RUSH: Hey, folks, did you see that the Obama campaign has set out debate talking points already, even before the debate. I myself have the debate talking points right here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers that the Obama campaign sent out. It’s amazing when you read these talking points. They sound exactly like what the Drive-Bys have been saying for the last month anyway. (sound of crumbling papers) This is what I think of the Obama debate talking points. Great to have you with us, Rush Limbaugh, from the EIB Network. 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program, e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

Warning, ladies and gentlemen, I woke up in the middle of the night and I said, ‘Uh-oh, I’m coming down with something.’ Now, my voice has been hoarse for the past couple of days. I have one of these little hacking coughs in the upper respiratory tract and I have felt sleepy and watery eyes all day long. When that happens, you start thinking flu. But it’s gotten somewhat better. I grabbed a couple of Zicams since this all happened, I swabbed my nose and we will see. Every time I’ve tried this and it’s been a cold, Zicam has gotten rid of it. We will see. (interruption) Well, that’s not a bad idea because I have put parts of my body, such as hands and stuff, on surfaces that you guys use. It wouldn’t hurt for you guys to try some Zicam, either.

Where do we start today? The stock market is down about 300 points. Everybody’s puzzled by this. I am not puzzled by this at all. The market’s not going to turn bullish until we have some across the board tax cuts passed. It’s the Treasury secretary and czar who have the responsibility to take care of this and promote economic growth. You cannot consume when you don’t have disposable income. This applies to business; this applies to people. This bailout, everybody knows now, was shortsighted. It ignored the fuel that the economy requires, and that’s disposable income. So I guess we have to wait until we get a tax-cutting Treasury secretary. His job is to promote economic growth. I’ve got the job description of the Treasury secretary right here on the bailout which I’ve shared with you on a couple of occasions. We also know that if Obama wins the election we’re not going to get any kind of a tax cut whatsoever, we’re going to get Robin Hood. We need to spread the wealth around, Obama says.

Under section 2 of the bailout act, purposes of the act are, one, ‘to immediately provide authority and facilities that the secretary of the Treasury can use to restore liquidity and stability to the financial system of the US, and, two, to ensure that such authority and such facilities are used in a manner that, A, protects home values, college funds, retirement accounts, and life savings. B, preserves home ownership and promotes jobs and economic growth.’ Well, I’m sorry, massive government debt leading to inflation is not going to promote jobs and economic growth. Tax cuts do that. Do you realize the roll we have been on the last eight years economically because of Bush’s tax cuts? And I’ve got a story here in the Stack today, Jerry Jones got his massive new $1.1 billion stadium down there in Arlington, Texas, they can’t find anybody to pay the freight for the naming rights. They’re saying that this is part of the economic slowdown, corporate America having trouble coughing up the money for naming rights, the Jerry Jones Cowboy stadium. They’ll find somebody at some point because they’ll come to an agreement on a price. About the only guy in the country that’s not in debt and has the money to pay for the naming rights would be me.

That would be cool. Limbaugh Stadium in Arlington, Texas. I don’t think they’d go for it even though I know Jerry Jones, he’s a good guy. But, look, this is very simple. If the Treasury secretary is going to preserve home ownership and promote jobs and economic growth, you don’t do that by bailing out everybody but consumers. You don’t do that by bailing out the dregs of society. You don’t do that by bailing out the people that have been irresponsible in managing their own money. Also, it says here ‘maximizes overall returns of the taxpayers of the United States and provides public accountability for the exercise of such authority.’ Well, very, very simple. They’re having debate celebrations at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, the debate there tonight, and get this description from Channel 2 in New York. ‘The entire campus is buzzing. Historical reenactments were held 24 hours before Senators McCain and Obama take the stage. There was Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, a mock slavery auction, women’s rights activists and civil rights speakers all intended to engage debate. They’re all excited at Hofstra because there are going to be 3,100 journalists there. They actually held a mock slavery auction yesterday at Hofstra in Hempstead, New York. No wonder the New York Jets got outta there and moved headquarters over to Florham Park in New Jersey.

The latest Zogby poll is out, ladies and gentlemen, and, by the way, there’s a spread here. The New York Times/CBS poll, what is it, 14? There’s another poll at 11. Investor’s Business Daily is at three. So what you do, if you want to get a decent representation, you take the top and the bottom, you throw ’em out, and then you average what’s left. And when you do that you come up with Obama by six or by seven. Now, Zogby, which is the company that got the 2004 presidential race the closest, now has it Obama 48, McCain 42. He still leads McCain by 48 to 44, an advantage of 3.8 percentage points. This comes after leading by 6.2 points the day before. So Obama has dropped two points in Zogby in one day in the tracking. But it’s even more interesting than that if you go to the Zogby internals. Obama lost ground among independents and now leads McCain by just eight points, 44 to 36 in independents, the rest of the independents either favoring a different candidate or remaining undecided. Obama’s lead just yesterday among independents in the three-day rolling average was 17%. Both candidates continued to perform well among their respective party members.

And it gets even better if you go to the internals of the Rasmussen poll today. Among core supporters, those who are certain how they will vote and that they will not change their mind, it’s Obama 42, McCain 40. Now, that two-point gap is much closer than the overall numbers. It’s also much closer than the 45-38 advantage among core supporters enjoyed by Obama heading into the second debate last week. Just last week, this same poll had it 45-38 Obama. That’s a seven-point lead going into tonight’s debate among core supporters. Now, why is the New York Times and the CBS poll at 14 points and Newsweek at 11? I’ll tell you exactly why, they’re trying to depress you; they’re trying to dispirit you; they’re trying to make you think along with everything else they’re reporting that this is over, that the election is finished. We’ve got Obama and Pelosi now already planning policy in the final three months of the year, or two months after the election. We’ve got a professor at Harvard suggesting that Bush and Cheney just quit after the election and let Obama and Biden go ahead and be inaugurated and get going fixing the mess that is the United States of America. No matter where you look we have the Democrats and the Drive-By Media convinced that this is over.

Now, let me tell you something, folks, Obama ought to be up in every poll 16 points, as reviled as this administration is, as rotten as people think the US economy is, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and what has happened to it over the past month, with a couple of other factors that I’m not going to mention here. Obama ought to be up by 16 points. This ought to be over, but he can’t close the deal and they’re worried about it. And New York Times, another story today, and Governor Fast Eddie Rendell says McCain can win Pennsylvania. They’re worried about Democrats in suburban areas of Pennsylvania who won’t vote Obama because of race. That story is every day. You can find that race story every day in the Drive-By Media somewhere that the Democrats are worried that a bunch of their voters, when the pedal hits the metal, when the rubber hits the road inside the privacy of the voting booth, they are not going to vote Obama. And this ACORN stuff, now in Pennsylvania they have found irregularities and fraud.

In Ohio, the attorney general there with whom we had a run-in during Operation Chaos has been caught trying to cheat. The Sixth Circuit court of appeals told her, all these people that voted early and registered early, you’ve got ’til Friday to prove that they are legit. And she said, ‘I don’t have the facilities to do this.’ ‘Well you better find ’em,’ said the court, ‘because you’ve got until Friday to prove that these registrations are all legit and that everybody that voted early in that six-day window is all legit.’ ACORN investigations are popping up all over the place, and this is clear cheating. It’s fascinating. So Obama’s not up 16 points. He’s up four, he’s up three, he’s up two, he’s up 14 in the CBS/New York Times poll. The New York Times again today is suggesting their poll says attacks that McCain and Palin are making on Obama are backfiring, and McCain’s campaign recent angry tone — what angry tone? Where is there any anger in the McCain campaign, especially with Senator McCain. Where is there any anger whatsoever? And the sharply personal attacks on Obama. What sharply personal attacks? All they are is people telling the truth about the little squirrel. What personal attacks? ‘Well, see, Rush, there you go, that’s a personal attack right there.’ No, no, no, no. Not a personal attack, himself, Obama admits he’s embarrassed by his ears. What’s the big deal?

There have been no personal attacks by the McCain campaign on Obama. In fact, McCain has nixed any mention of Jeremiah Wright. Palin and a bunch of advisors want McCain to go after Jeremiah Wright, McCain will not do it. McCain will not use the Calypso Louie Farrakhan video in which Farrakhan says that The Messiah is speaking. Oh, and you know the joke that I told, ‘What do Obama and Osama have in common? They both have friends who bombed the Pentagon.’ A Republican state leader in Virginia has been renounced by McCain for repeating the joke! It’s in the Washington Post today. It’s true. It’s not a personal attack, it happens to be true. Obama and Osama both have personal friends that blew up the Pentagon. Funny! It’s funny, and this guy used it. Now, he’s not backing down. But McCain went out and denounced this guy. Now, where are these personal attacks? Anyway, the Times says that all these attacks are backfiring on McCain, that also is an attempt to shut up McCain. And like I told Governor Palin yesterday, it’s an attempt to shut her up, it’s an attempt to make them think they’re losing moderates, that they’re losing independents. But the Rasmussen poll internals today show that it is Obama who is losing independents today.

Now, in this New York Times poll that shows Obama up 14, nine out of ten were registered voters, not likely, but registered. I wonder how many were registered by ACORN? See, you cannot take ACORN out of anything that is happening here. How many of these registered voters in the New York Times/CBS poll were registered by ACORN and I wonder how it was skewed? One of the things that the pollsters do is they weight the percentage of Democrat respondents, percentage of Republican respondents. So if ACORN’s gone out there and fraudulently registered far more Democrats than there really are, the pollsters are going to look at that, ‘Well, look at all the Democrats out there,’ and their sample is therefore going to reflect it inaccurately. So you can’t take ACORN out of anything that has happened. McCain hasn’t attacked anybody except his staff. If McCain goes negative on anybody, it’s his staff for wanting to confront Obama with facts.

The Times Online, UK Times: ‘Political Scandals Slip Under the Radar with Attention Focused on Election.’ What do you think this is about? It’s about Tim Mahoney here in Florida. ‘With the eyes of the media fixed firmly on the race to the White House, the scandal of the Democratic congressman, his mistress and the $121,000 allegedly paid to keep her quiet has slipped off the radar of most US news channels.’ Well, hey, Times Online, how come Mark Foley and Macaca were on the radar for five weeks? How come they didn’t slip under the radar during the 2006 elections? It just slipped under the radar out there, folks, and nobody, nobody can find it.

If you, ladies and gentlemen, live in Kansas City, you need to check your latest credit card bill: A north Kansas City couple, ‘Steve and Rachel Larman say a strange credit card charge appeared on their statement this month — a $2,300 donation to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. The Larman’s say they don’t want this to be about their political affiliation, but they say they’re not about to give the Obama campaign any help from their pocketbook.’ They’re supporting McCain. ‘They said they notified Chase, their credit card bank, to report the fraud. ‘(They) said that they had seen, they were familiar with this,’ said Steve Larman. ‘It was fraud, they believe through telemarketing but they were going to be doing some more investigations.” So everybody out there, check your credit card receipts, check your credit card bill for the last month to see if somehow $2,300 to the Obama campaign has been charged to either/or all of your credit cards.

RUSH: Oh, yeah, Open Line Friday, heading us into a big NFL weekend. Two big games this weekend, the Pittsburgh Steelers in Nashville to play the Tennessee Titans at one o’clock on Sunday, and then on Sunday night, we have the New York Giants hosting the Carolina Panthers. And tomorrow night’s not insignificant, either. The Dallas Cowboys hosting the Baltimore Ravens on the NFL Network. Plus, it’s Christmastime! It’s the holiday season. Yip yip yip yip yahoo. Yeah, I’ll do some analysis of the Steelers-Titans. In fact, I might even today, not guaranteeing this, but I might bring back the environmentalist wacko picks for some selected games. Looks like George W. Bush just saved two million jobs, ladies and gentlemen. Well, that’s one possible spin on this.

Michelle Obama’s all upset. Michelle Obama’s upset they’ve got no place to stay in Washington. The president-elect and his family have no place to stay in Washington, DC. The networks are trying to build this story up. It’s not actually true. They have places to stay. They just don’t want to stay in those places. You see, Blair House, which I guess you could call the presidential guest house, across the street from the White House, it’s tradition that the incoming president and his family move in there on January 15th. The Obamas wanted to move in there on January the 2nd or 3rd to get ready for the little crumb cruncher Obamas to start school. But apparently there are people in Blair House up until the 15th. The White House turned down the request made by the president-select and his family and so they’re struggling.

Now, Obama has an apartment in Washington that he uses and has used while there doing work — ahem — in the Senate. However, I have come to learn that Michelle Obama has never stayed in that apartment, meaning that Michelle Obama has never traveled to Washington with Barack Obama while he was there working, ahem, in the United States Senate. The Bush administration offered ’em digs at a nearby military base. They didn’t want to go there, so now they’re looking at hotels. The point of the story is they have no place to stay. But it’s not true; they do. The place they traditionally stay is not going to be available as tradition says until January 15th, five days before the inauguration. But they’ve got his apartment. I know the hotels are going to be booked for the inauguration, but you know that a hotel there, the Four Seasons, the Mayflower, somebody would give them a big suite or two until they move in. A big deal’s being made about this, that the president-select is going to Washington and has no place to stay, which flat-out just isn’t true.

By the way, speaking of Chicago politics, the governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich is going to go public in some shape, manner, or form this afternoon precisely when this program ends. The Blagojevich presser will start at 2 p.m. central, which, for those of you who are Obama voters, is 3 p.m. Eastern, which is when this program ends. And, by the way, there’s some agitation in the Drive-Bys over two things, the big document dump that the Clintons made yesterday on the massage parlor and the Clinton Foundation, $500 million, and a lot of it is from the Middle East, a lot of it is from Saudi Arabia. Drive-Bys are poring through it, but they think it’s a late document dump going into a weekend and it’s so many pages that it’s not really worth going through. And then Obama next week will announce of results of his in-depth investigation by his own lawyer of the Blagojevich pay-and-play scandal for the Senate. The Drive-Bys are all upset that all this is not going to be ’til next week, what they really want — they don’t care about Clinton right now — what they really care about is who from the Obama camp may have been talking to Blagojevich.

More and more news coming out in the Chicago papers about how Rahm Emanuel had extensive conversations with Blago about this very thing, trying to push Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s good bud, for the Senate seat from Illinois. It’s also been learned, ladies and gentlemen, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg has not voted very much since 1988. She really hasn’t. She hasn’t voted very much since 1988. The Drive-Bys did an extensive — well, for them, they did an extensive look-see to look these records up and she apparently didn’t vote very much. But she was out there being a good mother at the time, and caring a lot about a lot of things, and so her qualifications have been ramped up.