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Rush Limbaugh

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RUSH: Folks, I’m going to tell you something else about this, and I’m dead serious. This is not to defend Joe Barton and it’s certainly not to defend British Petroleum. It’s to stand up for principles and the American way. What BP did to its stockholders here by agreeing under duress to fork over $20 billion is acting beyond their authority as a corporation. The shareholders, if they want — and a lot of them are British and American retirees — they have the right to sue BP management for caving to the White House. I’m not predicting a lawsuit, but I won’t be surprised if there is one down the road. But let me tell you the real reason that Barton can’t be allowed to call this shakedown what it is. I’m not going to back off. There’s no question it was a shakedown. The reason Barton cannot be allowed to call this a shakedown is because that goes against one of the fundamental tenets of Marxism and Alinsky and that is: He who controls the language controlled the argument.

So any time somebody on our side of the aisle happens to properly and accurately characterize these people, they’ve gotta be called on it — they’ve gotta be creamed, they have to be discredited, they have to be embarrassed and humiliated — because the only way that leftism and Marxism, Alinsky, the only way they can prosper is if they control the language. That’s why the media being in bed with these people is so crucial. It is exactly why there is no criticism of Obama at all for watching baseball, watching soccer, playing golf, at the same time Tony Hayward is on a yacht. The template is: ‘Hayward, BP: bad, horrible, villain, devil, El Diablo. Obama: Good angelic, cares, wants people to be happy,’ all this gorgeous rot. So you can’t let the truth out there. Controlling the language for liberals is to perpetuate lies. Now, everybody happens to love this shakedown. This is one of the problems.

You know, I saw some polling data out there that explains why everybody in politics and in media is jumping on BP, and that is: It’s become the number one issue in the minds of the American people. Fifty-nine percent of the American people think the most important thing going on out there is the oil spill and that BP’s responsible for it. You know where the economy shows up in this poll right now? 4%. Four percent of the American people think the economy is a big issue right now, with American unemployment at 10%. That’s why Obama loves this. This is the greatest distraction to the destruction of the private sector (that he is the author of) that you can imagine. That’s why he doesn’t want a solution here. That’s why it’s politically fine to go after Joe Barton. Everybody happens to love this shakedown. Well over the half the American people love the shakedown. They think it’s a great thing.

If it was a shakedown, even better! They want thuggery directed to corporations. There has been 50 years of anti-corporate lingo coming from the American left. The question is: Will they love the next shakedown and the one after that? Presidents are just like small children. They got away with something, they keep doing it. If you can take over General Motors and Chrysler, if you can tell Wall Street how to behave, where does it end? So far we have Joe Wilson — remember him? ‘You lie!’ They had to go destroy him and he was telling the truth. Now we got Joe Barton who’s saying, essentially, ‘You extort!’ The only two guys who would stand and vocalize what the rest of them are thinking. Everybody criticizing Barton’s thinking the same thing. Now, I’ve done a little research. I’ve also found that in the Republican leadership Barton’s never been that popular a guy anyway.

Last week on Thursday night-Friday, a lot of people just stunned when the House Republican leadership just popped up and said to Barton, ‘You apologize! You retract that. That’s horrible. We don’t agree with this. We don’t stand by that,’ and that told me something. I said, ‘Okay, I gotta find out what the polling data on this is,’ and that’s when I found out 59-60% of the American people think this BP oil spill is the biggest problem, that BP’s to blame for it, which is totally understandable. I still say to you, I got no brief for BP. I’m not trying to hold them up as heroes, not trying to defend what they’re doing or have done in any way, shape, manner, or form. I’m just telling you the people that you think are out there working hard to stop this are not doing diddly-squat. They’re prolonging it, using it as a political tool. They’re playing golf, they’re watching soccer, and they’re watching baseball. Here’s the Washington Post: ‘As midterm elections loom, Democrats zero in on a GOP apology to BP.’ Audio sound bites. Here’s a montage yesterday and this morning of a bunch of State-Controlled Media people going after the yacht race that Tony Hayward’s in while ignoring Obama.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: (music) What was CEO Tony Hayward thinking when he set sail this weekend on his private yacht?

BOB SCHIEFFER: (B-roll/music) While the oil keeps on gushing, Tony Hayward, the CEO of BP, took a break and went yachting in cleaner waters off the coast of England.

DAVID GREGORY: After Tony Hayward turned in a poor performance on Capitol Hill, he appears to have made matters worse by attending a yacht race.

KATIE COURIC: (outdoor noise) …Tony Hayward’s participation in that yacht race.

JEREMY HUBBARD: …enjoying a yacht race off the coast of England Saturday while oil spill relief workers sweated it out.

RUSS MITCHELL: …Hayward’s day on his yacht.

JAKE TAPPER: …BP’s CEO Tony Hayward at a yacht race.

MATT LAUER: Its embattled CEO comes under renewed fire this time for attending a glamorous yacht race.

ANNE THOMPSON: (outdoor noise) The CEO’s 52-foot yacht came in fourth.

RUSH: Yeah, well, no mention there of Obama on the golf course. No mention. This is controlling the language, controlling the debate, controlling what everybody thinks about this. No mention of Obama watching soccer, three hours watching baseball. Yesterday on This Week on ABC, fill-in host Jake Tapper talked to Rahm Emanuel about whom everybody’s making a big deal his leaving in December. They all leave after the first two years, a lot of chiefs of staffs do. Nevertheless, Jake Tapper said, ‘Before we start the questions, I’m interested in your reaction to photographs from Saturday: BP CEO, Tony Hayward, in a yacht race off the Isle of Wight in the clean waters off southern England. What goes through your mind when you see those pictures?’

EMANUEL: We can all conclude that Tony Hayward is not going to have a second career in PR consulting. This has just been part of a long line of PR gaffes and mistakes. This is a mistake, and it’s a big mistake. Like others he’s done in a sense when he said himself (garbled), he’s got his life back. Well, that’s… What’s more important is do people down there in that area have their life back? Do they have their livelihood back?

RUSH: So you can see the one-sided effort here to portray BP as heartless and unconcerned while our own president was out there playing golf — and let’s not forget. Let’s not forget that FDR was on the presidential yacht throughout the Great Depression, throughout World War II. FDR used to go out on that yacht all the time. And of course Rahm Emanuel, master of public relations, right? ‘A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.’ Here’s more — and if this doesn’t define shakedown, you tell me what does. Jake Tapper said, ‘Are you satisfied with what BP has done so far in terms of capping the well?’

EMANUEL: BP originally was going to do one relief well. We forced them to do a second relief well. They weren’t going to do that. BP originally had a plan on — on capturing, uh, a certain amount of oil. We forced that, as you know, today’s reports they’re up to 25,000. They originally weren’t thinking about $20 billion and they originally weren’t thinking about an escrow account and forcing them to do that. There are certain things that they had to be pushed — not certain things, a lot of things that they had to be pushed — to do.

RUSH: They were pushed. What the hell are we talking about here? See, words mean things, folks. I’m a stickler for words. Words are my business, and I study and marvel at the way people use them to manipulate, to inspire, to motivate, or to mischaracterize. And Rahm Emanuel, ‘Oh, yeah, they weren’t going to do anything right ’til we told ’em. They weren’t going to do a thing. One relief well! We told ’em they had to drill two.’ Who in your crowd, Rahm, knows about relief wells? ‘They weren’t going to spend enough money. We told them they had to do spend more. That is a down payment. We told ’em they had to…’ You told ’em? We forced BP to make the slush fund? We don’t know what they were going to do without us? Does this not essentially say that it was a shakedown? Jake Tapper again, to Emanuel: ‘Congressman Barton later apologized for his comments after some pressure from House Republican leaders, but the Svengali of the president’s political arm, David Plouffe, has called for him to step down as ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Do you agree with that?’

EMANUEL: You can say it’s a political gift for us, and it is. But it’s dangerous for the American people. Because while the ranking Republican who would have oversight in the energy industry and if the Republicans were the majority would have actual the gavel and the chairmanship, that’s not a political gaffe. Those are prepared remarks. That is a philosophy. What Joe Barton did is remind the American people in case they forgot: This is how the Republicans would govern.

RUSH: Yeah, Republicans are dangerous. You can’t let them back in charge. Rahm Emanuel, the essence of innocence, clean and pure as the wind-driven snow, only motivated by a big heart and compassion and love for all.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Daniel in Tyler, Texas, 20 years old. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, I am an accounting major at the University of Texas at Austin (unintelligible), and thanks for having me on.

RUSH: You bet, sir. Glad to have you here.

CALLER: Well, I just wanted to say something about Barton and the whole shakedown thing. I mean, of course he’s calling it what it is, but the thing I wanted to say was I’m a free market conservative, you know, I voted Republican in almost every election, but I’m just trying to, you know, for the past few years I’ve been fed up with the Republican Party because I just feel like they have no spine. And I just wish that they would have given Barton a little support for calling it what it is. And another thing, I just don’t get why he apologized for what he said because the people in his district in Texas wouldn’t care what he said, you know, they probably support him a hundred percent.

RUSH: Okay. Now, you believe all this, and a lot of other people believe all this, so why do you think he did it? Why do you think the Republicans jumped on him to apologize or to retract the apology, why do you think he did it?

CALLER: You know, I think they are walking on thin ice right now and he thinks they’re still under the big tent philosophy, they’re trying not to scare people away —

RUSH: Well, they’re not walking on thin ice. They think they’re walking on thin ice. But they’re not walking on thin ice. There are a number of factors here. Look, I can only speculate and guess as a highly trained broadcast specialist as well as a well honed political analyst. We’re talking about Republicans inside the Beltway. All you have to do is look at the polling data and the media coverage and find out what they’re going to do. This is not an issue that Republicans want to go to the mattresses on regarding the election. The bottom line is, as I mentioned mere moments ago, that the vast majority of the American people like the shakedown. That’s all you have to know. Sixty percent of the American people are just hacked off at BP like you can’t believe. This issue is the number one issue on people’s minds. The economy is now number one to three to four percent of the people. And so the Republicans do not want to appear to be on the wrong side of this. This to them is not an issue that is a teachable moment. This is something. ‘Let’s not even be heard on this. Let’s just slither away under the rock here and we’ll let Joe Barton get eaten by the Democrat lizards on this and we’ll protect ourselves.’ I mean, this is politics, and it’s one of many reasons why true believers have so much trouble with politics. It’s just that simple and no more complicated than that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It’s real simple, folks. It’s all about the Republicans not wanting to give the Democrat National Committee a cheap campaign ad featuring Barton and so forth. Unfortunately, the ill-informed would buy the ad, buy the whole premise. It angers people and frustrates people, especially the young who are in this for the purity of conservatism and they believe elected Republicans are in the same thing. This is one of the problems young people have, on both sides with politics, is that the idealism they attach to it is nowhere near the reality of the people who practice the so-called art of politics.

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