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Dec. 12, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:06
December 12, 2008, Friday, Hour #3
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Greetings, my friends, and welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh, The Excellence in Broadcasting Network, on Friday, live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
I have to admit, folks, this show is wearing me out today.
And we've got one more rocking hot, solid hours straight ahead at 800 282, 2882, the email address.
Lrushbow at EIBNet.com.
I want you to look very closely at what is happening with this United Auto Workers, the General Motors, Ford Chrysler bailout, and all this.
Because this is a union bailout.
Snerdley said to me, the break of the top of the hour.
He said, I know where this is headed.
I know exactly where this is headed.
So what's going to happen is the government is going to take over all of the union legacy costs, the pensions, the health care, the uh the uh retirement pay for all of the retired auto workers.
And once that happens, then the deal's done and then go to the bailout, and everything's monkey-dory.
And I said, That ain't be what's gonna happen.
What's gonna happen?
And I the first thing out of my mouth today when the program opened, there's gonna be a bailout.
It's gonna happen when Obama gets in there, there's gonna be some kind of little bridge.
They're gonna take TARP money, they're gonna do this, it's gonna happen, but get them to Obama's inauguration.
Bush can kick the can down the road, make sure that they don't go belly up on his watch.
Then what's going to happen, folks, is the genuine nationalization of these companies.
The federal government is going to take an ownership stake, and it's going to be significant, and the management of these companies will be more than happy for it to happen.
Then what's going to happen after that, remember now we're going to have, I mean, Obama is who he is, and his ideology is what it is, and that ideology will be peppered throughout the bureaucracy, the uh the House and the Senate.
What's going to happen is, is, is at some point down the road, a year or two, whatever, that the unions, the United Auto Workers, is going to own the automobile industry.
They are going to have more than one seat on the board of directors of these companies.
They're going to own a significant percentage of the automobile industry.
This will be done by government simply transferring the ownership that they have taken by virtue of their bailout to the United Auto Workers.
And this will be done under the rubric of class envy that it's about time that the people who really made this company what it is, the people who build the cars, it's about time they shared in ownership, about time they got what has been rightfully theirs all these many decades.
And then, what I want you to pay special attention to is Walmart, you're next.
Because this is what is gunning for you.
So, Now, they won't be able to claim that Walmart needs a bailout because right now Walmart is run very responsibly, and McDonald's, these some companies out there are turning a profit.
People are going in and buying things from these places because they can afford them for a host of reasons.
But as you know, if you look at the Democrat Party enemies list, it is almost all corporate entities plus me.
And they don't like Walmart because it ain't union.
They also don't like Walmart because people that patronize Walmart get a better bang for their buck than they do from government social programs.
People love Walmart.
Barney Frank wants people to love him.
Love government.
Little jealousy there.
Plus, they're not unionized.
So that's where we're headed.
Elections have consequences.
They matter.
Now I'm gonna tell you something else.
I asked you before the previous hour came to a screeching halt to remember the fear that was in Karen from Lansing's voice at the end of her call.
Forget for a moment what she said about her husband, non-union uh engineer working for General Motors, uh, Who didn't earn nearly as much and never got paid over time.
She's her husband's retired.
And they have a little pension.
She's worried about bankruptcy.
If they go bankruptcy, people like her and her husband are first to go in a reorganization and bankruptcy.
You figure out who you can pay and who you who bankruptcy reorganization basically figures out who's going to get paid among the creditors and who isn't.
And who's going to get paid, you know, what percentage of the dollars that they're owed and this sort of thing.
And she fears that she's going to go and when she fears her health care is going to go.
And she has an adopted son, and she's afraid his health care is going to go.
She's living in fear.
And I just I am it distresses me greatly to live in the greatest country, the most prosperous country on earth, to people to have for people to have this kind of fear because government involvement has made pricing of various things so high that people can't afford it without government.
Or a company benefit.
It's a crying shame what has happened.
There's no concrete logical reason why health care should cost what it does.
If health care were a pure free market thing, it wouldn't.
I mean, there's no reason a hospital bed should cost $1,200 a night, and yet you can go to a motel hotel and get one for $89, 150.
See, hotels can't charge $1,200 a bed because there's nobody paying them for it besides a customer.
They have to price themselves based on what the customers can pay.
Same thing with restaurants, same with everything everything else.
Now there are levels of hotels, there are levels of cars, there's levels of homes and so forth.
There's a market for everybody who has whatever they have to spend.
In health care, there is no such market.
It costs what it costs, and it has nothing to do with you.
Government, once again, has made it that way.
Government being involved.
And it's going to get worse.
The fear that was in Karen's voice.
The things that she's afraid of.
It's not just auto workers involved here, folks.
If the economy collapses as it could from all of this spending, everybody is going to be poor and without health care.
It's not just the auto workers.
It is all workers, it's all businesses, large and small, all citizens of this country.
Where do you think this money is coming from?
The Fed lends two trillion to people, we don't know who.
Who's going to pay it back?
What are the terms?
Two trillion.
Where'd they get it?
The annual federal budget's three trillion, and there's a deficit of $600 billion with that.
Now it's going to be almost $1.6 to maybe two trillion in deficit next year.
Where's this coming from?
It's not all coming from other countries buying our treasury bills.
They're printing money.
They have to be printing money.
Where is this coming from?
You can't keep doing this.
You can't keep printing money like this.
You cannot keep spending money like this.
Refusing to draw lines, no discipline whatsoever, a total avoidance of reality.
I'm convinced liberals don't know where money comes from.
They just think it's there and there's more of it wherever they need to go get it, they get it, printing press or taxes or wherever.
You just can't spend and spend and spend with government taking over percentages, this business or that sector, without destroying the economy at some point.
And the problem is that the government's doing exactly the wrong things.
It continues to increase regulations on companies that are going bankrupt.
It continues to protect union contracts that are unrealistic because the companies are going bankrupt.
I don't care what the deal in the past was, if the company's going bankrupt.
All bets are off.
The government continues to promote no growth fuel policies that are now having an impact on our economy by making us poorer.
And that, I fear, is their intent.
Have you seen?
Let me find this in the stack very quickly.
This this stuff that's going on out in California.
They are then they're so happy about this.
They just passed, and they're very happy.
They're their pollution board out there, just passed the most restrictive carbon emissions bill in the country.
It is going to force businesses out of business.
And these government bureaucrats out there think they're doing great things to save the country and the planet from global warming.
They say, look, one state alone can't do it, but we're going to lead the way.
They're going to lead the way in businesses shutting down.
California's already, the governor's talking about needing a bailout.
We spend a fortune on the poor.
We spend a fortune on the unemployed.
We spend a fortune on people without health care.
Short of nationalizing our entire system, what else can we do?
And what's the return we're getting?
We're spending a fortune on the poor and we have.
And there's still the same percentage of people who are poor.
We are spending extending unemployment benefits.
We're robbing people of their incentive to go out and make a job, to create a job.
We're robbing people of the inherent entrepreneurial spirit they might have.
Because we're giving them unemployment benefits.
extending them.
If we nationalize everything, we're going to be poorer.
There's another critical point, too.
Weakness.
We conservatives have been warning for years about the consequences of runaway government.
We have been warning for years about the destructive consequences of environmental regulations and taxes.
And I read today that Obama has appointed Al Gore to head up a green inaugural ball.
And Al Gore has convinced Obama that I don't think they convince him, but this Kyoto thing and cap and trade, Obama can't wait.
Totally redo our energy.
Program plan policy to go totally green.
And that's a misnomer because green does not mean more energy.
It doesn't mean cleaner energy.
It doesn't mean cheaper energy.
It means less energy, and it's more expensive.
We have been warning for years, we conservatives have been warning for years about the destructive consequences of all these regulations and taxes.
It is we conservatives who have been trying to fight these job-killing, business killing, dollar-killing policies.
Other than a short period of governance under Reagan, the left in this country has reigned supreme.
Of course, they and they make the same arguments they made in the past.
Well, we need more money, we need more money.
We, you know, this didn't work because we wouldn't have enough funding, and that didn't work because we wouldn't have enough funding.
We need more funding, more regulations.
You you can you can trace the demise of the free market.
You can trace the reduction here in prosperity and so forth, and then you can trace it right to a particular ideology, liberalism.
These are the people that populate government at all sectors.
Government kills jobs, kills incentive, kills innovation, kills prosperity, and it kills business.
Capitalism works.
It really works.
The rest of the world is going capitalist.
13% flat tax in Russia.
The ChICOMs cutting business taxes.
Sweden, arguably the most socialist nation in the world is cutting taxes.
The French are cutting taxes.
Germany is cutting taxes.
We are going in the we're headed toward a Western European type socialism.
And they have seen the error of all that finally, and many of those Western European socialist nations are turning the corner.
We need to try capitalism, folks, because it works.
Ha, welcome back.
It's El Rushbo, this the excellence In broadcasting network, I got to tell you a quick little story.
Rom Emanuel is imploding.
Rom Emanuel is imploding, but I have to tell you a little story.
I got an email yesterday during the show.
And I check email during the break.
And this email came from a woman in Minnesota.
She's uh a subscriber at Rushlinbaugh.com, and she said, and sometimes these things just hit me this way.
She said that she um having her Christmas dinner, seeing nine adults and six kids, and she and their family loves prime rib for for Christmas dinner.
And last year she went out, she she found a prime rib for 18 bucks a pound or whatever that she thought was just fabulous and it was great.
And she's intrigued, she wanted to go get one with Alan Brothers.
She went to abstakes.com, she went to their website, and she wrote me a note that says, Look, it I I mean I I would love to, but is it really worth what it costs?
I mean, this $18 a pound prime rib I got was fine.
I was it was really great.
I'd like to go, but is it really worth it?
And I'm sitting there saying, okay, what how do I how do I Yeah, it's worth it, but how how do taste is subjective.
So I said, send me your address.
I'm gonna send you one.
And she wrote back, and she didn't believe it, but she gave me the address.
So I called, I called Alan Brothers, and I ordered a 12 to 14 pound prime ribs.
I just served one for Thanksgiving, and it was, and I served one for golf weekend when my buddies came in.
And it's it is, it's better than you can find anywhere else.
I told her so, but I want to show you.
So uh sent it to her.
She wanted it on the 23rd.
And uh now it turns out that that she and her family, I guess, make fresh caramel, so she now wants to send me some some some caramel.
Excuse me.
And it got me to thinking.
I sit here and I talk about Allen Brothers all the time, and I tell you how good it is.
And uh how do you really know?
I said a lot of things I like on my in my email to her, I said, Now look, taste is subjective.
You know, you might like country music, and somebody else might like classical.
Doesn't mean either of you are wrong.
I said, and there's different kind of ways to prepare it.
Sometimes, you know, we get a syringe and we inject uh liquefied garlic into the into the prime rib.
Sometimes we just uh massage the prime rib with some garlic powder, garlic salt, and some cracked pepper.
We sometimes just do it plain and raw.
It depends on how you prepare it.
I said, You sound like a pro, but I'm gonna stop selling it here.
I'm not gonna tell you how great it is because I don't want to build up these expectations.
Just try it.
So she says, okay, well, I don't know, I'll send some pictures of everybody eating it and so forth.
And and so, got to take how can you find out if it's as good as I say, because taste is subjective.
And that's why they have the rush packs, little samples of things in there that you can use to try.
And once you do, folks, I'm uh tell you it'll it is a special occasion thing, depending on what you buy.
But Christmas is special occasion.
Family deals are, and these are these are uh challenging times, and sometimes it's nice to treat yourself.
So ABstakes.com.
Just go to the website, look at their online catalog there, and you will see what I'm talking about.
Rom Emanuel, ladies and gentlemen, is imploding.
He said today that he's not gonna go to the Now, remember now it's been revealed that he's on the wiretap tapes, and he spoke six times to Blogo about all this, despite what Obama said yesterday.
So Emmanuel says he's not gonna go to the presidential transition offices in order to avoid reporters who want to ask him whether he did indeed have contact with Blogo about the Senate seat.
According to an ABC News cameraman, this is an ABC News story.
According to an ABC News cameraman who was invited inside by Emmanuel to use his bathroom this morning, Emmanuel appeared beat red.
Emmanuel said to the ABC cameraman, I'm getting regular death threats.
You have put my home address on national television.
I am PO'd at the networks, you have intruded too much.
Oh.
Oh, this is these people are cowards, these are wimps.
Every time the temperature gets turned up on them, it's death threats.
We're getting death.
Rom, you ever heard of Ken Starr?
Do you remember Linda Tripp?
You remember all the places the media staked out and got these people coming out getting their morning papers and showing their addresses on TV and they didn't about death threats.
It's the big leagues, buddy.
I thought you knew that.
Now, if I'm right, if I'm right, folks, and if down the road, what Obama does is basically take over a percentage of the auto company, nationalize it and transfer it out of goodwill to the unions.
He ought to be transferring it to us because it's our money that will be buying these companies.
Everybody forgets this.
The government doesn't have diddly squat except the money they print.
And that is destructive.
The other money they have is what they tax from those who produce in this country.
They're going to take that money and they're going to nationalize a portion of the auto industry, and then they're going to give that to the union.
This is my theory.
This is not written anywhere.
We're going to be the ones that own these companies.
And you know, whatever happened to sacrifice, the only people not being asked to sacrifice here are union leaders.
news You United Auto Workers people, you're going to sacrifice.
When this is all said and done, you are going.
By sacrifice, I mean you're there there will be some legacy concessions that will be made at some point.
Will happen.
Union leaders, though, won't.
Because union leaders take your money from you and then donate it to Democrats.
We support the workers.
But not the union workers.
An innovative idea, ladies and gentlemen, in Pittsburgh.
Wrong stack.
Hang on.
I've got so many stacks here.
Wrong stack.
What I just had.
I just had the damn stacker.
This show is wearing me out today.
That's how good it's been.
That's how I feel like I have played.
Here it is in the Raven Steelers game that's coming up Sunday.
Pittsburgh public screw officials may change a policy that makes 50% the lowest grade students can receive, even if they do zero work.
You think this is just accidentally stupid?
This kind of stuff's being done by design, ladies and gentlemen.
The lowest grade, 50%, even if they do zero work.
The policy is meant to help students recover from a bad grade or the odd missed assignment, but the district's teachers complain that some students refuse to hand in an assignment simply because they're content to get the 50% grade for doing nothing.
I know how I was in school boy.
If they had this rule, that's what I would do.
I'd do Zilch.
I'd do Silts and get a C for it.
You know a C and what we call it where they were C was an M when I was a grade school, but for doing nothing.
Well, I d I I didn't do anything in school anyway.
And when I didn't do anything, I suffered for it.
I got a oh man.
Proponents of the policy say that students who are not given a chance to recover from low grades lose incentives to improve them.
Well, for cr not given a chance to recover from low grades.
What do you mean not given a chance to recover from low grades?
There's a simple way to recover from low grades.
Get better ones.
Oh, this is the sitcom.
Jimmy, Kansas City, Missouri, thanks for waiting.
Megan Ditto's rush.
Thank you.
Thanks very much.
From a Rocky Patel cigar smoker in Kansas City, UAW, Clay Como in Missouri, in desperate need of a rush pack.
What I wanted to call you about was...
I know for a fact I worked with the UAW for many years, and uh we've had a big problem with uh uh a pool hall across the street here in Clay Como and uh two different liquor stores at opposite side of uh at a quarter mile.
Thank you so much for helping me out here today.
Well well, it just seems like uh they come in on Friday night and cash their paychecks and also pay up a large amount of hours.
UAW workers are clay como a bunch of drunken fish.
They go into the pool hall in a couple bars to get the paycheck on thanks for helping me out here, buddy.
Well, well, it's just it's just the way it works.
It just seems to be that uh they continue to uh go to the cases to uh Jimmy, let me ask you a question.
Which came first?
The Clay Como plant or the pool hall on the bars?
What was there first?
What was there?
What?
What was there first?
Did they build the clay como plant next to the bars?
Oh no, the bars and the the full hall on the bars were uh there first and the liquor stores, and this is where they cast their checks on Friday.
No, no, no, no, no.
No, what uh what I'm asking is you got you got the Clay Como plant.
All right?
Correct.
There used to be a time when there wasn't a cloak clay como plant.
I mean, it had to be built.
What I'm asking you is, did the liquor store own uh open and the bars open and the pool halls open after they built the plant, or did the Ford people or the GM people build the plant purposely close to the bars, the pool halls, and the liquor stores.
Oh, well, well, the Ford plant was there first.
Yeah, that's what I thought.
See that the free market at work here.
But I I I'm just under uh I just find it mind boggling that I've worked there for several years, and it just seems like when a Friday night rolls around, they run down there, they cast their checks, and everybody's walking out with booze, and I'm getting tired of working with a lot of these drunks.
Yeah, but so liquor store owner and the pool hall guy and the bar owners and ooh, auto plant.
We're we're gonna we're gonna that's the free market works.
It's the same exactly back back in the old days.
You could talk to the guys that ran uh professional wrestling, and they knew they always schedule the matches on Friday night on payday.
Well well, uh uh more than anything, I'm just getting tired of my life being in danger from uh people that come back from lunch a little bit intoxicated, and uh yet they don't want to take a wage cut to help out and help save the company.
Well um I I look at y you're obviously giving first hand witness testimony here.
Oh, yes, I'm just saying, but I then you sound very passionate, enthusiastic and uh and jocular about this.
But it's a uh I I I I do not wish to cast these kinds of aspersions at large on members of the United Auto Workers.
And I understand that also, but my life is in danger with some of these employees.
Uh well you so you still work there then.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, oh, oh yeah.
But uh You don't go to these places at five o'clock on Friday.
Uh well, at our lunchtime and during the evening shift, it just seems to be a regular thing to where uh people enjoy not only casting their check, but uh uh buying up alcohol before they return back to work, and it's just Well, can you really can you really blame them the state of the auto industry, the state of the country, uh people feel like they've got no future, they got no hope, no health care.
Um even with Obama being alive, the surprises are still going on after the Obama was elected, but still these these these uh people have been told that there's no future in the country.
They've been told that it's horrible.
Obama says it's gonna get much, much worse out there.
But uh and some people, you know, we all choose to deal with our stress in different ways.
Well, I understand that, and yes, we can.
So it's become no, we can't.
You aren't.
I wish we could.
I wish they thank you much, Rush.
All right, Jimmy.
Thanks much for the call.
Uh by the way, a disclaimer here.
The um views expressed by the caller on this show do not necessarily represent the views of the staff management of the show, nor me.
Uh who is the staff and management.
Here's Todd in Pompano Beach, Florida.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Hello.
Hello, Mr. Rush.
Uh mega business owner Diddle's from Saint Papano Beach, Florida.
Thank you, sir.
I wanted to bring up uh I just wonder what does he what kind of earmarks does Barney Frank give to his constituents that make them keep voting for him?
I mean, I know exactly what's going on, but my father-in-law up in Cape Cod, he's like, oh yeah, we love him.
He's our guy.
He gets everything for us.
What exactly could he be doing with that?
Well, it it he doesn't have to do a lot because he lives in an almost pure liberal district.
So he doesn't.
I mean, he he's uh he could be sustained simply on the basis of ideology.
But since you ask this, now my memory on this is spotty, but I re somebody did a story on the internet of an attempt to modernize a port, some waterway that would have generated lots of new revenue and income to a portion of Barney Frank's district.
I think I've got this right.
And Barney opposed it because it would have had some adverse effect on unions.
And I don't I wish I could remember more about this.
It was a long, long story, and it was back this spring or this summer, and it was an expose of the answer to the question you're asking.
And I'm sorry, I just don't recall enough of the of the details here to uh to be able to fill you in.
But it was they did they did current pictures of what this area looks like and it's pretty bedraggled and worn out and run down.
And then they did uh artist renderings of what the new project would make it look like, and for some reason Barney was opposed to it uh uh protecting some constituency.
But beyond that, I actually I actually don't think he has to do much, although he probably does do a lot.
I don't think he probably has to.
He's I mean he's in Massachusetts for crying out loud, he's got to be in one of the most secure protected districts that uh you could find.
All right, here's what it was.
This is Barney Frank.
They there somebody wanted to build a liquefied Nash natural gas plant at a terminal on the taut river.
Taunton, Taunton River, liquefied natural gas terminal in the Taunton River.
And Barney Frank did not want it there, and the way he opposed it was to try to declare the Taunton River area there a scenic uh wild and scenic river, meaning it was off limits anymore development.
So if you and I saw the picture of what he wanted to declare a scenic river, and it looks like Cleveland in the 1930s.
There's nothing scenic about it.
And building a natural gas terminal would not have uglified it any further.
And uh he opposed it and and he opposed for for the environmentalists.
And in the process, he participated, look, liquefied natural gas would help with energy costs and energy supply in his district, and he opposed it.
Now that's you know, the the so he owes the natural the uh the environmentalist wackos.
Now I got a couple emails here.
One email, Rush.
I really enjoy listening to you talk about all this bailout and the economy and so forth.
Well, what do you know about any of it?
You keep talking about how people are gonna suffer where nobody's gonna have any.
What do you what do you know about bailouts and fear and so forth?
And okay, okay, I'll answer the question.
Because it comes up.
Ruther, you're out of touch.
You you you don't have to worry about any of this stuff.
You've got you've got reserves and resources.
Yours is never going to impact you.
Uh I don't think any of us can say this.
Have you heard about this guy in New York that was running this $50 billion Ponzi scheme?
Do you realize former head of NASDAQ, folks?
Do you know how many Charlatan cheats there are in the financial, the asset management industry?
People, it it's it's a crapshoot.
I've I've always I didn't stay in it very long.
I I've I've always been I never did instinctively understand why I should give people who had less money than I have my money to manage.
If they were so smart at it, they'd have more than I do.
If they ever get hold of social security, it could be trouble.
This guy fit he was running a Ponzi scheme.
He had $50 billion he said, of managed assets, and he didn't have that much.
What he was doing was taking the investments he got to pay previous investors, and it finally caught up with him.
And he's admitted it.
And a lot of his clients live here.
In Palm Beach, where I live.
This stuff can happen to anybody.
But I remember I was in Pittsburgh, my second job away from home.
I was working at an ABC, excuse me, O, KQ.
And that's when Nixon slapped wage and price controls on everybody.
You know, we were at 3% inflation.
And that was a crisis.
He had to put wage and price controls.
Well, management loved it.
They loved it.
They were able to freeze everybody's salaries for as long as Nixon wanted it.
But they didn't have to freeze their own advertising rates because they were able to create new categories of advertising, just like butchers were able to invent new cuts of beef that were not subject to the original price controls.
So the wage controls, and and I I've been, and I've I have there are a lot of things that happened to me in my life that were formative experiences.
And I said, if I have anything to say about this, I am not going to be put in prison like this again.
I am not going to live this way.
And I've I've had a desire to insulate myself from all of these things.
And I've I've been very fortunate and lucky in a lot of instances to be able to do it.
But I got fired eight times.
I was making $17,000 a year when I was 32.
That you know how embarrassing.
And that was that was horrible.
So I'm fully aware of all this.
I have Tated chips for when I because the only place that I would accept food a credit card was a was a snack store.
And I didn't have any cash because the credit card bill and the house payment were due in the same two weeks of the month, and MasterCardon wouldn't change the date.
So, you know, I've I just I'm not I'm gonna I'm not going to do this.
If I don't, if I don't have to.
And another guy, Rush, I don't like carbonate.
I tried to sign up for Mac version of Carbonite, and I don't have it.
Screw you.
They're coming.
I've told you this.
Carbonite's coming with a Mac version in um January, right after the first of the year.
They're gonna do it a consumer electronic show.
And it's matt, it's it's just it's automatic backup of your hard drive.
It's just the most brilliant thing.
And it's auto, you'll never even see it happening once you do it the first time, and you'll never regret doing it because everybody loses their hard drive.
Carbonite.com.
See this.
No uh payment for 15 days, get to try it free.
Offer code rushcarbonite.com.
Uh let's let me take a break here.
Try to squeeze in a call when we come back.
Don't go away, L Rushball back after this.
Markets up 45 points.
I'm being asked, how did that happen?
Probably because well, I know what they'll tell us.
They'll tell us the market's all excited that Bush might use TIRP funds to bail out autos.
Um I've been thinking about this.
I think if Blogo, if they don't pay him what he wants to resign, I have the perfect revenge.
Who he should nominate because the story the Senate cannot stop who he nominates.
Alan Keys.
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