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April 22, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:35
April 22, 2010, Thursday, Hour #3
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Time Text
You know, Snirdly just had an interesting observation.
Would it be fair to call this financial regulatory reform bill voodoo economics?
Because after all, the press is under a spell and everybody is expecting magic to happen from this.
Yeah, I like it.
Obama voodoo economics.
El Rushbow behind a golden EIB microphone, 800-282-2882.
Email address, lrushbow at EIBNet.com from Ann Kornbloot and Michael D. Scheer at the Washington Post.
I need a magnifying glass to read this.
It printed out.
I mean, I literally do.
But here's the headline.
Obama urges CEOs to abandon furious effort to block financial overhaul.
Bringing his case for financial reform directly to the industry's epicenter, President Obama urged Wall Street executives on Thursday to join with consumer advocates in urging lawmakers to pass stricter regulations.
Now listen to this.
Unless this Obama, unless your business model relies on bilking people, there's little to fear from these new rules.
In other words, it's sort of like the Ben Roethlisberger approach to women in a bar.
Just shut up, just relax, and eventually you're going to enjoy this.
And don't tell anybody.
Shut up, relax.
You'll enjoy it eventually.
Look, does this not betray everything Obama believes?
Unless your business model relies on bilking people, there's little to fear from these new rules.
That's how he views the entire private sector.
People get bilked.
And of course, the people who get bilked are the true owners, the rightful owners of the nation's wealth.
Here's another audio soundbite from the teacher union protest yesterday at the state capitol in Springfield, Illinois.
Here's a portion of some teacher talking about the state budget.
Where's the money?
Where is your healthy?
We need it fashion.
Were you able to hear that?
Were you able to make it out?
Where's the money?
Where is the money?
Save our children.
Give us the bucks.
Where is the cash?
We need it fast.
Now that you know that's what you're going to play this again, this is an unidentified teacher at this rally for tax increases in Springfield, Illinois yesterday.
Obviously, another one of these people that wants some money from Obama's stash.
Where's the cash?
Where's the money?
We need it.
We've lost this group.
We have lost this.
This group is gone.
And everybody like them.
They're gone.
Anytime, here's how to identify them, folks.
I'm sure you have a federal or county courthouse nearby.
All you need to do is drive by it.
And I guarantee you, everybody going in and out of there, other than the lawyers, well, including the lawyers, is going in there for their livelihood.
Where do these people go when they want money?
They go to the state capitol.
They go to work?
No.
They go to the state capitol.
They demand from government more money.
We've lost those people.
We're never going to convert those.
Those people are going to have to have to learn by virtue of tough experience.
And I just, I marvel at this.
You can see who we've lost.
You can identify them.
Any courthouse, any place where checks are handed out, any place where complaints about the check not being big enough.
You just check and see who's milling around there every day, who's going in and out, and you'll see who we've lost.
Because to them, going to some government building is where you go to get, in effect, your salary.
Joe Biden, what do you, what's your facial?
Why are you surprised by this?
Where is the money?
Are you surprised that this is unionized teachers asking this as opposed to who asking it?
Why does this surprise you?
Do you think that these people do not know where their lifeblood is?
Their lifeblood is taxes.
They live off everybody's taxes.
These are the people who live off of everybody's taxes.
They know full well what's in stake here.
If these Democrats have to start cutting budgets, it's less for them.
They know full well.
You and I, Snerdley, the last place we would go, something happened to this show.
The last place I'd go to some courthouse or some state capital and start marching around, where's my money?
Where is my money?
I need it back.
I would not even think of it.
It would never occur to me.
It would ever cross my mind.
These people, it's their daily existence.
These are, even though they work, the teachers, these are the free loaders.
It's not the people who are unemployed so much or exclusively.
And they are a net drain on the economy because the salaries that they are paid via our tax, they produce nothing.
They're not even in the private sector.
They're just vacuum cleaners.
They just suck assets and value out of the private sector.
It's no different.
Remember when there were $15 billion vouchers for a share of $15 billion from the stimulus plan in Detroit?
Remember the scam artists selling all kinds of phony applications.
You get one of these and you get to apply for your share of the $15 billion.
And our radio reporter up there, WJR, went, talked to these people.
And where's the money come from?
I don't know.
It's from Obama's dash.
From Obama.
There's no different.
Those people were out of work.
The teachers aren't, but they both go to the same place for their paycheck.
And that is where your taxes end up being collected and distributed.
Except under this regime, this is going to expand.
Now, Snerdly, he asked me a question.
How can you not have a modicum of self-respect?
They think they do.
These people, in their minds, are the ones whose lives have been spent getting the shaft from the system and from the man.
And so now this is their turn to get even.
This is They're heading down to these places like in Springfield to get their share finally.
This is not, they are being morally correct as far as they're concerned.
This is full of integrity.
This is the way it's done because they're victims.
The political party that they belong to, the ideology that they subscribe to, has made all of them victims.
I don't care what their race is, their gender is, their sexual orientation, their ethnicity or religion.
They have all been made to think they are victims of Wall Street or anybody else who's successful or has a house when they don't.
And the Democrat Party and liberalism has said, instead of you people going out and working for your share of an ever-expanding pie, we're going to make sure those who have more than you do are giving it up to you.
And we've been doing this for 50 years.
No, 60.
And so generations have been born into this entitlement way of thinking.
We deserve this.
We built the country.
We built it and our ancestors built it.
We built the railroads and we built all these buildings.
It's about time we got our share.
It's us.
So they don't, I don't think they have a problem with their integrity at all.
I think they think this is what they are entitled to.
To them, going to a courthouse or a federal or state building to collect benefits is the same as you and me trying to find a job.
You and I look at it as though we have to provide for ourselves.
These people have been told that they don't have a chance to provide for themselves because the deck is stacked against them.
And even if they do happen to get a job, it's going to get not fair.
They're going to get fired, mistreated by ugly, unfortunate, mean-spirited bosses.
And so the government and the Democrat Party is there to make sure that the little guy, after getting stepped on by the system, at least gets his share.
Now, wait, Snerdley.
Now, you're right, Snertle.
He said, what little guy?
These people are making a lot of money and great benefits.
I'm talking attitude, Snerdley.
You got to understand how these people have been raised.
You have to understand how they hear their political leaders.
They are victims.
Doesn't matter if they have $30,000 worth of benefits a year.
If somebody has 31,000, they're mad.
It's not fair.
If they earn 60 grand a year on their job and somebody in the neighborhood earns 70, not fair.
How do you think tax cuts for the rich plays with these people?
Oh, they love it.
Get even with those people.
Doesn't improve their lives any, but boy, it makes them feel better because they think somebody else is getting hurt.
Somebody else is in pain.
I mean, this is a grievance.
Liberalism, leftism is a grievance existence.
You live your life angry and upset, thinking you have been given the shaft from the moment you were conceived.
Some people think they were given the shaft because they were born.
It's all an attitudinal thing.
That's why we've lost these people.
Can you imagine me wading into that crowd, trying to talk to four or five of them and say, where's your sense of self-respect?
What do you mean coming down here and petitioning these lawmakers to raise my taxes?
Why don't you go out and get a job that is self-satisfying, that is sufficient, and that provides and give yourself a career.
Do you think they would hear a word I said?
They would take that as a giant insult.
They wouldn't be, we've lost these people by design.
This is the point of the creation of a welfare state, even among the working.
It's all about an attitude.
It's all about a mentality.
It's all about rage and grievance and anger rooted in a systemic unfairness.
So when Obama runs around, our country has made a mistake, this bunch applauds.
Damn right they have.
Screwing us.
That's how they made mistakes.
Anyway, I must take a brief time out.
Thank you for this, Snerdley, because now I don't have to play the Joe Biden sandbites.
I didn't want to play them, and now I don't have to.
What is that last soundbite that we played?
That teacher, where's the now we don't need to play it again?
Let me play it again.
I put it in the bottom of a stack.
I don't remember what number it was.
When I use it, I toss it.
And when I want to get back to it, I don't know where it is.
But anyway, here are these teachers.
Where's our money?
Give us our money.
We want our cash.
We want it now.
The scary thing is these people are teaching students in Illinois.
These are teachers.
Raise my taxes.
Raise my taxes.
Where's our teachers?
Where's our cat?
This is our Greece demonstration.
This is the beginning of it.
What's happening in Greece?
Snerdley still can't get over.
He cannot believe that there are people who think this way.
Why?
Why do you think?
I can't either.
Let me give you another example.
Give you another example.
Los Angeles Times today.
Why Religious by James Oliphant.
Why religion could affect Obama's court nomination?
In this story, Mark Scarberry, a law professor at Pepperdine, said that having Protestant representation was key in a country where about half of Americans identify themselves in that manner.
Now, I do not think this way.
I do not have an identity mentality.
When I'm thinking of a judge on a court, I don't first say, well, what am I?
I'm white.
And I'm Protestant.
Further, I'm a Methodist.
So I demand one of those.
And I don't think that way.
Do you, Sterdley?
Well, Obama does.
That's why we had to get Sonia Soto Mayor because she kills a couple birds with one stone in the identity politics, plus hardcore leftist.
But I don't think this way.
I don't, and you and I don't.
In this audience, we don't.
Where's our cash?
We want it fast.
Where's our money?
And they're teaching your kids.
Now, get this.
Cheryl Atkinson, CBS Evening News, did an investigative report on what's going on in Haiti.
Remember, we had the story yesterday.
$792 billion spent in Haiti, two-thirds of it on salary and perks for UN officials.
But it's even worse than that.
Of all the things you've heard about earthquake aid to Haiti, here's something you probably didn't know.
Haiti's government wants large-scale food assistance and free health care to stop.
If it's news to you, it was to us too.
The public outpouring is so generous, it's interfering with the Haitian economy.
If food is free, local farmers can't sell what they grow.
Desperately poor residents who aren't earthquake victims are moving into refugee camps for the free food and health care.
But the government wants residents to be less dependent on foreign aid, not more.
Too late for that.
Too late for that.
Here's a question for you.
Will Obama ever leave Haiti?
Will the regime ever vacate?
They're setting it up perfect.
They're shutting down whatever private sector there is in Haiti.
They're shutting down agriculture.
Farmers can't sell it because they're giving so much of it away.
People who are not earthquake-ravaged are showing up and joining the 10 cities to get the free food and health care.
And you wonder, Snerdly, why 10,000 teachers would march in Illinois, where my cash?
Give me my money.
We want it fast.
When your sole source of sustenance is the government, by God, by golly, you have to make your whole life's investment that government never gets smaller.
Because if it does, you're on the hook.
Let's hit the phones.
Ray in Livermore, California.
Welcome, sir, to the EIB Network.
Great to have you here.
Rush, it's great to have you.
Thank you for the work you're doing.
You often say on your show that it takes six weeks to convert someone.
Boy, I hate to correct you.
I've got a family member who was forced to listen to your show for three days, and it corrected years and years of brainwashing and lies from the marching band media.
He's a great Rush listener now.
He spreads the word.
He was forced to use a friend's car when his broke down, and the radio station was set on KSFO, and the knob was broken off so it couldn't be changed.
And it took three days to convert him, Rush, and I thank you.
In fact, I asked, can I give you the telephone number for my mom so you could talk to her for a couple hours and maybe get her on board too?
Well, let me tell you something.
It only took this guy three days.
Three days, Rush.
Three days.
Why was he afraid to listen prior to the time he had no choice?
Well, because he believed everything that he was being told.
You know, he was just...
Oh, yeah, the reason I ask is we had a great blog post yesterday from some woman identifying herself as bookworms.
She said, the reason liberals don't listen to me is because they are scared to death I will change their minds.
They think I have mystical Svengali-like powers.
And they're scared to death that I will upset their worldview.
So they don't want to take the chance of listening.
I think that is very true.
And that's why I wanted you to talk to my mom.
If you could just get a few minutes with her, even I think she's from the same generation you're from.
And, you know, God bless her.
She took her time to teach me how to think and not what to think.
And now she can't understand why I disagree with most of what she believes in.
And one other quick thing, Rush, going back to the first hour, whenever the left or a statist accuses a Republican of doing something, malfeasance, it's typically because the left has been doing that.
They are currently doing it or they plan on doing it in the near future.
And it's some sort of preemptive attack, I believe.
It's called projection, and you can always gauge what the left is doing by just listening to what they accuse us of doing.
By the way, I saw this picture of the teachers' protest in Chicago.
And from the photos I've seen, it didn't seem like there was a lot of racial diversity in this group.
I don't know that the media will point that out.
But this is how, folks, this is how you create a permanent underclass.
And you think, Rush, you're talking about public school teachers.
Yeah, we're talking about public school teachers.
Illinois, permanent underclass.
I mean, it really is, it's infuriating to Snerdley.
It is to me, too, but it makes me more sad than anything else.
Look at the worldview of these people.
It's so narrow.
In order to stay alive, they got to go protest at a state capitol building.
I mean, that's pathetic.
Hey, Snerdley.
Snerdley, I've been giving these teachers in Illinois too much credit.
They didn't know where they were going.
They just got on the buses and a union took them.
They didn't know they were going to the state house.
They just were told what to do when they got there.
I'm sorry, I gave them more credit than they deserve for self-reliance.
They already got the money.
It's from Obama's dash.
They're just trying to make sure that some of it doesn't get cut.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, from the Wall Street Journal, Pelosi Reid agreed to put immigration ahead of the energy bill as Hispanics, a key voting bloc, grow frustrated about inaction.
Democrat leaders in Congress.
I mean, we are under a full-fledged assault.
It's not daily, it's hourly.
No sooner did Obama finish, well, start the process of finishing off Wall Street than here comes Carol Browner talking about cap and tax, and here comes the Wall Street Journal talking about, no, no, we're going to do immigration.
Democrat leaders in Congress agreed to try to pass immigration legislation this year, placing the explosive issue ahead of an energy bill on their agenda and upending conventional wisdom that it was dead for now.
Why not?
Amnesty is where the votes are, and they're going to need them.
They are going to need them.
They're driving themselves off a cliff electorally.
They already have the green vote, such as it is sewn up, but they don't have the illegal vote because the illegals can't legally vote.
So you've got to fix that.
If the Democrats lose their majorities in November, it's going to be that much harder to destroy capitalism, and that's the priority.
So they've got to win these elections in November.
Now, here's this afternoon in Andrea Mitchell, NBC News in Washington, the EPA.
Well, Carol Browner, the director of the White House Office on Energy and Climate.
And Andrew Mitchell said, there's been a lot of talk here about cap and trade, climate change legislation.
He'll try to rebrand cap and trade.
Lieberman says, you remember the artist formerly known as Prince?
This is a market-based system for punishing polluters, previously known as cap and trade.
So it's going to be cap and trade without calling it cap and trade.
It's just a matter of semantics here.
It's not just a matter of semantics.
What Kerry Graham and Lieberman have been doing is meeting with individual industry sectors to understand what would be the best way to work with them to achieve the reductions.
And so it's not a one-size-fits-all.
So it'll be one system for the energy sector, one system for transportation, and different kinds of trading incentives within different industry sectors.
Right.
I think what's important is they are working with these industries.
That doesn't mean that they're doing exactly what the industry wants in every instance, but they're understanding what's important so that we can get the kind of market certainty and predictability so that companies here in the United States will make the investments to create the jobs.
I haven't the slightest clue how to make that happen.
So here it's another attempt at command and control over the energy sector of the economy.
After they sow up the financial services sector, after they sow up health care, they are making a march.
They are unstoppable until November.
I'm going to share with you pieces of a column today by Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal.
Democrats at the Edge of the Cliff.
Democrats are spending trillions of dollars at the worst possible moment with a new poll showing public trust in government at a historic low of 22%.
Henninger says there was something almost eerie about the way the Democrats said their health care legislation was what the American people had waited 70 years for.
Invoking the ghosts of 1939 was kind of creepy.
And then when the moment in history finally arrived, history got no votes from the other party.
Whatever the politics, there was something ominous about all of this.
One felt something else was going on.
Oh, that's exactly right.
One did feel something creepy was going on.
And get this: a Pew Research Center report just out.
The one says trust in government is at an historic low of only 22%.
Looks like the something else.
If you dig past the deadline of the Pew study, one discovers why Bill Clinton is insinuating that demonizing government could cause another Oklahoma City bombing.
If these numbers are at all close to reality, something one can hardly doubt just now, the American people have issued a no-confidence vote in government at both the national and the state level.
To the extent one believes in the consent of the governed, consent is being eroded.
Now, this report isn't bad news for the Democrats, this Pew report.
It is Armageddon.
The survey compares views sampled in 1997 with now.
The now is the Democrats' problem.
Survey took place mid-March.
After one year of the charismatic, ever-present Barack Obama, after passage of the health care bill, after spending zillions on Keynesian pump priming, the American people, well beyond the Tea Partiers, have the lowest opinion ever of national government.
One year ago, 54% said government should exert more control over the economy.
A year later, it's 40%.
Some 58% say Uncle Sam's interfering too much in state and local affairs.
53% want very major reform of the federal government.
After health care passed in March, Pew resampled in early April.
Trust in government rose to 25% from 22.
Inspector Clusseau would call that a boom.
Pew concludes a desire for smaller government is particularly evident since Obama took office.
That's pinned the tail on the donkey without bindfolds.
Now, Democrats could cite one passage in Pew to mitigate this dire portrait.
Historically, the report notes: whichever incumbent party is standing next to a big disaster gets pulled down in the undertow, thus Bush and the Iraq War and Katrina.
They can argue that Obama and the Democrats are getting hit with the legacy of the Bush downdraft and the aftershocks of the financial meltdown of 2008.
Once that passes, and after the inevitable November losses, the economy will stabilize by 2012, playing field resume to normal, and Obama sitting pretty, but Henninger says I don't buy that.
Something unique happened in the first Obama year about the last thing the Democrat Party needed.
The veil was ripped from the true cost of government.
This is the ghastly nightmare Democrats have always needed to keep locked in a crypt.
Before the internet, that was easy.
Washington, California, New York, New Jersey, who knew what the POWs were spending?
The Democrats and their Republican pilot fish could get away with this, but not now.
Email list 24-7, newspapers, blogs, TV, talk radio, the spending beast is running naked.
And when the financial crisis piled in atop a recession, a Democrats academic pundit economist blandly convinced the party to spend $787 billion in stimulus.
And then on April 30th, the Democrats passed a 2010 budget at $3.5 trillion.
This year, the 2011 budget hit $3.8 trillion, reaching a post-World War II high of 25% of GDP.
In March, they passed a trillion-dollar health care bill, total headline spending commitments in one year, about $9 trillion.
That's a lot of trust to ask for during a recession.
with 9.5% unemployment.
And now a sense is building of some broad middle-class tax grab.
After soaking the rich comes the deluge.
Demonization?
No need.
The Democrats did it to themselves.
Obama's speeches are filled with the Democrats' core claim to legitimacy.
Government must and will do good.
It must act.
But in a crucial period when voters across the political spectrum were losing faith in that core claim, Democrats lost any self-protective sense of what they were doing with public budgets.
Obama took a rising reservoir of public trust for his party, 62%, and emptied it.
Since he took office, the percentage of people who want smaller government and fewer services has risen to 50% from 42%.
A Quinnipiac poll released yesterday has the Obama presidential approval rating down to 44 after health care, after arms treaty with Russia, after the 47-nation anti-proliferation convocation in Washington.
But Obama insists on more government.
People want less.
They don't trust what they've got.
They want reform.
But here is the Pew blowout data.
In 1994, when the Democrats lost over 50 House seats at the midterm, the party's favorable rating was 62%.
And for the Congress they controlled, it was 53%.
And they still got killed.
The party's favorable rating now is 38%.
Congress approval is 25%.
Republicans' numbers are low too, but they're not in charge.
They're not running anything.
The Democrat Party is on the edge of an electoral cliff with a long fall to the bottom.
No wonder they are seeing a demon under every bed.
Look at this, folks.
San Diego Union Tribune.
Rising medical needs in the United States are creating new opportunities for Mexico's healthcare industry to serve a broad range of U.S. patients, from baby boomers to Southern California's large Latino workforce.
But participants in a day-long conference yesterday at the Institute of the Americas on the UC San Diego campus said that a range of legislative and regulatory changes are needed.
The event drew healthcare experts, tourism officials, nonprofit groups, real estate promoters, and others who see the potential for growth in cross-border care.
With health care costs in Mexico available at a fraction of U.S. prices, Mexican facilities can help fill a growing demand for services, including dentistry, surgery, long-term care, and assisted living.
But providers still face hurdles, and one major step would be certifying private Mexican hospitals to U.S. standards so that older Americans could use their Medicare benefits in Mexico.
I mean, this is incredible.
They were giving me grief about going to Costa Rica.
If this works, send them to school in Mexico.
If this works, I'm sure the homeless can live cheaper in Mexico than they can in San Francisco.
I mean, everything in Mexico is cheaper.
We're going to...
What?
On the heels of an immigration problem, we're going to send people across the border for health care.
We actually had a seminar on this at UC San Diego and tourism officials showed up.
Real estate.
Now, you say what you want, but this is the private sector.
This is the private sector doing, I mean, it knows globalization.
It knows what the rules are.
You always go where prices are the cheapest, labor is the lowest.
After all this, can you, I got a lot of friends in Southern California.
Hey, Dono, you know what?
You know, all those emergency rooms have been closed in California because they're not being paid because they all, guess where you're heading for your next heart bypass?
Tijuana.
Yeah, the government's going to send you there.
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Speaking of which, I will not be a key.
Little Spanish lingo there.
Going to Mexico to check out healthcare.
Mark Stein will be here tomorrow.
This is Bob in Stewart, Florida.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Nice to have you here.
Hey, Rush.
Great to talk to you.
And Mr. Stein serves you well.
I can't wait to hear him.
Thank you.
Hey, my point to you was in the last hour you were speaking with another caller and you guys had agreed that all these policy initiatives out of the administration were, in essence, a big-time federal power grab.
My question is, when are the states going to stand up and say no more?
If they don't stand up on 10th Amendment grounds, which would be the right thing to do, why don't they stand up on selfish grounds?
They're politicians.
They're losing power.
When are these state guys going to say it up?
This is an excellent point.
And the states are going to have to be where we make our last stand.
You are more on the money than you know.
There are a number of states that are joining together to sue the government over the unconstitutionality of health care.
Some of the states, I think, I forget, I don't have it right in front of me, six other states have joined to oppose something else going on in Washington.
What politician wants to lose power?
These state guys need to step up to the plate.
It's the same, almost the same question I get for 21 years.
Rush, where are the Republicans?
Where are the Republicans on the financial regulatory reform bill?
Everything I hear, they think they've got a deal.
And they think they can come up with a bipartisan bill here.
Everybody's going to love.
So where are the Republicans?
Where are the state officials?
You say that they want to have local power and so forth.
Well, if they're Democrats, though, do they maybe not want to be part of this giant national apparatus and have their career ladder laid out for them all the way up to Washington by being acquiescent?
At the end of the day, they're all narcissists, and it's all about themselves.
I just don't understand them rolling over.
Now, they're not all narcissists.
The Democrats are a totally different breed of politician.
I know that angers a lot of people.
They think that there's not much difference, but there is.
I wish I had more time to delve into this because this is a great question.
We'll spend some time on this next week.
The states will be the last line of defense against this power grab of the regime.
As to this last call we had about the states, remember, folks, that Obama has funneled a lot of money to the states from his stash, the stimulus bill, so they could extend unemployment benefits, keep their welfare payments to the Democratic constituents, so that the Democrats, at least, are very happy with the status quo in Washington.
For the most part, Democrats, one way or the other, control most of the states anyway, so it's, but that still is the last line of defense.
Stein tomorrow.
See you back here on Monday.
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