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July 3, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:35
July 3, 2008, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of The Rush 24 7 podcast.
Okay.
Yeah, I I get it.
I get it now.
I get it.
Rush takes the day off after the big contract.
He's the big guy.
Meanwhile, the fill in guy, me, I'm stuck over in Central Park going, pss buddy, got a quarter?
I mean, this is just wrong.
This is the economics of those big Republicans, I tell you.
Well, not quite.
Hi, everybody, and welcome once again.
I am Jason Lewis with talent on loan from Rush filling in for the big guy the day after the big contract.
And congratulations to Rush.
I mean, he now makes almost as much money as the trial lawyers did suing the tobacco companies in about a month.
So that's, you know, that's moving up.
Isn't it amazing how the scrutiny of entrepreneurs, the scrutiny of somebody who who actually brings something to the table with value, and yet the trial lawyers, the Hollywood left, I mean, they make they make a ton of money, and that's just fine with those left-wing free market capitalists, but when someone in business, a CEO or a Rush Limbaugh, actually makes money and in the process creates job after job after job.
You know, a couple of lessons and in our kudos to Rush, a couple of lessons here.
One, uh Russia's big deal underscores the power of radio, my friends.
The power of radio.
Well, for advertisers that are missing out.
I mean, th this is a signal.
Let's call it speculation, dare we?
This is a signal that says, you know what?
We can afford this.
The radio business can afford this, especially talk radio, uh, because it works.
While the other media are hurting, the other media are imploding, talk radio is soaring.
And a sword, quite frankly, when Rush Limbaugh came on the scene now, somewhat twenty years ago, the AM band in real trouble.
Now, how many people have their incomes, how many salesmen, how many traffic uh types, how many engineers, how many producers, how many Rush Limbaugh wannabes?
Yours truly, perhaps, uh have made a fine career because of El Rushbo.
Kit and Mike say, exactly six.
No, no.
Try sixty thousand.
I mean, all of the AM stations that were on on the verge of going dark are now profitable.
So the other lesson, the other lesson, other than the power of talk radio, the power of what we do, is of course trickle down economics works.
And it's not just not just Rush.
I remember a famous former Beatle years ago on the Johnny Carson show, talking about his riches and whether he felt guilty for them.
And he said he used to feel guilty until he realized how many people made money selling his records, marketing his records, working at the record shop.
It really is trickle-down economics.
You cannot, you cannot elevate the poor.
You cannot create jobs by bashing the employer.
Can't do it.
We should have learned this with the luxury tax fiasco.
Remember that in 1990, we were going to tax the rich expensive yachts and all the cars going to get those rich folks buying the luxury items.
Come to find out, you see, the rich react.
They react to uh uh the tax rates.
Uh their their reaction is very elastic in econom uh in what economists call elasticity of demand.
That is, if you raise their taxes, they don't work because they don't have to.
And they didn't buy a yacht, they didn't buy the boat, they didn't buy the car because they didn't have to.
So when government penalizes them with higher taxes, Barack Obama, they simply uh adopt the most efficient tax shelter.
They don't work.
They shut down the economy.
And when the luxury tax passed, they said it was going to raise all this revenue, and all of a sudden the people that got hurt were the folks building the the yachts in Rhode Island.
Even Patrick Kennedy came to realize this, and they repealed the luxury tax on the rich because it hurt everybody else on down the line.
And this is axiomatic.
This is a a truism of economics that we thought w you know, we thought the debate was done with the wealth of nations, but we've got to relearn it and relearn it and relearn it.
Uh I hate to be so blunt here on this July 3rd celebration, but uh the poor don't open factories.
The poor don't create jobs.
The poor don't invest.
Now, if you want that rising tide lifting all boats, you better make certain everybody has a return on their investment, including including the wealthy.
And I think that's what uh Russia's big uh deal yesterday announced yesterday, and I know you guys, uh Mike and Kit and Snurley had some fun with it yesterday, but that's what it really represents to me.
Uh the the beauty of capitalism, that there isn't it's not a zero sum game.
Rush can do very well, and the rest of us can do very well.
A rising tide really does lift everybody.
That is not the zero sum game that Democrats would have you believe.
They think if somebody makes money, why somebody else has got to give it up.
They don't believe in a growing pie, a growing uh uh economics.
They don't believe in the prosperity of uh of uh of Americanism, really.
They believe in the politics of austerity.
A little more on that later.
We've got an interesting story on more people riding mass transit that dovetails nicely into that.
But it is July 3rd, day before the big celebration, and I am glad to be in once again for El Rushbo.
By the way, you can always check out Rush Limbaugh.com.
The contact line here remains the same at 1800-282-2882.
And even though it's Thursday, it is the Thursday before what?
A holiday Friday.
So I'm going to take uh uh a uh point of personal privilege here and say, I think we ought to have open line Friday on Thursday.
I don't What?
What?
I mean, come on.
I know I'm kind of pulling an Al Haig here.
As of now, I'm in charge here at EIB.
Well, okay, until Monday when Rush gets back.
1-800-282-2882.
We'll have some fun today.
Uh I can hardly wait till this weekend because I got my new titleist irons in.
I can't I know Russia's golfing, and I just got these new irons, I can hardly wait to go to the range today and break those babies in, play a couple of rounds this weekend.
And in the process, let us all remember while we're having fun uh the troops in Afghanistan, the troops in Iraq, and what patriotism really is all about.
And there's been a great debate this week on on patriotism, and I think that's always healthy.
Interesting article by David Broder in the Washington Post today.
Uh there's a new study out by the uh Harry Bradley Foundation that says uh fundamentally our young people are stupid.
Well, okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but uh uh it says that our young people don't understand America's national identity.
They don't understand what the Declaration of Independence was about, and the declaration, of course, was the blueprint for the Constitution.
Not really the blueprint, it was the rationale for the blueprint known as the Constitution.
The Constitution gave us our government of enumerated powers, separation of powers, most importantly, federalism, at least in the eyes of people like Jefferson, who said states' rights and federalism were the true theory of the Constitution.
The Declaration of Independence gave us the rationale for writing that blueprint.
And it gave us the specific rationale for individual rights that somebody else's rights are circumscribed by my rights.
And that's the beauty of the Declaration of Independence.
But young people don't know it according to this article.
Uh especially because a lot of young people are recent immigrants.
The Bradley team, according to Broder, sees a real threat in such things as multilingual ballots and bilingual classes.
Such accommodations to the growing diversity of the population could lead to many Americas or even no America at all.
Historical ignorance, civic neglect, and social fragmentation might achieve what a foreign invader could not.
Close quote from the uh Bradley researchers at the Harry Bradley Foundation on uh America's national identity.
It's uh they say, by the way, they go on to say, knowing what America stands for is not a genetic inheritance, it must be learned.
It must be learned.
We call that assimilation.
That's why up until the mid-1960s, we had immigration quotas.
The theory wasn't to be anti-immigration, it was to we couldn't assimilate this great a number of people all at once.
So we're gonna take some from here, some from here, some from here, and they would be they would have to assimilate.
That's the beauty of this.
The the the concept, the concept of America united behind an ideal, which is really the real definition of patriotism.
Barack Obama gave his patriotic speech this week, and General Wesley Clark, I mean, I got a kick out of this.
What was it on Sunday, Wesley Clark uh goes on National TV, the Sunday morning talk shows?
What was it, CBS, I think, and literally belittles John McCain.
Now, let me just comment on this before we get to the patriotism definition real quick, because he dismissed John McCain's military service as a qualification for the presidency.
So on Sunday, uh Clark does this smear job, and on Monday, on Monday, Barack Obama, I mean, Clark's a surrogate, let's be clear about this.
Uh Barack Obama goes on uh you know out to the the hinterland, where was it, Independence Mo, I think, to give a speech on patriotism challenging McCain and company.
I won't question your patriotism if you won't question mine.
Too late.
I mean NATO commander under President Clinton, Wesley Clark, uh tried to as has tried to clarify what he meant.
But basically what he said was, look, um, I don't think quote I'll quote, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president, close quote.
Well, who said it was?
More importantly, now the Democrats are circling the wagon saying, hey, what Clark said is no different than what the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth did to sully uh uh John Kerry.
No, no, no, there's an extreme difference here.
Now I actually happen to believe that you don't have to be a military hero to be a good president.
George McGovern was a military hero, a bomber pilot.
I wouldn't have voted for him in 1972, even if I were eligible to vote in 1972.
Uh Abraham Lincoln once admitted the only bloody battles he had were with mosquitoes.
So you it's not necessarily a prerequisite, and we do have a country that has a civilian command.
We don't want generals running the country.
Uh we want a civilian command to rein in any potentiality for a military junta or something of that nature.
So I don't think this is necessarily a prerequisite.
Now, if you're going to be the commander in chief, which is the primary purpose of the federal government and the presidency to protect us from external threats, internal threats handled by the police powers of the states, primarily.
Uh it probably helps, but it's not necessarily mandatory, but that's not what Clark was doing.
Clark was belittling something that happened to John McCain, and that's what I took umbrage with.
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were attacking Kerry for something he did that he had control of, whether he was exaggerating this or his actions when he got out of the service and tossing his medals aside.
That's something he had control of.
That's something he did.
That's fair game.
But when Wesley Clark says, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification.
Well, I don't think it's a qualification either, but I don't think you ought to belittle it, especially the five years somebody spends as a POW afterwards.
Now I'm no McCain acolyte.
I feel about as ambivalent about this race probably as Rush does.
But that's not the point here.
The point here is it was rude.
It was just plain rude.
You were attacking uh McCain on something that happened to him that he had no control over.
That's not the same as what Kerry did.
I want to talk a little bit about patriotism too when we come back, but let's take a quick pause.
I'm Jason Lewis.
Your calls although also uh coming up here, 1-800-282-2882 when we return right here on the Rush Limbaugh program.
This sounds like the song they played at the Clinton inaugural.
What I think this is the intro to squeeze box, isn't it?
Welcome back, everybody.
Uh Jason Lewis here from the Northern Command to fill in in for El Rushbow, high atop our tower here in beautiful Minnesota on a pre-July 4th uh program.
It's good to good to have you with me.
Good to be here once again, 1-800-282-2882.
Now, real quickly on patriotism, because that it was it was brought up in Barack's speech, but really it was brought up by Clark suggesting that military service didn't mean much, apparently, uh, although, although, I mean, what, telling you telling your ROTC officer you loathe the military that does qualify you because he served under Clinton?
Seems kind of an odd juxtaposition.
But I I'll I'll admit this, uh I'll admit, I'll go that uh that route that look, um, you don't have to be a great military man to be president.
As I said earlier, we got a civilian command.
And I'll go a step further.
I'm getting a little worried when we start talking about patriism or patriotism, that we start talking about national service.
Now, God bless the troops on this July 4th weekend.
We would not have journalists, we would not have businessmen, we would not have talk shows, talk show hosts without first having troops, soldiers.
But just but let us let us disabuse ourselves of this notion that we should serve the state somehow.
Patriotism is not serving community service, Americor, acorn where Barack Obama cut his teeth.
Patriotism is not this blind loyalty to the state.
That was Stalinist Russia.
That was the Third Reich.
Uh patriotism is also not expecting something from the state.
Patriotism is a fidelity in a belief of freedom.
And that's what this particular uh outfit, the Bradley scholars were talking about, the ideals of America.
We are not a country based on bloodline.
We're a country based on, and let's be blunt about this, ideology.
The ideology of private property, the ideology of human freedom, the ideology of capitalism, the ideology of our Anglo Saxon legal heritage, all of that, all of that cultural mosaic and economic mosaic and legal mosaic.
If you don't believe in that, and if that's not what you're fighting for rhetorically, you're on the battlefield, then you're no different than any other quote unquote patriot from another country.
Think about this for a moment.
The Russians had patriots if patriotism is defined as serving the state, loving one's geographic uh borders, your country.
The Germans had patriots.
They would die for their country.
Uh, they would worship the state, they put on their brown shirts, jackboot down the street.
They were patriots, right?
No, they weren't, not in the context of the American experiment.
Let's uh look, everybody lauds John F. Kennedy's speech, his inaugural inaugural address.
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
Kennedy had it wrong on both counts.
He had it wrong on both counts.
Uh well, I shouldn't say both counts.
He was right about not asking your country for something, but then he went on to start a a liberal revolution in many ways.
But you know, you shouldn't be a servant to the state.
Ask what you can do for your country.
I wasn't born into America so that I could serve the state, so that I would have to be forced into community service, a forced into national service.
Uh that's not what America is about.
America is about the pursuit of happiness, individual rights.
Now, I mean we shouldn't be asking what our country can do for us, but we also shouldn't expect our country to do something for necessarily it for the sake of it.
Serving the state.
But I hear here's here's the angle on this.
Patriotism is not community service.
Patriotism is upholding individual liberty.
Sometimes that entails a larger service, whether it's military service, whether it's getting involved in politics, whether it's the rhetoric of a talk show host.
But you do it to uphold the ideal of America.
These troops are not fighting on this July 4th for the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
They're fighting for freedom.
And the difference between the left and the right, in most accounts anyway, the difference between the lovers of liberty and the left is that the left thinks patriotism is paying taxes.
The left thinks patriotism is community service.
You know, you go into AmeriCorps, you're being patriotic.
No, you're being a slave to the state.
That's not, that's not what the framers had in mind.
That's why they described individual rights as the primary goal.
So why are they talking about patriotism on the left?
Why does the Barack giving this speech?
Why do we hear all this talk about you know national service being patriotic?
Because they want to redefine patriotism.
They want to redefine it, meaning that we're going to be wards of the state.
And your highest goal is to serve the government.
Now they'll say the community, they'll say they're fellow man.
What they mean is the government.
It's not your highest goal.
Your highest goal is fulfilling your self-potential.
That will serve humanity.
The free market demands it.
The only way you will ever get rich in a country that embraces free markets and liberty is by serving your fellow man.
The dog eat dog survival of the fittest mode is when the government takes control and they crush people and they force people into paying taxes.
That's survival of the fittest.
You get in the political class and you survive.
You're outside it, you're SOL.
Free markets demand cooperation, civility, serving other people, to get wealthy.
So what they're really trying to do here is redefine the notion of patriotism in all of this.
And it's really kind of similar to redefining what?
Integrity, morality, the moral relativism of the left coast, perhaps.
They're saying their mantra is look, I won't judge you if if you won't judge me.
What did Barack say on Monday?
I won't challenge your patriotism, you don't Challenge mine.
Wrong.
Wrong.
I will challenge your morality.
I will challenge your ethics.
I'll challenge your integrity, and I will be prepared to be challenged as well.
I will judge you and I will be prepared to be judged.
That's the mantra.
Now that mantra, you know, has a premise that there is a right way to do things.
And the moral relativism of this new redefined patriotism is I look patriotism means different things to different people.
I won't judge yours if you won't judge mine.
Nothing could be further from the American ideal.
There are patriots and there are pseudo-patriots, and it doesn't necessarily involve combat.
What it does involve is a fidelity and a belief and a hope for the American ideal that human freedom is the only condition proper to well to this country.
And great to be back behind the golden EIB Mike.
Now that you've got my spiel on patriotism, let's get your reaction on this and the news of the day.
Open line Friday on Thursday, July 3rd.
Happy birthday, America.
1 800, 282 2882, first up today in Orange County, California.
Dave, welcome to the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
Thank you very much.
How are you today?
I could not be better, sir.
Awesome.
You were discussing uh the fact that most of the kids don't know about the declaration of independence in our schools today, correct?
The 2006 National Assessment of Educational Progress Civics Test reports the majority of eighth graders could not explain the purpose of the declaration of independence.
Only five percent of seniors could accurately describe the way presidential power can be checked.
On and on and on.
Well to make a joke out of that, seniors can't tell the uh left foot from the right foot anymore in uh their old age.
But to uh kind of go on with the fact that kids can't tell you what the declaration of independence is about right now is you know, we're having trouble, especially here in California, we're having budget cuts in our school system.
So this is putting a lot of burden on a lot of teachers.
I know quite a few teachers who are one getting laid off, and two, quite a few of my fellow students who uh I actually just uh finished college, a lot of them can't even get jobs because they can't get into the school system because there's no money in the school system.
That's the same thing.
Okay, it's it's funny you should bring this up, Dave, and I appreciate the call, but just tell me where in that constitution was the call for a government run Department of Education.
I mean, we we're talking about not knowing the Constitution and American civics, and you come on to lament that we don't have enough money for K through twelve.
Actually, we spend more money on education than we do on national defense.
But besides that, just where in the Constitution does it say we need a Department of Education or that education ought to have a monopoly of government.
Okay.
All right, well, I mean I'm gonna answer your question.
It doesn't say anything about that in the Constitution.
However, as we move on and grow as a country over these past hundreds hundreds of years, we need to kind of grow and understand things, and we also need to evolve and start to fund money into these organizations.
Our taxes are paying for the education system.
Our taxes are paying for our fighter fighters and our firefighters don't have enough resources to fight the fires that are in California right now.
Am I right?
So we need more government.
We need more governments.
You just did.
You sound like you sound like Lawrence Tribe on steroids here.
An evolving constitution, an evolving sense of the American ideal.
No, constitution in the sense that we are growing and we are we are changing in our atmosphere.
Then amend the Constitution.
Constitutions don't evolve.
If they evolve and change with the whims of the Supreme Court members, there are no constitution at all.
But if you do evolve and countries do change and they need to change, or we will sit and we'll be in the stone age and we will never do that.
Well, let me tell you something, Dave.
I think I think you put forth here the perfect choice that people have this fall, that we're in the stone age, that we'd better change for change sake because there's something wrong with the American way of life.
How much tell me how much money?
If you take a look, for instance, at the national per pupil expenditures, federal, state, and local, they are now approaching ten thousand dollars per pupil.
In my home state, the state of Minnesota, it's ten thousand three hundred and eight.
In the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, you're looking at fifteen thousand dollars per pupil.
I guess I would bet you that up north there in LA, it's that or higher.
Uh now uh tell me if you're advocating more money for education.
I wish some advocate who thinks money is the answer, it's not, and this has nothing to do with Curriculum when teaching the Constitution.
But just give us an honest answer.
How much do you need?
How much is enough?
Give us a figure.
Okay, here's the thing.
You're saying that we're getting 10,000 or in this in the LA area, you're saying we're getting a little more than 15,000.
The problem is that there's too much corruption in these areas that, you know, uh the uh the SP is getting hundred uh hundred thousand dollars a year.
Why does he need that much money?
What is the single big No you're right, there's waste because it's a government run monopoly, which is why we need tuition tax credits and we need to move education to a market-based system.
I agree with that.
But I will tell you what is the single biggest item, and you can ask your school board, ask ask any any school board in the country, the single biggest item of any school district budget in the United States of America.
What do you think it is?
Textbooks.
Not even close.
Try try salaries and benefits.
Salaries and benefits going to the SP, not going to the teacher.
No, going going to everybody, but primarily look, what happens in most districts, and I gotta let you go, but I appreciate the challenge.
Going in most di or what happens in most districts is the the lackeys behind the PTA, uh the lackeys of the school board, both groups now just front people, front men and women for the teachers union, run out there and say, Oh, we need more money for your local school district, we've got to have it because we need more textbooks, we need smaller class sizes, even though there's no correlation between small class sizes and educational attainment.
You can compare international test scores for that where the class sizes are much, much bigger.
By the way, you can compare money in Washington, D.C., very high levels of of funding uh to say Utah, where there's very low levels of funding, and the educational attainment correlation isn't there either.
But they go out there and say we need more money, and then they get the more money, and the first thing the teachers union does say, well, now you got more money, we want a better contract.
We want better lanes, we want better steps, we want better pensions, we want better health care system.
You know, we're breaking down this country into two classes, and they're not Republican and Democrat.
They're the working class, anybody that doesn't have a government job, and there's the political class that have better pensions, better health care, and guaranteed job security.
Uh we better get a handle on this nonsensical notion that the answer to any problem we have is more government, especially when it comes to educational deficiencies in American civics for crying out loud.
Jeff in Millsburg, Ohio, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with me, Jason Lewis.
Uh thank you for taking my call.
Um first I want to start out with a like a three-part question to you and your listening audience.
Um do you have a military background?
I do not, sir.
Okay.
Do you have a college education?
I do.
Okay, and a lot of these people in the audience have the military background.
When I ask that question to people that do have a military background, I always ask them which one was more valuable.
Almost everyone says the military background was three times more valuable than their college education.
But you tell that to somebody that hasn't got a military background, they look at you like you got two heads.
Why should we let someone run this country when they they're not willing to start out at buck private pay?
That's a fair point, but uh I mean, again, by that standard, I presume you would have voted for George McGovern.
Well, I don't know.
Well, I mean, he had a he had an exemplary military career.
Wesley Clark had an exemplary military career.
I think a military let me be honest with you.
I I think a military career exemplifies character individually.
I don't I don't think it's necess is necessarily going to tell you that person's gonna be the best president.
Who's willing to, you know, just willing to do something for other country without the power.
Well, uh start at the bottom.
You know, you can you can't go in the military and start out as a general, they just won't let you do it.
Well, you can go you can go into ROTC and have a little different route there.
But shake and make it the the the biggest rip-off uh with regard to higher education is the outlandish state and federal subsidies, you know, that go Pell Grants and the like while these administrators and the trustees rip people off on tuition.
That's the biggest scandal in higher ed.
I mean, if if I were running a state right now, I'd haul up every single board of regents I could find and say, you know what, you're not getting a dime more until you quit gouging students.
But what they do is they gouge and they hire these professors, most of whom are left wing, especially in the social sciences, and then they say, well, don't worry, uh, we'll have the federal government pass more Pell Grants, or we'll get more state subsidies because everybody deserves a four-year liberal arts education, which is a a total mistake.
We need more we need more masons and electricians.
We don't need uh more psychology majors.
But I understand your point, and you got me between a rock and a heart spot because I presume you have a military background.
I don't, so I I'm no one to preach.
I'm just saying I don't think that's the only qualification people ought to look for because you can get burned sometimes.
Yeah, it's true.
That's true.
You know, IQ is based on memory.
It's not what you it's not what you know, it's what you remember.
Um but uh you know that that's why I say I think one of the qualifications before we turn someone loose in there should be uh, you know, it's not great to have power.
If you've been in in combat, people look at you at the end for the answer, you're gonna find out it's not great it to be on top.
True, but we do have we do have a structure that set up deliberately a civilian command of the military.
Why do you think we did that?
It it didn't work with Clinton.
You got that right without a president anyway.
Thanks for the call, Jeff.
I do appreciate it.
Let's try uh Jocelyn in New York City on this July third, two thousand and eight on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Hi, thank you for taking my call.
Um I like to make a reference to the comment uh me regarding uh General Clark's uh comments of McCain as far as saying that uh shot down is not uh prerequisites becoming president.
I think the media has totally used that comment in various ways.
One in the point he was trying to get across.
It wasn't so much as far as that it wasn't if you register to become president, it was that people equate that specific military experience and what ensued from that as far as it's POW studies for the next year and a half has supreme foreign policy, you know, expertise, and you know if McCain starts to speak about foreign policy, no one has the right to challenge him and no one has the right to then he could well, then he could have said that.
Well, I mean you he also said that he's a personal hero, and you never hear that.
He said he's a personal hero of mine.
I respect the position.
No, no, no, no, no.
You know as well.
Now uh now look, you know as well as I do.
Look, I tell look, I'm you just heard me with the previous caller.
If somebody comes up in a sensible and dare we say sensitive way and says, you know, uh military service is something to be lauded, and we ought to be give thanks to our troops, uh brave men and women right now on July fourth, but is not necessarily an airtight predictor of a great commander in chief.
Fine, I don't have no problem with that.
I tend to agree with that.
Uh but but that's not what he said.
He was put on that show to deflect the fact that Barack Obama is weak on national security issues, and the way they had to deflect it was to try to tear down McCain.
And that was just simply an insensitive comment if he's if he's saying that look, military service is not going to guarantee a great president.
End of story.
Instead, it's well, getting shot down isn't a qualification to be president.
Well, McCain didn't choose to get shot down.
And then I think you didn't get shot he didn't get you didn't choose to get shot down, but at the same time, that that experience has totally surprised.
What's the difference between McCain's experience of getting shot down and someone who didn't get shot down and served?
Yeah, the different morality.
You put you please both individuals, you know, in the Capitol, and and and listen to what they have to say on Capitol Hills speaking to Congress.
Who's gonna be taking you know more whose words are gonna be taken more so hard?
Let's let the American people let's let the American people decide whether I mean what's a better preparation for commander in chief.
Uh being in the military and tragically a POW for five years in the Hanoi Hilton, or being a community organizer for Acorn in Chicago.
I'm Jason Lewis in for Rush Limbaugh on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
1800-282-2882 back on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Rush taking the day off, and you would too if you got that deal.
Congratulations to Rush.
I'm Jason Lewis.
America's Mr. Wright, filling in for the great one.
He'll be back on Monday, of course.
Hope everybody's getting ready for a good July 4th weekend.
Get those flags out.
Hamden, uh, Connecticut, let's try Henry.
You're on the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
Uh thank you very much.
I uh I called up because you said the poor do not create jobs.
Well, actually they do.
Uh the fact is that the poor, by being needy and by qualifying for all sorts of benefits, uh create jobs for the people who are providing them with the help, which with a little bit of effort they could probably take care of, but uh in some cases they're absolutely needy, but there are some uh some who are marginal, and uh these are created jobs because somebody has to do the work.
There aren't some that are marginal.
A vast, vast number are marginal.
Remember welfare reform and the children's defense fund and every other liberal uh you could imagine said, oh, welfare reform will throw a million children into poverty.
Guess what happened after we passed welfare reform?
And we just cut back a little bit, a few states did.
Minnesota really didn't much, but a few states did, Wisconsin being one of them, cut back on the cash portion of welfare.
The old AFDC program, now TANF.
That's all we cut back on.
The food stamps didn't get nicked.
In fact, they're going up.
Uh housing subsidies, Section 8 vouchers for housing didn't get nicked, uh, Medicaid didn't get nicked, just the cash portion.
But that was going to throw a million children into poverty, and poverty went down, which tells you what.
But people got a little bit of anxious and they went out and found work.
You're right.
I mean, that's how else did how else did I have something else to point out here?
Go ahead.
Uh while we're on the subject is that uh I uh I have a vision of what things are like in a hundred years.
The cars will mostly run on electricity.
The electricity will be produced by uh uh nuclear activity, and the waste will be dumped into the sun.
Someone starting their July 4th weekend a bit early there in uh Connecticut, uh, Henry.
Well, I'm just telling you that I have studied this stuff.
I began talking about the concept of dumping the stuff into the sun when Eisenhower was president.
I think I had that concept once in college, but that was late on a Friday night.
Anyway, look, who knows what's going to happen in a hundred years.
That's the the beauty of capitalism.
The bottom line is electric cars will not work now.
Uh the lithium ion batteries uh tend to explode.
You know, you can't even carry these loose lithium ion batteries for your computer in checked luggage anymore.
And these are some of the batteries that were going to put us into the next generation of electric cars.
You take a look at the Toyota Prius or the Chevy Volt, they're backing off on all of their claims.
You're gonna get 40 miles right now on six hours of charging the battery.
When the 40 miles are up, your battery's done.
And the sticker price try forty to forty-five thousand.
Oh, not to mention you're gonna have a larger electric bill.
It is these alternative energy sources simply do not compete with the internal combustion engine.
No matter how much uh some of the liberal left will tell you or what they'll tell you, it it simply isn't viable, and no amount of government money right now is going to make it viable.
But in a hundred years, who knows, Henry?
Diane and William Sport, Pennsylvania.
Hi, and welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi, how are you today?
Could not be better.
I've got my new irons in.
I'm gonna go to the range right after the show.
Well, I call because uh it's overline Friday, and I know it's a little bit off topic, but it just grates me that uh the Republicans say nothing, nothing about the economy and how well it c it's doing and how bad it could have been doing if it wasn't for a war.
I mean, all this money that they're sending to Iraq is not going to Iraq.
It's going to people's pockets here in the United States is employing millions of people through the military and all the expenses they have with housing and food and clothes and be careful.
Diane, my dear, be very careful here.
Once you set the the the premise or the precedent that a government program, even one as valid and necessary as the military, once you set that Keynesian premise that that will jumpstart the economy, the next thing you know, uh Barack Obama and Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi pick your favorite lefty will be talking about expanding AmeriCorps, expanding national service for helping neighborhoods, picking up parts.
Why think of all the jobs it will create?
There's a fundamental fallacy in this thinking.
And I under we we need the military, and we need some form of government.
But I believe it was, you know, Thomas Pain who said uh government at its best is a necessary evil, at its worst, an intolerable one.
These are net drags on the economy.
What makes the economy go is when you return resources to the private sector and they can invest and create real wealth.
Anything the government spends on, Diane, first has to come where?
Come out of where?
Out of our pocket, right?
So if you're talking about a rebate stimulus check, Or you're talking about another government program, they will first tax, borrow, or inflate to spend that money.
That is money that otherwise, otherwise could in fact be spent right here in the private sector.
And that's money that creates real wealth.
The bottom line is this do you trust government to spend our resources, or do you trust millions of consumers and investors and taxpayers to put their money where they think they can get the biggest return?
All right, don't go away.
1-800-282-2882.
Your call's coming right up as we continue right here with me, Jason Lewis, on the Rush Limbaugh program.
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