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Dec. 22, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:59
December 22, 2009, Tuesday, Hour #3
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I'm glad you're with us, my friends.
Our last live program of the year on the EIB Network.
I, of course, unlike most hosts, at least show up during Christmas week as I'm here.
But I will be leaving sometime tomorrow for parts unknown.
We got Mark Stein in here tomorrow.
We've got, what do we got?
Christmas, Christmas Eve, best up show, Christmas Day, Christmas music.
Yeah, Christmas music on Friday, then a series of guest hosts all next week.
Be back here on January 4th.
Happy to have you here with us.
Telephone numbers 800-282-2882.
Email address, L. Rushbow at EIBNet.com.
Jose Lambier, page two, Palm Beach Post, page two live.
Here's the headline, Child Abuse Activist Super Bowl Act The Who Not Welcome Here.
Now remember, as I read you this story, the National Football League has declared that I am divisive and would be somehow unsettling to too many people in the league.
Child abuse groups in Florida are asking the NFL to drop the British classic rock band The Who from the upcoming Super Bowl halftime show.
And one organization asked U.S. immigration authorities not to allow the band's famed guitarist, Pete Townsend, into the country.
Pete Townsend, they point out, was arrested in 2003 at a roundup of alleged pedophiles cruising the internet for pictures of infants and teenagers engaged in sex.
He was placed on the United Kingdom Sexual Offenders List.
Now, he says that he was researching for a book out there.
In a letter to the NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, Child Abuse Watch founder Evan Daly wrote, inviting Pete Townsend to play his blatant disregard to the values of American families and a slap in the face to victims of child sexual abuse.
Townsend wasn't convicted of a crime.
He was cautioned by authorities, the equivalent to adjudication withheld in Florida.
Roger Daltrey, the Who frontman called Townsend Naive, the guitarist admitted to using his credit card to access child porn as he was doing research.
So that's the halftime entertainment at the Super Bowl in Miami.
What?
What's the question?
His research?
I'm not sure that he was researching a book.
He was doing research, Mr. Snirdley, and I'm not sure what happened to the research.
I don't think we've seen any research on this.
Anyway, even if the NFL doesn't mind having a child porn voyeur perform its halftime show, what the hell, this group, the average age of people that know who this group is, is 60.
And I thought the Super Bowl was about young demos.
Why can't they go get Fergie, the owner of the Dolphins, one of the owners of the Donbass?
Or some of the other high-value, esteemed performers.
Get Snoop Dogg out there to come do some sort of a rampant halftime.
Let's get topical.
Let's get current.
Now, let me make a departure from all of this healthcare stuff and describe for you a story that I think is perfect.
The perfect story for today that illustrates one of the great challenges we face as a country.
It is from the nation.
The nation is the magazine edited by Hurricane Katrina van der Hoovel.
And it's a far-left publication way, way, way out there.
New wars on Christmas target gifts, Santa, and lights.
And they're all happy about this.
Along with fruitcake and caroling, one of the many traditions to look forward to in December is the annual War on Christmas, in which religious and conservative activists and pundits accuse secularists and innocent fans of the phrase happy holidays of stripping Christianity from the occasion.
But this year, seasonal skirmishes have broken out on new fronts.
In these new fights, it's not that the holiday is sliding down a slippery slope away from the manger.
Instead, it's that Christmas is bad for the economy, bad for your health, bad for your environment.
While those reindeer sweaters and charming dress socks you put under the tree are good for the retail business, Joel Wald Fogel, a professor at university's Wharton School, Pennsylvania Wharton School, has been spending recent weeks railing against Christmas gift-giving, arguing that it's an inefficient way to spend money that costs the country $25 million a year.
In his book, Scrooge Enomics, Why You Shouldn't Buy Presents for the Holidays, Professor Wald Fogel says that gifts generate less satisfaction than things that we buy for ourselves.
We don't really know what other people want, he says, but we do know what we want.
Because of this, in his view, Christmas shopping is an orgy of wealth destruction as we spend on things people don't value as much as the money we pay for them.
I'm not against spending.
I'm just against sloppy spending, Wald Fogel said on NPR's Tell Me More.
In one experiment, Wald Fogel asked his students to rate the level of satisfaction they had with gifts that they were given.
From his survey, he determined that gifts generate an average of 20% less satisfaction than things we buy for ourselves.
Which, my friends, is totally missing the point of giving a gift at Christmas.
If you're a secularist, you'll never get it.
If you're a pointy-headed academic elite, you'll never get it.
Gift-giving at Christmas is to remind us of the gift that God gave us with the birth of Jesus and the story surrounding that.
He says it's not true of gifts we buy for our closest family members and friends who we know well enough to gift accurately.
I would also point out, is it any of this guy's business who we give what to and how much we spend on it?
The theory behind this should not be surprising to economists who know well that consumers are best equipped to make decisions about purchasing for themselves.
That's frankly the basis of many economists' disdain for government, because after all, when government chooses for us, they get us the wrong health care program, the wrong color shirt, the bridge to nowhere.
And so this notion that we are best suited to choose for ourselves, a pretty basic notion, a fairly common sense one.
Except the government's not giving us gifts.
Just the exact opposite.
The government is trying to imprison us.
While the theory may bear up to microeconomic scrutiny, others say that Wald Fogel is missing the point altogether that giving gifts is good for society.
Then they move on to something else they approve of at the nation, that is the war on Santa's gut.
And that is new this year.
That is, if Santa Claus is too fat, there's no such thing as this jolly roly-poly guy.
People don't dress like that anyway when they're big and fat because it emphasizes how big they are.
It sends a wrong message to kids.
Kids were counseled this year that we went to see Santa Claus wherever he was.
They should tell Santa to lose weight.
Last week, Australian public health expert Dr. Nathan Grills of Monash University, all this stuff, all this stuff comes from these pointy-headed elites in academia, which is one of the four corners of deceit in our culture today, government, media, academia, and science, the four corners of deceit.
The Australian public health expert, Dr. Nathan Grills, was called a killjoy and a scrooge in the media for an article he wrote suggesting that Santa Claus was promoting bad health habits.
The article called Santa Claus, a public health pariah, was published at BMJ.com, a British medical journal, and suggested Santa was sending the wrong message with his obesity, drunk sleigh driving, speeding, and generally bad lifestyle choices.
Oh, I guess then we could just, we could, we could take the kids to an average Hollywood movie or let them watch an average television show for a while and let them be exposed to really good role models instead of this dreaded Santa Claus.
And then the other thing the nation approved of was the war on your neighbor's light display.
As Christmas trees went up and light displays started flashing around the world, some people cringed at the thought of the electricity required to light the season.
One environmental group, the Energy Justice Network, is providing tickets on their website for people to hand out to egregious offenders of Christmas light waste.
And remember when I was talking to you earlier in the show that once this healthcare stuff happens, that we're going to be pitting ourselves against each other for government services, and we're going to be ratting each other out and telling each other government on each other in order to perhaps put ourselves in better shape at getting government service like healthcare.
And I really mean it.
You know, you are going to see your neighbor with a bunch of flat-screen TVs, maybe more than you should have or too big, and you're going to call the pollution control police, and they'll come and come to your house.
This stuff is not without the realm of possibility.
Many of these light detractors suggest swapping out traditional Christmas lights with LED light-emitting diode strings, which can be 90% more efficient.
LED lights are used in the five miles of lights on the Rockefeller Center's Christmas tree and in the 32,256 lights in the New Year's Eve ball in Times Square.
Now, this story is datelined today from the Nation, a liberal journal of publication.
And I think it's perfect, the war on Christmas and how excited they are about it.
Because my friends, I am not going to participate in this killing of Christmas.
They can try, but they can't take it away from us.
It's beyond what they know.
These secularists have no clue what it is.
They are threatened by it.
They can't leave well enough alone because it is other people's faith in God that scares them to death.
And I, for one, and I hope you're one of them, refuse to let these people succeed year after year, wearing away the joy and the wonder and the true meaning of this time of year and this marvelous holiday.
We have to hold fast on many fronts, and this is one.
So as we go into this weekend of celebration of the gift God gave us all, I will set aside the socialist scrooges who refuse to let the rest of us live the lives so many fought to give us.
We'll get back to battle next week.
But as of today and the rest of this week, I'm going to enjoy life and my family and my faith, and I'm going to try and relax.
But when you are a powerful, influential member of the media like me in constant demand, relaxation is a true luxury, but I am still going to pursue it.
And I bought a ton of presents.
Well, I sent somebody out to buy a ton of, but we bought a ton of, I can't tell you, I bought presents for the mice that live in my brother's basement.
I bought presents.
I can't tell you.
I've had more fun this year sending people out.
I don't have time.
I did some on my own on the internet.
I mean, I have loaded up on the present.
The people at the nation would despise me.
This stupid professor, Mr. Wald Fogel, would highly disapprove of my behavior.
And we're going to rap a lot of them tonight.
We've got more rapping to do tonight than I can't tell you.
And I'm going to throw all that rapping away on Christmas Day.
We're going to throw it in the trash and we're going to start a fire.
We're going to create an ecological disaster with it, just like we do every Christmas.
We're going to go out and bake food.
We're going to get all kinds of the worst food you can eat.
Santa Claus is going to look like a marathon runner compared to our family by the time we finish on Friday.
And then I am getting in the airplane and I'm going to Hawaii and I'm going to get there before Obama does because he's got to sit around and wait for Harry Reid to vote on the health care bill.
I am going to enjoy myself and damn it, folks, I want you to too.
We'll get back to it next week.
Back after this.
Alrighty, and we're back.
Got an email.
What is that number, Rush, for the flower company you talk about?
It's 1-800-PROFLORES, 800-PRO Flowers.
If you call that number, make sure you heard it here.
Mention my name, Rush.
Or you can go to their website, rushproflowers.com.
Christmas is this Friday.
And you still, this is just Tuesday, you still have a chance to make some of these holiday special by sending them pro flowers and really tick off this professor up at Wharton.
I mean, imagine what you could do here.
You could destroy the environment by having somebody pick the flowers and then fly them around on a FedEx jet or a UPS jet, burning up precious carbon.
And then also all to send somebody some flowers at Christmas.
Look at the people you can irritate.
Look at all the people at the nation.
You give somebody a present that you think they don't like and don't want.
I'll guarantee you.
Flowers at a time of year nobody expects them are a home run.
I got, you know, at home, I wanted to see these 12 candy cane roses.
They are red and white roses.
So ordered them.
And they're just gorgeous.
Come in a free glass vase, only $19.99 plus shipping.
And you get six extra extra roses, chocolate truffles that go along with the bouquet for just $10 more.
So for a total of $29.99 plus shipping, 18 candy cane roses, red and white, free chocolate truffles, free glass vase.
Again, for $29.99 plus shipping.
But this is a last chance holiday deal because Christmas is Friday.
You've got to get this stuff delivered by Thursday.
So go to rushproflowers.com or call them 1-800-PROFLORE and mention you heard it on Rush.
You've actually got till 6 o'clock tomorrow night, 6 p.m. on Wednesday to get Christmas Eve delivery.
Here's Ernie in Chico, California.
Ernie, great to have you with us.
Hello.
Hey, Rush.
Thank you very much, conservative, conservative here in Northern California.
And I just wanted to say a couple things and then ask you a quick question.
And by the way, thank you for commenting on the reason for the season.
I appreciate that.
You bet, sir.
I have been in business for 20 years.
And I'm just starting to get into politics.
Well, I've always been in politics, but just starting to get heavily into it here in the state.
And just a couple quick comments on Jim, who called earlier.
You know, we're already in Northern California here.
I'm seeing layoffs and layoffs.
Businesses going out of business, you know cutting back, you know it's uh, it's a state that has its own problems.
It's in bankruptcy basically, and we're seeing that throughout numerous cities in in California.
And when we're dealing with the medical community and this health care you know, I know a lot of the doctors just in the business that I'm in and their own practices, especially when they're dealing with Medi-Cal.
That is a joke in itself, the fact that you know, for the last three years, these guys, these business owners, which are doctors, not getting paid for two three, four months at a time from the state of California because of Medi-Cal and the And it's going to get worse.
Well, can you imagine if the federal government decides to do what the state can't get their budget under control and they go for two or three months and they don't pay?
That's going to happen.
That's what bundling is all about.
That's exactly what bundling is all about.
And the reimbursements are going to be less.
Doctors are going to be earning less.
It's an utter disaster.
But that stuff's not going to start for four years.
Well, you know, one of the comments that was made to me from one of the local doctors of yours basically that, you know, when you deal with the Blue Crosses, the health care industry or the insurance agencies right now, you know, they can get something through within a week when they ask for it.
On Medi-Cal, it takes a month or two to get an answer back on some kind of a procedure.
So how in the world can government think that it's going to be able to do anything better?
It can't.
We have a pretty good health care system right now.
I'm sure it needs to be taken care of and dealing with lawyers and some other things and being able to go across state lines.
The question that you asked, the answer is not, the correct question is not, when is government going to realize it can't do it?
The correct question is, when are the people who support this going to wake up and understand?
I'm not talking about the elected officials because they support it for a whole different reason.
They don't care how it turns out.
They don't care how it functions.
Do you think they care how bureaucracies function at all?
They don't.
There isn't one that functions smoothly.
The real question, people, the average Americans, Democrats who are for this, when are they going to realize that what you describe is headed their way as a matter of daily life?
And I know you would hate to think that it's going to take the implementation of the program to make that happen.
Look, Ernie, thanks for the call.
I appreciate it.
I've got just a minute and a half here, and I want to say something.
All of these, I went through all of these bribes.
I looked at all what Ben Nelson got and all these states got.
And all these bribes are exemptions.
The state of Nebraska will be exempted from having to pay the new mandated Medicaid costs for new Medicaid patients.
In Louisiana, more money will be sent there to help the state pay for it.
The very act of bribing these senators is a, to me, is a tantamount admission to what a lousy piece of legislation it is.
If in order to get senators to vote for it, you have to exempt their states from the provisions, then you are saying we have here a punitive bill.
We are going to wreak havoc on everybody.
We are going to punish everybody.
That's the only way we can make health care equal.
And in the process, some people don't want to be punished or they won't vote for it, so they are exempted.
I mean, the very fact that these deals were made is the proof of how rotten this is and how it is not in any way, shape, manner, or form the way it is being promoted.
All right, brief time out.
We've got to take another obscene prosperity break back before you know it.
Now, I think this is funny.
I don't know if you've heard this or not, but Ben Nelson.
Ben Nelson let Nancy Pelosi write the abortion bill language that he agreed to in the Senate version of the health care bill.
They did this in Harry Reid's office.
And in there was Harry Reid, Chuck Yoshumer, Barbara Boxer, and Ben Nelson and a couple of others.
So Barbara Boxer writes the health, writes the abortion language that Barbara Boxer writes abortion language that Ben Nelson signs off on.
He then gives Chuck Schumer a hug and left the room.
Now, there is humor in this.
You have to look long and hard to find it.
Remember yesterday.
Yesterday on this program, we reported to you that AP, maybe it was the day before.
No, it had to be yesterday because the day before was Sunday.
Yesterday, AP had a story, top 10 business stories of the year.
Number one was the economic downfall and the rebound.
Today, because of the GDP number being revised downward to 2.2, from 2.8, from 3.5, Reuters is reporting the economic rebound weaker than first thought.
The economy grew at a much slower pace than initially thought in the third quarter, restrained by weak business investment and a slightly more aggressive liquidation of inventories, according to data on Tuesday.
And they don't even say that they were surprised by this.
The Commerce Department's final estimate showed GDP grew at a 2.2% annual rate instead of the 2.8% pace it reported last month.
And it actually reported 3.5% originally.
And remember, none of it took place in the private sector.
It was all government growth.
From the Washington Post today, state jobless funds are being drained in recession.
It's about to get much, much worse out there for those without a job.
Obama's failure to help the private sector is going to cause mass suffering.
The recession's jobless toll, draining unemployment compensation funds so fast that according to federal projections, 40 state programs will go broke within two years.
40.
40 state programs will go broke in two years.
And we'll need $90 billion in loans to keep issuing the benefits.
They don't have the money.
Nobody has the money.
The shortfalls are putting pressure on governments to either raise taxes or shrink the aid payment.
Has anybody ever thought about maybe just cutting government, period, like they're doing in Ireland after the lost decade of the 80s?
So people, we have some choices ahead.
Let people starve, raise people's taxes and further cripple business, or blame Bush.
Those are the options that we have.
I say it'll be B and C. Raise taxes and further cripple businesses and blame Bush.
The outlook is dismal no matter what the state control propagandists say.
$90 billion in loans.
Everybody's Fannie Mae is getting a bit.
There's nothing that's solvent.
Nobody is solvent.
Obama's economy.
Those are his starving people.
It's Obama's economy.
There's no question.
He owns it.
I got a note from a friend of mine early this morning with this subject line.
He had a little note attached to it.
Have you ever felt worse while winning a political debate?
He says, Rush, you are leading a political movement that's energized, ascending, and in the majority.
So why is there tightness in my chest?
And why am I grinding my teeth at night?
In normal pre-fascism days, I'd be sleeping a lot better than I am.
By the way, Rush, is there corruption when there's no one in power who cares to enforce the laws and they celebrate unethical behavior?
The bank robbers are in charge of the bank.
Their ringleader is the mayor.
His best friend is the sheriff.
When they take the money out of the bank, are they breaking the law?
Isn't that a mere technicality?
When legitimate business allows crooks to run it and the crooks also run City Hall, it really isn't corruption any longer.
Everything has changed.
And there's one thing I know about crooks.
They don't give up what they steal.
Asking nicely for them to return what they stole and play by their rules won't change the status quo.
The elections in 2010 and 2012 won't have election fraud.
They'll just be a new way of doing things.
No one will be there to prosecute what we once considered illegal behavior.
There's been a political earthquake, a surge of conservatism, patriotism, a throw-the-bums out mentality.
So why do I feel sick to my stomach?
Hopefully it's just because I'm the nervous type.
This is based on a story he read, the Rasmussen presidential poll, a political earthquake.
Only 26% of the nation's voters strongly approve of Obama.
The index, the president's disapproval, or the approval index rating is now at minus 21%.
That's the difference in strongly approve and strongly disapprove.
Wall Street Journal with an editorial today, big government backlash.
The enormous helter-skelter expansion of the federal government seems to be shrinking the president's approval ratings.
They say this is a trend.
They see it in the polls.
They document it here in the editorial.
I can only hope there is a huge backlash.
I hope we throw our necks out lashing.
I've already thrown my neck out, so you all should join me back after this.
Amberbach L. Rushboe and half my brain tied behind my back, just to make it fair to New Orleans.
And Eileen, thank you for waiting.
Great to have you with us.
Hey, Rush, Merry Christmas.
We love you down here.
Thank you.
I love you too.
I was just thinking, these Democrats are centralizing this massive amount of power, and now it looks like they're willing to give up their majority.
Do they ever consider that conservatives could get it back and appoint Dick Cheney to administer the death panels?
Does it ever cross their mind?
I'll tell you, dress this, sir.
They do not think that we will do anything to roll back any of what they've passed if we do take power back, because they don't think the Republicans as currently constituted have the guts.
Now, what you're saying is with a new conservative leadership running the House and Senate, new conservative leadership running the Republican Party, the Democrats won't know what hit them.
And that conservative movement is in an ascendancy here.
The current House leadership, Senate leadership, they're probably right because they would fall prey to the allegation that Republicans want to take people's health insurance away from them.
But Rush, they're not smart.
You wanted to know the definition of smart the other day.
Smart is knowing what you don't know.
And that is their Achilles heel.
They have no idea what's going on out here, and Dick Cheney is our fantasy.
Dick Cheney running the death panels would bring peace on earth.
You know, it's a toss-up as to whether or not they know what's going on.
You're probably right.
They do not know the degree.
But even if they did, I'm telling you, they wouldn't care.
They don't care.
This is not a representative republic anymore.
These are dictatorial people.
I'm glad you call, Eileen.
Great to have you with us.
Roland in Sarasota, Florida.
Hello, you're next on the EIB Network.
Welcome to Mr. Linlaw.
Sir.
It's an honor to talk to you, and I want to thank you for all that you do.
Thank you, sir, very much.
You had an earlier caller, Jim, and he was speaking about what small business people could do to withhold money from the feds.
And as a worker that pays federal withholding tax, I've considered what a lot of people could do, but it'd have to be a lot of people to do it to make it work.
Take nine exemptions on your W-2.
And if you do that in January, you don't have to ante up till April 15th of 2011.
And if 20 or 30 million people did that, I think it would be the equivalent of a bloodless revolution.
Well, that's interesting.
I don't know that you'd be affecting enough money doing that.
You could be, but it's clear, it's clear that there is sentiment out there.
You're the, I don't know, fifth or sixth caller we've had today who has signed on to some sort of plan to withhold tax revenue from the federal and state governments simply because they haven't the manpower to police it and collect it.
People have said we're willing to go to jail to do it.
This is, it goes back to what Eileen was saying earlier, that they're just, she doesn't think the Democrats have the slightest idea the degree of protest, rage, anger out over the fruited plain.
And they may not, but I also, I don't think they care.
And I also think that they don't think this would work.
When you think like they do as dictators, not as small D Democrats, then there's any number of ways to punish people for all of these acts of disobedience.
This is the way they would look at it.
They'd be looking to find ways to punish you, even after the fact, even if it worked.
I want to grab one more here before we go.
That's Roland.
This is Sally in South Lake Tahoe.
Nice to have you with us.
Hello.
Thank you.
This is really awesome.
My civil obedience suggestion is everyone use paper to file their taxes, download forms if necessary, and use their paper and then mail them on April 15th.
Do not mail anything early.
Mail it all on the 15th of April, and that would get the point across.
Well, here's the problem with that.
And I hate to be negative, but you have just highlighted one of the problems that we have.
Most people have their taxes withheld throughout the year, and you get your W-2, and that gets forwarded, and the government's got your money all year.
Yes, but if you have more taken out or you don't pay quite enough, you still have to file a tax form.
And there's plenty of us that are, I'm probably technically called poor, but I generally file early.
But I think I'm going to fall on the 15th this year.
Well, good.
And use as many forms as I can.
This has been, I have been advising people.
You know, I grew up around people who loved getting a huge refund every April or May, whenever they got the refunds.
They run around and brag about, hey, they shafted the government.
Look at this refund I got.
And I thought, well, how do I get in on this?
And I thought they were having more withheld than should have.
They were giving the government the use of their money all in exchange for a big lump sum refund every year.
And I finally figured out, well, that's silly.
You're giving the government the money and they're not giving you any interest on it.
And so I have advised people, you should try, if you can, to go so that you get no refund.
But people are so conditioned to have that lump sum, they can go out and spend it on whatever they need or want at the time that it's tough discipline.
I mean, what I've learned about this, my objective is to spend everything I've got before I pass away.
And my last check will be written to the IRS and it will bounce.
I have no desire whatsoever to give the government states, and I get audited every year by the state of New York.
And I have been since 1997.
These governments are, and I don't even live there.
And I haven't even been there this year.
But look, I'm getting away from your point.
This is two calls in a row.
And maybe, what is it, six or seven today, that people have suggested withholding tax revenue from federal and state governments as a way of shutting them down and causing chaos in their lives.
And I like the way people are thinking about this.
This is an interesting way to think about it because it illustrates that people are not going to sit here and take it anymore, that they really are fed up and more energized about this than ever before.
There is going to have, folks, I can't tell you what it's going to be.
I don't know how, but people are going to rebel over this.
AP headline number five, Limbaugh urges rebellion against Obama two days before Christmas.
All right, thanks much for the phone call, folks.
I appreciate talking to all of you today.
Brief timeout.
And we'll come back and close it out as we traditionally do.
Mannheim Steamroller and Silent Knight.
Be back right after this.
I first discovered Mannheim Steamroller back in 1985 while in Sacramento.
Interestingly enough, watching NFL playoff games.
They played it as mump music.
And I fell in love with it very quickly.
And it had a lot of emotional connections to me when my father died, time of year, and a number of other things.
This song particularly is on their first Christmas album.
First time I heard it to the end, the crescendo of strings, or not strings, but the replication of strings, actually brought tears to my eyes.
We always close out our Christmas show with this version, with as little chatter for me as possible so you can listen to it.
I just want to say thank you again.
It's been another great year for all of us here at EIB.
It wouldn't have been possible without you.
We love you more than we can ever express.
We can never repay the thanks that we all owe you.
You've meant more to me than you'll ever know.
Happy New Year, Merry Christmas, and see you back next year with a bright, shiny face full of optimism.
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