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Aug. 7, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:33
August 7, 2009, Friday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Ha, are you?
Isn't this fun, folks?
Isn't this fun?
Great to have you with us.
It's Friday.
Let's keep it going.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
Here's the phone number 800-282-2882.
The email address LRushbo at EIBnet.com.
Remember, on Friday, when we go to the phones, you own the program.
Now, let's see.
Let's see.
Let me try to figure out what this is.
Okay.
To all of you who are afraid that the argument is being lost now, to all of you who are upset that the town hall meetings no longer have reports talking about the contents of the health care bill, that all that's happening.
The Democrats have been so successful in changing the argument, and now all we are is a bunch of Nazi, unruly mobsters.
So forth.
I think you need to realize that the fevered emotional pitch about this is more than you know.
People are fed up, and for every action Obama and his union thugs take, it is just firing people up even more.
I'll give you a little anecdotal story.
And by the way, Brian, it still isn't fixed.
We had the HVAC guy in here today.
Air conditioning.
It's still not fixed.
You can't.
I already did.
I turned it down to 60.
It's still 76 in here.
The room temperature goes up.
By the way, you people think I don't exercise.
I don't get out at noon.
But I tell you what, I'll bet the calories I burn and I'm generating heat like crazy.
The room temperature goes up three degrees every show.
That used to not.
I guess the unit in this room is not anyway.
Not working.
HBAC guy came in here to look at it.
And normally this guy walks in, where's the problem?
And we never hear from him again.
He goes and fixes it and then leaves.
This guy walked in here today and he was a broken record.
His healthcare, this is crazy.
I want no part of it.
Healthcare, why this they can't even run a billion-dollar program on used cars today.
He wouldn't shut up about it.
This guy, in how many years has become, has never said a word other than ask where the problem is.
And I'm telling you, there's a lot of this out there.
Get this story.
This is a press release from St. LouistTeaparty.com.
St. Louis Tea Party will hold a press conference and peaceable protest at SEIU, Service Employee International Union headquarters in St. Louis at noon Saturday.
The protest is to demand justice for Kenneth Gladney, an African-American conservative who was brutally beaten by four individuals, at least two of whom were identified as SEIU representatives.
This was at the Russ Carnahan meeting in Melville last night.
The beatings included racial slurs and required hospitalization for Mr. Gladney.
As videos show, the attack was unprovoked and no one retaliated against the union thugs.
This attack followed hours of taunts and verbal assaults by SEIU and ACORN members upon citizens gathered to express their views under the First Amendment.
We believe this brutal beating is part of an organized plan to suppress dissent to the administration's planned seizure of the medical industry in the United States.
Great way to put it, the administration's planned seizure of the medical industry.
Anyone who believes in nonviolent protest in the rule of law, in the right of black men and women to express conservative political views, in the right to peaceably assemble to speak freely and to petition Congress for a redress of grievances, is invited to attend.
The St. Louis Tea Party specifically requests the NAACP and the ACLU to come out in support of Kenneth Gladney's rights, which were trampled by union hooligans.
We call on Representative Russ Carnahan to denounce the beating.
We call on President Obama to denounce the beating.
We call on St. Louis County to prosecute the assailants to the fullest extent of the law.
So nobody's backing down here.
If anything, they're taking it back to them.
St. Louis Tea Party, a press conference and peaceable protest at union headquarters in St. Louis.
By the way, you want the address?
No, they just tried to beat him.
I watched the video.
He just beat him.
He's the vendor.
He was the guy selling the buttons and so forth.
38 years old.
Black conservative.
This guy, numerous injuries in the emergency room to hospital for two days, they say.
SEIU union people.
No, I don't think there's, well, there were six arrests.
I don't know.
This is the place, you know, the St. Louis Post Dispatch reporter was one of six people arrested.
I don't know off the top of my head if any of these hooligans were arrested.
Wait a minute now.
We believe in a brutal beating.
Don't think so.
At any rate, the St. Louis SEIU headquarters are at 5585 Pershing Avenue in St. Louis.
I'm sure the union members acted stupidly.
The union members were acting very stupidly here.
Well, we won't hear that from the administration.
Remember, this is Obama's army.
This is why they were sent.
This is exactly why the union was sent out to these things.
There was no violence.
There were no people being shoved into walls prior to the union thugs showing up at these events.
They were all peaceable.
They were loud.
But they were all peaceable.
President Obama, this afternoon in Washington during this program, all giddy over the fact that only 240,000 more Americans lost their jobs, only excited that the full unemployment figure is 16%.
When you add the people who have been unemployed and have then given up looking for work to those who are recorded as unemployed and looking, the unemployment rate nationally is 16.9%.
President Obama and his remarks basically said that his administration has rescued our economy from catastrophe.
This morning, we received additional signs that the worst may be behind us.
Though we lost 247,000 jobs in July, that was nearly 200,000 fewer jobs lost than in June, and far fewer than the nearly 700,000 jobs a month that we were losing at the beginning of the year.
Today, we're pointed in the right direction.
We're losing jobs at less than half the rate we were when I took office.
We've pulled the financial system back from the brink, and a rising market is restoring value to those 401ks that are the foundation of a secure retirement.
The worst is behind us, America.
Obama saved the economy, touts the rising stock market, which in previous months this administration said they pay no attention to.
It's just a tracking poll.
247,000 jobs are not saved.
I just want, do you feel saved, America?
See, I made this point yesterday.
He's making the same great oratorical speeches.
He still looks cool, that same warm smile and so forth.
But the numbers are going down.
What's different here?
Do you feel saved?
Let's go to the next sound bite.
We need a new foundation, Obama says.
And he means it, and this is very important.
We do not need a new foundation.
We have had the best foundation any country has ever had for over 200 years.
We don't need a new one.
Here's what he said.
As we begin to put an end to this recession, we have to consider what comes next because we can't afford to return to an economy based on inflated profits and maxed-out credit cards.
An economy where we depend on dirty and outdated sources of energy.
An economy where we're burdened by soaring health care costs that serve only the special interests.
Now's the time to build a new foundation for a stronger, more productive economy that creates the jobs of the future.
And this foundation has to be supported by several pillars to our economy.
That's it.
We're going to remake it.
We're going to get rid of profits.
We're going to get rid of all the energy sources that are cheap, economical, and at work.
We're going to get health care costs down, which everybody knows isn't true.
The polling data shows that people aren't buying his.
Oh, this is just rescued our economy from catastrophe.
Here's the final soundbite.
I meet Americans who've kept their confidence in their country and in our future.
That's how we've pulled the economy back from the brink.
That's why we're turning this economy around.
I am convinced that we can see a light at the end of the tunnel, but now we're going to have to move forward with confidence and conviction to reach the promise of a new day.
240,000 more people lost their jobs.
Now, you could say, okay, maybe jobs are a lagging indicator and maybe things are turning around.
But folks, let's just hypothetically say, okay, we've hit bottom and we're now sort of bouncing back up.
You wait till cap and trade and health care are implemented and start impacting the economy.
And all this is out the window.
Wait till these tax increases hit.
Must be stopped.
We'll be back.
Don't go away.
Hey, hey, President Obama just rescued us from catastrophe.
We haven't been rescued from a catastrophe.
This is a catastrophe.
He is a catastrophe.
However, I have here a state-run Associated Press dispatch.
President Barack Obama on Friday welcomed a dip in unemployment.
It did not dip.
It did not dip 240.
I know it went 9.5 to 9.4, but it didn't dip.
At any rate, I don't want to split hairs.
President Obama welcomed a dip in unemployment as evidence the worst may be behind us.
And it may not.
Earlier, before his 1:15 p.m. TV appearance earlier.
The White House said the president still expects unemployment to hit 10% sometime later this year.
Now, that can be one of two things.
They say it, and when it doesn't happen, or they know it's going to happen.
They know it's probably already there now.
They're just cooking the books.
That's what I think.
You want to hear some startling numbers?
In 2008, over 2 million U.S. citizens fled the United States for greener pastures.
Now, while this figure still represents less than 1% of total U.S. population, the trend is astounding.
Between 2006 and 2008, the average number of U.S. permanent resident filings stood at roughly 1.1 million a year.
That's how many people would leave.
2 million in 2008.
2009 and beyond, going to double, it's going to triple.
You know, when a state goes nuts and starts taxing you out to Wazi, you can split the scene and move to another state.
When your federal government, when your federal government, there's nowhere you can go.
You can't escape it.
Except leave.
And some people do.
Two million people in 2008?
That's.
And I guarantee you, they're not leftists who are upset that the country's not liberal enough.
Here is David in Crawfordsville, Indiana.
Nice to have you on the program.
Hi.
Mega, who's your dittos, Rush?
Thank you, sir.
I am not 65 yet, but my wife and my parents and other relatives that I have are all over 65.
And I'm scared to death that if we don't continue the pressure and continue speaking the truth to power, that their health and their lives are going to be at stake.
And I just wanted to say that those people who are receiving wounds and becoming injured by daring to speak the truth to power, those people are just as much American heroes as if they received those wounds fighting in Ramadi or Baghdad or Kabul.
That is an interesting take on this.
I think I kind of like that.
They're not facing enemy fire, but they also are not trained to.
These people are just average citizens, many of them elderly, showing up, being beat up or intimidated, shoved by union thugs.
And they're doing it in the name of freedom.
Liberty.
And the more the forces that are in favor of this genocidal bill, this generational genocide that they're trying to foist on us, those people that are fighting against it are American heroes right down the line.
You know, let me ask you, you said you're not 65 yet, or you are.
I am not 65.
My wife is, and my parents are, and I have other relatives who are, including an aunt who's over the age of 100.
Well, you know, I'm getting a sense.
There are more and more elderly citizens catching on to what's happening here.
And if Obama loses them, you know, they are the traditional Democrat voters because they've bought the notion that people want to take away their social security.
And I'll tell you what, at a town meeting in Houston last night in Sugarland, Sugarland, Texas, doctors showed up.
When that starts happening en masse, it's just going to, it's going to compound all of this.
Look at, David, I appreciate your comments.
I hadn't looked at it that way, but you're damn right.
You're damn right.
And these people are not cowed.
You know what they are?
They're revving up and they're going bad.
They are madder than ever to be pushed around like this.
Jim in Grand Junction, Colorado.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
Many Americans that are against this administration's so-called health bill are doing so out of self-defense regarding life and death medical care.
Your previous caller nearly stole my thunder.
The parents of the very young who will be restricted in this bill, children of the elderly who will be restricted, and those in between, including many middle-agers like me, who will be old one day, are going to start seeing what the Logan's Run movie really meant.
They are also starting to one thing that is significant and got me a little concerned is many people are saying to the protected media and politically protected elite, you too have friends and families and coworkers, and they're not protected.
Comedian Ron White, who does that redneck comedian thing, says he had a pitch, which I'll paraphrase, that concerning Texas law and the death penalty.
He says, if you kill in Texas, we will kill you back.
This thing can get real serious.
I think it already has.
But I mean, there are people across the country who, if my parents were alive today and they were not treated because of something like this, I assure you, I would be thinking of many different options.
This is just Nazism.
And if anybody who ever saw the movie Logan's Run knows right what I'm talking about.
Do you see Logan's Run, certainly?
You've seen Logan's Run?
He's probably too young.
No, he's not too young.
He just is watches different things.
But, you know, the media elite and these very well-protected, politically elite, and I'm not talking about president.
I'm talking about, you know, the reps and senators, key senators, and all of this.
You know, they're opening their friends and family and coworkers up to all kinds of retaliations.
Well, same thing with late-night comedians.
In the entertainment world, they've got family, too.
You know, this is if the more this spreads, there is a chance that, well, you know, people, I read a piece on Andrew Breitbart's BigHollywood.com website the other day.
A guy who used to be a writer for a late-night comedy show, been monitoring the comedy shows.
Some of these late-night comedy shows are starting to turn on Obama, Jon Stewart.
You know, and he thought it was important Jon Stewart's turning or starting to because Jon Stewart in the 18 to 24 demographic 1834 is the most respected TV newsman.
It's a comedy show.
They asked the question somebody did after Walter Klondike passed away.
And the, so they, this, a lot of people are going to be affected by this, and it's going to be much, much harder just to become a propagandist for Obama when it affects you personally as well.
We'll see.
Thanks.
Be back.
Stay with us.
No, I know I'm here.
I'm just, I'm giddy.
I'm celebrating being rescued from the catastrophe that Obama said he's rescued us from.
I was just a little happy here, so I thought I'd enjoy the bumper music a little more before I had to come back and start talking as a real radio announcer.
800-282-2882, Congressional Recess.
Folks, is on and it's cooking, and it's hot out there.
And, you know, we talk about the Heritage Foundation here a lot.
AskHeritage.org.
I'm a member.
You should be a member.
You can do it for as little as $25.
You'll join over, I've over close to 500,000 people now who are members.
This is an organization that is devoted to the principles of the American founding, limited government, full liberty.
Those are two of the hallmarks of our Friends of the Heritage Foundation.
And these are brilliant people, devoted, committed people.
They're all scholars.
I know many of them.
They're in a think tank.
They sit there and they think.
And then whenever they finish thinking, they write what they've thought about.
And it's always brilliant.
Well, you know, it's a think tank.
Have you ever been inside a think tank, Snurdy?
People are just sitting there thinking.
It's an amazing thing to see.
And there are hundreds of them at the Heritage Foundation.
And they're thinking all the time.
And after they finish thinking, they write it down.
And what they write down, they put on their websites, and it is brilliant.
It's one of the primary sources I go to for show prep.
They're inside the Beltway, but they don't do Beltway Speak or DC Speak.
They are just the best putting out the best stuff.
And you can access it just as I can.
We are on the facts business side of things.
So are they.
Check it out.
Go look at it.
Get some samples.
And you hear me quote stories that only Heritage has, only their researchers and thinkers put together on, well, now health care plan, cap and trade, and so forth.
But there us.
These people advised Reagan back in the 80s.
They were instrumental in policy planning with the Reagan administration.
www.askheritage.org.
Here's Pat in Pasadena, Texas.
It's great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
It's great to talk to you.
I have a pet theory that the government has a vested interest in denying health care to seniors and encouraging their demise because as they die, the government has a potential to reap a huge windfall from the death tax.
Well, that's going to happen anyway.
I mean, people, we all are going to die at some point.
I think something more nefarious, Pat, is having senior citizens die earlier than normal by denying them life-saving health care coverage also will allow them to reform Social Security.
That's true.
By not paying it.
I mean, it paid to people who did.
Sometimes you do pay survivors under some versions of the program.
But even before you get to that, it's none of Barack Obama's business who lives and who dies in this country.
And it's none of Nancy Pelosi's business.
And it's none of Henry Waxman's business.
It's none of Barney Frank's business.
It's none of Harry Reid's business, who lives and dies.
They want to make it their business by being the ones paying for it.
They want to make it their business by being the ones who are charged with the responsibility of controlling costs.
They want to make as much of your life their business as possible.
It's not just the elderly they're focused on.
They're going to fund abortions as well as part of the health care plan.
They are going to deny certain coverage to people who are not by virtue of age close to death, but if they've got diseases or if suppose they come up with a, they've been talking about a fat tax or some way of dealing with obesity.
Suppose that you have lived a lifestyle they don't approve of that in their minds has increased your health risk and they don't want to pay for it or they want to charge you additional through the roof and so this is the kind of thing they want These are the kind of statists that want to control every aspect of people's lives.
And they want to certainly not have to spend money on people who have reached a certain age.
I mean, as I put it bluntly, where it's not worth, in their mind, it's not worth the investment to keep you alive.
This was not my comparison.
I forget who made this.
I think it was somebody at the AmericanThinker.com, but you think you're 76 years old and diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor you're going to get the coverage Ted Kennedy got and he is getting.
Ted Kennedy has a program, a healthcare program in the Senate he can choose from.
He's also, of course, independently wealthy, so the cost is not a problem with him.
You think if you're 76 and you don't have anything like Kennedy wealth, you come down with a brain tumor like he had, you're going to get all the health care that he got.
It ain't going to happen, folks.
Because the government's going to say so.
That's the rub.
It's none of their business.
It's none of their business.
Be in charge of who lives and dies based on money?
And maybe they can make it other characteristics and factors as well.
Who knows?
We're talking about authoritarian imperialists.
This health care bill, if it ever passes in its present form, gives them unlimited power to regulate lifestyles and behavior in every way possible.
Things that have nothing to do with health care.
They can say that they do and regulate them.
Arthur in Lake Elmsmore, California.
Nice to have you here, sir.
Hello.
Yes.
You're a hard man to get hold of, sir.
Well, I'm glad you made the effort.
I have tried.
I lost count of how many times I've tried, and all I got was a buzz-buzz.
Busy, busy, busy.
Well, but here you are.
Now, my concern is I'm not really sure if it's which is worse, either being out of a job or retired and elderly.
I mean, which is worse nowadays.
Because either way, you're in a bad spot with the system they want to put in.
Right now, I'm in pretty good health.
You know, I mean, no complaints.
The worst I've had is a headache or a toenail removed, and no big deal.
But if something drastic happens, I don't know how under this plan, I don't know.
I'm afraid my daughter would be in, you know, wouldn't be able to handle it.
Probably not, but you wouldn't have any say-so over it.
The government would.
Well, see, I have this.
I don't know if you're familiar with the scan out here in California.
It's an insurance coverage.
Scam or scan?
Scan.
Scam.
I'm not familiar with what you're talking about either.
Well, it's an insurance company out here in California.
And I also have a VA card.
But I'm not sure if that would even be covered, if they would even cover it if they took it over, because they would probably limit what they would do.
That's the whole point.
Everybody's going to be limited in what they get.
There's going to be rationed health care.
Look at you can't.
I was starting to sound like a broken record.
I want to get off the notion that this is about health.
If it works, if it gets you riled up when you find out that at your end of life, this government's going to throw you out pasture.
If that works to keep you fired up, that's good.
But this is about so much more than that.
This is why I think it's important that the elderly people, seasoned citizens, understand what's going on.
These have been traditional Democrat voters.
And if you all get fully informed here as to what these people have planned for you, there's no way you should put up with it.
It's none of their business what kind of health care you get and when and under what circumstance.
It's just not Barack Obama's business.
Be right back.
Don't go away.
And we are back.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have been advised that the New York Times planning heavy coverage for this weekend on the following story.
It's being written by Floyd Norris.
In the last decade, a lack of job growth.
This is just amazing in its malpractice and irresponsibility.
Listen to this now.
For the first time since the Depression, the American economy has added virtually no private sector jobs over a 10-year period.
The total number of jobs has grown a bit, but that's only because of government hiring.
The accompanying charts, which I don't have here, I just have the advanced text, show the job performance from July 99 when the economy was booming and companies were complaining about how hard it was to find workers through July of this year when the economy was mired in the deepest and longest recession since World War II.
So from 1999 to now, we have produced no new jobs.
We've been in a decade-long jobs recession.
The Bush administration never happened.
They're willing at their near-bankrupt newsroom at the New York Times, they're willing to put out drivel like this in order to prop up this catastrophe of a president.
You remember it was just two years ago we were at record employment at 4.7% after coming out of a recession that a mild one that Clinton left us with and then 9-11.
We had a growing population.
We had a booming economy that they tried to make everybody think was rotten, especially in the second Bush term.
And I must mention this.
I must mention this.
I finally read the full Associated Press story on the new unemployment numbers.
And even the AP admits that unemployment didn't really dip.
Employers sharply scaled back layoffs in July.
The unemployment rate dipped for the first time in 15 months, sending a strong signal the worst recession.
Then you go to the end of the article, buried at the bottom.
The dip in the unemployment rate was the first since April 2008.
One of the reasons the rate declined, though, was that hundreds of thousands of people left the labor force.
The labor force includes only those who are either employed or are looking for work.
So even AP admits unemployment didn't really dip.
We've just had a hell of a lot of people give up looking and they're not counted as members of the labor force.
That's what we now know in the BLS figures they put up, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The U6, unemployment six, like 9.4% of them is U3.
And that's people who employed looking for work, nonemployed on unemployment benefits.
U6 is everybody that's looking for work on unemployment compensation, and those who are no longer looking, they've given up, and that rate is 16%.
Not 9.4%.
It is 16%, maybe 16.9, but it's 16-something.
And even AP admits unemployment didn't really dip.
Just went off the charts.
Just went off the unemployment rolls.
Well, we have been rescued.
See, AP knows people aren't going to read the bottom of the story.
We've been rescued from this catastrophe.
The president said so today.
Houston, Texas, Tom, welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello, sir.
Yes, Rush, thank you.
Yeah.
If you would, can I say that I love my wife, Paula?
Sure.
Thanks.
The reason I was calling is that my wife is 65, and we went to Gene Green's town hall meeting the other night, and it was quite different than last night when we went to John Culberson's meeting.
And John Culbertson's is very positive and uplifting.
Gene Greens was in a small room with police.
All right, which one's the Republican?
Which one's the Democrat?
John Culberson is a Republican, and Gene Green is a Democrat.
All right.
And the observation I made to John Culberson last night was that the problems that we have with the health care and the insurance is, I think, caused by the Ted Kennedy HMO legislation from over a decade ago, and the chickens are coming home to roost.
That's certainly a factor.
It's hard to nail down one thing, but Ted Kennedy did invent the HMOs.
It was longer than 10 years ago.
In the late 80s.
He invented the HMOs, and now he is running around demonizing them.
He's been doing it for two years or longer, demonizing the HMOs as a bunch of profit-thirsty, mean-spirited, don't care about patients organization.
He invented them.
Well, Rush, we need to spread the word so that people understand exactly what we're facing, is that the intervention from the Liberal Congress has now caused the problems, and now they want to take it over and mess it up for good.
Well, you know, this is that the people that create the problem then come along and act like, who did this?
And they start blaming big this and big that while they claim they're just innocent bystanders trying to protect us.
And then they come along, say, we're going to fix this for you.
That's just shame.
Well, what can we learn from what's happened today, Mr. Snerdley?
What do we learn today?
We have learned that there is a building, percolating, effervescing, boiling over passion and emotion for liberty and freedom.
People do not want a bunch of inexperienced little mini socialist statists running around controlling their lives.
We have learned that the bloom is largely off the Obama rose.
And we have also discovered, ladies and gentlemen, that, well, Snerdley wants me to say Rush Rules.
But bottom line is, we may be in the minority, but we're not anywhere near powerless.
I just realized it's Friday, and I'm here.
And be here Monday, too.
Have we have an enjoyable weekend ahead of you, folks?
Thanks so much for being with us all week long.
Today.
It really matters now.
We'll see you on Monday.
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