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Oct. 21, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:38
October 21, 2010, Thursday, Hour #2
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Lots is popping out there today, folks.
And you get closer to the election, the drive-bys are doing everything they can to distract everybody from the issues that are leading to the destruction of the U.S. economy, which is leading to a massive voter turnout on Election Day to roll back, stop, and repeal Obama-ism.
And we're going to chronicle it all up to Election Day.
Today's hot and heavy as well.
Great to have you back.
800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, the email address, lrushbo at EIBnet.com.
Google gave the Obama campaign $803,436.
You could say that it was foreign money now.
Given how much foreign money they are not paying taxes on it, Google, Google was Obama's fifth largest contributor.
A special interest.
Now, here's the headline again.
Google 2.4% rate shows how $60 billion lost to tax loopholes.
Of course, the story is, the poor government, the poor government is out $60 billion.
That's not the way to look at this.
Why they only want to feel sorry for a fatted calf?
What is there in the world to be sorry about for the U.S. government?
Should they not feel sorry for us?
At any rate, I keep distracting myself here.
I'm going to stay focused on this.
Google's income shifting, involving strategeries known to lawyers as the Double Irish and the Dutch Sandwich, helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4%, the lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization, according to regulatory filings in six countries.
Have you ever heard of the Double Irish or the Dutch sandwich?
Do you have tax lawyers advising you of these strategies?
Sounds like a Kennedy maneuver, actually, the Double Irish, the Dutch sandwich, the waitress sandwich.
It sounds like a Kennedy-Chris Dodd maneuver.
I didn't know about them, but they're legal.
They're entirely legal.
Here's Google, big lib, Steve Jobs, big lib.
They want you to think that they pay their fair share when everybody else pays their fair share.
And look what they do.
Every chance they get to avoid paying taxes, they take it.
U.S. corporate income tax rate, 35% in the U.K., Google's second biggest market by revenue, it's 28%.
From the UK Times December of last year, Google pays no tax on $2.6 billion in Britain.
Google accused of ducking its social responsibility.
Google, the internet giant whose informal corporate motto is Don't Be Evil, did not pay any taxes on $2.6 billion, that's 1.6 billion pounds, of advertising revenue in Britain in 2008, 2009.
And they're, of course, they're eschewing their corporate social responsibility.
How the bloody heck they got away with it?
They bloody heck got away with it because it's legal.
What did I tell you the other day, Snerdley, about who writes the tax laws?
What did I tell you about why they're not going to be changed?
Why did I tell you what was the point of all this talk about we need a flat tax, fair tax?
Yeah, we do.
No question about it.
Who writes these tax laws?
All these liberals who claim the rich aren't paying their fair share.
Really?
The rich aren't paying their fair share.
Is that right?
How does that happen?
It happens with loopholes put in there by liberal Democrats have been running the House Ways and Means Committee up till 1994 for 40 years.
And since 2007, they have been running the Ways and Means Committee.
Now, I want to go to a column that ran a couple days ago in the Wall Street Journal, the Overseas Profits Elephant in the Room. co-written by John Chambers and Safra Katz.
John Chambers is the CEO of Cisco.
They make routers and stuff, another high-tech firm.
During last year's jobs summit, and I'd forgotten about that.
Maybe, do we not need another job summit?
Remember that jobs summit?
We had a job summit in December at the White House, and everybody went away to their study groups, came back in three hours, reported to the leader of the regime, and that was supposed to be problem solved.
Mr. Chambers says during last year's jobs summit, President Obama said he was open to any good ideas to get the economy moving again today.
He should be, especially so, since Washington's many monetary and fiscal policy decisions have not been able to spur the robust growth or job expansion we all would like.
And yet there's a simple idea, the trillion-dollar elephant in the room that has apparently been dismissed for no good reason.
$1 trillion is roughly the amount of earnings that American companies have in their foreign operations.
And they could repatriate to the United States.
That money in turn could be invested in U.S. jobs, capital assets, research and development, and more.
But for U.S. companies, such repatriation of earnings carries a significant penalty.
A federal tax of up to 35%.
This means that U.S. companies can, without significant consequence, use their foreign earnings to invest in any country in the world except here, which is what Google is doing.
They're doing it, and they are avoiding the 35% tax rate here.
If they expatriate the money back, they're looking at double taxation.
But rest, but rest, they're liberals and they're good citizens, and they care about funding the government.
No, they don't.
They care about you doing it.
They thrive on you thinking they're good citizens.
They thrive on you thinking they're good people.
Remember the We're Supposed to Look the Other Way monologue the other day after Dingy Harry and Sharon Engels' debate?
We're supposed to look the other way while they drive women off the car and kill them.
We're supposed to look the other way while they promote abortion.
We're supposed to look the other way while they don't pay.
We're supposed to look at it all because they're good people and because they have compassion.
We're supposed to look the other way and really ignore all the rot gut things that they do because they are good people.
They're liberals.
They pay their fair share.
They believe in government.
The U.S. government's treatment of repatriated foreign earnings stands in marked contrast to the tax practices of almost every major developed country, including Germany, Japan, the UK, France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Australia, and Canada, to name a few.
Companies headquartered in any of these countries can repatriate foreign earnings to their home countries at a tax rate of 0 to 2%.
That's because those countries realize that choking off foreign capital from their economies is decidedly against their national interests.
So, and by the way, have you checked out Canada's economic growth rate since 1997?
I mean, just a few miles to the north of us, there is an economic boom going on in what arguably is a socialist country.
Check it out next time you have a chance to check something out.
Especially with corporate bond rates falling below 4%, it's hard to imagine any responsible corporation, including Google, repatriating foreign earnings at a combined federal and state tax rate approaching 40%.
Why would they do it?
Many commentators have pointed to the large cash balances sitting on U.S. corporate books as evidence that the economy is still stall because companies aren't spending or because small business isn't borrowing.
Well, that analysis misses the point.
Large cash balances remain on U.S. corporate books because U.S. companies cannot spend their foreign-held cash in the U.S. without incurring a prohibitive tax penalty.
Now, some people would say, it's only 35%.
They get to keep 65%.
Why would they want to screw the government out of it?
If there's a place to spend it where it's taxed less, that's what they're going to do.
Remember, a company doesn't exist to support the government.
A company doesn't exist to give you health care.
A company does not exist to provide jobs.
A country does not exist to make sure the community remains crime-free.
A company does not exist to make sure that you don't eat trans fat.
A company exists to make a profit based on selling a product or service that customers want, desire, love, and like, and whose shareholders invest in and are rewarded as their investment increases in value.
A to B, simple.
And anything that gets in the way of that pattern is going to harm the corporation and not going to do it.
Unless they're scared to death of government, have to pay protection racket fees, bribes, and what have you in order to operate.
Back to Mr. Chambers' piece here.
By permitting companies to repatriate foreign earnings at a low tax rate, say 5%, Congress and the president could create a privately funded stimulus of up to a trillion dollars, private sector stimulus.
They could also raise up to $50 billion in federal tax revenue.
That's money the economy would not otherwise receive.
The amount of corporate cash that would come flooding into the country could be larger than the entire federal stimulus package.
It could be used for creating jobs, investing in research, building factories, purchasing equipment, and other things.
It could also provide needed stability for the equity markets because companies would expand their activities in mergers and acquisitions and would pay dividends or buy back stock.
And when markets go up, confidence goes up.
Confidence increases.
Businesses and consumers begin to spend.
It's simple.
The $50 billion boost in federal tax revenue, meanwhile, could be used to help put America back to work.
For example, Congress could use it to give employers larger, smaller refundable tax credit for hiring previously unemployed workers, including recent graduates.
The tax credit could equal up to 50% of a worker's first year, second-year wages capped at $12,500 per year.
Such a program could help put more than 2 million Americans back to work at no cost to the government or the American taxpayer.
How is that for a good idea?
John Chambers, chief executive officer, Cisco Systems, the co-author, Ms. Katz, president of Oracle.
Two high-tech corporations.
There you have it.
A trillion dollars is over there.
And over there, up there, down there.
It ain't here.
Could be here.
It's in Canada because Canada only charges 2% tax rate.
We charge 35%.
And of course, with this regime, corporations are evil.
They're the enemy.
They're the target.
Anybody suggesting this seriously would be accused of being in the back pockets of the special interests and so forth.
And of course, it is considered immoral for a corporation to only pay 5% in taxes.
Some reasons immoral.
So why would Google pay 35% when they can pay 2.4%?
Because Mr. Limbaugh, they're good liberal corporate citizens.
Yeah, you don't cough.
That's what they want you and everybody to believe.
Mr. New Castrati, if all corporations are evil, how does Google get a pass just because they're a bunch of liberals anyway?
Quick time out.
We will be back.
Jim DeMent has said if the Republican Party doesn't change, he's getting out of it.
We have two sound bites.
AP story, GOP leader hopes to work with Obama on some issues.
This posted last night, it's about Mitch McConnell quoted as saying, I can't believe Obama is going to continue to ignore the wishes of the American people.
If his party has a very bad day on November 2nd, if he pivots and wants to work with us, obviously I'd be happy to talk to him.
So here's another ranking Republicans.
It's the one that told me, we expect Obama to move to us.
He's going to want to get reelected.
He's going to have to.
Rush, you're going to have to.
He's going to have to move to us.
He wants to get re-elected.
You have to realize the American people don't like what he's doing.
And if he wants to move, we'll work with him.
what people want here.
People don't want anybody working with Obama.
They don't want him working with us.
They will figure this out.
Don't doubt me.
They will figure this out.
One more thing on taxes.
Fareed Zakaria, writing on the Time magazine website.
He writes, when I left India, the marginal tax rate was 97.5%.
Corporate taxation was punitive.
Business was stifled or went underground.
Were I to move from New York City to Mumbai today, my personal track tax rate would drop, as would every other rate from corporate to capital gains taxes.
Long-term capital gains tax rate in India is zero.
But have you seen what's happening to the Indian economy?
It's also going through the roof.
Singapore now ranks as the number one country for ease of doing business.
I have often told you of Singapore as a perhaps place of refuge.
Hong Kong before the economies took it over.
Singapore now ranks number one country for ease of doing business.
Their top tax rate's 20%.
Now, I know permanent residents working in the U.S. who are thinking of giving up their green cards to move to Singapore to an Indian of my generation writes Fareed Zakaria.
This would have been unthinkable.
The green card was a passport to the American dream.
But for young Indians, there are many new dreams out there and new passports, and they don't go to America.
The article is called Restoring the American Dream.
It's got a lot of bad ideas in it.
I mean, despite this, Fareed Zakaria comes out supporting a VAT tax.
But it's, I think, pretty clear if Time magazine's willing to publish this truth about U.S. taxes and their impact around the world.
It's resonating.
Message is resonating.
What needs to happen to this economy?
And it isn't, Obamaism.
Back after this.
I cleverly and poignantly pointed out at the beginning of the program what we're not seeing in the news.
No news of the disaster of immigration in Arizona.
No news of the Ground Zero mosque.
No news of the plummeting U.S. economy.
No news of Obama's failed efforts to fix it.
No, what are we getting?
Sarah Palin is a diva.
Big story out of the politico today.
And in that story, it is said that Sarah Palin is so chaotic and so difficult to work with.
She backed out of planned interviews with Sean Hannity and Mark Levin the morning she was scheduled to make them.
Levin says it's an outright lie that she never backed out of any interview with him.
Hannity.
Saying the same thing today.
That she's never backed out of it for crying out loud.
She's on with Hannity all the time on the Fox News channel.
So we're getting stories like that of Christian O'Donnell's a diva.
Christine O'Donnell's a nutcase.
Rand Paul's a wacko-religious kook.
Sharon Angles, a grandmother's nutcase, doesn't know anything about politics.
All these people supposedly unsophisticated.
That's the news that we're getting.
12 days out from the election.
To the phones, Kim in Jacksonville, Florida.
You're first.
It's great to have you on the EIB network.
Hi, Rush.
I love you.
Okay, look, I'm really mad.
That's why I just specify that I love you first.
I can't believe that you're defending Juan Williams, first of all.
He is a total progressive, and now he is being forced to suffer the consequences of his progressive agenda.
It's the agenda that he has been pushing since I can remember being five years old and watching this guy on TV.
I mean, this guy has been around for years, pushing and pushing and pushing these agendas, and now he's suffering the consequences for it.
And another thing, let's not forget that that suit he wears, that suit is funded by the taxpayers.
You and I paid for that suit, Rush.
He gets to go on TV every night, and Fox News gives him an audience to sit there and spout his hatred and his disgust with the American people.
I don't know how many times I've heard him call members of the Tea Party terrorists, teabaggers.
Did he get fired for that?
No.
Uh-uh.
But you know what?
We teabaggers and we terrorists are the ones that fund his salary.
But NPR didn't stand up about that.
PBS didn't stand up about that.
But he says something about how he feels about Muslims and, oh, now you've offended the wrong people and now you get fired.
So people need to stop a minute and save their pity for real Americans.
That would be the soldiers that stand on the line and fight for us every day.
They're the ones who fight for real freedom of speech, who fight for people like you and I to be able to stand up against tyranny and say the truth on a daily basis.
Those are the people that we need to reserve ourselves for and stand up for and fight for.
And it is certainly not the likes of Lon Williams.
This is a conservative victory.
This is one guy, another guy, and there are many more that need to be thrown out on their butts.
And this guy certainly does not need to receive one more dollar of the taxpayer's dime.
I am sick of it.
Sick of it.
Sick of it.
Now, I feel better.
That's all.
You're right.
Juan Williams is a common SOB.
He is.
I am 36 years old, okay?
And I remember sitting on my grandpa's knee and watching this guy, you know, talk with Liz Cheney.
Remember when she was on that show, Crossfire?
I mean, we're talking 30 years ago.
This guy was on TV, and he's been bashing Americans for as long as I can remember.
Kim, all this is a teachable moment.
It's kind of, I would think for you, sort of sweet justice.
It is.
Hoisted.
I'm trying to get this guy fired for 10 years.
Hoisted on his own petard here.
I'm not showing any pity for Juan Williams.
Don't miss his dad here.
Using him to illustrate a very teachable moment.
Also, you know, Juan Williams did on Fox come to my defense on this Magic Negro stuff at one time.
I actually think that is the moment where the target first began to be painted on his back.
We need a summit summit.
We need a summit summit to find out why all the other summits failed.
We had a job summit that didn't work.
We had a stimulus summit.
None of them have worked.
We need a summit summit.
Did you see this picture?
I got to take just a brief departure here from the serious issues of the day, for just a moment.
Did you see this picture on a drudge report of Michelle Obama's sweet potato haul?
I have never, here's the caption of the picture.
U.S. First Lady Moochelle Obama pauses for a break during a harvest of sweet potatoes during the annual fall harvest with scrool kids at the White House.
I have never seen sweet potatoes this big.
It's like last spring, if you remember, they needed two people to carry one head of lettuce that grew so big in her garden in six weeks.
And you take a look at these pictures.
Never in my life have I seen sweet potatoes this big.
Hey, these are from the White House garden.
What are they using?
Michelle's Miracle Grow?
My point is, I don't, folks, I just, I don't.
And didn't we just hear yesterday potatoes are supposed to be banned from the school lunch program anyway?
It is true.
You watch, we'll get some of the sweet potatoes aren't nearly as bad.
Yesterday, as you know, I spent a considerable portion of the first hour of yesterday's excursion into broadcast excellence responding to Michael Barone, who observed in a Washington Examiner column that the instincts of Tea Party people and candidates were strikingly superb,
and that the liberal media was not aware of just how good the political instincts of the Tea Party people are.
And I said, well, why is this such a surprise?
You remember, I'm sure.
Well, this morning in Washington at AEI, the American Enterprise Institute, during a midterm election preview, one of the panelists was AEI Institute resident fellow and Washington Examiner senior policy analyst Michael Barone.
The moderator, AEI senior fellow Carlin Bowman, says, Michael, it's your turn.
Could you tell us a little bit about what Rush Limbaugh had to say about you yesterday?
I made the point that some of the so-called Tea Party candidates on the Republican side actually have skill and political instincts, even though they're lampooned in much of the press as just a bunch of idiots bereft of science and reason and the president's phrase.
Rush Limbaugh said, well, Michael Barone has figured this out.
It's taken him some time.
Why didn't he figure this out before?
I, Rush, figured out it ahead.
So he also says some very kind things about me as an interpreter of political events.
So I'll say some kind things about him.
He has a great talent.
It was an interesting thing.
You know, your email lights up and your columns get hits when Rush gets you.
And I have to confess that when Rush was doing this, I was on the Acela going from New York to Washington and sort of the classic Metro liner insider's turf.
He thinks the Acela is the elite's mode of transportation, which I guess it is.
Now back to this AP story.
The Senate's top Republican says Obama and a more Republican Congress could join to pass laws on trade and spending policy and make changes to the health care overhaul if the administration listens to voters on election day.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said in a phone interview on Wednesday, I can't believe Obama is going to continue to ignore the wishes of the American people if his party has a very bad day, November 2nd.
If he pivots and wants to work with us, obviously I'd be happy to talk to him.
Why do they think he's going to do this?
Can I just one give me one illustration of where he's done it?
Let's go back when Scott Brown won the seat in Massachusetts Senate seat, and that took away the 60-seat majority.
At that point, everybody figured, well, that's it for healthcare now.
60 seats, he said, I don't know where to go.
What did Obama do?
He doubled down.
And did Obama offer, look at, we had Olympia Snow in there, Susan Collins, Lindsey Gramnesty.
I mean, there's some rhinos in there that you could have offered just one thing that they support, and they would have voted with the Democrats on it.
But he didn't.
Obama didn't offer them one thing.
In other words, Obama did not pivot in their direction at all.
So where is this evidence Obama is going to read the television?
Obama knows he's hated now.
He likes the fact.
He likes the fact that this country's divided.
That was his purpose.
When I spoke, this famous ranking Republican I told you about two weeks ago, I said, if you really think that he's going to pivot in your direction, he will lose.
He's willing to not be re-elected to advance his agenda.
He's got a chip on his shoulder about this country, and the ranking Republicans thought I was insane.
The ranking Republican, because the inside the beltway and modus operandi is, when you listen to the voters and you try to make the voters think you're hearing them, and you give them a little bit of what they want.
You still stick to what you really want to do, but you make them think that you're changing a Clinton triangulating to get reelected.
I said, you're not dealing with this standard, ordinary rubber stamp Democrat here.
This is a guy.
His agenda is not working with the American people.
His agenda is governing against the will of the American people.
That's the only way he can get what he wants.
And a ranking Republican could not understand.
Well, if you're right, it'd be the first time in history I've ever seen a president not pivot and move.
And I said, well, it, yeah, may be the first time in history, and that's where we are.
It's a lot of first times in history in this country happening right now.
Isn't that the point?
So, Jim DeMint seems he has a problem with the Republican Party.
We have a couple of sound bites.
This is Jim DeMint last night, Fox News channel on Hannity.
Hannity said, Mike Castle thinks that you are very wrong about your viewpoint, that you would rather lose and have pure conservatives rather than Republicans who are more liberal or, quote, pragmatic.
It really reveals who wants the Big Ten in the Republican Party.
All of the conservatives that I've supported who've lost their primaries are supporting the Republican nominee.
This is not true for the moderates who lose.
They don't have room for conservatives.
You see me supporting all of our Republican nominees.
They may not all be the same as I am as far as how they're going to vote, but the Republican Party is the only option we have this time.
The Democrat Party is to the left of Europe, and what we're trying to do in this election is reshape the Republican Party where it began.
A limited government party, less taxes, less spending.
So Hannity then said, well, you got on board pretty early for guys like Toomey and Rubio and Buck, Rand Paul, Joe Miller, Christine O'Donnell.
You took a lot of hits for going against the Republican establishment.
Is that an indicator of future events and battles to come?
I don't want to be in Washington another six years and watch the Republican Party betray the trust of the American people again.
I mean, we had the White House, we had a majority in the House and the Senate, and we voted for more spending and more earmarks.
Most of our senior members seem to be focused on taking home the bacon.
I'm not going to be in a Republican Party like that.
What I've tried to do, and others like Sarah Palin have tried to do, is give Republicans and Americans good choices in the primaries so that on Election Day, they can go out and not just vote against someone, they can vote for someone.
That is South Carolina Senator Jim Nement.
His opponent, by the way, is the estimable, what's the guy's name?
The poor guy.
Yeah, right, right, Al Green.
Let's stay together, Al Green.
Not that Al Green.
Alvin Green is his opponent.
There you have it.
I don't want to be in Washington another six years and watch the Republican Party betray the trust of the American people again.
I mean, we had the White House.
We had a majority of the House of the Senate.
We voted for more spending and more earmarks.
We can't keep.
I don't want to be part of that party.
Now, the Republicans have a historic opportunity here.
It appears that they see it as a problem.
The Limbaugh problem.
You talked about it, Snerdley.
Snerdley said, you know, after I talked to Darrell Issa on the phone on the program a couple of days ago, Snerdley said, you know, you're never going to hear about this, but closed doors, the Republicans are now saying, what are we going to do?
The Limbaugh problem.
What are we going to do about this?
So Snerdley may be right.
I don't know.
We'll find out in due course.
Republicans have an historic opportunity, and it appears they see this opportunity as a problem.
We can't control government.
We're not going to have that much power.
We're going to work with Obama.
He's going to come in our direction.
He's going to have to.
I think they may be shocked to learn how close attention voters are paying.
Voters have taken notes.
They've called in.
They've attended the Rush to Excellence tours, the daily lectures here at the Limbaugh Institute.
They've subscribed to the Limbaugh Letter.
They regularly visit Rush 24-7.
The country class, us, I mean, we've been preparing for this moment for 20 years.
Honestly, folks, isn't that the case?
I'm going to go back.
My dad told me, my brother and I used to laugh at him, by the way, when he told us this.
We're just barely into our double-digit years of age.
Boys, son, you're going to be slaves if the communists aren't stopped.
And the first people are going to go are going to be these liberal journalists who think they're going to be bought and paid for and be the most favored people.
They're going to be the first to be put in jail.
Anybody who disseminates information is going to be the first to go.
Son, you're going to be slave if you don't.
And he was talking about the Democrat Party of that era.
He wouldn't recognize the Democrat Party of this era.
He was talking about guys like Hubert Humphrey and Lyndon Johnson and the Soviets, Nikita Khrushchev.
But the Democrat Party still sided with those guys back then.
He believed it.
Ask my brother.
My brother tell you, he believed it.
We laughed at him.
We're young kids.
The concept, we're in Americans, slaves, slaves to communists and so forth.
Vietnamese driving jeeps in our town.
We couldn't see it.
But here for 20 years now, all this time, 22, 22, 23 years, we have been aware of the possibility that the left could eventually secure majority control of the country.
And at this juncture, they have.
So you could say that the country class, us, have been preparing for this moment for over 20 years.
We've been engaged, practicing, well-coached, coached up.
Now it's time to suit up and go play.
November 2nd, first day of the playoffs.
To use an analogy.
I've just been handed the official email from Vivian Schiller, the president, CEO, NPR of what NPR people are supposed to say when asked.
Yeah, the internal email to the staff explaining what happened to Juan Williams here and what to say when they were asked about it.
By the way, Juan's trying to get his job back.
He's calling a Tea Party racist today on Fox.
I didn't hear it.
Friend tells me that he called a Tea Party racist on Fox News this morning, trying to get his job back.
We have two Juan Williams soundbites here.
And by the way, our caller on Juan Williams, one of the best callers we've ever had here.
Let's get out of the way.
She didn't stutter.
She didn't stumble.
Not one time.
Here is Juan.
This is October 15th, 2009.
This is on the O'Reilly Factor, bold, fresh piece of humanity, talking about, we've got Warren Ballantine is on there.
And bold, fresh piece of humanity says, the reason Limbaugh is not going to be able to buy into the NFL is because a bunch of made-up stuff became a legend and he got hammered.
Okay, we won't look at the made-up stuff.
Let's look at him playing Barack the Magic Negro on his show.
That's not racial either.
It is racial to real people.
Hey, Warren, you were saying that my argument was a red herring.
Maybe you should do some research.
Go back and find out that it was an article written by a black person headline about Barack the Magic Negro.
And he made it out of a song and played.
He made it out of a song and played it on his show.
So what?
He's making fun of it.
Juan, it's okay.
You can go back to the porch.
All right, Juan, go back to the porch.
They call him an Uncle Tom.
So this Ballantyne, Warren Valentine, called Juan Williams Uncle Tom for truthfully explaining the Barack the Magic Negro and its origins.
But he also said this on August 22nd, Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace said, why would it be growing?
I mean, he's been in office a year and a half.
Would you think people would have more of a sense of who he is?
This is about the poll on Obama being a Muslim.
I don't know if you noticed, but his approval ratings have been sinking.
And as his approval ratings have been sinking, I think more people feel, you know, absolutely unleashed in terms of their criticism.
And I think the stuff that's coming from the right wing, from Rush Limbaugh and the like, you know, Imam Obama.
So he's on both sides here.
And NPR still got rid of him trying to get his job back today, calling a Tea Party people racist.
All right.
Elizabeth in Wilmington, Delaware, you're next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
It is from Northern Wilmington.
How are you?
Fine, thank you.
I wanted to expand on what you said earlier about political correctness.
Yeah.
And I think you almost got it, but it goes beyond what you said.
It's not just that the liberals don't want to hear any opposition.
They don't want anyone else to hear it either.
And contrary to what we're told, being politically correct is not a way to be sensitive to other people.
We already have that, and that's called good manners.
But being politically correct is just a tool to silence anybody who disagrees with the left.
It's to silence free speech.
Yeah, exactly.
I got you.
Right.
Yeah.
And I'd like to illustrate some points if I have time.
Yeah.
Suppose you say so out loud that you think middle schools giving condoms to students is a bad idea.
They label you a religious nut trying to enforce your morals on society.
And suppose you say out loud, you think marriage should be between a man and a woman, you're labeled a homophobe.
And how about if you say, I agree with the Arizona law, you're a bigot.
Well, nobody likes to be called these names, but these names can and they have cost people their jobs.
So what do we do?
We shut up.
We try to show, we try to prove how tolerant we are by our silence.
And when you can get your opposition to censor themselves, your victory is half won.
Exactly right.
But I think people are starting to wise up now.
Oh, I think.
Yeah, this is what's amazing about it.
A majority of the people oppose it, and yet political correctness is like women.
They're undefeated.
Well, I think people are starting to, I know where I am, people are starting to say so out loud.
And you can say so out loud without being nasty about it.
You don't have to be nasty to voice your opinion, but I think it's important for people to say, you know, I disagree with that.
Elizabeth, you're right on the money.
Two superb calls in a row here today.
We'll be right back.
Don't go away.
Yeah, the bottom analysis, the bottom line, the reason why political correctness wins is they sue.
It is the threat of lawsuit and bankruptcy that shuts people up.
Look, what's happening?
The federal government has fired Juan Williams.
NPR is the federal government.
The federal government, where's Chris Coons?
Where's the ACLU?
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