Rush Limbaugh Program - January 3, 2011, Monday, Hour #3

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Jan. 3, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program

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January 3, 2011, Monday, Hour #3

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	Yes, America's Anchorman returns tomorrow, live at uh twelve noon Eastern to kick off another year of uh excellence in broadcasting.
	Uh but this is uh America's undocumented Anchorman sitting in.
	Mark Stein, great to be with you direct from Ice Station EIB, the Rush Limbaugh Show's newest studio in far northern Grafton County uh New Hampshire, they're gonna have to get a whole new set of business cards, uh is gonna have to say the EIB network, uh New York, Los Angeles, Palm Beach, Grafton County, New Hampshire.
	It'll look it'll look it'll look great.
	Actually, I would say given uh given uh the state of New York and the City of New York's attitude to uh Rush and the punitive taxation Governor Patterson was gloating about that had driven Rush out of the state of New York, I would say there's probably more chance of Rush hosting the show uh from uh from uh New Hampshire than there is from uh New York anytime soon.
	It's a big studio too.
	Um I mentioned the other day that uh on next year's Christmas show we can get Rush and Manheim Steamroller in here live uh to play his favorite version of uh of Silent Night here live.
	Uh public sector workers, the cost of government uh where it's driving America.
	We've been talking about that uh on today's show.
	1800-282-2882, there's a heartwarming story.
	This will this will this will clutch at your heartstrings from the New York Times, public workers face outrage as budget crises grow.
	It's about uh a teacher called Marie Cawfield from Flemington, New Jersey, who who uh confronted Governor hard hearted Governor Chris Christie over the state's education cuts.
	It became a YouTube classic.
	But since then she's received a stream of vituperative emails and Facebook postings.
	People I don't even know are calling me horrible names, said Miss Cawfield, an art teacher who had pleaded the case of struggling teachers.
	The mantra is that the problem is the unions, the unions, the unions.
	What do you mean struggling teachers?
	What do you mean struggling teachers?
	You've got a better deal than almost anybody else among your neighbors.
	Uh and and yet you say st uh teachers are struggling.
	If you're if you think you're struggling, what do you think the guy who owns the hardware store is doing?
	Or the guy who works in the hardware store, or the guy who does the the night shift uh at uh at the at the quickie crap as uh uh express mart.
	What do you think they're what do you think they're like?
	You have a better deal, you'll retire earlier with more money, you get more vacation, you get better health care, you get better benefits.
	In what sense compared to your neighbors?
	Your neighbors.
	We're just talking about the people who live in the same Sabarbon cul-de-sac as you.
	You're the same town as you.
	In what sense are you struggling compared to them?
	This lady, Marie Cawfield, the art teacher from Flemington, New Jersey.
	People I don't even know are calling me horrible names.
	Well, now you know what it's like uh to be an um insurance executive or a bank vice president, or all the other people that Barney Frank uh demonized uh beginning in the fall of two thousand eight.
	Uh all the guys that the Democrats told, hey, we're the only people standing between you and the pitchforks.
	Well, maybe the the guys with the pitchforks are figuring it out that the real threat here is not some, you know, bank vice president at some stupid bank that's sitting on a uh trillion dollars worth of toxic uh subprime mortgages.
	But the real threat here is uh public sector unions with pensions and benefit packages uh that are in fact beyond accountable political control.
	You can't they're they're they're effectively uh chiseled into granite.
	You can't even pass a law uh uh uh repealing them, uh, because they're there.
	They're done.
	They're a done deal.
	They're a deal for all time.
	You can't get a court to overturn them.
	You can't elect a legislature to overturn them.
	All you can do is appeal to the public spirit of uh so-called public sector unions to recognize that they're dragging that the the they're dragging the rest of the country down into the pit.
	Uh the cost of we we now have we've we we now have too small a private sector horse to pull the big government cart.
	It's not that it's not that difficult to figure out.
	Uh these guys uh are are simply too big, uh too cosseted, and too insulated uh from economic reality.
	So m Marie Caulfield perhaps quite genuinely thinks that teachers are struggling.
	Teachers are struggling.
	Well, sorry, you signed on to deals that are unsupportable.
	And that in many jurisdicts di jurisdictions, when when voters figure the electoral math is against them as they do in California, they leave.
	They abandon the state.
	Private sector, the dynamic Californians flee that state and they and they leave what's left in the state to uh undocumented workers and public sector unions and all the rest of it, and those guys can all scratch each other's back, and in the end they'll figure out uh that there's no one to pay for it all.
	You know, they used to be an old saying, he who pays the piper calls the tune.
	Well, the taxpayers of New Jersey pay uh the piper of the teachers union, but they don't get to call the tune.
	They have they have they pay more and more and more, and they don't get to call the tune.
	And what you're doing there is setting up pre-revolutionary conditions.
	You look at the riots that they've had in Greece, uh the riots they've had in France, in Britain, uh in other European countries.
	Uh at the moment, these riots are from people who basically uh are on the big government happy juice and don't want it to end.
	But at a certain point, that will change.
	That will change.
	And the people who who are expected uh to pay for those guys to just sit around on the big government happy juice, uh, those guys will start rioting too, and then you'll be in civil war uh type scenarios.
	Uh in Greece, the public sector unions, uh if you've got a public sector union job, you work till 2.30 in the afternoon.
	And you work uh about five and a half months of the year.
	Uh the old joke, uh, you know, oh, he works twenty-four-seven, he works twenty-four hours a week for seven months of the year.
	That doesn't even apply.
	You can't even do that joke about Greek public sector workers anymore, because they they actually work less than that.
	Uh so uh so what we have here is an unsustainable system.
	And that's what people like Marie Cawfield don't seem to acknowledge.
	Even if you think it's a good idea, even if you think it's a good idea to that the teachers union does such a terrific job that it's worth paying them more than every other developed country pays its teachers, that it's worth paying we spend more on education than any other OECD nation other than Luxembourg.
	Uh I mentioned this when we had Shannon the educator on the show.
	Shannon the educator.
	I'm surprised by the way, they describe uh in the New York Times they describe Marie Cawfield as a teacher, because most self-respecting teachers now want to be called educators, educators.
	We had Shannon the educator on, who seemed to think that the the the problems in the country would be cured by actually giving the education system more money.
	No.
	We already give the the education system more money per student than any other OECD nation except uh Luxembourg, which is a tiny little country you can fit in your rec room.
	A tiny wealthy little country that will fit in your basement.
	Uh we spend more than anybody else, we have nothing to show for it, and yet Marie Cawfield says teachers are struggling and we need more.
	No, we don't.
	We need non-unionized teachers.
	We need non-credential teachers.
	We need more volunteer fire departments rather than uh public sector unionized fire departments, because this whole racket is unsustainable, cannot be sustained.
	Now we were talking earlier with John of Pinehurst, North Carolina, who wants to know what happens when it can no longer be sustained.
	Uh with money drains power.
	You can't let the Chinese uh own as much American debt as they currently own without also letting them uh in fact mortgaging to them a big chunk of American power.
	Uh Jonathan Swift.
	They have our soul who have our bonds.
	Uh the Chinese have our bonds, so to a certain degree they have our souls.
	About uh half of U.S. debt is uh owned by foreigners and about half of that is owned by the Chinese.
	Uh what does that mean?
	Well, even if your debt is owned by uh friendly powers, they determine they essentially uh determine uh the power relationship.
	You go back to the uh last transfer of power from one global hedgeman to another, that was uh Britain to America in the course of the Second World War, when FDR agreed to the lend lease program.
	Uh He didn't he that that was about as friendly a transfer of power from one uh Anglophone nation to another to its successor to its uh errant progeny assuming uh returning as the prodigal son to assume global leadership.
	That was the most friendly transfer of power in global history.
	And the deal stank for Britain.
	Uh Lendlease, uh Lendlease, which the British thought of as a financial arrangement uh when they signed on to it in the at the beginning of the Second World War, by the time they paid off the final payment at Christmas two thousand and six, uh by the time they paid off the final instalment of the lend lease debt to the United States government, they understood that it was not just money that had drained to the successor power, uh, but power and influence uh too.
	And the Chinese understand that already.
	So they are going to determine the point at which America the American dollar ceases to be the global currency will be determined uh by China.
	Uh China is not a powerful nation.
	It's got all screwed-up problems of its own, it has millions and millions of surplus young men, it's gonna get uh old before it gets rich.
	China is in a huge mess.
	But precisely because of that, uh it w its interests do not align with the United States, and when it chooses to yank the rug, it will come at a uh it will be entirely predictable, and we will all be stunned by it.
	And that is why uh the new hundred and twelfth Congress has to not uh doesn't have to talk about raising the debt ceiling or introducing VAT or finding more ways to uh put its hands in your pocket and take more money for more useless programs.
	What it has to do is stop spending.
	What it has to do is real in spending.
	What it has to do is tell states there will be no state bailouts, and those states have to tell their municipalities there'll be no municipal bailouts.
	Because the cost the cost in terms of sheer civil uh violence and instability uh is going to get greater and greater the longer and longer this goes on.
	You can't have you can't have uh Marie in Flemington, New Jersey, uh, like all public school teachers, retiring at an early age and a fantastic salary, and and the guy who pays her salary and the guy who pays her pension and the guy who pays her benefit uh and has the misfortune uh to own a small business on Main Street, working till he drops dead without any vacation, uh, just to pay for the so-called struggling teachers of the New Jersey Teachers Union.
	Uh so uh the feds uh have to get serious about spending uh and they have to make it plain the realities of the situation to the states, and the states have to make the realities of the situation plain to the municipalities.
	Because if the hundred and twelfth Congress doesn't make the decisions on this stuff, uh then there are guys sitting around in the presidential palaces of the world, most of which are not friendly to U.S. interests, sitting around plotting how to uh make the decisions uh in the finance ministry and Beijing and other places uh as well.
	1-800-282-2882, Mark Stein in for Rush.
	If you want my buddy and you think I'm sexy, I love, I love the uh love Rod Stewart in his disco mode before he uh before he uh started uh doing the Rod Stewart Slaughters the Great American songbook stuff.
	Uh do you know that was Muller Omar's uh I think that was Muller Omar's favorite uh record, when they uh when the American troops raided Muller Omar's ca uh compound in Kandahar, you remember under the Taliban, music was banned in Afghanistan.
	Uh but when American troops because music is decadent, uh you're not a uh the a Taliban Muller recently clarified um the uh Taliban's position on music, which says Allah doesn't forbid you to listen to music, he just forbids you to enjoy it.
	Uh so if you've heard my Christmas album, for example, you'll know that's fully Taliban compliant.
	But when the U.S. troops raided Mullah Omar's compound in Kandahar, they discovered that despite uh forbidding music anywhere else in Afghanistan, he had all these eight tracks from Rod Stewart.
	Uh Mullah Omar, the one-eyed Muller, uh had been bouncing around the room listening to If You Want My Body and you think I'm sexy.
	Uh to all I don't know whether he did it in private or in front of his four wives and uh then invited them to compete for him, but Uh at any rate, they uh that that was that was that was the big disco hit in Mullah Omar's compound.
	If you want uh my body and you think I'm sp sexy.
	Speaking of uh sexy bodies, the newly empowered House GOP uh has introduced a rules package for the 112th Congress that will prohibit former members of Congress who are currently registered lobbyists from using the gym.
	I'm glad to see they're tackling uh the key issues, uh the the priorities facing uh this uh this country.
	So if you're a registered lobbyist who was previously a congressman, you can no longer use the congressional gym uh because uh because uh congressional Congress type persons don't want to be when they're on the exercise bike, they don't want to be pestered by lobbyists uh you're not allowed to when you're working out in the gym when uh Nancy's Pelosi is in there in her thong and her uh and her uh sports bra, she doesn't want to be pestered by some lobbyist coming in and uh attempting to lobby her on something.
	So the this is a sign, I think, of the new broom in Washington.
	The hundred and twelfth Congress was already cracking down on lobbying on letting lobbyists use the House gym.
	I'm glad to see they've got their priorities.
	Did you know the hundred and eleventh Congress, by the way, added more debt than the first one hundred Congresses combined.
	Uh the total uh national debt accumulated a whole three point two two trillion dollars during the tenure of the hundred and eleventh Congress, and that is more.
	That is more than was stacked up by the first one hundred Congresses uh in in uh in US history.
	That's the terrific spending they did.
	And I love the way uh Obama, you know, likes to talk about how George still likes to talk about how George W. Bush dug us into this hole, so that the only way he can dig us out of the hole is to make the hole uh, you know, three times as deep, so eventually we'll come out, you know, somewhere in Australia or New Zealand and we can get out of the hole as long as we just keep digging and digging and digging and digging.
	That's the uh that's the Democrats' method.
	Uh let's go to Scott in Springfield, Ohio.
	Scott, you are live on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
	Great to have you with us.
	Hey, Mark.
	You're my most favorite undocumented host for Rush Limbaugh.
	I just want you to know that.
	Oh, right.
	I think that's damning with faint praise, because I I'm pretty certain Mark Belling has the paperwork.
	So uh that that is kind of damning with faint praise, but I'll take it.
	I'm so desperate I'll take that anyway.
	Great to have you with us and a happy new year to you.
	Happy New Year to you too.
	I'm just wondering why uh President Obama just signed off on this five billion dollar first uh responders uh health care bill, whenever we just signed off on a trillion dollar Obamacare last year, they're supposed to have mostly covered pre existing conditions.
	Yes, it doesn't it doesn't quite make sense.
	And even when you talk about pre existing conditions, by the way, but under you we're talking with these nine eleven bill, which is one reason why some of us uh had difficulty understanding it, is that these guys have the best health care packages in the country anyway, the first responders.
	Uh so uh but as you say, you're right.
	Why do we need to find another five billion dollars when there's all this unspent money, both from Obamacare and even more so from the stimulus.
	The stimulus which uh was uh passed in whatever it was January 2009 was supposed to stimulate the economy in the first quarter of 2009, two years ago, and there's still a big bunch of money that's entirely unspent from that, because there were no shovel ready projects.
	Uh the the shovel ready project was a myth.
	So as you say, why couldn't we take the five billion for that and uh use it for the first responders, Bill.
	What's your what's your thinking on that, Scott?
	Well, I think uh exactly what you were talking about before.
	These unions uh need the money.
	And uh they they made these promises on these health care uh uh health care uh union deals and they figured now they'll get the uh government to pay for it instead of them.
	Now that money that they're getting from their union dues going right back to the politicians that pay that pass this program.
	Yeah, it's uh it's it's a very cozy relationship.
	But it's also, you know, I'll tell you something else too.
	The reason they don't want to use the stimulus money on the health care bill is because the stimulus money is also uh uh another kind another variation of the racket.
	The stimulus money uh essentially doesn't go to stimulate the economy, it goes to stimulate government.
	If you look at almost uh any area where stimulus money uh has been concentrated, uh then it's gone to to stimulate phony baloney non jobs uh by by uh Obama's fellow com community organizers.
	Uh for example uh the uh there was something called I saw this uh full page ad, the um the the Southeast Vermont Community Association, something like that, uh in Vermont when the stimulus bill passed.
	And it listed all the uh fantastic new jobs that were now available thanks to the stimulus.
	Uh and the one were the first one was the ARA project's coordinator.
	So in other words, the first job created by the stimulus was a job for coordinating other programs funded by the stimulus.
	Uh the next job was a marketing specialist to increase public awareness of the stimulus.
	So all stimulus money does is stimulate uh stimulus promotion activities.
	Uh stimulus coordination industry, the stimulus funding industry are all oomped up, but nowhere in the real economy is stimulated by Obama's phony baloney stimulus.
	Yes, America's anchor man is away but worry not he will return tomorrow, live at twelve midday.
	And in the meantime if you go to Rushlimb.com, if you're a Rush 247 subscriber, it's like he never went away because you can access all that great rush content on your schedule.
	And you can also find out about the uh new Rush app which was uh released I think just a few days before Christmas on its very first day it became the best selling app in Apple's uh store and uh so immediately the Federal Government then rushed into uh with the FCC to regulate uh apps as part of its regulation of the internet.
	Um but uh it's uh it's a terrific thing it's free and what it means is if you're a Rush 247 subscriber you'll be able to watch Rush live on the Ditto cam from your iPhone or iPad uh you'll be able to hear the Rush morning update you can see video from uh Rush's TV show back in the nineties.
	Uh you can uh email Rush directly all you gotta do is uh either go to Rushlimbour.com and we got all the info on the app right there at the website or if you go to the Apple store and enter the word rush uh then you will uh get uh uh you'll be able to download it uh directly from Apple.
	Don't forget though, as we warned in the first hour that uh if you do break the Rush app, if the if the Rush app breaks, then it is like the Curly Fry light bulb.
	And you do need to have uh with you a pack of playing cards, uh two canning jars, a small artist paintbrush and an eyedropper with you to help clear up the mess if you do break your rush uh app on your iPad.
	Uh but you can find out all about it by going to Rushlimball.com or going direct to the Apple store.
	Let's go to Joe in Dallas.
	Joe, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh show uh great to have you with us.
	Hello Mark.
	Hi Joe.
	You're one of my favorite substitutes for Rush Limbaugh.
	Oh I think that's damning with even more fainter praise than the guy who said I was the uh the the favorite undocumented host.
	But I'll take that I'll take that uh that feign praise.
	There isn't any other kind uh uh for poor old me.
	I wanted to talk about how you mentioned earlier that in like Hungary and other parts of Europe they're seizing pension funds.
	Right.
	Well here in Dallas something has been quite an issue relating to pension funds.
	Uh the city council recently voted to cut the percentage of it from like eight to down to like seven or six percent.
	Which I think is kind of a little similar but it's not the same as seizing them but they're still taking money from like workers like the police department and fire department.
	Yeah because they have a funding problem now and they cannot honor their obligations.
	Exactly I mean that the city council has spent half a billion dollars on a hotel which a lot of the people here didn't want but somehow it got approved by the voters.
	Yeah but you know you you you want to you want to think about this because uh that's exactly what is going on basically not just in Dallas, not just in Washington, but throughout the Western world is that the government refuses uh to rein in the spending and what they need then is to drag in more and more sources to prop up the spending just for another just for another year, just for another month, just for another 48 hours.
	And the idea that somehow you will be uh any of us, whether we're private or public sector workers will be able to hedge off our particular deals from government, because government, the IRS can already freeze your bank account and your kids' bank account and anybody else's bank account the moment it wants to.
	So they've already got the powers to do this stuff.
	And and and you make the right point that instead of saying, well, wait a minute, maybe we should cut the uh the transsexual performance art outreach uh supervisor.
	Maybe that job isn't as necessary as we once thought.
	Uh police and fire benefits, by the way, these guys do have terrific packages.
	But you know I would bet one I would I will make a wager with you that one of the first things that will be cut back in the years to come in America as this crisis starts to bite deeper and deeper in municipalities is meaningful police services.
	So in other words, they'll still have bureaucrats sitting around precinct houses shuffling paperwork.
	But they'll have fewer and fewer cops out there on your particular street.
	You will be you will be like most suburban cul de sacs will find themselves in the situation of Baghdad outside the green zone.
	Inside the green zone, inside the precinct house, bureaucrats will be shuffling paperwork, but they will be cutting back on core law and order policing services to to people in first in outlying streets and and then you know as much as they can get away with just like they do,
	just like they're already doing in cities like Detroit, which uh has a huge murder rate, a huge government, huge murder rate, huge number of bureaucrats, but nobody nobody manages to hook up the huge government and the huge number of bureaucrats to do anything about the huge murder rate.
	So what you're seeing Joe in Dallas and St. Louis and all kinds of other places is the first glimpse of the future that that government would rather cut back core functions such as law and order than cut back on, as you said in Dallas the new hotel or as I suggested, you know, the transsexual community outreach officer, they will cut back on core services long before they cut back on any on any of the wasteful stuff.
	Or do you think I'm wrong on that, Joe?
	No, I don't think you're wrong on that.
	It's just I'm surprised that they would do that because they I'm pretty sure they don't know the risk that if they cut spending for like the police department and fire department, they're opening themselves up more for a riots in the streets and such, and eventually it'll reach their footsteps and they'll be in danger.
	Yeah, but you know something uh you know the way to think about this, Joe, is uh you often see that take it from an old school imperialist.
	If you'd happen to be uh in Aden, which is now part of Yemen uh forty years ago, just before in the late nineteen sixties, before the uh British packed it in and uh and and basically was succeeded by a communist people's republic.
	The colonial administration was holed up in its headquarters, ventured out in armored trucks ever more rarely and ever more fiercely protected on ever more cautious routes where it wasn't at risk.
	And you will see a lot of that in uh d you already see it in Detroit really where uh the d the Detroit is a good example has gone beyond Latin America and it's uh and it's actually resembles some of the more feral parts uh of the uh uh of of failed states these days you'll see a lot more you'll see a lot more of that in the years ahead let's go to Charlie who is on I 70 in Kansas uh seeing a lot of that uh hey hey you got a lot of that stimulus money smoothing out your roadway there on I 70.
	Uh I sure do.
	Um but there's still snow on a little snow on here so apparently it didn't make it to the plows.
	Hey your comment earlier while I was on hold I heard you talk about Ezra Klein and uh his comment about being confused about documents that were over a hundred years old and I have to say that sure did go a lot of uh a long way in explaining uh the left wing intelligentsia's utter contempt toward Christianity which is uh based on documentation that's what twenty to forty times more than a hundred years old?
	Yeah that's that's true Charlie on the other hand uh they uh they don't seem to have any problem with the uh uh Karl Marx and uh Friedrich Engels and the Communist Manifesto which is what was that written in eighteen eighteen forty eight I think so there's a little bit of selectivity going on in uh going on in these things uh uh but but you but you're but you're right that uh that uh it is but but but it is I think actually you know a contempt for a a real contempt for the past.
	What's fascinating about that remark is the assumption behind it that that there are no enduring principles that That uh that somehow the fact that something is old is ipso facto proof of its obsolescence.
	That was very revealing to me, Charlie.
	Absolutely.
	My comment, uh, Mark was uh playing off of your theme of the pansy left.
	You know, the the natural outcome of the policies of the pansy left uh is at best a lack of um consumer choice, and at worst, um an increase in consumer death.
	You can look at uh cafe standards in cars that make them more uh deadly.
	Um and you can even look at uh you know, from a consumer choice standpoint, you can look at the business I used to be in, which was financial services, that every time we came out with something that was really good for the consumers that they liked and they were actually willing to pay for, uh somebody to do good, uh uh you know, quote unquote, uh, for the consumer, somebody from the government came and said we had to offer that for free.
	And so our natural inclination then was to say, well, we we can't lose money at this, so we pull the product.
	So the natural the natural uh uh process uh of the do good or pansy left is to limit consumer choice and to actually kill the consumers with the limited choices they have.
	Yeah, and as you put it, they they artificially interfere in it.
	I I was reading a m marvelous uh uh rant by George Harrison of all people a few decades ago, uh which began by referencing, you know, codecs, codac monopoly in film.
	Well, you know, uh the market solved that problem.
	Uh uh somebody came along and uh uh and and and came up with digital photography, and now Codachrome, I think it just happened last week.
	The last Codachrome production facility closed down.
	Uh if if government had interfered in that, we would still all be shooting film with Kodak Instematics uh and it would be developed by unionized regulated workforce, and it would take you four weeks to get your your holiday photographs back from the Kodak Instastatus Matics development lab.
	Uh but it left to the market, the Kodak monopoly faded away because somebody invented something that that that was better than it.
	And and as you say, governmentalization of that just shrivels choice uh and imposes more costs.
	Thank you for your call, Charlie, on I 70 in Kansas.
	I don't know whether you uh if you were listening with the speakers up loud, it's it sounded like some motorcycle cop just uh drove into his uh his passenger seat about midway through that call.
	I hope it didn't, uh and I hope he's uh an obliging fellow if he did.
	Uh Mark Stein in for rush, lots more to come.
	Mark Stein in for us on the EIB network.
	Uh I've just had a a listener email me to say that apparently in the last segment I said that uh police and firefighters, these guys do have terrific packages.
	And he uh demanded to know quite what it was.
	I was trying to say with that.
	Come on, man, give me a break.
	I was talking about Nancy Pelosi in a thong in the segment before that.
	So if that's not the the hallmark of a red-blooded heterosexual male, I I don't know what is.
	There's no need to need to suggest I've got something when I'm going on about the terrific packages of firemen.
	You know, but give me give give me a break, man.
	Uh Mark Stein Infrarush.
	We were talking about uh uh this business of uh Ezra Klein, uh the Justin Bieber of the Washington Post saying that the Constitution is over a hundred years old, nobody can understand it.
	Uh th this idea that the the left has that there are no timeless principles.
	In fact, in fact, uh generally speaking, the facts of life uh reassert themselves with numbing predictability every time.
	I was uh just talking earlier about how uh Britain's decline, like America's started with the money, started with debt, it always does.
	Uh the French monarchy, uh the the House of Bourbon in the year 1688.
	I think uh debt as a percentage of GDP was something like uh sixty-six point five percent or something, something like that, sixty-five, seventy percent.
	And we know how that worked out for the uh for for the House of Bourbon uh the following year, the French Revolution, 1789 and all the rest of it.
	Generally speaking, there are timeless principles.
	Uh uh great powers decline for the same reasons and for the same numbingly predictable reasons every time.
	So it would do the Justin Bievers of the left a little bit of good occasionally to look at something from from the the old musty Cindy Lauper era uh of uh of quill pens and uh uh and and uh and and complicated old timey English.
	Because the timeless principles Assert themselves time as a time and again.
	Let's go to Ray in Southern Illinois.
	Ray, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
	Great to have you with us.
	Hey, great show.
	I really enjoy listening to you.
	Thanks.
	What's on your mind, Ray?
	There's something you've talked about before about the Menard Kirchner Center and the law.
	That's right.
	That's right, where everyone's come down with uh the repetitive stress syndrome.
	Well, there's a few things that that happened there.
	One of them is uh Menard's one of the oldest prisons, and they still use the the big Folger Adams keys as big as your hand.
	Now just a minute.
	Just a minute just a minute, though.
	When you say uh it's one of the older prisons, how old is it?
	Well, I can't I think I think it's maybe the oldest in the state now.
	So what does that mean?
	Uh I a hundred years old.
	Um I'm not exact I'm not I'm not sure, so I can't really tell you.
	Well, you know, I'm in a 120-year-old building.
	Uh I live in a in a building that's over two hundred uh years old.
	I'm very struck by this.
	Do you remember when uh the the president was going on about Taishioma Bethaya, the the schoolgirl from South Carolina, who complained about uh peeling paint uh in in her uh uh peeling paint in her classrooms and trains rattling by the window, and uh the press will reported this as saying the building was uh over a hundred years old.
	And in fact, the building the the part of the building that is over a hundred years old is actually not used for classrooms, it was used for the school superintendent.
	And the uh and the building that uh Taishioma Bethair is actually educated in was fully remodeled in the 1980s.
	In other words, the problem here, you can there are there are sometimes problem with uh old buildings.
	They're sometimes caused by new building codes that government imposes on old buildings.
	So if you've got an old high school, you have to drop the ceiling to put the ugly ceiling tiles in uh because the the government uh has got all kinds of regulations on uh the height of uh ceilings in uh classrooms now.
	So if you've got an old schoolhouse, that can cause a problem.
	But they managed the guys who were operating these jail cells in the Edward G. Robinson, Jimmy Cagney public enemy era, were able to turn those keys.
	In other words, maybe maybe if the i i if dealing with uh uh prison cell doors that previous generations of American prison guards were able to deal with is now a cause of dramatic illness uh and getting you all kinds of uh ten million dollar settlements from the state, maybe that is a sign uh not of the decrepitude of the building, but of the decrepitude of uh American citizenship.
	Because there is the idea that somehow, uh to take the Ezra Klein view that simply because something is old, it has to be replaced, uh, is going to be the the the death of uh uh this country.
	Whether you're talking about the Constitution or whether you're talking about every single building uh in the United States.
	Most of us, most of us manage to get by living and working in old buildings.
	And that goes for that goes for prisons too, whether they date from the Jimmy Cagney uh era or not.
	Uh there may be repetitive stress issues, but repetitive stress issues for for 400 guys, including the warden who doesn't actually open these cell doors himself, uh sounds more like some kind of statist tracker to me.
	Mark Stein in for Rush, more in a moment.
	Mark Stein in for Rush on the EIB Network.
	You know, we were talking about uh Ezra Klein at the Washington Post claiming the Constitution is confusing because it's uh over a hundred years old.
	A uh listener, uh Jim uh from Reston, Virginia, suggests uh that uh that Ezra Klein should be asked to take the following test.
	He should uh he should read the six pages of the Constitution, be asked what it means, and then told to read uh the two thousand pages of Obamacare Act, or any six pages of it, and uh and explain to us what that means, because that's far more confusing and it's not written in the old timey English.
	Uh I've had a great time over this uh Christmas and new sea uh new year season, but the uh lame duck session of the Rush Limbaugh Show is finally drawing to a close, and the genuine article, the real thing, returns to the golden EIB microphone live at twelve midday Eastern tomorrow.

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