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Nov. 9, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:20
November 9, 2010, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Why do I laugh when I see a headline on TV that says President Obama building bridges with the Muslim world?
Why am I laughing when I when I when I see that?
Well, I don't know why I'm laughing.
President Obama building bridges to Muslim world.
Why?
Some reason I see that and I start laughing.
Why am I laughing?
Maybe somebody can tell me great to have you back here, folks.
The fastest three hours in media, Rush Limbaugh, 800-282-2882.
Email address L Rushboy, EIBNet.com, Los Angeles Times, Climate Scientists.
Plan a campaign against global warming skeptics.
Now this is a teachable moment here.
We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the whole idea of man-made global warming is a hoax.
We know the people who have put forward this theory will not share with us their data.
They've even thrown it away.
We know it is a hoax.
We know that the people at the Hadley Climate Center, the East Anglia bunch over there in the UK, we know it's a hoax.
We know that liberalism is a hoax.
We know that liberalism destroys, we know that liberalism is a lie, and yet, even after they are exposed as frauds, they keep it up, they ratchet it up.
The American Geophysical Union plans to announce 700 researchers have agreed to speak out on the issue of global warming.
Other scientists plan a pushback against Congressional Conservatives who have vowed to kill regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.
This is by Neila Beenerge, the Tribune Washington Bureau.
Faced with rising political attacks, hundreds of climate scientists are joining the broad campaign to push back against congressional conservatives who have threatened prominent researchers with investigations and vowed to kill regulations to rein in man-made greenhouse emissions.
These still evolving efforts to reveal a shift or do reveal a shift among climate scientists, many of whom have traditionally stayed out of politics and avoided the news.
Oh, give me a break.
Many now say they're willing to go toe-to-toe with their critics, some of whom gained new power after the Republicans won control of the House in Tuesday's election on Monday.
The American Geophysical Union, the country's largest association of climate scientists, plans to announce that 700 climate scientists have agreed to speak out as experts on questions about global warming and the role of man-made air pollution causing it.
It's a hoax.
And they double down on it now.
What they rely on is fatigue.
Remember talking with President Bush just an hour ago.
He admitted 2006, middle of the war, Iraq, midterm elections.
People were tired of me.
I said, how does that feel?
I mean, you're president of the United States.
People you think people are tired of you.
That's what the left relies on.
They rely on people just getting beaten down, just worn down.
Can't that's what they're counting on here.
They're counting on everybody thinking the election being the peak.
All right, victory, we won.
We showed them, but now nothing's gonna happen.
The left, the Democrats, they're sending the same leadership team back.
They want Pelosi back.
Although, although some Democrats who lost have leaked a letter that they wrote to Pelosi telling her to go away to Fox News.
The letter has been published.
I have a copy of it here.
And I'm saying, who leaked this?
But there are long knives out for Pelosi because Pelosi is responsible for a lot of these people losing their seats, losing their careers, losing their jobs.
They wanted to serve in Congress.
They wanted to be the blue dogs and others, not just exclusively blue dogs.
So they're lining up the same leadership team, and they're gonna start the same tactics.
They don't know anything else.
They're gonna pretend the election ever happened, folks.
They are going to act like they still run the show.
And the media in Washington is going to treat them that way.
I want to prepare you for this.
It happened in 1994, and I've told a freshman class then.
I said, do not think that the Beltway media is going to be happy you're here.
Do not expect them to treat you as winners.
What's going to happen is they're going to go to Stenny Hoyer of the day it was Tom Foley.
They're going to go to the Democrats of the day that favored their friends.
What do you think of these new kooks that showed up?
These Tea Party wackos and the majority of the House and the and the narrative every day is going to be what a bunch of kooks are running the Congress.
The media is going to act like it's just aberration.
Temporary thing.
People had pimper tantrum.
That's all going to be fixed soon.
Because regardless who wins the election, when you get down to brass tax, the liberals still run the town.
This is the risk.
It's always present.
When the Democrats lose power, the Republicans gain it.
In town, the power doesn't shift.
The Republicans don't start running the town.
They're not in charge of the social or the power.
And the social's big, don't ever think it isn't.
So the media is going to run around and they're just going to beat everybody down.
They're going to, they're going to, just like this global warming bunch.
Yeah, it's a hoax, but we're just going to keep talking about it.
We're going to wear you out.
We're going to think we're going to make you tired of having to defend it all the time.
And the same leadership team going back, Pelosi, if it happens, and Hoyer and Kleiburn, the point is going to be to pretend it didn't happen.
That the only thing that's changing is the outcome of votes on various pieces of legislation.
They're really counting on the fact that the election victory, election day itself, election night when the returns came in was the peak.
And everybody's going to think, okay.
We can relax.
We got it done.
And I think they're miscalculating.
They're miscalculating big time.
Here's why I think this is this is this is not good news, folks.
And I wish I did not have to tell you this.
I wish I didn't have to report this to you.
We just told you about the global warming guys.
They're going to come back.
They're going to start attacking conservatives in Congress, newly elected, who don't sign on to the theory that man's destroying the planet, who don't believe that we need carbon taxes.
Those people who don't believe that we're destroying the planet are going to be targeted.
Representative Fred Upton, Republican Michigan.
Wants to be the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Well, it's not a good thing.
Because Fred Upton, Republican Michigan, was a co-sponsor with Jane Harmon, Democrat California, in 2007 to co-author the legislation that effectively banned indoor incandescent light bulbs in the United States.
Fred Upton wants to chair the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and this is a guy who believes in man-made global warming, and he is a Republican.
He and Harman teamed up again to offer new legislation that would extend the ban on incandescent bulbs to outdoor lighting.
So now these compact fluorescence, these spaghetti bulbs.
Is it 2012 that the ban goes into effect?
I don't care.
Well, I know they started reducing supplies.
A lot of people are starting to hoard incandescent light bulbs.
This is not going to happen.
I'm not going to put these little curly Q things in my house.
I'm not going to do it.
Okay.
And a lot of a lot of other people aren't either.
In 2007, Jane Harmon and Fred Upton introduced bipartisan legislation that's bipartisan, co-authored.
Actually, the legislation was written by a liberal Democrat, Jane Harbin.
That's all you need to know.
It became law as part of the Energy Independence and Security Act that bans the famously inefficient.
What do you mean famously inefficient?
100 watt incandescent light bulb by 2012 phases out remaining inefficient light bulbs by 2014 and requires that light bulbs be at least three times as efficient as today's 100 watt incandescent bulbs by 2020.
Last year, after George Will wrote a column criticizing Upton's and Harmon's proposal to extend the incandescent bulb ban to outdoor lighting, the two House members sent a letter to the Washington Post complaining about Will's column and defending their legislative campaign against the incandescent bulb.
Now this would be a tone-deaf disaster if the Republican leadership lets Fred Upton ascend to the chairmanship of the House Energy Committee.
This is exactly the kind of nannyism, statism, what have you, that was voted against and was defeated last week.
No Republican complicit in nannyism, statism can be rewarded this way.
But seniority may rule the day.
Let's go to the audio sound bites.
Last night on Hard Ball, Chris Matthews talking to the Huffington Puffington Post's senior editor Howard Feynman, no longer at Newsweek.
You know, it's it's a strange.
I make the cover of Newsweek and Feynman's gone.
Chris Matthews says, let's take a let's take a look at Lindsey Graham because he comes off as sort of a thoughtful person in this fight.
But maybe he's just a favorite of ours.
But here he is.
If you think what happened in Delaware is a win for the Republican Party, then we don't have a snowball's chance to win the White House.
That's Lindsey Graham talking about Christine O'Donnell.
If you think Delaware was a wake-up call for Republicans, then we have a we have a shot at doing well for a long time.
I can't tell you how much the Republican Senate establishment hates Jim Dement.
They hate him.
And one reason they hate him is he's complaining about the fact that they were trashing Christine O'Donnell, where he, Jim Dement, went around the country for the previous year trashing all of the Republican candidates that he thought were not sufficiently Tea Party-esque.
And that's true.
Howard Feynman's right.
Jim Dement, the long knives have been out for him in the Senate for a long, long time.
They don't like Dement.
They want earmarks.
Remember earmarks.
We got to get rid of them because they're bribes.
They also are excess spending.
There's nothing redeemable about them.
Morton Kondraki last night on the Fox News Channel's special report, the All-Star Panel, uh discussing the uh uh conservatism in the Republican Party and what's happening.
It's not just the Tea Party.
Look, there is a mini civil war going on, at least in the Senate, between the establishment and the Dement forces.
Jim Dement is a guy who runs candidates against in primaries against sitting senators.
And he is, you know, he wants, he said, I'd rather have 30 people like me than 51 a majority in the Senate.
And the the establishment guys are all looking at themselves and looking to see if they have targets on their back or their front or something like that.
Anybody who has ever been seen cooperating with a Democrat about anything has got a target on.
And you know, that's not the way you grow a party.
Yeah, it is the way you grow a party, Mort.
It most definitely is the way you Grow one and reform one.
Krauthammer responded to this.
On the larger issue of the Tea Party, it's not a party.
It's a tendency.
It's a tendency to lower government, less intrusion, less regulation, lower taxes, less debt, etc.
And that's a general principle that Republicans share.
The idea that the media are making of a civil war, I think is highly exaggerated.
You're going to have Republicans who are to accomplish stuff unlike Dement and actually adhere to principle.
And he is right.
Uh except the Dement stuff.
The civil war is not in the Republic.
Well, it's not a civil war.
There is a battle.
There is a conservative ascendancy, and the ruling class, the establishment Republicans don't like the Tea Party type, there's no question.
But all of this misses what's going on in the Democrat Party, which was the focus of yesterday's program.
They are in in deep, deep doo-doo.
That's a question from the official program observer.
Yes, Mr. Snerdley, what is it?
Um I don't personalize this.
He wants to know if they don't like Dement.
What do they think about me?
I I'm under no illusion that they like me.
I'm not out I don't care.
I'm not out to be liked.
I'm just pointing out here, Fred Upton wants the chairmanship of this energy committee in the House, and it's that that'd be a step backwards.
And some of the Republicans in the Senate going after Dement.
I'm just telling you that the Democrats are counting on this kind of stuff.
The Democrats are counting on a lack of energy.
They're counting on people thinking that the election was the peak, was the high point.
They're just gonna beat us down, they're gonna keep coming with their agenda, and they hope to wear us out.
Just warning you.
Pure and simple.
By now, folks, you have figured out.
You know that one of my favorite go-to sources for facts and analysis is the Heritage Foundation, and I'm not alone.
Former President Bush has chimed in on heritage as well.
He um he says that his administration has benefited from heritage, their good works, as has the country.
Uh he called Heritage an advocate for free enterprise traditional values, the advance of liberty around the world.
Now I I talked to the president.
I didn't ask him if he's a member of Heritage in his retired status, but I know he's a longtime supporter.
I know he's a huge fan.
There are some 700,000 members now of Heritage, an all-time high for this conservative think tank organization.
I remember when I first heard about them.
They were elevated high up on a hill.
You had to be special to know people there to interact with people there.
I felt fortunate be able to read some of what the people at work there thought.
They clearly were instrumental in helping me coalesce my ideas, confirm my conservative instincts, and help me to explain to people why I thought what I thought.
And how I was wrong.
They are us.
They're not some elevated bunch on a hill.
They are us.
And you can become a member for as little as twenty-five dollars and a year, and you can expose yourself to um that's the wrong way to put it.
You can introduce yourself to all of the scholarly thinking coming out of the Heritage Foundation.
When you make yourself a member today, you'll also get a citizen's guide to the Constitution.
It's free with your membership at Heritage.
The websites, askheritage.org.
Become one of us.
Become one of the 700,000 members to date.
Here is that letter that the uh defeated Democrats have sent to Nancy Pelosi.
Many I'm not gonna read a whole thing, just some highlights.
Uh many of us want the chance to run again and reclaim the seats that we lost on Tuesday.
With you, as the leader of House Democrats, the hangover of 2010 stands no chance of subsiding.
Many of us have run our last race but remain committed to our party.
We want to help recruit successful candidates to run in our stead.
Unfortunately, we fear that Republicans will further demonize you, and in so doing, they will scare potential candidates out.
The prospect of having to run against their own party leadership, in addition to their Republican opponent is simply too daunting.
You have been an historic figure in our great nation, and for that we are all proud.
Nonetheless, we each experienced how Republican demonization of you and your leadership contributed to our defeat.
It is impossible not to judge the results of November the second as anything but a profound loss.
We want to recover.
Recovery of our majority in the House necessitates new leadership at the top.
It doesn't include you.
One mark of a strong leader is the ability to discern when it's time to pass the baton.
As defeated members whose party needs to rebuild, we are counting on you, Ms. Pelosi, to show the strength of your leadership in this dark hour.
We ask that you step aside as leader of our party in the House.
With utmost respect, we are.
That's a draft copy of a letter that was sent to Pelosi.
And whoever wrote it leaked it to Fox News.
The long knives are out.
You can talk about civil war in the Republican Party all you want.
What's going on in the Republican Party is good for the party and it's good for the country.
What's going on in the Democrat Party is also good for the country in the sense that they're being defeated big time.
But Pelosi has her defenders.
They want her back.
Because that is a hard, hard leftist institution.
And the Democrat Party has gone so far left that she looks good to them still.
So I'm checking the email during the break at the bottom of the hour.
And some people want to know why I'm spending so much time talking about the Democrats and Pelosi and all that.
Folks, it's very simple why.
In order to be prepared for the future, you have to know how they're going to act.
I know how they're going to act.
I know what they're going to do.
And their effort is all going to be aimed at one thing.
And that is dispiriting you.
They want you feeling as negative about this victory as soon as they can.
They want you thinking it was all for naught as soon as they can make you think that.
And why?
Because in the past, we've done it.
In the past, we have treated a victory as the end of things.
We have jobs.
We go back to work.
Now, I think they're misreading the Tea Party this year.
I don't think they have any idea who the Tea Party is, but it isn't going to matter.
They still are going to try the same tactics.
And that is to beat you down.
And you must prepare yourself.
In fact, I do not want to get.
Snerdley, make a note.
I do not want to get one phone call, because I'm warning you now.
I don't want to get one phone call from now into the future.
Asking me, Rush, how come the media is treating the Democrats like they won?
Because the media and the Democrats are one and the same.
And they still do run Washington.
This is important to understand.
They don't run the House of Representatives.
But they run the town.
Now the Democrat lobbyists are going to have to do business with Republicans, but corrupting them is the objective.
Getting people like Fred Upton on energy is the objective.
Making sure that somebody like Jim Dement gets marginalized in the Senate is the objective.
Taking the wind out of your sails as soon as possible is their objective.
And that's one of the reasons why so many people are pushing for an identical leadership in the House and Senate as though nothing has changed.
Now what you have to keep in mind is it is a major blow to them what has happened.
Here the American Spectator blog, David Paul Kuhn has an interesting interview with Senator Jim Webb about his party shellacking in the midterms.
Webb says that the Democrats have turned their back on Reagan Democrats like him.
Now, Jim Webb was uh Secretary of the Navy under Ronaldus Magnus.
And perhaps, you know, the they're making a move on Governor Manchin in uh in West Virginia.
They're holding out a carrot to him to maybe change parties in the Senate.
So there might be some Democrats like Webb, and he's sending out feelers here that the Democrats are leaving him and letting him down and so forth.
I mean the real problem uh that exists politically is the Democrats.
But they're gonna they're gonna do their best to create the illusion that it is business as usual.
And there's another primary reason for that.
They've got to keep their donor base up.
It's all about money if they're they're not gonna run around and act panicked.
They are not going to give you the satisfaction of even acknowledging for one moment that they lost anything.
That's why you're hearing all this talk about working together, compromise by part the American people want the Republicans to work with us.
That's what the election is all about.
Not the American people want us to go to hell it not the American people want us to be silenced I've seen it I've watched it happen and I've seen it work.
Their whole objective is going to make it is to make it appear that they have not lost power.
And they're gonna pull that off you're gonna be watching cable news you're gonna watch all the friendly yuck yucks all these loser Democrats are going to be on and are going to be acting like it's just the same as it was yesterday.
They're gonna be talking about the Republicans as though they are a minority and a bunch of whack job losers.
And can you believe what they proposed today?
They really want to cut taxes.
And I'm talking about how stupid this is.
Because what they realize, what they realize is that there are a number of people on our side who define victory as how many of their minds we change.
And we don't.
The minds we change will never see that.
The minds we change are their rank and file.
Voters, people not in elective office.
so they know you're going to be depressed.
they know that you can lose spirit what does that mean?
That means you will stop pressuring Republicans to act as they promised during the campaign.
It's all part of the strategy.
My point is they're relentless they never go away they never think of themselves as having been beaten they don't look at this as rejection they look at this as not so much a challenge they just they just get ticked off they hate you even more.
They want you to pay for this the more they think you're getting depressed or unhappy with the speed of change lack of it or what have you then the uh the happier they are going to be Sherry in Winston Salem, North Carolina great to have you on the EIB network.
Thank you for waving and hello.
Hi Rush great show as usual.
I'm learning something I wanted to do my small part to try to clarify things about the Federal Reserve buying bonds and how that might lead to inflation please do.
Oh, good.
Well, firstly, when the Fed purchases bonds, the only way that leads to an increase in the money supply is if the Fed creates deposits to pay for those bonds.
So I think people mistakenly hear the Fed goes on a big purchasing program.
That means the money supply is going to go up by that amount.
I think that it probably...
But wait a minute.
Isn't that the objective?
Isn't that what the Fed wants?
Doesn't the Fed want inflation?
Well, I believe that Bernanke is fine with inflation.
I think that what he is deathly afraid of, being a student of the Great Depression, is deflation.
I think he feels powerless to combat deflation.
So he's merrily going on his way, holding the bag for the Treasury and allowing the money supply to skyrocket.
and that will in fact I believe cause inflation but Bernanke is excessively confident that he's going to be able to combat inflation it's deflation that he's that he's well I'm gonna get that tonically afraid of I want to get back to deflation in just a second but this what w whether they're inflating the money supply or not, uh whether they're actually making deposits or not, as you said, the fact is commodity prices are already rising.
Look at oil.
Look at gold, they're already going up just on the uh they haven't even made the first purchase yet of these bonds.
It's gonna happen over eight of the of the stocks of securities, hadn't even happened yet, and it's already the prices are going up because the the people doing this, the investors know the dollar's gonna be weakened.
That's correct.
That's right.
That's right.
And uh the real economy, um, you know, mom and pop businesses are working as hard as they can to keep pr being productive to keep the the real interest rate up there.
So our dollars are strong for a reason that they're not being inflated down in value.
Now, what is deflation?
I always struggle to explain this to people.
Uh and I'm sure when you say that what Bernanke is really worried about is deflation, some people who've not heard that before please explain that.
So would you?
Well, just imagine the economy just shriveling up.
That that nobody everybody wants to put their money under their mattress.
Nobody wants to s to spend anything today because they think prices are gonna go down tomorrow, which is what deflation means, and why buy it today for ten dollars if I can wait till tomorrow to buy it for nine.
And in the meantime, pro production falls, employment falls, and it's a vicious downward cycle that the that the federal government that the policy makers do not have a tool to combat.
Exactly right.
What they can do is increase demand.
That's exactly right.
Because what happens when producers can no longer charge what it costs to manufacture or provide the service, then they're out of business.
That's right.
So you're not even talking profit.
If they can't even make the nut back.
That's correct.
And that's what deflation does, among many other things.
That's right.
And the the f the the federal the the government with fiscal policy and monetary policy are absolutely powerless to combat it.
They wouldn't have a toolkit to play with and they would have to just trust the the private economy to get us out out of the mess.
And they don't trust the private economy.
And why not?
Why don't they tr th why don't they trust the private economy?
Because they're policy makers.
They want to create a demand for their own services because they think they know better than all of us.
I think Bernanke blinked in 08.
I think he blinked at the beginning of the financial crisis.
And Geitner and the Treasury are the ones that are really calling the shots.
I think the Federal Reserve has kind of lost its way, and they're they're trying to get it back uh to a point where they're autonomous, but they're they're absolutely not there yet.
So we've basically lost whatever benefit the Federal Reserve could do for the economy, which is basically be predictable and and and insert uh liquidity into the economy.
That's all the Fed can do anyway.
And it hasn't been working.
This is not the first attempt at it.
No, but they're kicking them they're shooting themselves in the foot.
Do you know that they're they're complaining about commercial banks not lending, but they're paying banks to not lend.
They're literally paying banks interest to hold on to their deposits and not lend them out.
They're very disingenuous on the part of the Fed right now.
Well now now, that's true, but you're gonna have to explain this in lay terms because tell me I'm gonna take a break and I want you to formulate your answer here.
But what what happens when the banks borrow money and then turn around and keep it rather than recirculate it and lend it, why is why are they doing it?
Because they're making more money by not lending it.
Well, because it's not costing them anything to get the money.
The money is free right now.
Uh and and that's it's it it is a vicious cycle.
Look, you hang on, this is a uh an e economics professor at Sherry from Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
We have to take a timeout.
We'll be back.
We will continue with this when we get back before you know it.
All right, Sherry, we're back, and I've got about four minutes here, but I just wanted to give you some idea of the of the brevity we need to uh uh engage in here.
But I have been hearing from economics friends of mine, economists, experts, and so forth, since the um late eighties about deflation.
I have been hearing about this paranoia of deflation, and yet to me, this talk that there's no inflation going on is a crock.
Um go to the grocery store and tell me there isn't any inflation.
I mean, they uh uh prices are going up.
The idea that we're heading for deflation, I think is uh uh partially a myth.
It it is it is a type of paranoia.
Uh I b I believe that.
Um but the the scholars and Urnaki considers himself one of those um on the Great Depression, a lot of them um link that to the uh failure of the Federal Reserve to step in and provide liquidity.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, that's uh that sounds like Obama isn't.
FDR didn't spend enough.
Well, no, spending is is you know, one thing.
That's you know, the government, you know, whipping out its checkbook and paying for things with tax dollars.
The money supply is something completely separate.
That's just think of it as liquidity.
Uh the and the grease that goes around in the engine.
It's not you know moving money through through time like like like debt does.
Right.
It gets confusing.
Um you were asking before the break about um why banks are doing what they're doing right now.
On the one hand, they're being criticized for not lending to private industry like they used to.
Um, and that is how they earn their their profits.
They, you know, they charge interest income for loans.
But loans are just deposits to the bank that are not used as you know, cash on hand, the the cash checks and reserves that they're required to hold by the Fed.
So you got deposits on the one hand the one side of the balance sheet, that's their liability, and then you got currency and reserves and loans on the other side.
So whatever money the banks take in that they don't have to keep this currency and don't have to keep as reserves, they should theoretically lend out in order to make money.
But why they're not lending right now is two reasons.
One is because the Federal Reserve, for the first time, in my memory, are paying the banks interest on their reserves.
So a reserve is a is a dollar not lent.
And secondly, they're afraid to lend because the policies coming out of Washington are so oppressive and risky to private industry that the banks can't be really sure of getting their money back until we know that private industry is going to be allowed to be productive and allowed to make long-term plans.
Makes total sense.
So they can't be sure of getting interest from private industry.
It's very risky.
And they're absolutely sure of getting interest from the Federal Reserve right now today.
So why not just hold on to that money and get paid?
If the Fed is essentially paying them to keep money.
They are paying them.
That's what that's what paying them interest is.
Then why should they take the risk of lending it to people who may not be able to pay it back because existing policy or future policy coming out of Washington may make it increasingly difficult to stay in business or to be con uh to be uh uh productive.
And all of this is is folks, if I if I may interrupt here, all of this is creating mass confusion and leading to an absence of total lack of confidence.
When you have a lack of confidence at the institutional level, from the Fed on down, and who are the money people, when you have a lack of confidence in the economy, and you've got a president overseas applauding the notion that America's economic dominance is over.
You've got not only a lack of confidence, you have confusion, which is going to cause paralysis, which is essentially where we are.
You throw in this fear of deflation, uh, and that means everybody's sitting on what they've got, pure and simple.
It's not circulating.
Ergo let's flood the market with uh with with printed money.
Vicious cycle.
They've been trying it and it hasn't worked.
It's always great to be with you, my friends.
I um never take this opportunity for granted.
I love this.
I love you, I love the relationship, the familial relationship that we all have, and we'll do it again in 21 hours.
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