Rush Limbaugh Program - January 28, 2011, Friday, Hour #2

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Jan. 28, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program

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January 28, 2011, Friday, Hour #2

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	Yes, America's Anchorman is away today, and this is your undocumented Anchorman sitting in.
	No supporting paperwork whatsoever.
	Rush will be on your television set later today, though.
	Seven p.m.
	Easton, four PM Pacific on the Golf Channel, three back-to-back Rush episodes of his golfing adventures.
	Seven PM Eastern tonight, four PM Pacific, and he will be back at the Golden EIB microphone live Monday to take you through another week of excellence in broadcasting.
	Well, it is the end of the week, and you know what that means.
	Here we go.
	Yes, not actually live, not actually live from New York.
	We are live uh live from New Hampshire from EIB's newest broadcast facility, Ice Station EIB in Barney, New Hampshire, eleven degrees uh Fahrenheit today.
	I'm not sure what that is in Celsius, but uh I think to show that we're uh getting uh getting our act together and rejoining the modern world, we should uh we should convert to the centigrade system and uh then I'll be able to give you the uh the uh temperature in real degrees.
	Uh so uh eleven degrees Fahrenheit, Barmy, New Hampshire, Ice Station EIB.
	I did mention, actually, I mentioned in the last hour that I was gonna be in uh uh New York, because what usually if I'm doing the show from New York, I mention that I'm in non-compliance with the New York State uh Bureau of Compliance, because uh walked into my office uh uh one day uh early last year and uh s saw my ashen-faced assistant reading this uh missive from uh the New York State Bureau of Compliance informing us that we were in non-compliance with the Bureau of Compliance and the fine for
	that was fourteen thousand dollars.
	And I think with the interest it's up to a hundred and twenty-seven thousand uh or whatever it is by now.
	We'll we'll be funding the entire high-speed rail link uh in New York State uh from Plattsburg to Manhattan will be entirely funded by my fine for being in non-compliance with the New York State Bureau of Compliance.
	But uh but uh despite that, uh when I mentioned I was gonna be in New York, I had some emails saying, Where you where are you gonna be in where are you gonna be in New York?
	I'm actually going to be in Albany, where I believe the Bureau of Compliance is based.
	Is that right?
	Is that right, Tiffany?
	That's like right.
	So that's we're gonna be round the corner from the Bureau of Compliance SWAT team.
	I think I'm at the uh whatever it is, the Holiday Inn in Albany or whatever, talking to the uh Conservative Party of New York, the guys who uh elected uh William F. Buckley's brother a few years back as uh Senator uh for New York.
	But uh I'm in non I'm in non-compliance with the Bureau of Compliance, so uh I'm taking a great risk actually crossing the border into New York State, because the Bureau of Compliance SWAT team could easily take me down as I'm uh as I'm giving my speech at the uh at the Holiday Inn.
	So uh if you're there and you hear banging on the door, duck under the attractive uh table centerpieces, uh so when the uh Bureau of Compliance SWAT team open up on me, uh you you what you won't get uh you won't get hit and uh be uh one of the un unfortunate casualties uh of their determination to keep me in compliance with the Bureau of Compliance.
	Um, the states uh are are uh are falling apart in America, and this is uh what we do about this is gonna be very interesting in the uh in in the years ahead.
	We can carry on talking about rubbish like uh high speed rail, but the reality is that all levels of government in many parts of this country spend too much.
	And the question is what to do about them, and now they're talking about uh making enabling states to become bankrupt.
	Uh and uh this is uh obviously a racket.
	They're gonna let states become bankrupt, and then what will happen is that uh if you happen to live in a more or less fiscally responsible state like New Hampshire, you will wind up on picking up the tab uh for California and uh New York State and Illinois and all the rest of it.
	And there is a uh a letter, Brian Smith, who's a reader in the in the Wall Street Journal, he had uh I don't know whether this is a letter in the print edition or just a website comment.
	But he had a great idea here.
	He said that if states uh go bankrupt, they should lose their statehood.
	And uh in if effectively they're living on uh on on the federal tab, uh they should revert to territory status.
	Uh and I think that's actually a great idea.
	That if if you if you have been so incompetent as a state, like we're not talking about a school district or a city here.
	We're talking about an entire state.
	If an entire state goes bankrupt, in what sense are you a functioning jurisdiction?
	You should lose your statehood and be uh they should chisel a star out of the flag and you should be a territory again, like uh like Oklahoma Territory uh was uh a century ago uh when they uh did uh Oklahoma and the farmer and the cowman should be friends and all the rest of it.
	Uh the the uh you should lose statehood and revert to territory status because you have failed at grown-up government, and that should be reflected in your in your jurisdictional status.
	So if if they want to change the uh th change uh the law to enable states to go bankrupt, uh then they then they should also m put the price on that that i the st if the state is going to become a dependent, if the state is effectively going to become uh a welfare charge upon the other states, uh then you should lose statehood at least temporarily and become a territory.
	There's actually a North American, I hate to uh go all Britannic on you, but there's actually a North American precedent for that.
	Uh Newfoundland, uh, you know, that big uh barren rock uh just up uh off the East Coast, way up north uh Newfoundland.
	Uh Newfoundland was an independent uh dominion uh within the British Commonwealth from uh I think from nineteen ten or nineteen eleven to the early nineteen thirties.
	Uh it it had what uh they call in the British Empire responsible government.
	Uh so it was an independent uh country, in effect, like Canada or Australia or South Africa uh or uh New Zealand.
	And uh and then in the early thirties, in the Depression, when FDR was doing such a great job with the uh North American economy, uh the fringe parts of it uh took a bit of a hit and knew uh Newfoundland could no longer uh maintain itself as an independent country and reverted to becoming a colony, to reverted to becoming a dependent of London.
	And I don't believe, uh as far as I know, I don't think there are any other examples.
	One, uh one, I can think of one other example in British imperial history where a self-governing independent member of the British Commonwealth becomes a dependent territory of London again.
	That's what happened to Newfoundland in the early 1930s.
	Uh it failed, uh as I said, the expression they use in the British system is responsible government, which is a good word for it, because it means you're responsible enough to govern yourself.
	Well, California and New York and Illinois tried governing themselves and they failed.
	They flopped.
	Uh they flopped big time.
	And there is absolutely no reason uh why those of us in more prudent states uh should have to pick up the tab for them without some cost.
	Uh so if states want to go bankrupt, that's fine.
	But there should be there should be a price for that, that they be that they uh they become territories again and uh and they lose their congressional representation and their ability to influence who we elect uh to govern the nation, and uh and and their failure at responsible government should be reflected uh in their change in their status.
	And Brian Smith makes this point in uh in the Wall Street Journal ex uh very uh very pithily, I think.
	Illinois, by the way, of course, is the Obama state.
	Uh and this this is perhaps where he gets his uh his kind of lackadaisical blithe insoucian approach uh to to fiscal matters and why he can stand up at the State of the Union and start uh bleating on uh about uh light rail as the solution to uh America's problems.
	I don't think it's ever going to be possible to have high high speed rail in this country.
	I mean, just to take him seriously for a moment.
	Uh you you remember he said, oh, high speed rail, you'll be able to zip around on trains really fast and there'll be no pat downs.
	Well, actually, let's just take that for a minute.
	Uh it's not funny, and that's why people didn't laugh, when the President of the United States is making uh jokes about no pat downs, because he's the guy who institutes the pat downs, right?
	He's the guy who says uh that minor uh federal bureaucrats can now stick their hands in your underwear.
	He's the guy who instituted that.
	Uh he doesn't have to go through it.
	Nobody's gonna get their hands on President Obama's genitalia, just on yours.
	Okay?
	So that's the difference.
	Right there, that's the difference between the king and his subjects.
	Uh so it's not so lots of people can make jokes about enhanced pat-downs.
	But the guy who's ordering the people to put his hands in around your around your genitals Is not the guy in a position to make that jokes.
	That's like uh that's like President Mubarak standing up right now in his presidential palace in Cairo and doing water cannon jokes.
	Lots of people can do water cannon jokes.
	Not the guy who's ordering the water cannon into action.
	So that's why his uh that's why he flopped out with his pat down joke.
	But here's the other thing.
	You know, what's the first thing that's gonna happen the day after the high speed rail network opens, and you'll be able to zip by high speed bullet train or whatever pansy name they gave they give it, because they don't want the mean spirited Japanese name.
	When you can zip by high speed rail link from New York to Los Angeles, what do you think?
	What do you on if that starts on Monday?
	On Tuesday, there's going to be some Al Qaeda threat to Pennsylvania station or whatever.
	And on Wednesday, they're going to institute enhanced pat downs at the high speed rail station.
	So the rail journey will only take twenty minutes, but you'll have to get to the station three hours beforehand to shuffle through all the enhanced pat downs.
	So even the no pat down thing isn't the isn't even going to happen.
	Uh but the other thing that isn't even going to happen is the high speed rail link.
	The only train in this part of the world is the one that goes from Washington, D.C. via New York and New Haven, Connecticut, uh, up to Montreal.
	And uh and a couple of years ago, I was thinking you trade I like trains.
	I was thinking of taking the train from uh uh up to Montreal.
	I looked at the timetable.
	The average time uh between White River Junction, Vermont, Montpelier, Vermont, and uh St. Albans, Vermont, and Montreal, it averaged sixteen miles an hour.
	Amtrak, Amtrak averaged sixteen miles an hour.
	You'd be quicker bicycling.
	You would be you could if you were on a bicycle running alongside the Amtrak Montreal, you'd be faster.
	You'd beat them.
	If you were one of these liberals, if you were John Kerry in the beautifully sculpted yellow spandex hugging your buttocks beautifully, so every TSA agents can see you're hiding nothing in there except what God gave you, and you on your little racing bike, you would be beating the Amtrak Montreal.
	And it eventually uh they they decided to uh end the train at St. Albans, Vermont and stick everybody on the Greyhound up to Montreal.
	The idea that this country, in its present state, could develop any kind of meaningful high speed rail network that wasn't a unionized boondoggle that attracted no customers at a uh at any kind of affordable price, uh, and instead was j just imposed another unsustainable, bureaucratic, feather bedded union racket uh on top of the poor taxpayers of this country is completely absurd.
	And when a grown man stands in the United States Congress and delivers that as the solution to the woes facing America, he's just out of it.
	He's just on planet zongo.
	He's got no he no loy he he has completely slipped his moorings, and he is now free floating in the clouds, entirely detached from any reality.
	And that was the President of the United States on Tuesday night.
	1-800-282-2882, Mark Stein in for us, more straight ahead.
	Mark Stein in Farush, Michelle Obama says she doesn't tell people what to eat.
	This has never been about the government telling people what to do, she says about her anti-obesity plans.
	You can't tell me, you can't tell me.
	This isn't why the government is uh giving eight million dollars to Colorado universities in Colorado to develop uh terrorism uh detecting plants that can sniff explosives on your person and change color.
	They'll also be able to tell whether you got a Twinkie in there.
	I'm not sure I'm with Mrs. Obama on this.
	But she says it's never been about government telling people what to eat.
	That's the state where by the way, that's the state we're uh reduced to after uh uh uh uh the first uh quarter millennium of America's republic is uh we've worked our ra us uh way uh round to a situation where we're supposed to be reassured when the government tells us it's not gonna dictate to us what we're gonna eat.
	Let's go to John in Crofton, Maryland.
	John, you're live on Open Line Friday.
	Great to have you with us.
	How are you doing, Mark?
	I'm doing good, and thanks for waiting.
	I think we got a crisis developing.
	This is uh what Obama's been waiting for to show us uh that he can earn his bones and finally take care of a crisis in effective way.
	It's a weekend.
	You got uh a number of nations that are going through uh turmoil right now, not only Egypt but Tunisia already fell.
	And I understand Yemen and Jordan are uh have a problem.
	I think uh Iran might be behind it, even if they're not.
	Uh you got the Suez Canal, being a British guy, you know damn well that there have been uh crises that affect the Suez takeover of the Suez Canal.
	We do have to protect that right now.
	I think the Pentagon and the State Department, the White House should be considering sending a task force there to protect the shipment through the Suez Canal, especially with the price of oil the way it is.
	And I think OPEC would appreciate this, and we could charge them back for this service to keep the free fl flow of supplies, especially oil right now.
	The market went down a hundred and thirty-nine points while I was on the phone waiting to get on.
	It's more important than that WTF speech that he gave on high speed uh train traffic.
	So I think we have to get serious now and not fiddle while Rome burns.
	Well, y that's very interesting about the Suez Canal.
	You're in favor of sending U.S. troops to secure the Suez Canal.
	Is that right?
	Absolutely.
	That would be...
	What's more important than the Suez and the Panama Canals, the two premier canals...
	And if they choke off oil supplies through there, what's it gonna do to the price of gas, which is already over three dollars a gallon for regular.
	No, no, that's uh that's true.
	But th don't forget that uh when it comes to that, Obama is all in favor of that.
	He thinks if we get he if he thinks if you want the price of gas to go up, we don't.
	Yeah, yeah.
	That's the point.
	But you realize would welcome it.
	Realistically, John, Obama is not going to get mixed up in this.
	Obama, for example, Obama's core belief from his first two years of foreign policy is that he does not believe in the projection of American power in the world today.
	And the idea that Obama would st would would stake the Obama era in American politics, which he wants to be a transformative domestic era, uh, on uh securing the Suez Canal.
	I find that hard to imagine.
	I mean, you don't really think Obama's gonna do anything on this.
	That's why I think we have to ask him to do it.
	He has to be forced into doing it because that's the smartest thing to do for the whole world.
	Now you're gonna have a financial crisis worse than what we're seeing just today.
	This is gonna affect world markets.
	Yes, but you know, everything that ha has happened in the last c I mean, just to take your point, for example, that it might be the Iranians behind this, right?
	Which is an interesting point.
	But but if we assume, say, that Iran will go nuclear any day now, uh what would be the uh what would be the main effect of that?
	The main effect of Iran going nuclear is that it would control the price of the world's oil de facto, and it would control who Middle Eastern oil gets sold to.
	So for example, if they decide they want to prioritize their uh Chinese customers rather than their Western customers, they're free to do that.
	Uh Obama has sat by and done nothing for two years as Iran has gone nuclear on his watch.
	Why would he suddenly swing into action now?
	Trying to act like he's moving to the middle because he's trying to act right Reagan-esque.
	Wouldn't Reagan do this?
	Didn't Trump.
	You know, you you know what he might do if he's gonna go down this path uh uh at all, John.
	I think he wouldn't do what Reagan would do.
	I mean, I think that whole time magazine cover that Rush was talking about the other day, is uh just uh glib opportunism on the part of Obama and his Obama's soxes in the uh media.
	But he he you might get him on board for like a kind of some sort of UN mission, UN peacekeeping type thing.
	Well well, that's all you that's all you'd get him to do, because he believes in multilateralism, he believes in stand ha a bunch of guys standing around in blue UN helmets.
	Uh uh he I can see him doing that.
	But the idea of him sending a U.S. task force to secure the Suez Canal, which you're right.
	You're right.
	Uh and in a sense, I think he could get uh something on that, because the Chinese certainly have as much to lose from uh any choking of traffic in the Suez Canal as anybody else.
	But here but here's the thing.
	Here's the thing, John.
	He has had he has demonstrated no interest in the rest of the world since he took office.
	His only interest in the rest of the world uh is that he doesn't want the Iranians nuclear Cleveland until he's had an opportunity to uh to devastate uh the American economy and the American political landscape himself.
	He just wants their he just wants foreign policy to butt out and keep the hell out.
	And and and that's why everything he's done uh here is reactive.
	He has no strategic view whatsoever uh of America's role in the world, except except that he does not believe in the uh projection of American power in the American national interest.
	That's why if you listen to his speeches, uh they all give the impression that he's sort of taking an intellectually equidistant position between U.S. national interests and the sort of global interests of the planet.
	Very unusual aspect to the speeches of an American president.
	Lots more still to come.
	Open line Friday on the EIB network.
	Mark Stein sitting in for rush, rush back live on Monday.
	Yes, open line Friday on the Rush Limbaugh Show, Monday to Thursday, a highly trained broadcast specialist controls the content of the show.
	But Rush is out today, so we don't have a highly trained broadcast specialist on hand.
	Anything goes, whatever you want to talk about.
	Uh we've been talking about Egypt.
	We've been uh talking about uh the the uh president's response to the situation that the United States faces.
	Let's go to David in Kingsland, Georgia.
	David, what's on your mind?
	Uh please don't make this political.
	The when the Chinese uh the head of the China came over and we had to hang our head.
	I think it's time that Americans stand up for themselves.
	And we need to um have Americans donate money and pay back the debt that we owe them.
	Well, you know, I would be interested in doing that, but the question is how do you do it?
	Let's say about half the debt of the United States government, the federal debt, not uh the the state and municipal debt, but just say like half the federal debt is uh foreign and about half of that, you know, forty something in the region of two fifths to half of that is uh with the Chinese.
	So you're talking uh about finding a sum of uh of uh in the region of uh at a low ball estimate, something like three and a half to four trillion dollars.
	And you can't find that overnight.
	I mean the great question is not whether we can aff afford to pay off the debt, but whether we can even afford the interest payments on the debt.
	I'm sure, you know, David, you have a MasterCard or a Visa card or whatever, and you know it's not a good month when the statement comes at the end of the month, and you can only pay off the interest rather than just paying the principal.
	Doesn't matter whether that applies whether you've got like a uh a MasterCard or a visa card with a hundred thousand dollar limit or whether you've got one with a two thousand dollar limit.
	If you can only pay off the interest uh at the end of each month, you're not uh you're not doing you're not doing so great.
	And that's the situation the United States is in, that uh within the next two to three I would say by twenty fifteen, uh the the interest on the debt will be covering the interest payments on the debt will be covering the entire cost of the Chinese military.
	Right now it covers about eighty percent of the cost of the Chinese armed forces.
	I mean, that's crazy.
	Eighty percent of the Chinese military is paid for by U.S. taxpayers.
	How are we gonna that's just the interest.
	How are we gonna pay off the actual the actual principal of the debt, David?
	What you have uh companies and people that have a trillion dollars, uh a billion dollars, and I know they're gonna help.
	I'm disabled, I'm in a wheelchair.
	Right.
	And I will give you five hundred dollars.
	I'll have to make installments, but I am sure there's many, many Americans, and we should be able to pull up that kind of money.
	Well, well, you you say you say that, David, you know, and I believe you that you'd give five hundred dollars and we'd buy bonds that would be specifically marked for uh paying off the Chinese.
	Uh but you but but uh what what uh what are the odds that say you get two or three, five years down the line and the Social Security Fund is uh running low and they decide to take the bonds that were earmarked for paying off the Chinese and put them into uh and put them into uh propping up social security.
	That's the problem.
	That's the problem, David, that the American people, it's not just pathetic government figures, but the American people each November uh for some time now have voted themselves a lifestyle and a a level of government that they're not prepared to pay for in taxes.
	And so and so uh how are you gonna persuade those people who say, Oh, great government health care.
	Oh, great, let's have uh government funding for high speed rail.
	Oh great, let's replace all the light bulbs in America with the curly fry light bulb uh because it's environment how are you gonna persuade all those people that if you live by debt you die by debt, uh which is the situation the United States are in.
	I mean that's not a problem for government, that's a problem for the American people, David.
	Well, I understand, but I know for a fact that we can we can get the money that we owe China.
	I cannot uh believe that people would uh hold you know hang their heads because we are that kind of money.
	I know we can get that kind of money.
	I know it.
	Well, I hope I hope you're right, uh I hope you're right, David, because the it's a very simple thing.
	When money drains, power drains.
	Uh so uh who the guys who hold your bonds hold your soul, as uh Jonathan Swift said uh a couple of centuries back that uh when when your money is draining to Beijing remorselessly, uh eventually other things do too, like uh like power.
	I mean, basically the uh dollars roll as the global currency is entirely dependent on whether it's in the interests of Beijing to keep it that way.
	Uh thank thank you for your call, David.
	But you know he's right here, by the way.
	He's right.
	Uh if he's serious, he's right.
	Uh that at a that a certain point uh America has to stop uh being a country mortgaged uh to Beijing.
	I'm I'm uh as I s I was uh interviewed by a foreign TV station the other day and uh and I said I'm about the least anti-American non-American on the planet.
	But that said, there are th there are structural defects in the United States that are looming, not just in mid-century, but looming right now, right now.
	I was gassing up in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, uh a couple of days ago on a very cold morning.
	And uh I was putting the gas into the Tangamai truck and the the the the uh the the uh gas pump was running slow as it does these days.
	I don't know why.
	Uh there's all kinds of apocryphal uh urban myths about this, or in this case a rural myth, urban myths that it's to do since they put the ten percent ethanol in the tanks run slow, particularly on cold mornings.
	Uh uh I don't know what it is, but I know that if you're ever going through some like decrepit New Hampshire town that's got some broken down general store where its pump, its sole pump has been unmodernized, so it's the original pump they put in in 1954, and you stop to fill up your tank there, you'll be in and out of that place in a minute and a half.
	That that thing from nineteen fifty-four will fill up your tank in nothing flat.
	Whereas the new environmentally friendly pump, you're standing there freezing in the cold, uh pumping gas forever.
	So I'm standing there in the freezing cold, this thing's running slow.
	So it's like taking four minutes to put a dollar's worth of gas in the tank.
	So at some point I say, nothing works in this third world dump of a country anymore.
	And a guy comes round the corner who's been gassing up the other side.
	And he's like plaid clad and he's uh, you know, he's dressed for hunting season, and he doesn't like to hear some sinister foreigner bad mouthing his country.
	Uh so he says to me, Hey, why don't all you foreigners, if you don't like it, why don't you clear off the hell out of here?
	And I said to him, because I was in a bad, we were both in a bad mood, could easily have ended in bloodshed.
	You know how these things go.
	And uh I said to him, I s I j uh uh which I wouldn't normally do, I'd have sort of backed away cautiously, uh, but I was in a bad mood uh and I snapped at him and I said, Hey, if us foreigners ever pull out of the United States, you guys are screwed.
	You're completely screwed.
	You've got to use that line fifty years ago.
	You're gonna use that line thirty years ago.
	But right now the only people propping this country up are foreigners.
	Who's buying your debt?
	The United States government dumps in treasury bonds every year the equivalent uh of the uh Canadian economy or the Indian economy twice over.
	In other words, as fast as India grows its economy, uh America grows its debt twice as fast.
	The entire Canadian economy, the United States government now issues in the form of treasury debt each year.
	In other words, in other words, this country expects the world to buy the equivalent of a G7 nation in US federal debt every single year until the end of time.
	So the line, the line, oh, why don't you foreigners, if you don't like it here, clear off back where you came from?
	That's a very that would have been a cute line as recently as nineteen eighty.
	But now it's just a joke.
	It's just a joke.
	Uh because until you're s until you get serious uh about uh about this debt, you are like Blanche Dubois in a streetcar named Desire.
	You uh you have come to depend on the kindness of strangers, sir.
	You uh America is dependent on the kindness of strangers, sinking a G seven economy's worth of money into US Federal Treasury debt every year.
	On America's on big government street guard named Desire, you have come to depend on the kindness of strangers.
	And Americans should be ashamed of that.
	And that's why that's why uh it's interesting to hear callers from Americans who are ashamed and actually personally prepared to pay off American debt uh themselves.
	But you know how that ha how you know how that works.
	You know, let's say you got a teenage son, and he wrecks the car and he goes out drinking and he blows all his money, and next thing you know, he's got a credit card, but he's run up twenty thousand dollars worth of debt on it.
	And you say, Oh, not to worry, son.
	It's embarrassing to me having a son with twenty thousand dollars of credit card debt that he's run up.
	I'll pay that off for you, son.
	Do you think that's gonna teach your profligate son that this time he should drive more responsibly and drink less and learn how to budget and steward his money?
	No, he's just gonna carry on as normal.
	So if individual citizens volunteer to pay off Chinese debt so they can walk tall in the world today, do you think that man who gave that pathetic figure who gave the State of the Union address on Tuesday?
	Do you think he's gonna take that as a sign that he needs to rein in?
	No.
	He he every everything, every speech Barack Obama gives, he stands up there and he says, Washington is broke, Washington is fixed, Washington doesn't work anymore.
	So what's his solution?
	More Washington.
	More Washington in everything.
	More Washington in your car, more Washington in your property market, more Washington in your health care, more Washington in your mass transit light rail links, more Washington, more Washington, more Washington.
	Until you change that, paying off the uh individuals, individuals volunteering to pay off the debt wouldn't work.
	Uh Warren Buffett, Bill Gates writing a check to pay off the entire debt wouldn't work because in the end it's not an accounting error.
	It's it's actually a moral question.
	It's uh it's about the debauchery of Republican government.
	It's it's about the negation of 1776.
	What you've done uh is not run uh not spent more money.
	That's not the issue.
	And it's not even the Chinese uh uh owning them uh the debt.
	That's not the issue.
	It's the spending that causes the debt.
	So there's no point paying off the debt until you crush and kill I hate to use mean spirited uh violent language, uh, but unless you take a Japanese bullet train and send it spiraling into the heart of government spending, uh then who owns the debt and volunteering to pay it off is not going to make any difference.
	Mark Stein in Farush, lots more still to come.
	Oban Line Friday on the Rush Limbo Show.
	Let's go to Paul in uh Fort Walton Beach in Florida.
	Paul, you're live on the EIB network.
	Great to have you with us.
	Yeah, great to speak to you, Mark.
	Uh you're the number one guest host on the number one show.
	Yeah, that's uh that's uh that's not damning with fame praise.
	Great honor for a foreigner to to sit at the golden EIB microphone.
	What's on your mind today, Paul?
	Yeah, uh during your last um uh sit-in on the show, you uh uh mentioned that uh farmers are going to have to spend a lot more of their time filling out government paperwork instead of farming as a result of the so-called FDA Food Safety Modernization Act.
	Right.
	And uh it's even worse than you feared.
	In the Washington Post recently, they reported that uh the FDA is going to hire two thousand inspectors uh specifically to enforce the provisions of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act.
	So after the farmer gets done uh planning and sewing and repairing the equipment and working all day, he comes home and he's gonna have an FDA inspector to make sure that all of his paperwork is correct before he gets up the next morning and starts all over again.
	Well there's no point to that.
	I'm sorry, go ahead.
	No, there's no there's no point to that.
	I mean, two thousand who who could think that what America needs right now is two thousand more federal inspectors for anything.
	Right, farming more federal regulators uh regulating agriculture than there are farmers to begin with.
	Right.
	Okay, that's the bad news.
	The good news is the uh the the bill as passed, well it's now a law, public law 11-353, is unconstitutional in three very important points.
	If I can go over them very quickly.
	Okay.
	Okay, first of all, the Constitution, Article 1, Section 7 says all bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.
	That's the origination clause.
	Well, it uh the bill didn't originate in the House, it originated in the Senate, and we've got out of the mouth of Senator Harry Reid himself uh the fact that that's the case, because when the bill passed the Senate on the night I may add of Sunday, remember during the lame duck session, they and all that uh those backroom deals.
	Well, on Sunday night, uh December the nineteenth uh of last year, uh Harry Reid substituted with two amendments, he substituted the the uh title of the uh Senate version of the uh Food Safety Modernization Act and the text into an unrelated House bill.
	He basically gutted the House bill, put the entire title and text of the Senate bill into it.
	Yeah, and they would be interesting to see.
	He thought he'd found a technical way around, because this is like a legacy from the uh old Georgia Third days, where the House of Lords couldn't originate money bills.
	Exactly.
	And it's and it's the same and same thing here.
	What's the second what's the second point here, Paul?
	Well, okay, the second and now they've tried to make this so it'll s it'll withstand the constitutional challenge by using the bill number from the House bill, you see, so they can say, well, it originated in the House.
	Right.
	Well, that's you know, that's almost dismissive.
	It's uh I don't think anybody's gonna buy that.
	Uh that's constitutional contempt.
	And I I would hope any uh a judge I would hope any judge would see it uh uh as such.
	That's uh that's true.
	That's exactly right.
	Okay, well, another thing they did to try to make it withstand the constitutional challenge was that when they changed the title in the text, uh gutted the House bill and put the uh uh Senate language and uh and title in the uh under this uh House bill number, um they did that in the form of amendments.
	Because also in section in Article 1 Section 7, uh the last clause, it says, but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills.
	Okay, so by the they think that by making the title one amendment and the text another amendment and sticking it in there and sending it back over to the House, that that would fulfill uh the uh constitutional muster.
	Well, it doesn't, and and here's why not, because the founding fathers, when they were writing the Constitution, uh had no way of knowing what sort of administrative procedures that uh the that their successors would follow.
	Uh what bill num they could have used names instead of bill numbers, who knew at that time.
	So when the founding fathers were w said a bill for raising revenue shall originate, they were referring obviously to the language.
	Yeah, and uh it's it'd be interesting.
	I mean, I think you're right on this, and I think it's clear that Harry Reed found an uh unconstitution Harry Reed thought he could be like uh Snoop Dogg when uh Snoop Dogg uh had his little uh trial a few years back and he could be acquitted on a technicality.
	That's what they think uh that's that's what they think here.
	I mean, clearly the Senate uh originated an unconstitutional money bill uh and then they tried to fiddle the paperwork to bring themselves into uh into post facto uh compliance with it.
	And if uh if if the Supreme Court were to entertain that seriously, then you know, in effect the Constitution is dead.
	It's meaningless because it demonstrates naked contempt for constitutional government, and that's a very good uh point, Paul.
	That was the Food Safety Modernization Act, by the way, under which uh farmers, as uh Paul was saying, not only have to get up early and milk the cows and plow the fields, uh, but they also have all this extra paperwork imposed on them when they get uh get there in the evening and two thousand new uh uh uh federal regulators to make sure they're in compliance.
	So basically a farmer when he gets up at the crack of dawn would be better off just going and standing in the milking stall himself, uh leaning over and letting some federal regulator come in and milk his teets, because the idea that you can uh function as a farmer or in any other occupation with this level of federal regulation is preposterous.
	And that's the reality of the State of the Union, by the way.
	Uh that uh uh apart from the constitutional uh unconstitutional Remorseless centralization of American life.
	It's all crippling.
	There's more and more government and a smaller and smaller base of people supporting it.
	Mark sign in for Rush.
	More straight ahead.
	The right-wing hate is getting out of control.
	The state of Utah has just named an official state gun.
	It's the Browning M1911 semi-automatic.
	That is the new official state gun of Utah, uh, along with the new state cooking pout and state folk dance.
	I don't know about you, but I like to take uh the state gun, and while I'm doing the state folks dance, uh, shoot up the state cooking pot.
	That's the kind of mean-spirited right-wing hater I am.

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