by Garrett W. McIntyre

As a media man, Rush Limbaugh is a veritable Midas. He has at least five easily discernable revenue streams. In all, Limbaugh likely brings in close to $60 million each year. It’s a good thing the man lives in Florida where taxes are favorable. Limbaugh will likely earn more than $1 billion from 2000 to 2016. Get a look at where the dollars come from after the jump.

Limbaugh’s big breadwinner is “The Rush Limbaugh Show”. From 2000 through the year Limbaugh’s contract with Clear Channel’s Primere Radio Networks paid $285 million. In 2008 he entered into a new contract, this one paying him $400 million over an eight-year period. That amounts to $50 million dollars a year, or about $136,986 a day. Limbaugh’s is the biggest contract the radio business has seen since Howard Stern’s $500 million contract with Sirius Satellite Radio. It’s pretty fair if you consider that Limbaugh’s weekly audience of 20 million represents a bit shy of 10% of overall radio listeners.

For those that don’t get enough Limbaugh on the radio, visitors to his site can become members of Rush 24/7. Members get to listen to recorded broadcasts on the show whenever they like, and they pay for the privilege. Membership cost $6.95 per month. Assuming that 5% of visitors to Limbaugh’s website become members (maybe a conservative estimate given the loyalty of his following) this program pulls in around $417,000 per month, and a little over $5 million per year. Given all the members get is a free t-shirt and a screen saver, its safe to say that Limbaugh & Co keep most of that money.

Limbaugh put out two best-selling books in the early 90’s. In The Way Things Ought To Be, Limbaugh put down his thoughts on just about any subject he felt like, and over 2 million people wanted to read it. As a big- name author, Limbaugh might have kept around a third of the cover price. At that rate he brought in about $9.6 million. His second book, See I Told You So, sold 2.5 million copies. Assuming the same rate, Limbaugh brought in about $11.6 million from the books. Overall, Limbaugh’s foray into the literary world added over $20 million to his bank account.

Picking up on his success in authoring books, Limbaugh puts out a monthly letter. The letter is devoted to political commentary, and covers just about whatever is getting his goat in a given month. A subscription costs $34.95 a year. Based on the information we can find, the letter has 135,631 subscribers. That puts revenue from the newsletter at a little over $4.7 million. Given the number of subscribers postage for the year costs no more than $100,000. Even after paying and artist and editor this business conservatively keeps $4 million a year. Not bad for a little stream of consciousness.

RushLimbaugh.com gets roughly 1.2 million page views per month. Based on the ads that Limbaugh runs on the site, we estimate the site brings in about $500 in advertising revenue each day. That amounts to $182,500. It’s impossible to know what it costs to operate the site.

If the site take two people to run, Rush might bring in about $100,000 a year from the its operation.

The theater of the absurd continues:

In a poll conducted by the CBS show “60 Minutes” and Vanity Fair magazine that was conducted November 6-8, respondents said that the conservative talking head Rush Limbaugh, was the most influential conservative voice in America.

Read More…

California unveils draft cap-and-trade rules
via CNET News

California on Tuesday released draft rules for its landmark greenhouse gas cap-and-trade plan that will be the most ambitious U.S. effort to use the market to address global warming.

State law requires California to cut its carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Measures will range from clean vehicle and building rules to the cap-and-trade system that lets factories and power companies trade credits to emit gases that heat up the earth.

Federal rules under debate by Congress could eclipse and preempt regional plans, but California and other local governments see themselves as the vanguard of addressing climate change, especially in light of slow national action and setbacks for international talks scheduled in Copenhagen next month.

The draft released on Tuesday shows California, seen as an environmental trend-setter, may take on even more than expected in its first round of cap-and-trade, which will start in 2012.

Gasoline and residential heating fuel suppliers could be included in the first cap-and-trade phase, which had been expected to focus on big pollution sources like power plants and refineries.

“California is the first out of the box,” state Air Resources Board Chair Mary Nichols told reporters on a conference call. The draft rules kick off a comment period that will lead to final regulation next fall.

A less comprehensive northeastern U.S. regional trading system is already under way, focusing on carbon dioxide emissions by big emitters. California by contrast plans to include nearly every source of emissions to reach its goal.

California businesses regularly criticize the plan as going too far too fast–and costing too much. Whether the net effect of the plan will be a new green economy or disaster for overburdened businesses is still hotly debated.

New estimates of plan costs, including suggestions on how much support to give industry, won’t be available until an independent advisory group issues a report next year.

The draft avoids what may be the toughest issue–how much to rely on auctions of credits, which would require power companies and the like to buy permission to pollute. The emitters want allowances given to them, especially early on.

But Nichols said California had shown a strong preference for moving to auction as quickly as possible and that its 2006 global warming law provided clear guidance while politicians in the U.S. Congress were still raising support for a bill.

“Congress started this, you know, as a political exercise to see how many allowances you had to give out to which groups to get them to buy into the program. They didn’t have a climate bill,” she said.

“We know how many emissions we have to reduce. The question is how do we do it in a way that costs less,” added Nichols, whose Air Resources Board was appointed by state law as the main regulator deciding on how to cut greenhouse gases.

The cost of a ton of carbon dioxide initially could be around $10, based on how other programs operated, she said. That is about half the current European price. The average American has carbon production of about 20 tons per year, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The cap-and-trade system will account for only about a fifth of California reductions but it draws outsize attention, in part because the state, with the largest U.S. economy and population, is part of the 11 member Western Climate Initiative, which includes U.S. states and Canadian provinces.

China, too, will watch California’s action, partly by virtue of the state’s partnerships with Chinese provinces, said Environmental Defense Fund California Climate Change Director Derek Walker.

“In many ways this is similar to what you are hearing from international circles now. Everybody is coming to the table with their opening bets,” he said. But unlike most, California has committed to cuts and now is working out the details.

U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.

It is not known whether the intelligence agencies informed the Army that one of its officers was seeking to connect with suspected al Qaeda figures, the officials said.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said that he requested the CIA and other intelligence agencies brief the committee on what was known, if anything, about Hasan by the U.S. intelligence community, only to be refused.

In response, Hoekstra issued a document preservation request to four intelligence agencies. The letter, dated November 7th, was sent to directors Dennis Blair (DNI), Robert Mueller (FBI), Lt. Gen Keith Alexander (NSA) and Leon Panetta (CIA).

Hoekstra said he is “absolutely furious” that the house intel committee has been refused an intelligence briefing by the DNI or CIA on Hasan’s attempt to reach out to al Qaeda, as first reported by ABC News.

“This is a law enforcement investigation, in which other agenciesnot the CIAhave the lead,” CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said in a response to ABC News. ” Any suggestion that the CIA refused to brief Congress is incorrect.”

Investigators want to know if Hasan maintained contact with a radical mosque leader from Virginia, Anwar al Awlaki, who now lives in Yemen and runs a web site that promotes jihad around the world against the U.S.

In a blog posting early Monday titled “Nidal Hassan Did the Right Thing,” Awlaki calls Hasan a “hero” and a “man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people.”

According to his site, Awlaki served as an imam in Denver, San Diego and Falls Church, Virginia.

The Associated Press reported Sunday that Major Hasan attended the Falls Church mosque when Awlaki was there.

The Telegraph of London reported that Awlaki had made contact with two of the 9/11 hijackers when he was in San Diego.

He denied any knowledge of the hijacking plot and was never charged with any crime. After an intensive investigation by the FBI , Awlaki moved to Yemen.

People who knew or worked with Hasan say he seemed to have gradually become more radical in his disapproval of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On Sunday, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) called for an investigation into whether the Army missed signs as to whether Hasan was an Islamic extremist.

“If Hasan was showing signs, saying to people that he had become an Islamist extremist, the U.S. Army has to have a zero tolerance,” Lieberman told Fox News Sunday.

Army Chief of Staff

A fellow Army doctor who studied with Hasan, Val Finell, told ABC News, “He would frequently say he was a Muslim first and an American second. And that came out in just about everything he did at the University.”

Finell said he and other Army doctors complained to superiors about Hasan’s statements.

“And we questioned how somebody could take an oath of office&be an officer in the military and swear allegiance to the constitution and to defend America against all enemies, foreign and domestic and have that type of conflict,” Finell told ABC News.

The Army Chief of Staff, General George Casey, raised concerns over the weekend that innocent Muslim soldiers could suffer as a result of the shooting at Fort Hood.

“I think the speculation (on Hasan’s Islamic roots) could potentially heighten backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”

via ABC News

Matt Latimer took a lot of heat for his “tell all” book, Speech-less, prior to its publication.  The non-establishment right has now had a chance to read the book and has met the author.  They were surprisingly impressed. Latimer’s criticism of Bush was that he was not conservative enough.  He was right!

Running Away From Rush

by Matt Latimer

Rush Limbaugh George Gojkovich / Getty Images Lately, GOP leaders are anxiously distancing themselves from Limbaugh and Beck. Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer reports his boss ignored the talk radio titans—and why that was a mistake.

Like viewers learning about a mysterious civilization on the Discovery Channel, those in the know in New York and Hollywood continue to observe the inner workings of the Republican Party with fascination. I really think it is important to help those who haven’t had much experience with conservatives try to understand some of their tribal rituals and enthusiasms. Recently, in fact, I continued my modest instructional work in Hollywood as I spoke with screenwriters and producers interested in my book, Speech*less, a conservative’s coming-of-age tale in Washington, D.C. This time, the pressing issue among Those Who Want to Know was the mystifying appeal of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and others like them who are now “running” the Republican Party.

For all those worried about the undue influence of these folks—some of you may want to sit down for this—their hold on the GOP is greatly exaggerated. And—as I said recently to startled folks in Hollywood—that’s not necessarily a good thing.

As an eyewitness to the final days of the Bush administration, I can report with assurance that the absolutely last people the powers that be listened to were conservative activists on radio and TV.

Washington remains such a hot topic to movie folk that time and again, producers seem compelled to greenlight an endless series of politically oriented movies—most of which, they cheerfully confess, are earnest, dull money-losers. Still, they are determined to decode our political system. So from the well-appointed garden of Spago to the sun-soaked patio of Le Petit Fours, as word quickly spread that someone with knowledge of the nation’s capital was venturing through, I soon found myself asked to explain the great curiosities of my strange city. None, as I mentioned, weightier than those about the “angry” radio and TV hosts of the right. Don’t misunderstand. Movie people like opinionated talk-show hosts fine. But just the low-key, noncontroversial ones. You know, like Bill Maher and Keith Olbermann.

• Lee Siegel: Why Liberals Should Be Worried About Rush

• Conor Friedersdorf: Rush the Race-Baiter I was given a glimpse of the vision folks in the entertainment world have conjured—senators, congressmen, and Republican operatives sitting eagerly by their radios, pad and pencil in hand, as Rush dictates their next steps in global domination. I’m not sure folks in Hollywood believed me—in fact, I caught more than one polite but skeptical glance—when I told them that that’s not how things actually worked.

When I was a congressional aide, most members of the House and Senate were usually too busy passing money for bridges to nowhere to pay much heed to talk-show hosts. Sure, every once in a while, constituents would call about something they heard on Rush Limbaugh or Laura Ingraham. Members of Congress scrambled to mollify them—by holding a hearing or issuing a press release—so they could go back to the far more important work of having taxpayer-subsidized chauffeurs take them to gas stations in their SUVs to complain about global warming.

Time and again during the Bush administration, folks on talk radio warned the White House and Congress about grassroots discontent over a divisive immigration bill, would-be Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, and the administration’s spending sprees. GOP leaders didn’t listen. They should have. Conservatives abandoned the party in droves. (Of course, there are limits to talk radio’s influence on the grassroots. Just last year, Rush advised listeners that John McCain would be a disaster for the Republican Party if he was the nominee. He came just short of endorsing practically anyone else—Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, none of the above. Listeners decided differently. That didn’t mean Rush was wrong.

As an eyewitness to the final days of the Bush administration, I can report with assurance that the absolutely last people the powers that be listened to were conservative activists on radio and TV. If Chief of Staff Josh Bolten happened to catch Rush or Laura, it likely was only on his way to finding NPR. And Condi Rice wouldn’t take her marching orders from Glenn Beck if he renamed his program The Glenn and Condi Variety Hour and let her play piano concertos between segments. Meanwhile, talk radio’s remaining White House hero, Vice President Dick Cheney, was all but gagged and tied to railroad tracks while Bolten, Rice, and others did their impersonations of Snidley Whiplash waiting for a train to arrive.

It is true that White House communicators, led by clever sorts such as Karl Rove, cared about their relationships with talk radio and cable news. But as the controllers, not the controlled. Like savvy publicists stuck pitching a mediocre movie, Team Rove furnished select talkers with extravagant perks (tickets to special events, invitations to exclusive dinners, close-hold meetings with the president) to get favorable reviews. When that didn’t work, they’d use another old publicist trick of threatening to deny access to Bush, Cheney, or various other administration “stars.”

Some of the more popular talkers, like Rush, were too powerful for them to intimidate. (Rush being our equivalent of Tom Hanks.) But the approach worked on others. One well-known face at a cable network recently told me that the Bush-Rove infiltration is so extensive at their news channel that “95 percent of the building” will not to this day entertain the slightest criticism of the GOP’s inner circle—from either the left or the right—and they’d keep people off the air who offered any.

Nonetheless, top Republican strategists in Washington are now testing out the “Rush is the problem” line. Fresh from managing two mammoth back-to-back election losses for their party, these gurus recently postulated in the influential D.C. publication Politico—our version of Variety—that “angry” conservatives riled up by Rush and Glenn and other “flamboyant” talk-show hosts were the true source of the party’s woes. Ed Gillespie, one of President Bush’s top aides, bemoans the very same talk-radio crowd his White House massaged and threatened for espousing “the kind of harsh rhetoric that the left used against former President Bush.” Pete Wehner, another Bushie, blasts Glenn Beck as “a rolling mix of fear, resentment, and anger.” Yet Beck and Rush (and Savage and Levin and Laura) had virtually nothing to do with the party’s collapse. It’s like a producer blaming the disaster that was The Astronaut’s Wife on Roger Ebert and Michael Medved (although that tactic may, in fact, have been tried).

As Republican candidates look for a resurgence in 2010 and 2012, they ought to keep the talk-show world in perspective. At their best, these hosts are self-described entertainers, occasional provocateurs, and early-warning systems. They cannot guarantee anyone’s election to office. Nor are they responsible for a party’s communications failures. Sadly, it seems, candidates still have to earn support the old-fashioned way—by developing a coherent and consistent message on their own. That sort of storyline may be too much to hope for, even in Hollywood.

Matt Latimer is the author of the New York Times bestseller, SPEECH-LESS: Tales of a White House Survivor. He was deputy director of speechwriting for George W. Bush and chief speechwriter for Donald Rumsfeld.

Running Away From Rush – The Daily Beast

San Jose Mercury News

When it became public that radio host Rush Limbaugh was involved in a bid to buy the St. Louis Rams NFL football franchise, his detractors began waging an attack on him of immense proportions. Armed with un-sourced Rush “quotes” lauding slavery and Martin Luther King assassin James Earl Ray, Mr. Limbaugh’s critics set out to deny the avid football fan the opportunity to participate in ownership of an NFL team.

They succeeded.

Limbaugh was dropped from the bidding group by David Checketts, an investor and sports team owner who organized that group.

That would have been the end of the story had it not been for Limbaugh’s unwillingness to cave in by withdrawing from the group and allowing the injustice to go unchallenged. Instead, the conservative commentator pointed out that the “quotes” that had been widely disseminated by the old media (the national networks and urban newspapers) were patently false. He had never uttered them. Nobody had called him to confirm the quotes. Nobody reporting the “quotes” had properly sourced them. They were made up … and the real source of the false quotes appeared to be from a computer in a law firm in New York City that had posted them on Wikipedia.

It was almost predictable that the reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson would be among the vanguards of pushing the false accusation forward … and they were. Also on the leading edge was NFL Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith, who served as counsel to Attorney General Eric Holder and who was part of the Obama transition team. He not only took the opportunity to hurt a political foe but also to (from his view) help his union in upcoming negotiations with league President Roger Goodell.

The dozens of national media people who had reported the false accusations against Limbaugh as fact are now lining up to retract their statements and apologize. With their “mission accomplished” of assassinating the character of the conservative talk show host and depriving him of his desire to buy the Rams, they will probably continue in their careers without the stigma of being incompetent or evil. One of the benefits of being part of a mob is eventual anonymity.

As bad as the attacks on Limbaugh were, much good is coming from it. Even some of his harshest critics have sprung to his defense. When liberal NPR commentator Juan Williams defended Rush, he himself was attacked and was effectively called a racially insensitive name that so offended him he was visibly shaking with anger discussing the event in a later television appearance.

Limbaugh has often noted on his radio show that “conservatism is on an ascendency” and the scope of the attack indicates a level of fear from those on the left that seems to confirm the talker’s observation. Resorting to making up quotes and spreading them in order to assassinate someone’s character seems to indicate panic among those on the far left, which from my point of view is a good thing.

As for Limbaugh, his calm, cool and level-headed handling of the barrage of attacks by the media and others has earned him new respect and probably will earn him a million or two more listeners, as well.

Benjamin Disraeli’s most famous advice to aspiring politicians was: “Never complain and never explain.” For the greatest orator of our time, a man who makes Churchill, Lincoln and Henry V at Agincourt look like first-round rejects on “Orating With The Stars,” Barack Obama seems to have pretty much given up on the explaining side. He tried it with health care with speech after speech after exclusive interview for months on end, and the more he explained the more unpopular the whole racket got. So he declared that the time for explaining is over, and it’s time to sign on or else.

Meanwhile, to take the other half of the Disraeli equation, Obama and his officials and their beleaguered band of surrogates never stop complaining. If you express concerns about government health care, they complain about all these “racists” and “domestic terrorists” obstructing his agenda. If you wonder why the president can’t seem to find time in his hectic schedule of international awards acceptance speeches to make a decision about Afghanistan, they complain that it’s not his fault he “inherited” all these problems. And, if you wonder why his “green jobs” czar is a communist 9/11 truther, and his National Endowment for the Arts guy is leaning on grant recipients to produce Soviet-style propaganda extolling Obama policies, they complain about Fox News.

The most recent whine – the anti-Fox campaign – is, apart from anything else, unbecoming to the office. President Obama is the chief of state of one of the oldest free societies in the world, but his official White House Web site runs teasers such as: “For even more Fox lies, check out the latest ‘Truth-O-Meter.’” It gives off the air of somebody only marginally less paranoid than this week’s president-for-life in some basket-case banana republic ranting on the palace balcony because his interior security chief isn’t doing a fast-enough job of disappearing his enemies.

George W Bush: Remember him? Of course, you do. He’s the guy who’s to blame for everything, and still will be midway through Obama’s second term. It turns out he’s in exile abroad. Presumably he jumped bail and snuck across the border on the roof of a box car. But, anyway, he was giving a speech in Saskatoon. That’s a town in Saskatchewan. And Saskatchewan’s a province in Canada apparently. And in the course of his glittering night playing the Saskatoon circuit, he was asked about media criticism of him, and he told the … Saskatoonistanies? Saskatchewannabees? Whatever. He told them the attacks never bothered him, although his dad used to get upset: “He’d read the editorial pages, he’d watch the nightly news, and I didn’t. I mean, why watch the nightly news when you are the nightly news?”

That attitude, while raising a bunch of other issues, is psychologically healthier. If you’re going to attack the press, you need a lightness of touch, not a ham-fisted crowbar such as the White House wielded Thursday, attempting to ban Fox from the pool interviews with the “pay czar.” Another bit of venerable Disraelian insouciance, on the scribblers of Fleet Street: “Today they blacken your character, tomorrow they blacken your boots.” For two years, the U.S. media have been polishing Obama’s boots, mostly with their drool, to a degree unprecedented in American public life. But now it’s time for the handful of holdouts to make with the Kiwi – or else.

At a superficial level, this looks tough. A famously fair-minded centrist told me the other day that he’d been taken aback by some of the near parodic examples of Leftie radicalism discovered in the White House in recent weeks. I don’t know why he’d be surprised. When a man has spent his entire adult life in the “community organized” precincts of Chicago, it should hardly be news that much of his Rolodex is made up of either loons or thugs. The trick is identifying who falls into which category. Anita Dunn, the Communications Director commending Mao Zedong as a role model to graduating high school students, would seem an obvious loon. But the point about Mao, as Charles Krauthammer noted, is that he was the most ruthless imposer of mass conformity in modern history: In Mao’s China, everyone wore the same clothes. So when Communications Commissar Mao Ze Dunn starts berating Fox News for not getting into the same Maosketeer costumes as the rest of the press corps, you begin to see why the Chairman might appeal to her as a favorite “political philosopher”.

So the troika of Dunn, Emanuel and Axelrod were dispatched to the Sunday talk shows to lay down the law. We all know the lines from “The Untouchables” – “the Chicago way,” don’t bring a knife to a gunfight – and, given the pay czar’s instant contract-gutting of executive compensation and the demonization of the health insurers and much else, it’s easy to look on the 44th president as an old-style Cook County operator: You wanna do business in this town, you gotta do it through me. You can take the community organizer out of Chicago, but you can’t take the Chicago out of the community organizer.

The trouble is it isn’t tough, not where toughness counts. Who are the real “Untouchables” here? In Moscow, it’s Putin and his gang, contemptuously mocking U.S. officials even when (as with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) they’re still on Russian soil. In Tehran, it’s Ahmadinejad and the mullahs openly nuclearizing as ever feebler warnings and woozier deadlines from the Great Powers come and go. Even Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize is an exquisite act of condescension from the Norwegians, a dog biscuit and a pat on the head to the American hyperpower for agreeing to spay itself into a hyperpoodle. We were told that Obama would use “soft power” and “smart diplomacy” to get his way. Russia and Iran are big players with global ambitions, but Obama’s soft power is so soft it doesn’t even work its magic on a client regime in Kabul whose leaders’ very lives are dependent on Western troops. If Obama’s “smart diplomacy” is so smart that even Hamid Karzai ignores it with impunity, why should anyone else pay attention?

The strange disparity between the heavy-handed community organization at home and the ever cockier untouchables abroad risks making the commander in chief look like a weenie – like “President Pantywaist,” as Britain’s Daily Telegraph has taken to calling him.

The Chicago way? Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight? In Iran, this administration won’t bring a knife to a nuke fight. In Eastern Europe, it won’t bring missile defense to a nuke fight. In Sudan, it won’t bring a knife to a machete fight.

But, if you’re doing the overnight show on WZZZ-AM, Mister Tough Guy’s got your number.

Posted at OCRegister

Each day with this administration comes a new outrage. Fox News, President Obama’s favorite whipping boy, has spent considerable time questioning the appropriateness, and the constitutionality of Obama’s liberal use of “Czars.” The obvious concern is that the appointments are not subject to legislative oversight. We are now told that Obama did not know about his “Pay Czar’s” directive on bank salaries. Either Obama is not being truthful or the Czars are simply a power unto themselves.

Here is Rush on the pay “Czar”:

First we are supposed to believe that little old Barry Obama had no idea that his pay czar was out acting like a fascist, and other czars have and do. Barry was clueless that some rogue czar in his administration was out dictating pay for financial firms? It’s like Barry had no idea that Anita Dunn idolizes Mao Tse-tung? Barry had no idea that Ron Bloom idolizes Mao Tse-tung? Barry had no idea that Van Jones was an avowed Marxist and communist? Barry had no idea of any of this? You see the wall of deniability the press is trying to build up? He didn’t know about any of this. He’s Mr. Perfect. He’s Mr. Clean. He’s Mr. Calm, Cool, and Collected.

He’s reworking the American economy so what’s happening now doesn’t ever happen again. The only way that can happen is if what’s happening now becomes permanent. Let’s go there. Has there ever been a more compelling case, I ask you, for Congress to get rid of every so-called czar there is, has there ever been a bigger bucket of crap poured on Americans and American businesses than this administration and this so-called pay czar who’s acting unilaterally without old Barry’s knowledge?

Is there no one in Congress to stand up and say, “What’s going on? We’re going to investigate this.” You’ve got people acting without the president’s knowledge, interfering in the private sector, capping executive pay. The problem is, the Democrats in Congress are all for this, and Barney Frank, in case you’ve forgotten, wants Congress to go further than even the pay czar has gone. Barney Frank wants the government to regulate pay of every business in the country whether they’ve received bailout money or not.

So it’s no wonder Obama is out there attacking me and Fox News. Who else will report this? That’s what’s really going on here. The people who are reporting the truth in this country are the targets of this administration. Fox News, talk radio, me in particular. That’s what’s going on. The American Thinker has a piece today. There was a hearing yesterday. Joe Lieberman, whatever his Senate health committee is, Lieberman had three administration officials up to talk about the shortage of the H1N1 flu vaccine.

Have you seen any news stories on that? Did you know it happened other than me telling you? If there were a shortage of flu vaccine in the Bush administration and a Senator had called three members of the administration up to explain it, that’s all you’d be hearing about because they’d be trying to create a panic that Bush is incompetent, his administration is so incompetent it’s going to lead to people dying. There was one news agency that reported the results, the story at all. It was Fox News. You can go to Google, you can go to AOL, you can go to any search engine you want and try to find any mainstream story of Lieberman and a hearing with three administration officials on the shortage of H1N1 and it’s not there. They didn’t report it. Only Fox did. And in this way, some people are saying maybe the administration’s plan to marginalize Fox is working. Fox reports something, you simply let it stay with Fox, it doesn’t go anywhere else, and only the Fox audience will know about it. There is definitely collusion, because there’s no difference between Barack Obama and Chris Matthews, Barack Obama or anybody else in the Drive-By Media, they are on the same team, they are doing the same things, just from different locations.

I think everything about this story, this pay czar, is blockbuster. It’s late-night comedy gold. Everything about the story is a lie. Everything about the story, this is in The Politico, but it’s all over the place, it’s at FoxNews.com, every detail about this story has to be a lie. I refuse to believe that Obama didn’t know what Feinberg was doing. In fact, the truth probably is Feinberg’s following orders. Feinberg is following orders, and I guaran-damn-tee you, Obama said you get up there and you rape ‘em and you make ‘em poor and you make ‘em pay and you let ‘em know. Just don’t tell ‘em that I knew anything about it. You go out there and you’re on your own and I’ll back you up.

I don’t believe for a moment that Obama had no idea what his pay czar was doing when he announced these kinds of cuts. “One official told Fox News that Feinberg from the start had the independent authority to work with companies and make such a call. Obama was never required to sign off before final decisions were made.” Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot, WTF, who the hell is going to believe this? Sign me up for the Ten Million Man March, folks. This is so much worse than Clinton hiding behind Janet Reno’s skirt after the Waco invasion, it isn’t even funny. Obama didn’t sign off? What the hell else has he turned over to his czars? I mean it’s all a lie.

Here’s another headline from Fox News: “White House Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg Did Not Seek Obama’s Approval.” I don’t believe it for a minute. I believe that Feinberg could not have acted without Obama’s instructions. Make no mistake, Obama is not an innocent bystander, he’s not Mr. Perfect, this guy’s got a chip on his shoulder and he’s going after everybody that he thinks is responsible for this nation’s immorality and unjustness and unfairness, and those people happen to be those who achieve. I would really like to ask everybody, because I know there are a lot of people happy about this, this is what’s scary, there are a lot of people happy that these guys have been raped this way. That’s why I started the subject saying “I know you’ve got mixed emotions.”

But I want to ask you a question, I want to ask you how is your life better now that the pay czar is in control? Okay, these Wall Street guys got 90% of their salaries cut. I want to know how that’s improved your life. If all you’re doing is sitting around saying, “Yeah, man, yeah, man, you screw ‘em,” is your life any better for that? You want to live on vengeance? Is vengeance your diet? Is vengeance your meal? Show me the calories. Show me the nutritional value of it.

Just like when the rich get tax increases, “Yeah, man, yeah, man, soak ‘em,” does it make your life any better? So Wall Street execs are gonna lose 90% of their compensation. How is that job search coming for you, by the way? So you gonna get a new job now because of this? You gonna get more money? You going to have a better life because Wall Street got screwed? Cut salaries of a hotshot Wall Street guy, no problem, I’m not a Wall Street guy, you go ahead and cut ‘em. Go ahead and raise taxes on cigarettes. I’m not one of the cigarette smokers. Ripple effect. It’s all coming. It’s going to affect all of us. It’s right out in the open, we can all see it. By the way, in the Associated Press story on this, is this little paragraph: “Elsewhere, Freddie Mac –” a supposed private sector business, it’s a government-run mortgage house “– Freddie Mac is giving its chief financial officer compensation worth as much as five-and-a-half million dollars, including a $2 million signing bonus. The government-controlled mortgage finance company doesn’t have to follow the executive compensation rules because it’s being paid outside the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.” So you work for the government and you get paid whatever you want. Five-and-a-half million to the Freddie Mac CEO, Wall Street guys get canned, get raped. And Barry Obama had no clue. Do you believe that?

It is a sad day in the United States when someone like Rush Limbaugh is prohibited from owning a minority interest in a NFL team.  Rush asked his listeners today to imagine any liberal being subject to the same treatment.  Rush has been subject to slander throughout the media with virtually no fact checking. The NFL has no problem with foul mouthed rappers owning an interest in a NFL team, but a conservative is not welcome.

Sources: Rush Limbaugh to be out of bid for St Louis Rams – ESPN

Rush Limbaugh is expected to be dropped from a group bidding to buy the St. Louis Rams, according to three NFL sources.

Dave Checketts, chairman of the NHL’s St. Louis Blues and the point man in the Limbaugh group attempting to buy the Rams, realizes he must remove the controversial conservative radio host from his potential role as a minority member in the group in order to get approval from other NFL owners, the sources said.

Three-quarters of the league’s 32 owners would have to approve any sale to Limbaugh and his group. Earlier this week, Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay predicted that Limbaugh’s potential bid would be met by significant opposition. Several players have also voiced their displeasure with Limbaugh’s potential ownership position, and NFL Players Association head DeMaurice Smith, who is black, urged players to speak out against Limbaugh’s bid.

Ultimately, the sources said, Checketts must reconfigure his group and find another investor to make his bid more viable.

Exactly when Limbaugh will be dropped is uncertain, though some familiar with the situation said it could be within the next week. It is unclear if the two sides even have spoken.

A Limbaugh spokesman told ESPN that Limbaugh would have no comment on Wedneday. Earlier, on his syndicated radio show, Limbaugh was defiant, holding on to hope that he still could be part of the ownership group that buys the Rams.

“I’m not even thinking of exiting,” Limbaugh said on his program, according to a transcript provided to ESPN. “I’m not even thinking of caving. I am not a caver. None of us are. We have been betrayed by too many who have caved. Pioneers take the arrows. We are pioneers. It’s a sad thing but our country over 200 years old now needs pioneers all over again, but we do.”

Without Limbaugh, Checketts and his group would have to find a financial substitute to replace the investment that Limbaugh intended to make. At the NFL owners meetings this week in Boston, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell addressed Limbaugh’s potential involvement in the league and said “divisive comments are not what the NFL is all about.”

Goodell added: “I’ve said many times before, we’re all held to a high standard here. I would not want to see those comments coming from people who are in a responsible position in the NFL — absolutely not.”

In 2003, Limbaugh was forced to resign from ESPN’s Sunday NFL Countdown after saying of Philadelphia’s Donovan McNabb: “I think what we’ve had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well.”