RUSH: No, no, no, no, the Top Kill method is simply lower a pipe down to the leak and they simply flood the thing with mud and sludge and a bunch of other things, whole bunch of garbage there just to plug the leak. The Top Kill version, that’s what BP is going to try next. Meanwhile, Obama says, ‘Plug the hole.’ So just like when Obama before his inauguration issued a statement and said that the Georgians and the Russians should stop firing, should be a ceasefire, and then they did, it was Tim Kaine, the governor of Virginia who went out there and said, ‘See?’ All Obama had to do was speak, and hostilities ended. So what will happen if the Top Kill method works? The Democrats will say, ‘See, Obama said plug the hole, and BP had never thought of that, BP had never thought about plugging the hole. It was Obama’s direction and his leadership to plug the hole that led BP to come up with the Top Kill method that stopped the leak. He’s been on the job since day one. Nobody is more upset than he’s been about this.’
Great to have you here, folks. Rush Limbaugh back in action, great to be back with you, by the way. Telephone number is 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.
Lots of other stuff in the news today, but I want to stick with sound bites from the oil spill just to illustrate the humor and the folly of this. Last Monday in Galliano, Louisiana, at a press conference, here’s the secretary of the interior, Ken Salazar.
RUSH: There you have it. We’re gonna really fix this. We’re going to keep our boot on the neck of BP ’til they get this fixed, ’til the job gets done. They’re going to be held accountable, which, at the end of the day, is all that matters to the left. Last Sunday afternoon in Houston, after visiting BP’s Houston headquarters, Salazar held a press conference and during the Q&A a reporter said, ‘Mr. Secretary, is there a scenario where the US government’s going to take over this cleanup effort instead of leaving it to BP? When will the US government take over?’
SALAZAR: With respect to the rest of the responses, including keeping the oil from coming near shore and onshore and dealing with those ecological values, BP, again, is the responsible party and is on the hook for doing everything that needs to happen. If we find that they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, we’ll push them out of the way, appropriately, and we’ll move forward to make sure that everything is being done to protect the people of the Gulf Coast, the ecological values of the Gulf Coast, and the values of the American people.
RUSH: The values of the American people? What the hell does that have to do with anything? The values of the American people? Okay, so Ken Salazar with his cowboy hat from Colorado says here, ‘If we find they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, we’re just gonna push ’em out of the way, appropriately, and we’ll move forward to make sure that everything is being done.’ Apparently, according to you guys, they don’t know what they’re doing for six weeks now. You know, we’ll push ’em out of the way, we’ll protect the values of the American people. Just a bunch of wordsmiths. All they have is a paper playbook with things to say in time of crisis, to shift blame while making themselves sound like the end-all to all problems. Last Monday in Washington, White House press briefing, US Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen spoke about the oil disaster. During the Q&A a reporter says, ‘Is there to this point, thought of whether the government can do more, can it push BP out of the way like Salazar said if it feels like the company’s not doing their job? What’s your response to that?’
ALLEN: Well, to push BP out of the way would raise the question, ‘To replace them with what?’
REPORTER: Do you think that this government right now is doing the best it can?
ALLEN: I’ve been involved with the technical decisions made, especially in relation to the deal with the leak, and they are pressing ahead, we’re overseeing them, they are exhausting every technical means possible to deal with that leak.
RUSH: So Salazar said if they don’t get it done we’ll just push ’em out of the way and we’ll bring in people with the appropriate action to get it done. Coast Guard says, ‘Replace them with what?’ He obviously was not aware of what Salazar had said at BP headquarters in Houston. Sunday morning, CBS Slay the Nation, Bob Schieffer talked to Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary: ‘Do you think this could be your administration’s Katrina?’
GIBBS: Well, I think if you look back at what happened in Katrina, the government wasn’t there to respond to what was happening. That, quite frankly, was the problem, even tracking the hurricane for days and knowing fairly precisely where it was going to hit. I think the difference in this case is we were there immediately, we have been there ever since.
RUSH: It’s an absolute lie, it is an abject lie. They’re still not there. The government did get there in the case of Katrina. They did get there as quickly as they could and the local people told them to get out. Blanco said get outta here, I don’t want you guys getting credit for this, I’m a Democrat governor. School Bus Nagin was running around just beside himself here trying to explain why the buses weren’t used. The difference here is we were there immediately. They were not there immediately. And when they were there they sent SWAT team members, and they sent Salazar and Carol Browner to gaze out into the Gulf of Mexico to look and survey the problem. One of the head guys was vacationing in the Grand Canyon and did not come off vacation. Obama is going on vacation for the second time since the oil spill happened and is reluctantly going to stop in down there on his way to vacation for the Memorial Day weekend and give it a gander. Douglas Brinkley, who was on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 120 last night, he’s now at Rice University, used to be in New Orleans, but Doug Brinkley is now a professor of history at Rice University. Anderson Cooper says, ‘You have the secretary of the interior, Ken Salazar, saying we’re putting the boot on BP’s neck. It doesn’t seem like there’s much pressure being applied to that boot if there’s any at all.’
RUSH: Wait a minute. Who is famous for using the bullhorn? Yeah, it’s Bush, not Sharpton. George Bush at Ground Zero at 9/11, the bullhorn moment. The idiot, the dunce, the cowboy, all of these insulting things that were said about Bush and here’s Doug Brinkley, ‘You know Obama is sickened by this.’ How do you know that, Doug? Does he act sickened by it? Or does he see an opportunity here to blame Big Oil, to stop offshore drilling, and to once again point the fingers at capitalism for being greedy and unkind, selfish, and so forth. Is he really sickened by it? We need a bullhorn moment? We need a leader who’s emotive? You know Obama’s got it in him, we just know he’s got it in him, why doesn’t he show up? Maybe that’s not who he is, Doug. David ‘Rodham’ Gergen, Anderson Cooper 190. Cooper said, ‘It’s sort of fascinating, David, for a president who watched Katrina and saw the failures of the Bush administration, failures at the state and local level, for a president who saw that and was very critical of it, to now find himself in a situation in which he’s being criticized for the lack of response or lack of coordination is kind of stunning.’
GERGEN: The critics who are saying this is sort of a coming Katrina in slow motion have a point. I’m very sympathetic with what the administration has — this is tough, it’s very tough. And President Obama clearly cares and we have to appreciate that. But it’s not enough simply to care; you’ve gotta take charge. And we’ve reached that moment in this crisis when I think he has to take charge.
RUSH: He clearly cares. We know he’s sickened by all this. He clearly cares. He doesn’t act like he’s caring about it much. He doesn’t act like he’s sickened. If anything, he sounds angry that he is being distracted by this. As president, you sit there and say, how is this gonna get fixed? He wants it fixed so he can move on with the rest of his destructive domestic agenda. This is all politically inconvenient and we’ve reached the moment in crisis, gotta take charge. He’s not a take-charge guy, David. He’s an organizer and an agitator. He’s not a leader.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Just to revisit the Boston Globe editorial that I mentioned in the opening segment, a couple paragraphs here: ‘Plan B should mean more than blaming the Bush administration… But the exemptions from environmental regulations that were granted to BP happened on Obama’s watch, and are still occurring. … Above all, it calls for leadership on behalf of the public interest. That is Obama’s job.’ So not even the Boston Globe (terribly sympathetic) is buying the administration line on this. Even his supporters say, ‘Hey, look, you can’t keep blaming Bush for this when you guys were gonna award BP as a model for safety for oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.’ You think he’s not totally oriented toward who gets credit for things, and you think it’s doubtful that he would really deny permits to Bobby Jindal because Bobby Jindal’s a Republican? Don’t doubt me on this. Look, it’s time everybody woke up and realized just who this man is, what it is that animates him and where he’s taking this country. Because it’s frightening. It’s very disturbing.
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RUSH: I’ll tell you what, the attention on Obama on this oil spill is intensifying. This morning on CNN, this is Florida Democrat Senator Bill Nelson.
NELSON: If this thing is not fixed today, I think the president doesn’t have any choice — and he’d better go in completely take over, perhaps with the military in charge. Not because the military can do this but the military has the apparatus, the organization by which it can bring together the civilian agencies of government and to get this thing done.
RUSH: What? In? The? World? The military? He admits the military, ‘Not because the military can do this but the military has the apparatus, the organization by which it can bring together the civilian agencies of government and to get this thing done’? This is a Democrat Senator? The military to work with civilian agencies of government? So if this thing isn’t fixed today, if this Top Kill method doesn’t work, then Senator Bill Nelson wants Obama in there, to go in there and completely take over. Senator, it isn’t going to happen. Sad to say, Mr. Obama hasn’t slightest clue what to do here.
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RUSH: Memphis, this is Dan, your turn on the EIB Network. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Good afternoon, Rush, mega dittos from the home of Elvis and the best barbecue in the country.
RUSH: Where is the best barbecue in Memphis?
CALLER: Downtown at the Rendezvous.
RUSH: Downtown at the Rendezvous.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Cool. Okay.
CALLER: All right. We’re missing the big picture here, to quote Rahm Emanuel, never waste a good crisis.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: You know, going on vacation during oil spill and his lack of leadership in this scenario.
RUSH: Hmm.
CALLER: I think it’s deliberate. I think the administration wants, subconsciously, this environmentalist disaster —
RUSH: Subconsciously?
CALLER: — upon the coast so that, forget BP, he’s wanting to clamp down on the entire energy industry, you know, and demonize oil, coal, nuclear, what have you, and he’s going to use this as leverage with all this stuff floating ashore to get some bills pushed through Congress to tighten up regulations even further —
RUSH: Right. Demonize the private sector at the same time in its entirety. Yeah, I happen to think, I told people last week, they don’t mind this disaster. This is actually something that they can use. This is an opportunity for them. All it took for me to come to that conclusion was when I saw Democrats criticizing Bobby Jindal. Bobby Jindal had an idea. He wanted to get a federal permit to start building some barrier islands per se to soak up the oil before the oil got to the actual Louisiana shoreline. And the Democrats came out and said, ‘Bobby, Governor Jindal, you believe in small government, you can’t make a suggestion like that. An idea like that coming from you has no validity because that would take government to do it.’ So if these people are willing to say, ‘No, Governor Jindal, you can’t do it because you don’t have the bona fides because you believe in limited,’ well, that’s all I needed to hear. These guys were willing to use anything and everything about this to further a political agenda. And there’s no question that many leftists see in this a golden opportunity to do so.
Everything is political. They want the disaster. Folks, I know this is a tough thing for some of you to believe and hear because we don’t think of presidents this way, but we’ve got one now and an entire administration who do think this way, that everything that happens must be seen through the prism of, ‘Is it a political opportunity or is it a political liability?’ And if you doubt this, it’s been six weeks. We now have Democrat commentators all suggesting that we know President Obama cares but he’s going to have to do something to show it. He’s going to have to use a little emotion out there. The cool, calm Obama is not what we want. Now, these are not things that you can fake. If you care about something, you care about it. If it really angers you, you get angry about it. When you’re a leader and things like this happen and you think people are being lackadaisical in fixing it, then you step in, and you see to it that everybody heels to. There hasn’t been any of that. There’s been the usual political posturing.
We’ve had Salazar saying, ‘We’re gonna keep our boot tight on BP’s neck,’ and we’ve had all the czars sent down there, we’ve had all the inspectors, we’ve had the town hall — well, we haven’t a town hall meeting but we’ve had government bureaucracies that have met to discuss the problem. There hasn’t been any action. Occasionally there’s been some harsh words of criticism aimed at British Petroleum, but about all we got from Obama is, ‘Plug the hole, I’m tired of this, I’m not going to take it anymore.’ Look, it’s not easy to say these kinds of things, but it is what it is. Obvious is obvious. Human emotion is human emotion. When it’s not there, it’s not there. It’s not that it’s being quelled. It’s not that it is being restrained. It’s not there. We don’t have a leader. Obama’s not a leader. He’s an exploiter. He creates problems. He exacerbates them for the express purpose of taking advantage of them, pure and simple, folks.
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RUSH: Chris in Atlanta, welcome to the EIB Network, sir.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. Good afternoon. How you doing today?
RUSH: Very well, sir. Thank you.
CALLER: From a displaced Montanan. Real quick, one of the things that I notice, and it kind of carries on with what you say about, you know, that words have meaning, is, you know, sometimes it’s not so much what people say but how they say it. And if you look at Obama’s words ‘how is this problem going to be solved,’ you know, that’s the passive voice. That’s how an observer talks.
RUSH: Right. Exactly.
CALLER: Somebody who’s actively involved in solving a problem says, ‘What is the solution,’ or ‘What do we do to fix that,’ and so I’m always very wary whenever I hear somebody speaking in the passive voice because that’s somebody outside looking in that will throw rocks or be one to stir up trouble but not really one to get in there and take the risks of making decisions and trying to fix that.
RUSH: Ed, grab audio sound bite number three. I want the audience, Chris, to hear what you’re talking about, the passive voice, great observation, thanks very much. This was last night in San Francisco at a fundraiser for Barbara Boxer at the Getty home. The Getty family is founded by Big Oil. I mean the Getty family is Big Oil. And there’s Obama out fundraising, and he was talking about the oil spill, and as Chris says here, it’s the passive voice.
RUSH: Passive voice. Good way to describe it. (imitating Obama) ‘Like every president sitting there, how does this get solved, who’s going to do this, who’s gonna fix this, how’s this get solved?’ Not how am I going to solve this, but how is this gonna get fixed? You don’t have a leader here. There are no leadership characteristics for Obama. He’s an agitator/organizer. What he does is create power for others to use, like the SEIU storming the front yard of a Bank of America executive. There’s a couple of families more upset than Obama is about this. Very true.
Steve in Orange, California, welcome, sir, to the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Can you hear me okay?
RUSH: I hear you fine. Thank you.
CALLER: My favorite sound bite I’ve ever heard in the past 21 years on the EIB is that James Carville sound bite as he’s complaining about the lack of response by the big government that he claims to love and that he supports and campaigns for, and I think we might be hearing our future in that sound bite.
RUSH: Let’s play audio sound bite number six, and we had this in the first hour. This is Good Morning America today, and Carville talking to Stephanopoulos.
CARVILLE: The political stupidity of this is just unbelievable. Here you have a situation where you had 11 hardworking people blown up as a result of corporate malfeasance and maybe criminal negligence, as a result of inept bureaucrats, and the president doesn’t get down here in the middle of this. This thing should be… His approval rating should be up seven points right now if he’da come down. I have no idea of why they didn’t seize this thing. I have no idea of why their attitude was so hands-offie here. It’s just unbelievable. I hope he sees it now.
RUSH: He went on to say, ‘Man, you gotta get down here, take control of this, put somebody in charge of this thing, get this thing moving, we’re about to die down here.’ That was Carville today. It’s interesting when these disasters happen in your own backyard, how your perspective changes.