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Nov. 4, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:06
November 4, 2010, Thursday, Hour #2
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I just saw an email in the subscriber in mailbox uh inbox of the 24-7 account.
Russia, it's getting boring.
It's getting boring.
Could you start telling us what to do to stay in good cheer?
Let me uh let me tell you what's going on out here.
The ruling elite, which includes the news media and even some GOP Rhinos.
Even though they're not in the ruling elite, but they want to be.
I mean, they want to be treated well by the ruling elite.
They're not really in it.
What's going on here, folks, is very simple.
They want to establish a lie very firmly in the mind of the public that the Tea Party hurt the Republican Party in these elections.
They want to use this to stop Sarah Palin.
We had the story all last week.
Republicans, the insiders trying to figure out now how to stop Sarah Palin.
And I have to say I'm not going to mention any names.
I got a bunch of emails from some of these so-called insiders.
Hey, Russia's not me, it's not me.
They got me wrong.
I'm not on the I'm not doing that.
A bunch of the people named is trying to stop Sarah Palin sent me a note.
Not me.
Don't don't don't blame me.
Well, I don't care who it is, we know it's happening.
The objective here is to blame the Tea Party as being a detriment in these elections after a record pick up of seats.
And in typical fashion, what they're doing is turning reality on its head.
If anybody is an obvious winner here, aside, of course from me, it would be Palin.
Look at the grief and the mockery that she got for putting what the media claimed were targets in 20 Democrat incumbents on her website.
Look at the grief that she's gotten ever since she was named McCain's running mate.
Eighteen of those Democrats she targeted lost.
That's a pretty amazing and impressive record.
Sarah Palin targeted a bunch of Democrats for defeat, and 18 of them lost.
That's more than any Republican elites are doing.
We didn't have any on-the-ground money in Nevada.
You know why?
We gave it to Charlie Christ.
We didn't have any on the ground money in Nevada because we gave it to Carly Fiorina.
That's where a lot of the so-called money ground game money went.
We didn't have any.
Yesterday on this program, I was watching the president's press conference, and he got a question from Jake Tapper, and it inspired...
A monologue, and I wanted to replay it since some people did not hear it yesterday due to the fact that EIB affiliates, some of them, I don't know how many, it doesn't matter, had uh had had preempted us to carry the president's press conference, first one in I think almost a year.
So here is a full-throated defense of liberty you may have missed yesterday.
Well, I had a chance to listen to just a little bit of the Obama press conference, Jake Tapper.
ABC asked Obama about the uh compromise that he might make on extending the Bush tax cuts.
Right now, of course, uh tax cuts uh will eliminate stop for everybody at 250,000 or more, and maybe everybody's taxes will be raised.
But believe me, there are no tax cuts on the table.
And Jake Tapper said, would you um would you maybe compromise and say people to make a million dollars a year will not see their tax increase or tax uh decrease, tax cut sunset?
And I started thinking, what what where's all this talk of rich equaling 250,000 a year, a million a year?
Where's all this start?
What right does Obama have to sit there and proclaim that people who earn X are going to be punished with Y?
People who are in less than X won't be punished with Y. What where is You notice how easy it is to fall into the premise trap that the left sets?
Looked at within the prism of liberty and freedom, as our founding documents spell out the declaration of the Constitution.
All of a sudden, I mean in nowhere In any of our founding documents, was it ever said that people earning X would be punished for it?
It was never said in our founding documents that people earning X would share a greater burden of funding the government than people who didn't.
Where does all this talk start?
Because all this is nothing more than a direct attack on liberty, a direct attack on freedom, and it creates class envy and resentment and anger between the classes, between people of different income groups.
So all of a sudden, we're faced with the possibility here of the Bush tax cuts ending for people who earn $250,000 a year or more.
Well, why are we even discussing that in the first place?
What would they what do those people do?
What is magic?
Who sets arbitrarily this figure of $250,000 a year?
Why are they targeted?
And look how easily people fall into the trap of debating the premise.
When the real question is, when is the federal government going to assume responsibility for the deficit spending for the irresponsible position they have put this country in?
When are they going to be forced to reduce the behavior, to limit the behavior they are engaging in that is causing a usurpation of our liberty and freedom?
The question is not should people who make 250,000 or 500,000 or 1 million for some reason pay a higher burden of supporting the folly and the irresponsibility of people like Barack Obama and most people in government?
Why are we even debating the premise?
If we really believe in liberty, if we really believe in freedom, why do we acknowledge a premise that states the successful are going to get punished?
The successful are going to pay the price.
Where is it written that the people who create the problem get to demand that people who had nothing to do with creating the problem solve it?
First get blamed for it.
Because that's really what's happening here.
People who are making 250,000 or 500,000 or a million.
According to people like Barack Obama, and in fact most people in Washington are somehow to blame for our deficit.
Somehow to blame for this out-of-control spending, somehow to blame for this generational theft.
What did they do?
What did the people earning $250,000 do to create this problem?
What did the people who earn a million dollars do to create the what did the people who earn $500,000 a year do?
What have they done that has resulted in this irresponsibility in Washington?
Nothing.
The people who earn $250 or $500,000 or a million are in fact the people who are investing in this country and the private sector, hiring other people, producing products and services that allow for the country's economy to grow and for people to have jobs and to earn higher wages.
The federal government, the state government cannot and does not create wealth.
Oh All it can do is destroy it.
All it can do is confiscate it.
And what we're doing is discussing the proper level of servitude.
What is your price?
What are you going to have to pay for the irresponsibility and for the misnamed, the maligned, the stupid, the incorrect policies of liberals like Barack Obama?
What level of servitude will you have to bear the responsibility for something you had nothing to do with?
At what level are we going to proclaim you are more guilty than another citizen based on how much you earn?
Where?
In our founding documents, where in natural law, where in the Constitution are these principles written?
So when Jake Tapper stands up, are you willing to compromise, Mr. President?
Um, are you willing to compromise?
Maybe go $500,000 a year, uh, they get to keep the Bush tax cut.
Maybe a million and Obama, as the all knowing the all whatever, oh, no, oh, think about it, as though he has any right to who is Barack Obama to be able to say that any citizen in this country has to pay more to support his mistakes because of what they earn.
And why do so many of us fall into the trap of thinking, yeah, that's fair?
Why are so many people willing, accidentally, purposefully, to squander and give up their liberty and freedom so that they do not have to feel the guilt?
What is the price of your freedom?
You know, it used to be that Americans would give up their lives before they would give up their freedom.
Americans would give up their lives before other people would have to give up their freedom.
Americans would give their lives so that others might be free.
Now, who made Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid or you any Democrat?
I don't care any who made them the decider on what anybody should make and then what level of taxation they should pay.
Who made them the deciders on what we should eat?
Who made them the decider what kind of light bulbs we have in our homes?
Who made them the deciders on the kind of car we should drive?
Who made them the deciders of what kind of house we live in?
Who made them the deciders of when and where we can and can't turn our lights on?
Who made them the deciders of who loses how much of their freedom?
Who gave them that power?
It doesn't come from the Constitution.
The Constitution does not say the Democrat Party gets to decide which car people drive, which light bulb they have, what foods they can and can't eat, and what lights they can't turn off or on at what time of year?
The Constitution does not say that the Democrat Party gets to decide any of this.
The Constitution does not envision this kind of usurpation of freedom.
The Constitution does not envision nor allow for this kind of invasion of private property rights or overall liberty or freedom.
It has to have been a political party looking at the Constitution and being unhappy with what it says, ignoring it, in order to implement their policy.
So now we have a guy who is the least qualified in any room he walks into, being asked a question by an equally incompetent reporter.
Oh, Mr. President, are you willing to compromise?
People that earn $500,000 a year will be able to keep more of what they earn.
Will you even go as high as one million?
And I'm watching this.
Who the hell are either of you people to decide this?
How did I end up as an American with a guy who doesn't even like my country telling me how I have to live?
How did that happen?
How did I end up with a guy who does not even respect the founding documents to this country?
How did I end up?
How do we all end up with that kind of guy telling us how immoral and unjust we are?
How did this happen?
It happens because people, for whatever reason, are willing to sacrifice and maybe not even know it's happening, little bits of their freedom and liberty now and then.
Under the auspices of it's a good cause, or it's in the name of compassion.
Fairness.
Well, I want somebody to tell me what is fair about one incompetent having the right to systematically destroy my country.
I want to know where the fairness is in that.
I want to know why in hell anybody is even thinking about, much less talking about, compromising with this man.
I want to know why anybody who believes in the Constitution wants to discuss compromising individual lead freedom or liberty with this man?
Because that's what the compromise is.
When people say that we must compromise with Obama, we are saying we must compromise on our freedom.
A lot of you have read books by Anne Rand.
Some of you pronounce it Ayn Rand.
I don't care.
She asked a question once on compromise.
Where do you compromise between food and poison?
That's a little better than saying where do you compromise between good and evil, because evil sometimes differs from person to person, but poison's poison.
So where do you compromise with food and poison?
Oh, yeah, okay, you think I should eat arsenic, but I don't want that much.
You give me a little arsenic.
Because some global warming scientists said I can tolerate a little bit of it.
But any more than that, and my death might cause the planet to warm.
So where is this?
You got a boot on your neck.
Where do you compromise with it?
Move the boot to my shoulder, please.
Did he just say this?
I'm being told here that Obama just said I reject the idea my policies have taken the country in reverse.
Now let me tell you something, President Obama.
You can reject it all you want.
But you've done it.
And we know you're happy you've done it.
You might want people to think you're not happy about the direction the country's going, but if you really were unhappy about it, you'd do something to stop it.
And instead, you're doubling down on it.
Reject the idea, your policies have taken the country in reverse.
Where the hell have your policies taken us?
You happily preside over a nation in decline.
You have told the world, no longer will the U.S. population lead the world economy.
Ain't gonna happen anymore.
That was it.
That was from yesterday, and I played it because of popular demand, or re-aired it.
I also have not forgotten.
I promised yesterday to explain to you what this Fed bailout is.
How it is that $600 billion to buy stocks is six hundred billion to buy stocks actually printing money to cause inflation.
I will explain that.
As I promised yesterday, plus we'll get all your phone calls in today as well.
After this, stay with us.
Here is Mike in North Providence, Rhode Island.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello, sir.
Mr. Limbaugh, thank you for taking my call.
It's an honor to speak to you.
To answer your question before I know I do not think uh Lindsey Graham is the future of our party.
Uh in fact, I think the future of the Republican Party is no one like Lindsay Graham.
I think the future of the Republican Party is Marco Rubio.
Uh he ran a campaign, I'm sure you're aware of it because you live down there and you follow this stuff, but he ran a campaign that spoke about American exceptionalism better than anybody I have heard of since it's Ronald Reagan.
And he articulated it to a point where it's hard to disagree with him.
I agree.
And you know, I in a way disagree what you're saying with about Angle and O'Donnell.
No, the answer to that would not have been to run a Mike Castler or uh Loudon.
But I contend that if Marco Rubio lived in Nevada and ran the same campaign that he ran in Florida, he would be the senator from Nevada.
Same thing with with Lower.
And I think that, you know, we need to find our own Marco Rubios in whatever, you know, I'm the bluest of blue states here in Rhode Island, but Marco Rubio ran here and ran the same campaigns we're going to do.
This is an interesting premise.
A lot of people are saying we need to find candidates.
A lot of people are saying we need to go out there and vet candidates.
I've heard some people say that we need to find better Christine O'Donnell's.
Well, the problem with that is nobody found her.
She's an outsider.
She efferves, that's bubbled up, think beer, uh, for those of you in Rio Linda.
Bubbles, beer, big head.
She just bubbled up.
The Republican Party didn't go out there and say, ah, Christine O'Donnell, yeah, okay, we've identified now.
Let's vet her.
Uh same thing with um with uh angle.
Now, maybe there's a way around this.
Maybe as part of the Limbaugh Institute, we begin this process.
Well, I'll explain it in due course.
I'm just planting the seed out there now.
But I agree with you about Marco Rubio.
Um be wonderful if every Republican candidate could articulate it the way he does.
Sadly, they're not all going to be able to.
They will all be able to vote it.
They'll all be able to vote it, and that's the important thing.
Getting them there to vote it.
V O T E it.
Sometimes people get confused when syllables run together.
From the hotline on call, Nationaljournal.com.
Republicans pick up 680 state legislative seats.
680 state legislative seats.
That is some.
Yeah, what went wrong there?
What went wrong, Senator Graham?
What went wrong, Senator Lott?
Uh, where's the failure here, Politico?
680 state legislative seats.
The biggest win at the state house level since Watergate, and thanks to local grassroots activism, i.e., Tea Parties.
This 680 state legislative seat pickup wiped out generations of the Democrat bench.
680 new conservative benchers.
And Senator Graham, they are coming after you.
They are not going after Sharon Angle, and they're not training their sights on Christine O'Donnell.
Nor me.
They're coming after you.
They don't view me or O'Donnell.
I mean, Christine O'Donnell, I mean, what's wrong with her?
She dabbled in witchcraft.
Right, in high school during the height of the goth fed.
Right.
Well, Joe Biden has dabbled in insanity all of his life.
And it was his seat up for grabs.
You want to talk about flawed candidates to me.
Okay.
Um, quantitative easing.
What the Fed announced yesterday at 215 didn't get a whole lot of attention.
Stock markets go into the roof because of it.
What is it?
Quantitative easing is where a country's central bank, i.e., the Federal Reserve, tries to boost the economy by increasing lending by increasing the money supply.
How they do that?
Well, the Federal Reserve announced that they're going to purchase about $600 billion in treasury securities.
That's about $75 or $75 billion per month for the next eight months.
This is the government printing new money to purchase existing treasury securities that have already been issued and are currently owned.
All right, so who owns them?
Well, banks, Wall Street firms, insurance companies, pension funds, other governments.
The purpose of the program, the purpose of QE2, is to reflate the economy to create wealth via higher stock and bond prices via inflation.
It's another stimulus.
They've tried it once before.
That's why this is QE2, quantitative easing too.
In addition to the $600 billion, the Federal Reserve will also purchase $250 billion of treasury securities with TARP money.
Remember that TARP money?
We had to we had to bail out that $700 billion.
If we didn't, the world financial system would crash in 24 hours.
We still have $250 billion of that.
Unspent.
So that $250 billion to purchase treasury securities with TARP money again over the next few months.
The total package will be $100 billion a month over the next eight months.
The Federal Reserve is not buying the stocks.
The institutions will have more money as a result of selling the treasuries to the Fed, and they use the money to buy securities and thus higher prices.
And this creates the impression that The economy's growing.
Wall Street, Dow Jones Industrial Average climbing every day.
Well, look, we got an economy recovering.
The purpose of the program is to put more cash, liquidity, into the system.
Banks, Wall Street firms, insurance and pension funds, money firms who own them get the cash.
The goal is the banks and other lending institutions will also lend the money to business and consumers to expand their business.
They did this once and it didn't work.
And the small business people tell you this is not what we need.
We don't have a credit problem.
We don't have any customers.
Our problem is there aren't any customers.
Our problem is we don't have any sales.
And we don't have any sales because there aren't enough people working.
More and more people are losing their jobs.
Unemployment claims unexpectedly went up.
Again, unexpectedly.
Past stimulus plans from Obama's to quantitative easing one have not helped the economy.
They have not created sufficient job or economic growth.
Right.
They have failed.
Excessive printing of money and spending has hurt the value of the U.S. dollar.
The value of the dollar is down over 15% since Ben Bernanke's began talking about QE2 back in August.
Now the past stimulus money, previous, went to commercial banks, investment banks, Wall Street firms, who have not lent the money.
Which we predicted.
We predicted when TARP came, they're not going to lend the money, they're not going to redistribute it, they're going to shore up their own accounts.
They're going to shore up their own bottom line with it.
They're going to keep it, which they did.
They have not lent the money to business and consumers as planned.
The money has not been used to spend on new projects or on hiring people or creating growth.
The money firms have used this.
I mean, the interest rates are practically zero.
They're getting money for nothing.
I mean, it's it's almost as though they're being given money.
That's how low interest rates are for these transactions.
And they have used this zero-cost money to buy and trade treasury securities or other financial instruments and made money on the differential.
It doesn't cost them anything to get money.
They invest it, they get a big return on it.
Why would they lend it?
Why would they put it out there at risk to somebody who may not be able to pay it back when they can invest it and shore up their own bottom lines, which is what's happened.
The money is being printed, it is being invested to banks and firms and Wall Street firms, and it's stopping with them.
It's not circulating.
It didn't work in QE1, so damn it, you know, let's try it again, QE2.
What's the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?
So the banks and all the people who are getting the newly printed money are using it to make more money, maintain a strong balance sheet.
During troubled financial times, make themselves look solid.
Now, in the past, with Obama and the Democrats controlling the presidency in the House and the Senate, things were far too uncertain politically and economically.
It's another reason why all these firms have all this cash.
You've heard the number, trillions of dollars in cash, firms are sitting on it.
Democrats are running around, why don't they invest it?
No, they objective is not to lose it.
And they don't know, speaking of taxes and freedom and loss of liberty, they don't know how much of it Obama's gonna come and claim.
They don't know how much Obama is going to cost them.
But they got a good idea, it's gonna be a lot.
So they're holding it in reserve to be able to either pay it or to finagle away around it.
They're willing to be criticized for this, too.
Ask yourself.
Whatever's a big number to you.
Let's say you had 100,000.
And everybody was expecting you to take that hundred thousand dollars and spend it on something.
But you weren't sure what the future held.
And you've got your family to be concerned about and yourself.
And you think down the road, the federal government have policies that are going to make that $100,000 worth 40 or 50.
Well, you're going to hold on to it, shelter it as best you can, trying to keep it away from those guys as long as possible.
Because it's yours.
You've earned it, or in some cases, the Fed has given it to you, but regardless, you don't want to give it to Obama.
It's not his.
In addition to all that, the USA, world economy, has been coming out of a financial crash.
This thing in 2008, 2009.
The institutions were very hesitant to lend the money back then.
So credit became and is still hard to get for a lot of businesses and people.
And many of the companies and people whom the money was meant to be lent to were too hesitant to borrow it.
For the same reason.
And these are the people who are saying, we don't need easier access to credit.
We need customers.
We need sales.
So, I mean, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make the horse drink, so there was there was no average American or corporate beneficiary of any of this.
Now with QE2, they want to attempt the same thing as they tried in the past, much of the previous stimulus money still out there.
And despite what you've heard, a lot of it, well, I'm sure some of it's now been spent in this election cycle, but up until this election cycle, the campaign cycle, a lot of the stimulus had not been spent.
It had been held in reserve.
And a lot of people think because of that, there's already enough money out there.
There was $250 billion unspent TARP money.
Why are they printing more?
It's it's a mistake.
There ought to be, and there should be sufficient money to achieve the goal of reflating the economy without printing additional money, but they don't think that there is.
So the number of trillions that corporations are now sitting on in cash is two trillion dollars.
It is estimated that consumers are sitting on a combined $8 trillion in cash, saving money, hedging their bets against the future, not knowing, but having a very great fear of what the future holds.
U.S. corporations have over a trillion dollars sitting in offshore accounts that benefit other countries and not the USA.
And we talked about this last week about double taxation.
If Obama and the U.S. Congress would simply change tax rule, some of that money being held offshore would be brought home, and that would begin circulating in our economy.
it's now now that the Democrats have lost the House the Obama presidency in a Democrat controlled Senate can no longer do whatever they want the Republicans will now create a check and balance uh And this is going to lead to gridlock, which the markets absolutely love.
One of the reasons the market's skyrocketing is because they can anticipate the gridlock that's coming.
They love it.
Because that's not uncertainty.
The uncertainty that has plagued the country and its companies for two years, uncertainty and fear, now for the most part can be eradicated.
So the notion of gridlock, which Mort Kondracki is very afraid of, the notion of gridlock creates a more confident business and consumer environment, which results in an expanding economy utilizing the increasing liquidity that has been injected by the Fed.
So it has some potential because of this money firms that have been holding the cash, been too hesitant to spend it or lend it, feel more we can see some credit ease, maybe, but and and we don't need the QE2 to do this.
Meaning the election of the Republicans, the upcoming gridlock economic, we don't need to start printing money.
This is simply unnecessary.
Totally unnecessary.
Money firms that have been holding the cash have been too hesitant to spend it or lend it.
Feeling what we can we can see credit ease up, borrowers wanting to borrow, companies and small business individuals feel better and safer, more confident to spend the cash that they put.
We'll see if it happens.
It's still largely going to depend on what Obama's policies are, what happens.
He's floating the idea by Robert Fibbs floated the idea this afternoon.
They are now open, they say to extending the Bush tax cuts to everybody.
We'll see.
So that's that's what QE2 is.
It's a it's an attempt to stimulate the economy in identical ways that have failed up till now.
And I gotta take a break.
I just noticed the clock.
A little long.
We will.
The problem comes here is if this doesn't work.
If it doesn't work, and if these banks just sit on the cash, again, if the institutions just sit on the cash, hello inflation.
And a lot of people are gonna say, well, that's good because that'll show growth.
That'll one of the fastest ways to retire debt is to inflate the currency because you automatically begin to retire some of it just by virtue of the inflation.
So if the economy doesn't take off, the Fed's not going to be able to sell these bonds that it bought.
Remember, the Fed owns the Fed's buying all these treasury bonds.
The dollar will be devalued, and we'll have inflation, maybe even hyperinflation if this doesn't work.
That's why people are really leery of it.
It's why it's so damned risky, and a lot of people scratching their heads.
Why are we doing this?
It isn't necessary.
Now to put this in perspective, during QE1, quantitative easing one, that was December 2008.
Through March of this year, the Fed bought 1.7 trillion dollars of treasury notes and mortgage-backed securities.
If 1.7 trillion didn't do the trick, why will another 600 to 800 million help?
I mean, even the New York Times is afraid of this.
That's I don't know like quoting them, but they're not even on board with us.
David Springfield, Missouri, great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Yeah, Rush.
It's an honor to speak with you.
I've been listening to you since September of 1998, when you did the condom updates and all that.
She came out today and said the reason Ike Skelton was beaten by Vicky Hartzler, you know, he's an 18-term rep from Missouri, and the reason he lost is because of low voter turnout, which is not the truth because the people were voting in mass here in Missouri.
But her excuse was uh that uh voters didn't turn out, and uh and I I just think she's in denial because I think her number's gonna be at mass.
Well, let me tell you something.
Let's tackle this.
I love this theory, low turnout.
Low turnout.
I've always wondered about this low turnout business.
McCasco's up in two years, by the way.
So it's just trying to set the table here.
If your voters love you, if your voters know you're in trouble, and if your voters don't turn out for you when turnout's the answer, then isn't the problem you not the voters.
I mean, how the Democrats kept talking, we need turnout, we need you to turn out for us.
And the voters didn't.
They did not turn out for Ike Skelton, they turned out for his opponent.
Notice it's always the voters' problem with Democrats.
It's always the voters' problem.
It's always your fault.
Also, with Lindsey Graham, it's always your fault.
But if the voters don't turn out for you, it seems to me a problem is you.
Okay, it's the fastest three hours in media, and two of them.
Already completed and in a can.
One to go, and it'll go by lickety split two.
So a lot of sound bites I want to get to and share with you, plus more of your phone calls.
All that coming up on the Rush Limbaugh program before you know it.
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