean, it’s very frustrating.
RUSH: Well, right now, there’s a great series of things called ‘tea parties’ that people are joining, and it’s a great outlaw for frustration —
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: — and it’s allowing people to show up in great numbers. In fact, some local governments are trying to cancel these things, because they’re getting so big, local governments say they may not be able to provide adequate security and this kind of thing. These tea parties, a lot of them are happening around April 15th around the country —
CALLER: Mmm.
RUSH: — and if there’s one happening near where you live, it’s always helpful to run around and get involved with people who have the same point of view you do with the same concerns because then you realize that you’re not alone.
CALLER: Hmmm.
RUSH: But right now, you have to understand, there aren’t the votes to stop any of this.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: They’re just not there. Now, there’s a story in the AP today, and I… See, I don’t believe anything coming out of the news these days, just like the pre-stories on the G20. They end up being a total tee-up for Obama. The stories talked of rifts and divisions, and, oh, it was an impossible task! Sarkozy may walk out, and now it’s a giant kumbaya. It is perhaps the most successful G-meeting any time, anywhere.
CALLER: Uh-huh.
RUSH: Now, this story from Andrew Taylor of AP: ‘President Barack Obama’s Democratic allies in Congress are taking only baby steps with his budget, putting off crucial decisions on his ambitious plans to expand health care, curb global warming and raise taxes on the wealthy.’ It says here, ‘Presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and both Bushes all got far stronger assists from Congress on their first budgets. Nonetheless, Obama is counting on votes approving budget outlines this week to give him some semblance of momentum.’ So it’s Poor Old Obama, again. Here’s the story: ‘Poor Old Obama! Why, he’s got this wonderful budget, but his own Democrats, why, they’re starting to drift off! Why, I don’t think they can go quite as far as they had hoped. Oh, it’s just horrible. Oh, it’s just sad.’ This all is setting him up for another terrific overachieving, overwhelming the odds, coming back against all opposition narrative. So they tease us with these things, that Obama is in the process of being stopped by his own party, which I don’t believe for a minute.
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RUSH: We have more Obama sound bites from his press conference. Question from the BBC’s Justin Webb. I should point out (this is not going to ingratiate me to women, and I’m making a supreme effort to ingratiate myself to the babes, but I’m sorry ladies) that the female reporters I’ve seen so far that are getting a chance to ask Obama a question are embarassing. ‘Thank you, Mr. President, for calling on me! Thank you, Mr. President! You’re wonnnnnderful! (crying) Thank you so much for calling on me.’
‘Now, now, please ask your question. That’s quite all right.’
Here’s Justin Webb of the BBC: ‘In the spirit of openness, which you are going to run your administration, could you give us an insight of areas where you came to London wanting something and didn’t get it? Where you compromised, where you gave something away to achieve an agreement?’
OBAMA: I’d rather not specify what those precise items would be —
RUSH: Because it’s everything!
OBAMA: — because this is a collective document. Now, keep in mind, I think that this kind of coordination really is historic. If you had imagined 10 years ago or 20 years ago or 30 years ago that you’d have, uh, the leaders of Germany, France, China, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, a president of the United States named ‘Obama,’ former adversaries — uhhh, in some cases former mortal enemies — negotiating this swiftly, uh, on behalf of fixing the global economy, you would have said, ‘That’s crazy,’ and yet it was happening, and it happened with relatively little, uh — rel– rel– relatively few hiccups.
RUSH: It happened before everybody got there. These things always do. But I want to go through this list. ‘Now, keep in mind…this kind of coordination really is historic. If you had imagined 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, that you’d have the leaders of Germany, France, China, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, a president of the United States named ‘Obama,’ former adversaries…’ What’s changed? Has China changed who they are? Nooo. Has Russia really changed who they are? Nnnno. Brazil? The head honcho down there said that this whole crisis is blamed on blue-eyed white people. Have they changed any? South Africa, have they changed last 10 to 20, 30 years?
Hell’s bells they’ve changed! They’ve got a communist-Marxist government, for all intents and purposes, with the ANC guys running around with a hammer and sickle! So you’ve got, okay, Germany and France. France, you know, they’re always what they are. Germany? Germany is always embarrassed of themselves because of Hitler. They always end up caving. What’s changed here? France, Germany, throw ’em out. China hasn’t changed. They’re still the ChiComs. The Russians are still the KGB. They’re still working deals with the Iranians and with the Cubans and wherever else they can find it, Venezuela. Brazil? South Africa? What’s changed is us! What’s changed is us. The question was, ‘What did you give away?’ The answer is everything!
‘Well, I don’t want to be specific about that. This is a group deal. You know, it’s remarkable here. The group got together! Major, major things,’ but he didn’t want to tell what he sacrificed. He’s asking every one of us to sacrifice but he didn’t want to specify the precise items because it’s a ‘collective document.’ We’re all the same. Here’s the next Q&A. Who’s the…? Australian reporter Emma Albaricci. ‘Mr. President, from the Australia Broadcasting Corporation. At the moment, in the US, the UK, and in Australia, executive salaries and bonuses are decided in the boardroom of the major publicly listed companies. Who will be making those decisions on salaries and bonuses as a result of the agreement you have made here today — and if it is still the boards, will they be guided by principles or legislation?’
OBAMA: Theoretically, that should be the shareholders.
RUSH: But —
OBAMA: But the way that too many corporations have operated for too long —
RUSH: Mmm-hmm?
OBAMA: — is that you have a CEO who basically selects, uh, his board —
RUSH: Yeah?
OBAMA: Uh, the board, uh, in — in a fairly cozy relationship oftentimes with the executive — uh, hires a executive compensation firm which, uh —
RUSH: Uh, uh, uh.
OBAMA: — surprisingly, tends t’think that it’s necessary, uh —
RUSH: Uh. Uh.
OBAMA: — retain the best talent to pay people 20 or $30 million a year, uh —
RUSH: Uh.
OBAMA: — and we — we get into the kinds of habits and practices that I think —
RUSH: Uh.
OBAMA: — have — have not been — have not served shareholders well. Uh, I think ultimately, uh, distort the decision making of many CEOs.
RUSH: All right, ladies and gentlemen. Did you get the answer? Do you think he answered the question, Snerdley? Do you think he answered it? (interruption) Yes, he did. Yes, he did. He most certainly did answer the question. He just trashed the whole private sector system for selecting CEO salaries. He just trashed friendly, cozy boards, chosen by the CEOs. He just trashed compensation committees. It’s not ‘compensation companies,’ by the way. It’s ‘compensation committee’ made up of the board. He just trashed all these cozy relationships. He just trashed paying people $20 million to $30 million a year. He trashed ‘the kinds of habits and practices that that has created, which have not served shareholders well, and it ultimately distorted the decision making of many CEOs.’ While he didn’t say, ‘Well, we’re gonna set salaries,’ he may as well have set it up ’cause he just said the way they’ve been running themselves is wrong, too cozy. They’re paying themselves too much. We’re going to fix it — and then the president added this.
OBAMA: Doesn’t mean that we, uhh, want, uh, the state dictating salaries. We don’t. Uh…
RUSH: Uh-huh.
OBAMA: Eh, uh, we — I strongly believe in a free market system, and as I — you know, uhhh… As I think people understand, uh, in America, at least, uh, uh, people don’t resent the rich; they want to be rich, and that’s good. Uh, but we want to make sure that there’s mechanisms in place, uh, that, uh, holds people accountable and, uh, produces results.
RUSH: Don’t resent the rich? You just sent your goon squad ACORN after the people who got bonuses that were in legislation in Connecticut that work for AIG. Don’t resent the rich? Your whole career has been built on making people resent the rich. I should say ‘his whole career’ has been. ‘It doesn’t mean we want the state dictating salaries’? Better tell Geithner. ‘I strongly believe in a free market system’? That just cannot be true, not with what he’s doing. ‘And I think people understand in America, at least people don’t resent the rich, they want to be rich.’ Yeah, but he’s going to fix that. The minute you make 250 grand a year you can kiss being rich good-bye!
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RUSH: I want to do a little flashback here. I want to read a small little excerpt from the book ‘Dreams from My Father,’ by Barack Obama, a man who just said that he loves the free market. Here’s the excerpt: ‘Eventually a consulting house to multinational corporations agreed to hire me as a research assistant. Like a spy behind enemy lines, I arrived every day at my mid-Manhattan office and sat at my computer terminal, checking the Reuters machine that blinked bright emerald messages from across the globe. As far as I could tell I was the only black man in the company, a source of shame for me but a source of considerable pride for the company’s secretarial pool. They treated me like a son, those black ladies; they told me how they expected me to run the company one day.’ This guy is no different than your average street liberal when it comes to corporations. The multinationals, the corporations. They are the evil and he is no friend of the free market.
All right. Here’s the question and answer I was talking about when Obama said our self-interest is linked to everybody else. The question comes from a reporter from China TV: ‘Politics is very local even though talking global solution as indicated by your recent preference over American journalists and British, which is okay. How can you make sure that you will do whatever you can so that bad local politics,’ meaning American, ‘will not trump or negatively affect good international economics? Thank you, Mr. President.’
OBAMA: I’m the president of the United States. I’m — I’m not the president of China. I’m not the president of, uh, Japan. I’m not the president of, uh, of the other participants here. And so I have a direct responsibility to my constituents, uh, to make their lives better.
RUSH: When you gonna start?
OBAMA: It is also my responsibility to, uh, to lead America into recognizing that its interests, its fate is tied up with the larger world’s, that unless we are concerned about the education of all children and not just our children, not only may we be depriving ourselves of the next great scientist who’s going to find the next new energy source that saves the planet, but, uh, we also may make people around the world much more vulnerable to anti-American propaganda. So, uh, so if I’m effective as — as America’s president right now, part of that effectiveness involves holding, uh, providing Americans insight into how their self-interest is tied up with yours. And, uh, and that’s an ongoing project.
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RUSH: Folks, we’re going to prevail over this. The country’s too strong and there are still too many of us left. So while all this may be disconcerting, we’re going to beat it back.