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Nov. 27, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:21
November 27, 2006, Monday, Hour #3
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Well, now they've shut down a um California Hascroll, suspicious device found.
They found a suspicious package at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.
How can this be?
The Democrats won the election.
This stuff's not supposed to be happening anymore.
And have you noticed all these stories today on how to be happy?
I thought we took care of that by electing the Democrats.
But there's apparently a lot of misery out there, ladies and gentlemen, and so we're going to discuss this.
Greetings, welcome back, Rush Lindbaugh here.
By the way, programming note.
You will not be pleased.
I'm going to miss tomorrow and Wednesday, ladies and gentlemen.
I have received a special invitation, a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
I cannot turn it down.
It's not political.
I can't turn this down.
I've got to accept this, and the only two days to do it are tomorrow and uh and Wednesday.
So I'm going to add a couple vacation days to the normal 200 I take.
What you tell no.
I have to do this.
It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
But we'll be back Thursday and then straight through the maybe one other day.
I'm not sure yet, but otherwise straight through the uh Christmas season, all the way up to, I forget, uh 22nd.
Christmas Days and a Monday this year, 25th, 24th, Sunday, 25th.
Yeah, we're right up to the right up through the uh 22nd.
Uh we'll be here dead solid.
The Supreme Court today sided with Philip Morris, sided with big tobacco, refusing to disturb a court ruling that throughout a 10.1 billion dollar verdict over the company's light cigarettes.
The court issued its order without comment.
Last year, the Illinois Supreme Court threw out the massive fraud judgment against Philip Morris, which is a unit of the uh Altria group, uh, or Altria, I'm not sure how you pronounce it, was a class action lawsuit involving light cigarettes because the Federal Trade Commission allowed companies to characterize the cigarettes as light and low tar, Philip Morris could not be held liable under state law, even if the terms it used could be found to be false or misleading, the uh state court said in Illinois.
A case involved 1.1 million um people sad sacks, one point one million get rich quick schemers who bought light cigarettes in Illinois.
They claimed that Philip Morris knew when it introduced such cigarettes in 71 that they were no healthier than regular cigarettes, but hid that information and the fact that light cigarettes actually had a more toxic form of tar.
An Illinois judge ruled in favor of the 1.1 million uh get rich quick schemers in March of 2003, saying the company misled customers into believing that they were buying a less harmful cigarette.
But the Supreme Court threw it out, said screw it, the award much too big, and uh big tobacco wins one.
All right, three stories today, uh, my good friends on happiness, which as I say stuns me given the fact that I thought everybody was delirious after the elections.
I haven't heard of any post-election stress trauma, uh, such as after the 04 election or down in Fort Lauderdale, a bunch of distressed South Floridians uh needed to go get counseling over the fact was it boca?
Uh they needed counseling after the uh Bush election victory.
I haven't I haven't heard of any uh anything marginally like that at all.
Yet apparently there is a lot of misery, and so all the stories on happiness are out.
The three headlines are researchers seek roots to happier life.
The other stu uh another headline is study.
Money happiness link is complex.
And then there's the secret to success.
The uh a hit internet movie claims to reveal centuries old secret uh to getting what you want in life.
Uh let's do this this uh money happiness link story first.
It's uh from our old buddies at Al AP.
Does money buy happiness?
It's sometimes said that scientists have found no relationship between money and happiness, but that's a myth.
Says uh University of Illinois psychologist Ed Diner.
The connection is complex, he says, but in fact, very rich people rate substantially higher in satisfaction with life than very poor people do, even within wealthy nations.
There is overwhelming evidence that money buys happiness, said economist Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick in England.
The main debate he said is how strong the effect is.
Oswald recently reported a study of Britons who won between 2,000 and 250, 250,000 in a lottery.
As a group, they showed a boost in happiness, averaging a bit more than one point on a 36-point scale.
That was before they blew all the money that they won.
I mean, the worst people to go ask about this are lottery winners.
Because they all end up miserable because they blow it all within ten years.
That's why there's a group.
It's right down here.
What's the name of this group?
Hoke.
The Sudden Money Institute, exactly right.
It's up there in Palm Beach Gardens.
Sudden Money Institute.
This is this a bunch of people that ask you to give them some of the money that you've won so they can tell you how to deal with the pitfalls, the pretfalls, and the problems of coming suddenly into large amounts of money.
These are the wrong people to ask, lottery winners.
But at any rate, as a group, lottery winners showed a boost in happiness averaging a bit more than one point on a 36-point scale when surveyed two years after their win compared to their levels two years before they won't.
Well hell's bells, the next day is within two years after you win.
Most people are delirious when they win the lottery.
It doesn't take but a day or two for the bad feelings to set in because family members you haven't seen in years, friends you never had, uh lawyers you never knew, everybody makes a beeline for them to try to get their fair share of the winnings.
Daniel Kaneman, a Nobel Prize winner and Princeton economist and colleagues recently declared that the notion that making a lot of money will produce good overall mood is mostly illusory.
They noted that in one study, people with household incomes of $90,000 or more were only slightly more likely to call themselves very happy overall than were people from households making 50 to 89,000.
The rates were 43% versus 42%, respectively.
Members of the high income group were almost twice as likely to call themselves very happy as people from households with incomes below 20,000.
Now that, of course, you would think it at first blush makes total sense.
Those of you in this audience ask you, how many of you make whatever you may how much if you if if tomorrow you made 20, would you be happy versus what you're making today?
You might be able to adjust to it.
Many of you probably have.
Many of you have probably gone through ups and downs, and I know a lot of people in this audience are entrepreneurs and they've lost everything and they've built it back up.
And I imagine when you lose everything, it's not a very happy moment.
The uh the notion that money doesn't buy happiness has been one of these myths that's been around, and you know who starts this myth?
The rich.
The rich start it so nobody starts competing with them for what they've got.
So the rich are telling people, hey, money doesn't buy happiness.
Look at me, I've got all the money in the world and I am miserable.
I've got I got worthless kids, I got bills at the wazoo.
I've got more complications with this.
You don't want any part of it.
The rich are the people out there tell the start of this myth money doesn't buy happiness, so that the non-rich will believe it.
So that they will then try to go out and find happiness and tell themselves even though they don't have a lot of money, they're still happy.
And there are a lot of people in that circumstance, by the way.
But the idea that money doesn't buy happiness I've always thought this is why why do people pursue it?
Why do people want a raise?
Why do people want their career to elevate so that they get more money?
Why do they want to succeed in what they do?
It's not just the satisfaction people get from personal achievement.
It is because of the remuneration.
It is because of the compensation.
And as much class envy as there is in this country, sponsored and fostered by our good friends and Democrats.
You know full well or uh uh millions of people in this country judge themselves on the basis of what they don't have.
Because they can turn on TV and they can they can they can see, you know, some entertainer, a musician or what have you, giving a guided tour of his crib with the requisite game room, media room, and four or five scantily clad models out by the pool.
Uh how about how about lifestyles of the rich and famous?
Why did people watch that?
Well, one reason was they got the vicarious thrill from it, but number two, hey, I want this too.
I'd like to be able to experience this.
The idea that that money doesn't buy happiness is a myth because people think that it does.
Otherwise, they wouldn't pursue it.
So I've always thought that this is a is a myth.
You know, if I ever write my next book, uh, and I've got two or three ideas for a next book, so maybe two or three books, I don't know.
But I can tell you that so much of what I thought various things would be when I didn't have them, but I aspired to them, uh, are nothing at all like how I imagine they would be.
Success is not what I thought it would be.
I'm not saying it's bad.
I'm just saying I had no concept of what it would actually be.
I had no concept of um of having a lot of money.
I I I thought that it would enable a number of things and eliminate other kinds of problems, and it's I was totally wrong about it without without getting too personal.
Uh I don't know anybody, and this is this is all you really need to say about this.
I don't know anybody with a lot of money who says, you know, I'm miserable, I'm giving it away.
Well, I I yes, I know, of course, I know people who are miserable, even though they have a lot of money, they're miserable anyway.
Uh they'd be miserable whether they had it or not, but I'm just saying that if if if it was we're st I'm stick with this whole theory money buys or doesn't buy happiness.
I'm just telling you that people who earn a lot of money and who are unhappy, the first thing they'll think to do to fix the situation will not be getting rid of their money.
So this is all it this story comes out every year at Christmas time.
I'm I'm convinced it's it's it's put out there by forces, powerful forces among the rich.
To try to convince the middle class and the upper middle class to stay right where you are, because anything worn, you're gonna be miserable.
Uh as the the other story here about researchers um seeking roots to happier life, this really doesn't have much to do with money.
Uh we'll talk about that next after the break.
Sit tight.
Coming right back before you know it.
Folks, you're just not going to believe this.
I have to read this to you.
It is a statement on the PR business wire by Russell Simmons, who is uh how would you describe Russell Simmons and run DMC as one of the early rappers wears his hat sideways when he goes on television, married to Kamora Lee, businessman now is a clothing line, uh he's a mogul.
That's right, goes out there and registers voters and uh and and so forth.
So here.
Here's it's a dateline Johannesburg, South Africa.
Monday, November 27th, 2006, 5.30 p.m. local time.
I, Russell Simmons, have arrived at 5.30 p.m.
Monday, November 27th, safely in South Africa.
I am here because the most important and powerful Muslim preacher and the most important and powerful Jewish rabbi I've met in my lifetime, the honorable minister Louis Farrakhan and Rabbi Mark Schneier, both individually told me to come here.
I am funded by the Diamond Information Center.
I am here to promote the transparency and integrity that is found in the conflict free.
Greatest diamonds in the world, which to me represents truth.
I'm inspired by my lovely wife Kamora Lee Simmons and my children Aoki Lee and Ming Lee Simmons.
I'm on a fact-finding mission to learn how the diamond industry, in conjunction with Simmons Jewelry Company, can positively affect the lives of the black Africans here who are suffering from poverty, HIV, and lack of high quality education.
So there's two more paragraphs.
Stick with me on this.
Uh He's now got the Simmons Jewelry Company, and he's over there at the suggestion of Calypso Louie and the Rabbi Mark Schneier to find out what he can do working with the greatest diamonds in the world, which to him are truth.
A fact-finding mission to learn how the diamond industry in conjunction with his jewelry company can positively affect the lives of black Africans who are suffering from poverty, HIV, and lack of high quality education.
I have heard from Ken Sunshine directly.
Parentheses, Petra Nemkova and Leo DiCaprio's publicist, end parentheses, that Petra Nemkova is worried about the political and possible business ramifications of my trip, and that she is awaiting her advisors to respond to whether she can join me.
I know her presence as a celebrity and the chairman of her Happy Hearts Foundation will give added attention to this mission, which is much needed to make it a success.
I pray that her advisors, including Ken Sunshine, and all other parties will advise her to accept this invitation as planned.
I am sending out this statement because I sincerely believe that the more people I can mobilize to support this mission, the greater chance we'll have to help improve the lives of the African people.
The more people talk about this mission, the more I can serve humanity.
Further, I believe that I am protected by the one God that protects all of humanity.
Sincerely, Russell Simmons.
Is this not a classic case of self-absorption narcissism or what?
He flies over there to inspect the diamond industry, because he's got the Simmons Jewelry Company.
The trip is obviously under the guise of ending AIDS and starvation and promoting education.
I I don't know, folks.
I just gonna be on TV shortly.
What a wonderful mission.
What compassion.
We need more people like Russell Simmons who care.
And he needs Ken Sunshine, a publicist to get his client over there, Petra Nemkova, to uh to solve all these problems.
Anyway, from that, ladies and gentlemen, we transition back to a happier life and the roots to a happier life.
As a motivational speaker and executive coach, Caroline Adams Miller knows a few things about using mental exercises to achieve goals, but last year one exercise she was asked to try took her by surprise.
Every night she was to think of three good things that happened that day and analyze why they occurred.
That was supposed to increase her overall happiness.
I thought it was too simple to be effective, said Miller, 44 of Bethesda, Maryland.
I went to Harvard.
I'm used to things being complicated.
She was assigned the task as homework in a master's degree program, but as a chronic worrier.
Well, that's great condition to be in if you're a motivational speaker and executive coach.
As a chronic worrier, she knew she could use the kind of boost that the exercise was supposed to deliver, and she got it.
The quality of my dreams has changed.
I never have trouble falling asleep, and I do feel happier.
Now results may vary, but that exercise is one of several that have shown preliminary promise in recent research into how people can make themselves happier, not just for a day or two, but long term.
It's part of a larger body of work that challenges a long-standing skepticism about whether it is even possible.
Martin Sealingman, University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues have collected more than 100 specific recommendations, ranging from those of the Buddha through the self-improvement industry of the 1990s.
The problem is that most of the books on store shelves aren't backed up by rigorous research.
It's just individual theories on the part of the authors.
In fact, there's been very little research in how people become happier.
Why?
Well, the big reason, she said, uh this, by the way, is Sonia Lubomirsky, uh psychologist, University of California Riverside.
She conducts studies on happiness.
And the big reason that there's been very little research on how people become happier is that many researchers have considered that quest to be futile because they're miserable.
Well, it doesn't actually say that, but I mean it's got to be a reason.
Why do researchers think that research into why people are happy is futile?
Recent long-term studies have revealed that the happiness thermostat is more malleable than the popular theory maintained, at least in its extreme form.
Set point is not destiny, says you know, I one of these one of these things happiness is something you are when the minute's like comedy.
When you start talking about comedy in an analytical way, it's not funny.
When you start talking about happiness in an one of these egghead kind of ways, you destroy the whole concept.
More on this when we come back.
Stay with us.
Thank you, I know.
We're here executing assigned uh host duties flawlessly while having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have just a couple more little passages here from this uh it's a very long AP story on researchers seek roots to happier life.
Other studies show an effect of specific life events, though of course the results are averages and can't predict what'll happen to particular individuals.
And of course not.
There's a reason why most people aren't happy.
And in fact, most people aren't.
Because happiness is it's let me let me finish this.
I brain starts getting fertile on me here, and I sound discombobulated.
Results show long lasting shadows associated with events like serious disability, divorce, widowhood, and getting laid off.
The boost from getting married, on the other hand, seems to dissipate after about two years.
That's I'm thinking that long.
I mean, that's this pretty optimistic.
What about the joys of having children?
Well, parents recall those years with fondness, but studies show that child rearing takes a toll on marital satisfaction, and we know what they mean by that.
Parents gain satisfaction as their kids leave home.
I have always known that that would be the case, which is why I have none.
I've always thought as a parent the happiest day of your life would be either 18 or 19 to head off to college.
And even then you're still going to pay for it.
At any rate, this whole concept of happiness.
Do you know how elusive it really is?
We have we have devised whole philosophies to deal with our unhappiness.
And probably the most powerful one is that there is virtue in suffering, and that we are to endure hardships, and that these hardships and their endurance uh increase uh our character.
Uh and uh make us tougher, and so forth and so on.
And I've always had a problem with that.
I have never thought that the gift of life was a gift of suffering.
I mean, it can be, it can be whatever you make it.
I think too many people look at happiness as a series of events, and if the events don't transpire as dreamt about or hope for, then it leads to disappointment.
Uh contentment's probably a better objective for people, but this is look at I've always said that you you will you will not go to the library and find a book on how to fail because somebody knows how to do it, but you'll go to the book and find all the of the library and find all these positive thinking books, and people that write them make millions because it doesn't seem to be the natural disposition of people.
And I think it it's hard to come up with a single reason or even five or six reasons why people are happy or why they are unhappy.
Because so much of it has to do with uh we're all individuals and we are all different.
I don't care what the libs try to do in trying to say we're all the same, men and women, boys and girls, everybody is different.
I have found, in and this is just anecdotal, but I have found over my uh short little life here.
The happiest people I have run into are people who are not obsessed with themselves and are not sitting around telling stories to themselves about how this isn't gonna work or that isn't gonna work, or that's gonna be too hard to do.
Uh they're ever they're not they're not inwardly focused.
They're outwardly focused.
Uh and and uh the people who enjoy life are maximizing the opportunity to do so.
They have a different outlook on life than than a lot of people.
They don't look at it as something to be endured, and they don't look at the first half of it as something to be spent in uh in abject misery for your reward later on when you retire or whatever.
Uh but it's it's hard to put your hands around the and arms around and and you know, offer anybody advice on on how to be happy, but the the uh probably the quickest route is to stop thinking about yourself so much.
Everybody be miserable when they do that.
Because most people don't like themselves, or most people think they've got problems.
I'm too fat, I'm too short, I'm too bald.
You start focusing on all these negative things about yourself, and it's impossible to be happy.
And then the second thing they do is focus on what everybody else thinks of them.
And everybody does that because everybody wants to be loved.
It's the toughest thing in the world to not care what people think of you, because nobody's raised that way.
Everybody's raised to not offend people.
Everybody's raised to make everybody like you.
So you don't embarrass your family, you don't embarrass your friends, you don't embarrass yourself.
Everybody is raised.
I don't know anybody.
I don't know one, maybe Hitler, but I didn't know him.
I don't know anybody who grows up wanting to be hated.
As an objective, as a life of who he takes happiness from it.
I don't know anybody who does that.
I haven't everybody wants just the opposite.
Of course, not everybody's going to be loved by everybody.
Not everybody's going to be respected, and when that's what you really want, and it doesn't happen.
A, you're not happy about it, and B, you start blaming yourself.
What's wrong with me?
And then people run around with these phobias, because all they're doing is examining themselves, comparing themselves to others, and they're always coming up short.
And that's that's that's I mean, that's a great recipe for unhappiness.
When you think everybody's better than you, or everybody has more than you, or everybody's happier than you, or uh what have you.
And then there are people who look for acceptance from the wrong people.
Acceptance, uh love, uh all this from the uh from the wrong people.
And they reject it from the people that give it to them.
Everybody wants what they don't have.
And that's not a recipe for happiness.
Everybody thinks that what they don't have is better than what they do have.
I mean, there are exceptions to this.
I'm using everybody in a very generic sense.
Anyway, to the phones.
Uh Susan Prescott, Arizona, nice to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, Rush, money buys happiness did us to you.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
You bet.
Hey, listen, I found out why, going back to your previous hour and why the Democrats don't like to be called Democrats, and it had to do with what the term meant historically back in the 1790s.
And it's in a book by uh Joseph Ellis, who also wrote his excellency about uh George Washington, and in here he's describing words and terms that were evolving during the time that our country was evolving, you know, right after the Revolutionary War.
And here are the I'm gonna read this.
It's just one sentence, but it's the definition of Democrat.
The term American, like the term Democrat, began as an epithet.
The former referring to an inferior provincial creature, the latter to one who panders to the crude and mindless wind of the masses.
And you think that's why they don't like Democrat.
Well, I I gotta tell you, there's the definition.
There's the historical thing that's the right.
They might they might think that about American today, but I'll guarantee you don't they don't think that about Democrat.
Well, uh why don't they want to be called that?
Because they it's not that they don't want to be called that, it's that they want to be called the Democratic Party because being democratic is all encompassing.
It's fair, it's open, it's got everybody gets what they want.
Democracy, democratic.
If you say Democrat, the Democrat was a dirty word here, and the like liberal is a dirty word.
Democrat was something that that that uh you know it it was it had a negative connotation to it, like Republicans does now.
These things are cyclical.
But I will guarantee you that their choice, their demand to be called a democratic party has nothing to do with whatever the ancient roots of the word Democrat were in this country in the 1790s.
It's all about wanting to be called a Democratic Party because it makes them sound more inclusive and bigger and fair than the Republican Party.
I mean, the Republicans could counter this and call themselves uh we're the Republic Party.
But that would just confuse people republic, because that's not uh that's not taught.
If you listen to this show, you know what a republic is.
Most people think we have a democracy.
Most people think we are democrats.
The Democratic Party has the kind of America's party, and that's how they want it perceived by the dingbats that pay scant attention to this stuff.
Uh it it that that's the sole reason.
Carl in St. Louis, you're next on the EIB network.
Hello.
Well, it's uh it's an honor to talk to you.
I believe you're exactly where you ought to be, and uh I hope the many years of um work uh uh behind the radio.
We didn't order this.
We ordered an eye a car.
Okay.
Hey, Carl, we're car we we didn't order it.
Where are you out there, Carl?
Sorry about that.
I got I got something going on here.
One second.
Um the thing about the money being ha uh bringing happiness, I believe is a reverse thing.
Uh money itself doesn't bring happiness.
But the lack of money brings misery.
Uh the lack of money can.
Uh lack of money can bring misery.
Uh been there.
Uh in fact, I'll tell you the most unhappy time in my life, it had nothing to do with money, but it did well, not really true.
I was making um, I think at the time $15,000 a year, working for the baseball team, the Kansas City Royals.
And this was this is this would be 1980 or 81.
So well it wasn't a living wage.
I found a way to do it using a uh don't know what the details.
I found a way to do it in eating potato chips, you know, and and and snack foods where you could because at grocery stores back then you couldn't use a credit card.
I found places that sold junk food that is credit cards.
At any rate, I was surrounded by people who made tons.
And uh, hey, Rush, want to go to Aspen next week.
No, no, I don't have time.
I couldn't afford to go, as was the the real reason.
And so you're right.
I I I was I was miserable, not because I wasn't making a lot of money, and I thought I deserved more, we all do.
Uh but the the problem that it led to was that my focus became earning money rather than doing good work and staying focused on a career and so forth.
Uh and that's what made me miserable because it didn't happen at that time.
The money, the money wasn't forthcoming.
But you know, everything is relative.
Uh when you're making 15 and your next job pays you 24, well, you think you're in the money because now you don't have the problem, but after a while, 24 is not enough.
Because everybody lives beyond their means, and you're no matter where you go, folks, I don't care who you are, even if you're Bill Gates, somebody is gonna have more.
Like Crown Prince Abdullah of the Saudi Saudi Arabia.
There's always somebody who's gonna have more.
So no matter what you no matter what you acquire, I mean uh I know people.
Um you remember how when you when you when you bought the car your dreams, the fur when the first time you could actually buy what you wanted, how ecstatic you were.
I know people who can buy whatever car they want.
They can do it every day, get rid of the one they just bought yesterday.
It doesn't bring them happiness anymore.
After a while, as you progress through life, the things that gave you all kinds of joy, material things that gave you all kind of joy ceased to do so.
Because everything's relative.
Everything everything uh levels out.
And so I think this whole business money doesn't doesn't buy happiness is because the people that have it, uh the reason it is said about them is because after a while the money isn't the reason anybody's happy, because it after after a while it it it it you you've you've gotten used to what it can provide you, uh and after that there's nothing you can spend it on that is gonna increase your happiness.
So then you start getting unhappy.
Well, why am I so miserable?
I have all this and I have all that, and happy.
I think that's why a lot of people get into charitable work, not just the tax consequences, because um like I love giving away.
I love sharing what I've earned uh with with people.
That is that is happiness to me, not hoarding it or any of this.
But no matter where you are, at whatever stage you are economically in life, there's always gonna be somebody with more.
And you can always therefore say, gosh, I don't rate.
Or I don't have that, or what and I a lot of people, and I was this way, uh when I was making this $24,000, I said, gee, if I could just man, I I would be in fat.
I used to love around and I love to go around at parties and ask people, what just give me the figure.
What is big money to you?
People my age at the time, you know, 25, 30, what is big money to you?
And I was stunned at the answers.
They ran the gamut.
Oh man, 75 grand and I would be set for life.
Uh some people know you gotta have 250 million or you don't count.
Uh It just, it just, it just ran the game.
But the point is that everybody's reference point is different, and when that reference point is reached.
The best way to illustrate this, back in the old days in the 1980s, I don't know if it still happens, Merrill Lynch, when they brought in prospective employees for the interview, they asked them.
And if the if the prospective employee gave a number, it was a negative mark on the application.
Because the Merrill Lynch people discovered that once that number was reached, the comfort level had been reached, and the work stopped.
So it all the trying to trying to get a handle on what it is that makes people happy, what was the the money aspect to it at all, is um is impossible because that's really not where the root of it all lies.
Happiness is inside you're in your heart and it's in your soul.
And it is in there.
You just have to find a way to find it.
Get it.
Back in just a second.
You know, a lot of people are afraid of happiness.
It's like they're afraid of success.
Have you ever met people afraid of success?
Oh, wait, this isn't me.
Oh, God, I I'm not gonna be able to hold on to this.
And they they they set about uh in an unintentional way of destroying their success.
Like ha happiness is a scary thing because you know it's not gonna last.
Oh, gosh, I don't know if I like to be miserable.
That's why you've heard the phrase people are miserably happy or happily miserable.
Because it's safe.
It's but but to go out and choose happiness.
I am gonna be happy today.
That makes it a quest.
That makes it a what if you fail?
Oh, I'm even worse.
Some people get depressed who want to stay depressed because to artificially make themselves happy, of course, which is no such thing, but artificially make themselves happy, they that's just gonna be temporary.
I'm gonna be even more depressed when the happy when the happiness is.
I just want to stay depressed and write it out.
But if you could artificially make yourself happy, why wouldn't you do it?
There's nothing artificial about it.
But people convince themselves it's not real, it doesn't have staying power.
It's a shame.
Really is.
That's why so many dunkheads vote Democrat, I think.
Frank and Old Forge, Pennsylvania.
Welcome to the E.I. The Democratic Party is organized to help you deal with your miserable uh self and to make you so.
Yes, Frank, welcome.
Mega Ditto's from the pizza capital of the world, Old Forge, Pennsylvania.
Thank you, sir.
Nice to hear from the pizza capital of the world.
It's one of the reasons I live in this cold blue state.
But listen, Rush, I'm calling to let you know that Walmart helps you to buy happiness.
And I was as I was driving today, I heard you're talking about money and happiness.
But here's what happens.
You go into Walmart, and because your dollar buys more, you can physically put more stuff into your car.
Who else cooks on a charcoal grill nowadays when you could go to Walmart and buy the big stainless steel baby and fry up some steak the good old American way?
I mean, I I think that really uh it's a it's a grab for the cash, Rush.
Ask uh, well, that's that's that's that's that's what we've been talking about.
Um I don't know that you can say that Walmart proves that having money or or money equals happiness.
Walmart exists because people's money does go further, and that pleases them, and so there it lessens some of the uh some of the uh concerns about it.
I I think the whole point of this has been uh the discussion has been to try to dispel the notion that money uh has a fundamental relationship to happiness.
Uh it really doesn't.
It it what it does can give you insulation and comfort.
I mean, there is a great deal of uh con uh well, comfort or or a lot less stress if you don't have to worry about paying the bills.
If the phone bill and the electric bill and all these, if you don't have to worry about those things, then that that is uh an immense um l lack of stress that you have to go through.
But it'll be replaced by something because people will invent it.
They'll start telling themselves stories about something, and before you before you know it, the same cycle uh uh appears, rears its ugly head in people.
And so whatever people have and whatever they accomplish and do they s the the basic identity who they are doesn't change just because they acquire a bunch of stuff is the uh bottom line.
And the sadness is that they think they are gonna change when they get a lot of stuff.
It doesn't happen.
Be back here in just seconds.
All right, remember I gotta be gone tomorrow and Wednesday special invitation, one time in a lifetime, can't turn it down.
We got Paul W. Smith tomorrow.
And Roger Hedgecock on Wednesday.
I can't wait to get back to see you on Thursday, folks.
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