I am the colossal and enduring Rush Limbaugh, the last man standing.
Still on the attack and moving forward.
Great to have you with us as it is Friday.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
Yeah, I knew this is going to happen.
Now I'm getting wardrobe advice on what to wear at my speech tomorrow at the CPAC convention.
I am 58 years old, and there are still lots of people who think I don't know what I'm doing.
Mostly women, not all.
I mean, there's some people think I still don't know how to do a show right.
Anyway, it's great to have you with us here, folks.
Telephone number if you want to be on Open Line Friday, 800-282-2882.
The email address LRushbow at EIBnet.com.
Well, I'll tell you what, they're throwing all of their credibility overboard at the drive-by media, particularly the Associated Press.
A.P. Obama, I have to name for you the writer of this story.
His name is Calvin Woodward.
He is known as an Associated Press writer.
Another one of these fact-checked pieces from AP.
Now, remember, after the quasi State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, which many Americans were miffed at because they thought they were going to be watching American Idol.
Instead, they saw Obama.
After that speech, AP ran a good fact-check story pointing out how much of it was just not true.
Much of any of the claims, it just wasn't true.
Now they've done a fact-check on the Obama budget, or they have assigned the esteemed Calvin Woodward to look at it.
Claims that President Obama's tax plans are an assault on small business skirt the likelihood that most job-producing small business wouldn't feel the pinch at all.
This is an out-and-out lie.
It is a prevarication.
It's worse than a distortion.
President Obama is proposing to raise taxes on households earning over $250,000 by increasing the rate on the top two tax brackets and limiting deductions starting in 2011.
Republicans and other critics, knowing they will get little mileage from defending the rich, instead are casting the plan as a tax hit on people who run industrious little companies driving job growth.
That's not likely, according to one in-depth analysis, which found that more than 95% of small business owners would be off the hook.
The magical 95% number again, as in 95% of you are going to get a tax cut.
Well, we just had a call from Arizona.
What was the woman's name, Dawn?
Can you check the transcript and find her name?
What?
Gail in Lakeside, Arizona.
And she just had her tax preparer do her 2008 income tax return.
And her tax preparer warned her about the Obama tax cut that starts in April, where many of you ostensibly are going to see $13 more per week in your take-home pay.
Withholding tables are being rewritten as we speak, so that when your employer gives you your first check in April, you will see $13 a week additional in your net.
And that reverts to $8 a week starting in January.
Gail's tax preparer told her to be very careful because this really is not a tax cut because they are not adjusting the rates.
So the $13 additional dollars that many Americans will see in their paychecks is not the result of an income tax rate reduction.
It's simply a tax credit.
Even people who do not pay taxes will get this $13.
So if you take, she was told by her tax preparer, if you take the $13 a month, that is additional income that you will be taxed on next year.
In essence, you'll have to give it back because the rates are not being lowered.
And that will be called income.
So there is no tax cut.
Now, to say that 95% of small business would be off the hook on taxes is just as absurd.
It is irresponsible reporting by Mr. Calvin Woodward at the Associated Press.
And it gets better.
Obama does not propose higher business taxes, but critics reason that owners of many small business companies report business income on their personal tax returns instead of filing corporate taxes.
That exposes their business earnings to Obama's higher tax rates on the wealthy.
Now get this.
This is the piece des résistance.
And I hope you are a small business owner listening to this.
For one thing, writes Calvin Woodward of the Associated Press, most small businesses don't create jobs.
Calvin Woodward of the Associated Press asserts in a press release for Barack Obama's budget that most small businesses don't create jobs.
He says that most small businesses tend to be lawyers, accountants, and other professionals who earn some of their money from partnerships and otherwise organize themselves as a business entity.
As well, many small businesses with employees don't earn enough to put their owners over the threshold for the higher tax rates.
Indeed, most of them, like Joe the Plumber, would probably get Obama's tax break for the middle class, which we have just learned is not a tax break.
There is no tax break.
They are not reducing tax rates on anybody.
If they're not reducing tax rates, how in the hell are you going to get $13 additional every week in your take-home pay?
It's called a tax credit.
They're just changing the withholding tables.
But next year, when you start doing your 2009 taxes, that $13 a week is going to show up as income, and you are going to have to pay taxes on it, which means you're going to have to give a portion of it back because the rates are not changing.
Understand something.
No income tax rate anywhere in the tax code is going down.
They're going up.
Now, there's some obscure taxes out there that there might be some rate playing with most of the significant rates from capital gains to income to everything going up.
So this is not a tax cut for 95% of the people or for 1% of the people.
It's a subsidy.
It is simply the redistribution of wealth.
It is nothing more than a transfer payment.
But it is an out-and-out lie.
For Calvin Woodward and the Associated Press to assert that most small businesses don't create jobs.
The U.S. has roughly 6 million businesses that employ people and 20 million businesses without employees.
They are the employees.
Self-employed are employees.
How can you have a business with no employees?
20 million businesses without employees is not possible because the owner is an employee.
And I'll guarantee you, there's some people on the cash side being paid.
So there's some independent contractors doing some work for these people that are not technically employees.
This is just outrageous.
This is irresponsible.
It is another sign of the absolute degradation of the professionalism that once was journalism.
Most small businesses don't create jobs.
20 million businesses without employees.
Many truly small operations simply don't make enough to qualify for the tax hit.
They fill up their gas tanks, don't they?
Wait till the carbon tax hits.
Wait till a gasoline tax increase hits.
There are tax increases throughout this budget that people are still looking for, haven't found, in addition to the ones that have been found.
Everybody's taxes are going up under the Obama budget.
Everybody's, not just the wealthy.
Everybody's taxes are going up.
And it's going to get even worse because when it is discovered that all of these new taxes do not lower the deficit or cover the costs of universal health care, and they won't, demonstrated that yesterday, then they're going to have to go get the money somewhere else.
Now, understand something, folks.
Every time you read anywhere, Obama's big challenge is how to pay for all this spending.
He doesn't care about paying for it.
He wants to create the illusion that it's being paid for because he knows that most of you have to pay for what you get.
He has to create the illusion that they're concerned about having it being paid for.
But if there were a genuine, legitimate concern about how to pay for all this, they wouldn't be doing 90% of it because we do not have the money.
We can't pay for what is being done.
All we can do is print the money and hope and pray and keep our fingers crossed on inflation.
We can't pay for it.
Furthermore, there's no intention to pay for it.
Debt, chaos, upheaval, constant growth of government is the plan.
It is the design here hidden behind speech after speech after speech that attempts to be inspiring toward, yes, we can come back.
I'm going to tell you something else.
I was thinking about this.
It finally hit me.
It shows you how easily we all get sucked into premises that are advanced by the left.
Yeah, we got a bad economy.
Yeah, it's not the best in the world.
Yeah, it's been worse, but we got a bad economy.
Doesn't justify all this.
Doesn't come anywhere near justifying what we're doing.
Taking over banks, taking over the mortgage industry, taking over this industry, taking over health care.
Universal education was in the budget.
Everything is an emergency.
The crisis has to be done.
It's not that 92% of the American people still paying their mortgages.
92%, 93% of Americans who want a job have a job.
It's not the Great Depression.
Falling home prices.
Well, somebody recognizes the deal when they see it.
The Chikoms are flying over here with a plane load to buy four closed houses in Southern California.
They are.
I saw the video of them getting off the bus.
They're going to hire tour buses to go through these neighborhoods and the Chikoms get off of the bus.
Average Chikoms, I'll take that one.
I'll take that one.
I'll take that one.
And they're buying them up.
Meanwhile, we're going, I can't take my money.
Now, understandably, if you live in this country, buying a house right now, the market's unsettled.
Can I tell you something else here?
Why, with the market is unsettled and full of chaos, with the stock market erratic as it is, down 3,000 points almost since the immaculate election.
Why, you can understand people being trepidatious about getting into the housing market, even with the seductive nature of low prices.
Here's another story.
You know, the Obama administration, liberals just love this.
More Missourians than ever sign up for food stamps.
Nearly 1 million Missourians, one in six people in the state, needed federal aid last month to keep food on the table.
That is the highest count ever.
It's exactly what liberals want.
Just years ago, they couldn't get people to use them.
Remember just years ago in various states, California being one they're advertising at the end of the fiscal year for people to come in and get on the food stamp rolls?
One in six people in my native state are on food stamps.
Nearly one million people.
The increase in Missouri's food stamp usage mirrors a national trend since 2001.
As of November, the most recent month for which data were available, more than 31 million people used food stamps, up from 17 million in 2001.
You don't think the liberals love this?
This is where we're headed.
This is what they want.
I've told you, he has envisions of a massive welfare state that includes new participants from the middle class and even the upper middle class.
A massive welfare state.
You say, Rush, why?
Because you can control the people.
Friedrich von Hayek had it right.
Socialism as opposed to capitalism is attractive because it offers the opportunity of control, for control.
Capitalism does not.
It is also, as I say before we go to the break, sickening for me to see great American companies groveling and begging at Obama's feet.
We'll be back.
I'll explain what I mean after this.
Welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, Open Line Friday.
As we return to the phones to Minneapolis, this is Kristen.
Great to have you on the program, Kristen.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
How are you today?
Fine.
Thanks very much.
Good.
I just wanted to share a little story with you.
I'm one of those 5 million Americans who are unemployed.
And yesterday I called the unemployment office to see what benefits that I would get from the stimulus package.
Of course, being a government agency, they didn't know that much, but they did tell me that I would get $25 extra in my paycheck weekly, my unemployment check.
And I thought to myself, you know, something is not right here.
You know, they're going to give, what is it, $13 or $16 to working Americans, but unemployed Americans, they're going to give $25 to something's not right here.
And people should be outraged at that.
But it makes total sense.
The unemployed are not being paid nearly as much as the employed.
It's only fair the employed get a smaller increase than the unemployed because their baseline is lower.
What is your unemployment check?
Do you get it every week?
How do they come?
I get it every week.
Do you mind my asking what the total amount is?
It's $459 a month, and I get taxes taken out of it, too.
$459 a month gross?
No, no, I'm sorry, a week.
I'm sorry, a week.
I get $459 a week.
That's over $2,000 a month.
It's a lot of money.
I mean, it's a good amount of money.
Plus, I get taxes.
Well, for not working, it is.
Yeah.
I know they deduct taxes from it.
So what is that?
They offer you the option.
You don't have to have taxes taken out, but I choose to.
Because you have to pay taxes on your unemployment compensation eventually.
Okay, so you choose not to, or you choose to.
No, I choose to have the taxes taken out, yes.
Okay, so what is your net unemployment check every week then?
It's $459.
Oh, that's the net?
That's after taxes?
Yes.
What is the gross?
I don't know offhand.
I don't get stubs or anything because I have it direct deposited, so I don't have to look that up.
But then I'm going to get an extra $25 now.
And I just, I mean, I think that's a good amount of money.
I may have to revise my answer here is why I'm asking for these numbers.
So $459 a week is the net after taxes.
Right.
That's $24,000 plus some idle change every year.
Right.
After taxes, how many members in your family?
It's just my husband and myself.
Is your husband unemployed?
No, he has his own business, and we have employees, or he has employees that work for him.
He has employees.
Yes.
All right.
So you guys, with his, now I see what you're talking about.
Well, I mean, as an American, I just think it's not right that people that are working are getting shortchanged.
It isn't right.
Of course it's not right.
God bless you for calling.
God bless God for seeing to it that you got through because this is a perfect illustration of my theorem of what this is all about.
The unemployed, the people who are technically not working and not doing anything, are being paid more by the government to stay in that circumstance than people who are working.
Right.
People who are working and fit a certain profile get $13 a week, which is what is it, $52 a month.
It's less than $1,000 a year.
Plus, they're going to pay taxes on it next year because the rates haven't been changed.
So the people working, you're exactly right.
The people who are working, who are getting their fingernails dirty, the people who are going out there and just hanging in there despite the obstacles, get a measly $13, and your increase in your unemployment check is $25.
I'm telling you, that's purposeful.
They want to make it more attractive to be on unemployment than it is to work.
Mark my words.
Would you let me at least introduce the segment before you interrupt me?
What's the question?
What is the well, you know, actually, it's a good question.
Nerdly wants a question of a very famous football player.
I've been kind of marveling today at the Down Jones Industrial Average because, you know, everybody was expecting the Down Jones Industrial Average plummet.
I mean, they were worried about blowing through 7,000 today because of the news on the government picking up 36% of Citibank.
But it's down 27%.
It was down in the triple digits, 150 or so earlier, but it's down to 27 now.
And I think that's because the market approves of the impending release of Michael Vick from prison, which, well, it's as good an analysis as anything else to explain what the market's reacting to.
So the question then becomes, will a team in the National Football League be interested in it?
Yes.
However, what is next is, will the Commission, Roger Goodell, suspend him?
League suspend him.
The league hadn't dealt with him yet.
He's just dealt with the criminal justice system.
Now, Goodell could say, I'm going to sit you down for another year.
We're not going to tolerate this kind of behavior in our league.
Or I'm going to sit you down for six months.
I'm going to sit you down for four games.
He might say, time served, and have at it, go see if you can find a job.
At which point, the Oakland Raiders will be first line as Al Davis tries to recreate the image of the greatness of the Raiders from the old days of misfits when the Raiders were something.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I think I found some conflict here between Calvin Woodward of the Associated Press, who has a fact-check piece today, asserting that small businesses do not create jobs.
They create most of the jobs in this country.
He asserts they create no jobs.
I'm not sure.
I think this first quote from Obama is from his Quasi State of the Union speech on Tuesday night.
I will not spend a single penny for the purpose of rewarding a single Wall Street executive, but I'll do whatever it takes to help the small business that can't pay its workers or the family that's saved and still can't get a mortgage.
Small business that can't pay its workers.
Hey, Calvin Woodward, the president of the United States just used plural of the word employee to describe who works at small businesses.
By the way, this is sort of a variation on the strawdog argument.
I'll not spend a single penny.
The purpose of rewarding a single Wall Street is what is bailing them out.
You have spent gazillions of pennies.
You've spent more pennies than we have made rewarding Wall Street executives by bailing out their firms.
You see how this works?
But of course, ignorance is the most expensive commodity.
I have said this.
I maintain it to this day.
Ignorance is our most expensive commodity in this country, ignorance on the part of many of our people.
And they hear him say things like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you keep hammering them.
You keep them off their jets and you make sure they can't put new bathrooms in.
Yeah, you do that.
By the way, in Berlin, because of the economic strife and the recession there, owners of Beamers and Mercedes automobiles are seeing their cars torched.
The Hoi Polloy are burning up high-end, high-end brand name automobiles.
Now, that's not new to us.
It's just that here, militant environmentalist wackos torch SUVs on automobile dealership lots.
But it's starting over there, Mercedes and Beamers.
Story is one woman came back from a business trip, couldn't find her car, thought it might have been towed away, called the cops.
No, no, no, somebody torched it.
We did tow away, but there was nothing left.
It was burned up.
They put the igniter, the fluid, between the windshield and the engine.
They pour it down there and then light it up.
They know how it's taking place.
Another Obama quote from the Obama Small Business Recovery Plan.
Did you hear that, Calvin Woodward, AP, the Obama Small Business Recovery Plan?
Temporary tax incentives to encourage investment in jobs.
Obama will give small businesses additional incentive to make investments and start creating jobs again by providing temporary business tax incentives through 2009.
This will be accomplished in part by the extension of IRS Code Section 179 expense deduction to $250,000, which now expires in December 2008.
So it's sort of like the unemployment in the stimulus.
States take the money.
When they run out of federal money, they're out of money as well because the rules get changed in the state if you take the federal money.
In this case, you and small business are going to get a tax deduction incentive for an additional year if you go out and hire an employee.
Now, you better plan on only having the employee for a year.
I think also in this, and I'm not quite certain, but it was part of the campaign.
Remember that little $3,000 tax credit for every new employee hired?
Now, anybody running a small business that knows what they're doing would just laugh at that.
Because $3,000 tax credit to go out and hire somebody at $30,000, $50,000 a year plus benefits, $3,000 is going to offset that.
See, the purpose, let me tell you what this is all about, folks.
Look at me.
He'll tell you what this is all about.
None of this that he has announced is an incentive for small business to hire anybody.
And if they don't, in the 2010 campaign year, the Democrats in Obama will hit the trail saying it was small business that refused to hire people.
We offered them all kinds of incentives.
They are into demonizing capitalists.
They demonize achievers.
They are creating a rabble-rousing is what they're doing.
This is a nothing incentive to go out and hire somebody to keep a tax deduction that's already on the books for an additional year.
Stephen in Acme, Washington.
It's nice to have you on the program, sir.
Open Line Friday.
Hello.
Hello, Rush.
Thank you for taking my call.
First thing, as a fifth generation veteran and with two soldiers in the family presently, thank you very much for what you're doing for our veterans.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
God bless you, sir.
Do you think Obama is making the decisions and the something he is because he's in over his head, doesn't know what he's doing, or is he actually doing it on purpose to destroy our country?
Well, I don't think he thinks he's destroying the country.
I think he knows he's destroying a system that he thinks is unfair, unjust, and he doesn't like.
He is destroying capitalism.
That's his objective.
He wants to destroy capitalism.
He wants to establish a very powerful socialist government, authoritarian.
He's intellectual.
They want control.
He wants control of the economy.
He wants it for his party as well.
They don't think they're destroying America.
They think they are America.
See, these people think their way is America.
We're the ones un-American.
We're the ones that stand for capitalism, which is unfairness.
To them, capitalism is greed.
It is selfishness.
And they are the good people, and they love to think of themselves that way.
In truth, what Obama's doing is cruel.
What the Democrat Party has done is cruel.
I intend to detail this in my CPAC speech tomorrow.
What they have done is cruel in the guise of compassion.
It is what?
What?
What are you chuckling about?
What is it?
Yeah, I'm starting to think of things.
Somebody at Fox called me today and said, can you give me an advance idea what you're going to say?
I said, I don't know yet.
I don't start thinking about this till the last minute until every bit of news that's going to happen has happened before I go out there.
I can't write a speech.
I cannot sit down and write a speech.
I lose half my vocabulary when I write a speech because I get caught up at the keyboard, typos, and your brain freezes.
All my life, my best thinking has been done while I'm speaking, as is illustrated by 20 years behind the golden EIB microphone.
But yeah, this is the speech is tomorrow.
It's a little like 26 hours away.
This is when the little gray cells start exploding in there.
So yeah, I'm starting to get an idea.
But anyway, what they have done is cruel.
And they've done it for 50 years.
And they get away with it because of their good intentions.
They only wanted to help.
But somehow the unintended consequences end up really damaging millions of people and families.
It's never reported that way because the assumption is they're full of compassion and love, and they're just trying to help.
So no, he's not trying to destroy America.
He thinks he is America.
He thinks he represents the America that's been getting a shaft for 200 years.
He represents the America that's on the wrong side of every deal.
They get the raw deal, the rotten deal.
They have been screwed.
They have been shafted.
They've been taken advantage of.
They've been discriminated against.
It's time to make it right.
It's time to show these people that have been doing these evil things to people exactly how it feels.
So you want to find out what it's like on welfare where you don't care people are on it?
Here you go.
Here is your unemployment check.
You want to find out what it feels like to be scared to death?
Here you go.
This is about revenge, a little vengeance.
It is about theoretical capitalism that they despise because they can't control it.
And again, because they think it's unfair and unjust and unequal.
No, no, no.
They're not in their minds trying to destroy America.
They're trying to rewrite it.
The only problem they've got is that liberalism doesn't flourish in the free market, which is why Obama has to go out and sound like he's Ronald Reagan, promising socialism.
He couldn't be getting away with this.
And this point, ladies and gentlemen, is crucial.
He couldn't and wouldn't be getting away with this were it not for a totally compliant press.
If it weren't for the drive-bys, in effect being his PR statement each and every day, PR agent, he would not be getting away with this.
If there were a genuine vetting of Barack Obama during the campaign and prior to it, if there were a genuine vetting of his administration and all these plans, wouldn't be getting away with any of this.
But he has not been vetted and he has not been challenged.
He has not been investigated.
He has not been questioned.
He's not been doubted for going on two years.
Well, that's a lot of solid time to propagandize people.
That's where we are.
We're also at an EIB obscene profit break, which I'm a little late in getting to.
So I must come to a screeching alt here in terms of program content and take it.
Be back with more phone calls on Open Line Friday after this.
Excuse me just a minute.
Are you doing anything for it?
I'm the last person.
I'm the last person you ought to come in and tell me you think you're getting a cold.
How do you think it makes me for crying out loud?
We have been the stellar advertising choice for Zycam for two or three years.
We put Zycam on the map.
Snartly comes in, hang on, coming down with, don't tell me, go get some Zycam.
It's in the bathroom cabinet.
This is why advertising is necessary, ladies and gentlemen, because even as frequently as often, and a great name, Zycam, you can't forget that name.
But it is interesting.
Even I, I will admit sometimes, when I'm coming down with a cold, or think I am, the first thing I do is just get mad.
And then I start uttering expletives, undeleted.
And then even I remember, go go, like, I, you know, I don't feel like I'm coming down with a cold, but I've got this speech, CPAC speech tomorrow in Washington.
I can't miss it.
I don't want to go up there not feeling well.
So I've been taking it just in case.
Because sometimes a cold can penetrate you and lay dormant before you see or feel any symptoms.
And I've been sneezing a couple times.
Stuff really is magic.
It does work, and I get email testimonials from people constantly.
But you've got to catch it early the first instant that you think you're coming down with a cold.
You have to use it.
And by the way, if you've tried it before and had trouble with the packaging, and it was kind of odd, because you had to fold some, the end of it and then rip it, and it was hard to do, or she had to go get some scissors, in which case you had to manipulate the Q-tip inside back so you didn't clip it off.
They got a great new package now.
It's a tube, and you just snap the top of it off, and it's right there.
You just swab the inside of both nostrils, hold your nose five seconds, do that every four hours, and I guarantee you, you will retard the development of the cold.
You'll slow it down.
You'll limit the severity of it.
And if you catch it early enough, sometimes, like some of us here, it lasts a day and it's gone.
Mary Ann in Redding, Connecticut, Open Line Friday, and you're next.
Hello.
Oh, hello?
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
I am calling in response to the summit.
I just couldn't call you the day you had it.
And I'm both excited to call you because I'm a huge fan and I thank you for all you do.
But I feel terrible that I'm calling to confess why I one time didn't like you.
Confession is great for the soul.
And we hear confession here with no judgment.
Well, I have become a very big fan in the past two years.
My mother was a huge fan for years and encouraged me to listen.
And I would try to listen to you.
But I found you to be arrogant.
But it was because I didn't give you a chance.
And I just wonder if other women don't feel that as well.
You have an air of confidence in your voice, and you say things like, I'm on loan from God, and they don't offend me anymore.
But they did initially.
Did you honestly believe?
See, this is the kind of thing.
Now I know it's humor.
Did you honestly believe that I thought I was saying I'm God?
No, of course.
No, I just thought you were arrogant for making such a comment.
Of course, I didn't believe that.
I'm going to let you know this little secret.
Sometimes it's necessary.
Sometimes magicians do let you see one of the tricks.
Now, I hear the pompous a lot.
I hear the arrogant.
I hear cocky.
Now, when I was growing up, women loved John Wayne.
There was nothing wussy about John Wayne.
And John Wayne went out there taking polls on whether the pioneers ought to go after the Indians.
I have been in relationships, dates with women where if I left the choice of where to go to dinner with them, they wanted me to make the decision.
Now, that's just a couple of little points.
We all have formative experiences in our lives.
When I was growing up, my 20s, women did not like being complimented on their appearance.
It was an insult because their brain, they thought, was being ignored.
But when it comes to this talent on loan from Gaza, first off, it's thanking God for the blessings of creating me as I am.
Absolutely.
And I know it's only temporary.
And the, well, I haven't revealed the magic trick to you here yet.
And I'm just out of ticket.
Can you hang on for a while?
And I don't want to mislead you or anything.
I'll reveal the magic trick to you in mere moments.
Every magician must release one now and then.
Look, I don't want to build this magic trick up any bigger than it is, but I do owe you an explanation of what I meant since so many people, women, apparently seem to be so conflicted here about elements of my presentation on this program.