Yes, America's Anchorman is away today, and this is your undocumented anchorman sitting in, and no supporting paperwork whatsoever.
Rush was live from Los Angeles yesterday.
We've got to get him.
I'm in New Hampshire at the newest EIB broadcast facility, Ice Station EIB.
And it's an absolutely huge studio.
You could get Rush in here.
Rush could play golf in here, actually.
Rush could play golf in here if we did a little bit of landscaping.
And on one of the attractively landscaped hillocks, you could probably put Mannheim Steamroller to serenade him with Silent Knight as he's playing golf in here.
So we try and get Rush to do a show from Ice Station EIB.
He will be back live here behind the Golden EIB microphone on Monday.
And tonight, it's free back-to-back episodes of Rush on the Golf Channel starting at 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific.
So don't miss that.
7 p.m. Eastern tonight.
Free back-to-back episodes, including my favorite one, the middle one, which has the title Hawaii 4-0.
So do look for that.
Well, we were talking about 15 minutes back when a caller called in and proposed that we should all volunteer to pay back the Chinese debt.
And I wasn't impressed by this, in part because we've already given so much money.
The average American taxpayer has given so much money to China over the years anyway.
We didn't volunteer to do it.
Nobody told us that the government was going to be giving it to China.
We were giving it to China anyway.
And the idea that we can sort of have a pass around the collection tin and raise $3.5, $4 trillion and give it back to China is perhaps not as practical as it might be.
And I started talking about how I'd been at the gas pumps in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, and they were running slow.
And I'd said, nothing works in this third world country.
And the guy on the other side of the pump who was gassing up came around and said, hey, well, if you sinister foreigners don't like it, why don't you clear off and get the hell out of here?
And I snapped back at him because it was a cold morning and said, that would have been a cute line 30 years ago.
But if we sinister foreigners pull out now, you guys are screwed because we're propping up this country.
We're buying all your debt.
You're living with a level of government you're not prepared to pay for.
And it's the rest of the world that's buying your debt and keeping things going.
So if we foreigners take your advice and get the hell out, you guys are screwed.
There's nothing left.
And somebody said to me, well, how did that story end?
Did you and he get into a fight and it all come to blows?
And I said, yes.
He grabbed a bat from out of the bed of his truck and he clubbed me over the head.
And I wound up going to hospital and all the way.
But in fact, he was so stunned by me actually snapping back at him that he just said, whoa, okay.
He'd never met a pansy foreigner who was prepared to give him some lip on this subject before.
So he said, well, he got the measure of me.
He knew I was an ephete metrosexual foreigner, but I had my dander up.
And at this hour of the morning, he had better things to do.
So he just said, whoa, okay, man, and went off.
So we didn't come to blows.
And I wasn't on the front page of the Caledonia Record in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.
1-800-282-2882.
And you know what it means at the end of the week.
Yes, you can talk about whatever you want to talk about.
Multi-trillion dollar debt to Beijing.
You can talk about the meltdown in Egypt.
You can talk about Charlie Sheen being taken to hospital with his hernia problems after a night spent with a bevy of hookers and a suitcase full of cocaine.
That would give anybody a hernia.
We were trying to establish earlier, technically, how many hookers make a bevy.
And HR's best guess was four to six.
And I said to him that I thought six was the European Union estimate for the number of hookers in a bevy, because in a Euro bevy, you get more hookers because they're on the metric system.
So you get six hookers to a bevy over in Europe, but only four hookers to a bevy in the United States of America.
So we'll try and establish for you because there is some doubt about this.
And I know that George Soros' stenography pool are on the alert for factual errors from right-wing hate radio.
So if you belong to the hookers union and I've grossly underestimated the number of hookers in a bevy of hookers, then we will try and correct the error before the show is out today.
By the way, if you're Charlie Sheen and you're resting up from your hernia, and I take it you're in no mood to be under a bevy of hookers right at the moment, perhaps you could call up and let us know yourself how many hookers are in a bevy of hookers.
I don't want to get short changed.
I'm very naive.
And, you know, we're not richly endowed with hookers in remote northern New Hampshire.
And I find I'm worried when I go out of an evening to spend with a bevy of hookers and a suitcase of cocaine that I may be getting a bit short changed.
And, you know, I'll wander into the brothel and I'll say, okay, I'll have the full bevy.
And there's only two girls there.
And I'm suspicious that maybe there ought to be more in a bevy of hookers when you're paid up front.
But that sometimes you're not getting the full bevy.
So if you know about that, do let us know.
Yeah, that's right.
A half rack or a full rack, says HR.
He's obviously a metropolitan.
He's in New York.
So they're more on top of the bevy of hookers down there, metaphorically speaking.
1-800-282-2882.
You know what was the other totally lame aspect of that state of the union thing, by the way?
The Sputnik moment, the call for a Sputnik moment that the president made.
I mean, this isn't even his idea.
This is Thomas Friedman in the New York Times, who is always going on.
Thomas Friedman is what passes for a thinker at the New York Times.
He's off at the moment because he's writing a book.
He wrote the book The World is Flat, and he's doing some other book now.
He's a big globalization guy.
And in fact, all his columns, they're generally filed from the departure lounge, the VIP lounge of some airport.
And he's always complaining that when you're in the departure lounge at Shanghai or Alma Atta in Kazakhstan, and then you fly into a dump like LAX or Newark, that this proves how America is slipping behind in globalization.
Because when you're in Shanghai, they've got the high-speed rail link with complementary Wi-Fi all the way to the airport.
And then you get on the plane, everything's working fine.
Then you get in the plane, land at Newark, and Newark is a dump.
Then you land at LAX, LAX is a dump.
And that's all his columns.
He's got this great line that, you know, landing at Kennedy Airport from Hong Kong is like going from the Jetsons to the Flintstones.
This is always his great line to show he's up on top of American popular culture, which he last checked in with circa 1963.
So he always says landing at Kennedy after you've flown out of Hong Kong is like going from the Jetsons to the Flintstones.
I think that was in January 2008.
A couple of months later, he goes in JFK's waiting lounge after he gets there and takes off for Singapore.
And he says that's like going from the Flintstons to the Jetsons.
You know, JFK is the Flintstones, Singapore is the Jetsons.
Then a couple of months later, he's flying from Zurich to LaGuardia.
And he says that's like flying from the Jetsons to the Flintstones.
So this is the only pop culture analogy he's on top of, Thomas Friedman.
And his other analogy that he always uses is that America needs a Sputnik moment.
America needs a Sputnik moment.
That we need to galvanize the nation in the way that we did during the space race and the response to the space race.
But, you know, that's not what big government is anymore.
Big government doesn't do that.
And in a way, the ability to do that, the ability to do an extremely particular accomplishment, which we did in the space age, was an anomaly.
Everybody used the space race template to apply to government.
Rich Lowry has a column today, my old boss at National Review, Rich Lowry has a column today going on about the cliché.
You know, if we can put a man on the moon, why can't we fix Grandma's Medicare?
That was what they used to say in LBJ's day.
But that's the point.
If we can put a man on the moon, in those days, the only way you could get to the moon was through a big government project.
That is a very particular, you're looking to government to fill a very particular aspect of life.
When government is dealing with your healthcare, in other words, if you break your ankle and you need government, that's not a man-on-the-moon moment.
When you buy a car and you need the government to have a hand in the manufacture of that automobile, that's not a man-on-the-moon moment.
When you seek accommodation and you need a subprime mortgage, that's not a man-on-the-moon moon moment.
These are things that humanity was able to accomplish for its entire existence until we started thinking of it in terms of Sputnik moments.
That you could provide a rude dwelling for you and your family, and you could get from point A to point B.
And if you happen to fall off the roof of your rude dwelling, you could somehow manage to make arrangements for your own health care yourself.
These are not man-on-the-moon moments.
There's nobody saying, well, I've got a healthcare plan.
That's one small step for man, one giant step for mankind.
Let's plant the American flag in my big toe.
Those are routine aspects of human existence.
And a society that starts to look on them as a kind of space age moment is a society by definition in deep decline.
Because a society that cannot manage, that is now reduced to Michelle Obama lecturing Americans on their diets, a society that cannot control its own diet, cannot control its own health care arrangements, cannot make provision for accommodation, cannot make provision for transportation, that is a society by definition that has so debauched its human capital that government now has to control every aspect of life.
It's not a man-on-the-moon moment.
You know, when they send a rocket up to the moon, they didn't say, the argument wasn't that this demonstrates the capacity of government to do something extraordinary, therefore government has to do everything ordinary.
And that's why Obama is being deeply dishonest when he starts calling for a Sputnik moment.
We don't need a Sputnik moment.
We need a Main Street moment.
We need a small farm moment.
We need a homestead moment.
We actually need to stop thinking about the ordinary details of life as something to do with the space age and return to the way they were viewed by the people who built a republic in the wilderness two and a half centuries ago.
And that is very different.
They didn't look on it as anything extraordinary.
The guys who founded my town, the first miller in my town, dragged his mill wheels.
He came from Connecticut and he dragged his mill wheels up the frozen Connecticut River one winter, almost to the Canadian border, and he became the first miller in my town.
Now, he's nobody special.
He didn't apply for a millwheel transportation grant.
He didn't sit around in Connecticut saying, oh, you know, I can maybe move up there and open a mill if they had a high-speed rail link for me to put my mill wheels on.
Americans, as Tocqueville said, when a European has a problem, he wants to know what the government's going to do about it.
An American has a problem and he does it himself.
Or that's what he used to say in Jacksonian America when Tocqueville was wandering around it.
So the whole Sputnik, this is what's crazy about Obama's speech.
He thinks he sounds modern when he's talking about a Sputnik moment.
It's retro chic from the groovy space age, except all the groovy space age airports are now horrible decaying buildings filled with TSA agents groping eugenitalia.
The space age ossified.
It got arteriosclerosis under government.
So sputnik moment, sputnik moment.
How can a man stand up there in multi-trip facing multi-trillion dollar debts that he that is destroying our children and grandchildren's future?
There's a guy, James Poulos, at a website called Ricochet, written saying this isn't a Sputnik moment.
This is a Stalingrad moment.
This is when Hitler threw everything at Stalingrad and realized he'd throw everything at it and it was still a catastrophe.
This is America's Stalingrad moment and Sputnik ain't going to cut it.
Mark Steinin for Rush 1-800-282-2882.
Lots more still to come.
Mark Stein in for Rush on the EIB network.
Let's go to Luann in Webster, Wisconsin.
I think that's right.
I had a momentary blank on my two-letter postal abbreviations, but I think I'm right there, Luann.
Great to have you with us.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing good, all things considered.
How are you?
Well, I was doing perfectly fine listening to my favorite radio program, my favorite undocumented radio host, but then David came on and got my blood boiling.
When he said that we, first of all, overspent our money and we need to pay back China, we didn't do it.
If we were in charge of it, we wouldn't have spent like drunken sailors.
And second of all, my husband and I own a business, and every quarter we write out checks to the government in large amounts, I might say.
And if he thinks I'm going to write another one to help pay down the debt, he's crazy.
No, basically, what David was arguing was that where he was right is that he was right in that it's embarrassing for a great power to be indebted.
And normally, this, by the way, normally this level of indebtedness leads to the end of your dominant status.
It did for the French monarchy, and it did.
One could make the same argument with Britain over lend-lease with FDR and all the rest of it.
In other words, basically, once you're mortgaged up to the hilt, it's over.
But you're right that you've already paid to China.
You've already, you write checks.
If you've got a small business, you're writing checks to China every single quarter, and you're just routing them through Washington as the middleman.
And so the answer is not for, as David says, for you then to put a collection tin on the counter of your business so that your customers can come in and put $5 bills in there and send it all over and put it in an envelope and mail it to Beijing.
The answer is for the government to stop spending at a level that makes it necessary for the Chinese to lend us money.
Absolutely.
Well, Luann, what business are you in, by the way, Luann?
We do quality control inspections for manufacturing companies.
Oh, right, right, right.
So you and you, that's you and your husband.
And so you're affected by, by the way, by all these new regulations about having to issue 1099s for this and 1099s for that.
All that stuff just takes up more time for you.
Oh, it's terrible, the things that they've imposed on us small businesses.
It's really, it's really bad.
Yeah, and it's amazing to me that, and I don't know what Wisconsin is like.
New Hampshire at the state level is quite a good place to run a business in, but the amount of federal regulation of business in the United States is crippling this country.
And that's why it's the amount of regulatory costs, the amount it costs to hire a person if you hire an employee in your business.
Basically, government imposes a surcharge of 30, 35% by the time you've covered the cost of insuring them and all the rest of it.
It's driving jobs out of the country and it's driving businesses out of the country.
And the idea that we have a president who stands up there on a Tuesday evening and he simply proposes this and he proposes that, all of which have one thing in common, that they're going to mean more federal regulation, more agencies of this, bureaus of that, departments of the other, all with thousands and thousands of federal employees federally regulating you.
And then David comes along and says, oh, and by the way, I've got a collection tin here.
We don't think the Chinese naval carrier program is ambitious enough.
We think they should be able to build more.
So why don't we have a collection and pay off the Chinese debt as individual citizens?
As you say, you already pay money to China.
The government should stop spending at a level that necessitates that.
Good for you, Luann.
Well, we're going to get better because as of a couple days ago, like I said, we're in Wisconsin and Scott Walker is now the governor.
They put a new sign at the entry of our state that says, now open for business.
Right.
And I hope that is true.
I do.
I hope that is true because not enough American states are.
Basically, California is closed for business.
Basically, New York State is closed for business.
Unless you're in the Bureau of Compliance business, New York State is not a state to do business in.
So I hope you're right on that, Luann.
Thanks a lot for your call.
She's in no hurry to donate money to China.
By the way, we've had Ed, Ed emailed me to say he looked up the definition of bevy, and a bevy of quail, apparently, is two dozen.
So if Charlie Sheet actually did have a bevy of hookers, it's no wonder.
I'm surprised it was.
Yeah, he would have more than he'd have at least a triple herder, I would think, after a bevy of hookers.
So I don't know about that, but we'll try and keep you up to speed on that.
I always love, by the way, can we get that for the old bumper music, Mike?
That hit from the Don McLean hit from the 70s.
I put my bevy in the Chevy and I drove him to the levee.
What was that?
What was that song?
I'd amazed.
Can you get a bevy of hookers in a Chevy?
That is one, not in a, yeah, in the Chevy Vault.
I think you can get 24 environmentally friendly hookers in a Chevy Vault.
We'll look into that and get back to you because we're on the cutting edge of things.
Open line Friday on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Lots more to come.
Yes, Rushback Monday, Open Line Friday, Miami Shores, Florida.
This is from the New York Times.
Quote, the Marine Patrol officers and fish and wildlife agents made an onshore visit Thursday to the home of one Nick Harrington, 16, to deliver an ultimatum.
Remove the grand piano from Biscayne Bay within 24 hours or face felony charges, a $5,000 fine, or perhaps worse.
Apparently, it's a felony to put a piano on a sandbar in the state of Florida.
And South Florida has been gripped by the sight of this grand piano on a sandbar and why on earth it suddenly appeared there.
And the reason is that the teenager had intended to make a surreal video of the piano perched atop the sandbar's highest point with Miami's glittering skyline as a backdrop to impress the college admissions officers at the Cooper Union in Manhattan, where he hopes to study art or music.
This is the hyperpower in Twilight right here, this poignant image of a grand piano on a sandbar that the guy has done as some kind of art installation in order to increase his chances of getting into college.
Do you know that, by the way?
By the way, you're thinking about going to college, retraining, you know, there's no jobs in town.
You might want to take out a quarter million dollars worth of debt by going to college and studying art.
And the way to get in, apparently, is to put a grand piano out on a sandbar and that will impress the people who determine whether you can go to college or not.
Wonderful.
Nick remained quiet as to that he put the sandbar out in the piano.
Nick remained quiet until an independent filmmaking couple.
By the way, that's the hyperpower in Twilight right there.
That phrase, an independent filmmaking couple.
What is that?
Is that a category in the census now?
Nick remained quiet until an independent filmmaking couple claimed credit on Wednesday for putting the grand piano out in the sidebar.
So no, they're on the sandbar.
They're fighting over this.
Instead, by the way, they never did make the video because Nick and his family instead decided that was too much like hard work.
So they thought it would be better for him to pretend to play it while somebody set the piano on fire.
In other words, to get into an American college now, take your grand piano, put it out on the sandbar.
You know, in the old days, it was how do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Practice.
Now it's, you know, how do you get to college in Manhattan?
Don't practice.
Have the piano towed out onto the sandbar, set it alight, and have an independent filmmaking couple take photographs of you playing the piano while it's on fire, assuming, of course, you get your fire permit from the state of Florida, and then send it in for your college application.
And that's great, because I think what we need in the America of the future is more college graduates who are familiar with getting a grand piano out onto a sandbar and setting it alight.
That is what is going to save the United States from sliding into the abyss.
Piano on a sandbar.
That is the story in today's New York Times.
Let us go.
No, chocolate sauce and shower can, that's not enough for your art installation.
It was easier in the old days.
You could just put a crucifix floating in urine and get a government grant for it.
But it's no longer enough now.
You know, it's like when you're getting on like me and you're beginning to develop the old prostate problems and you think to yourself, well, at least I can just urinate in a beaker and I can get a grant from the NEA for it.
No, it's all more complicated than that.
You've got to drag the grand piano out in the sandbar.
Let us go to Nick Harrington's fellow Floridian, Victor.
Victor, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Yes.
Hi, Mark.
It's great to talk to you.
It's great to talk to you too, Victor.
Try not to laugh.
You're so funny with all this bevy and a chevy bit.
Don't try it.
You'll wind up with a herdia.
You'll wind up with a herdia like Charlie Sheen and Obamacare won't be there for you.
They cover the first 23 hookers, but not the full bevy.
Well, first of all, let me, a little bit belatedly in the new year, on behalf of all your fans at thefreerepublic.com wish you much and much and much and much health.
That's good.
Go freepers.
Lots of health, Mark.
We need to have you around.
You know that.
Okay, no, I don't think anybody's planning to take me out.
And if they do, I'm sure someone will manage to blame it on Sarah Palin.
What else do you want to talk about, Victor?
Well, in the reference to your earlier point about the Sputnik, actually it's pronounced Sputnik moment.
What's interesting is that Obama is referring to the tinnacle of supposedly behuman achievement that's not only been accomplished by the government, but also by the communist government nonetheless.
That's an interesting little tidbit that the purpose of the launch, of course, was nothing less than an attempt by the Soviet Union to accomplish a military superiority over the United States.
Yeah, it was the idea to establish Soviet dominance in space.
Now, to be fair, to be fair to Sputnik-Sputnik, I think what Obama meant by that is that when the Sputnik-Sputnik Rustbucket Rustbucket as Rustbuket,
however you say it, Rustbuket, however you say it in Russian, when it went up, I think he meant that it galvanized the United States into getting serious about space.
Now, you can look at it, I think you can look at it as a different way.
I don't think Sputnik was ever a real threat to the United States.
And in fact, I read somewhere in the last couple of days that if the Americans had been first with that and launched their own space satellite before the Russians, the Russians would have gone to the Security Council of the United Nations and denounced the Americans for the militarization of space and imposed a regime and got a security resolution, a Security Council resolution passed laying off the militarization of space.
So that in fact, in strategic terms, it was to America's advantage that the Russians got their first.
But I think you're right.
It's an odd analogy for the President of the United States to be harking back to a brief moment of Soviet superiority, Viktor.
But by the way, did I pronounce Victor right?
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay, I know.
I was on TV, you know, and I pronounced, I originally pronounced Obama.
I think one time I pronounced Obama Obama, and I got denounced by a Democrat for mispronouncing Obama.
And I wasn't, I was just trying to, I realise it's Obama, it's like the Pakistan-Pakistan thing.
So it's like the Sputnik-Sputnik thing.
So we want to be sure we're on top of that.
But you found that odd.
So you found that odd just watching him and he drags up a kind of Soviet analogy from half a century ago.
Right, it's a communist country, and the ultimate purpose was to basically create intercontinental ballistic missiles.
And I think part of the alarm that went off the United States was the obvious, Americans understood that finally if the Russians can hoist the Sputnik, I mean, they obviously can launch a missile that will reach the United States.
And of course, Americans were working on their own program at the time.
But you know, Victor, what the real Sputnik, the Sputnik moment of today is the Sputnik moment of today is from the surviving communist power, China.
Is when China builds its first aircraft carrier and it establishes control over the Western Pacific, that will be China's Sputnik moment, and the American taxpayer will have paid for it.
So this communist analogy is relevant.
But the difference is whatever Lenin's great line was, you know, the capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.
This time round, the Chinese are selling us the rope with which they'll hang us.
So they've improved on Lenin's formula.
Thanks very much for your call, Victor.
Victor, great to talk to you.
By the way, all this space age stuff I think is ridiculous because, you know, under Obama, NASA used to go to the moon.
And I can see the point.
If you've got a government space agency building a rocket and sending it to the moon, you need a government space agency for.
The head of NASA, a guy called Charles Bolden, last year gave an interview, and he said that the brief he'd been given by President Obama was that the foremost priority was that, quote, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and math and engineering.
That's what NASA's foremost purpose is now under Barack Obama.
You know, Islam, the final frontier to boldly go where no diversity outreach consultant has gone before.
The President of the United States tells NASA that what's, quote, foremost for it is to make Muslims, quote, feel good about their contributions to science.
Because, as I'm sure we all know, as recently as the early 9th century, Muhammad Al-Khwarizmi invented the first universal horror requiring.
I mean, it's true, things have been a little quiet since the early 9th century.
But, you know, if we make them feel good, who knows?
Who knows what might be possible?
That's what we've come down to: from actually going to the moon to NASA as a self-esteem boosterism operation.
You know, Muslims are from Mars, infidels are from Venus.
That's Barack Obama's Sputnik moment.
Mark Stein in for Rush, Open Line Friday, 1-800-282-2882.
Mark Stein in for Rush on the EIB Network, America's number one radio show.
We have more listeners than a bevy of Charlie Sheen hookers.
Let's go to Drew in Quincy, Illinois.
Drew, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Well, thank you, Mark.
My pleasure to speak with you today.
Good to have you with us.
I just wanted to give you a little insight on us people in Illinois.
We've been gifted with a 67% income tax, retroactive to the first of the year.
There is a plan for a bullet train to go from Chicago to St. Louis.
And we also have a prison that we could put Guantanamo detainees in.
Yeah.
And that's all you need.
When you've got your bullet train and your Gitmo detainees, that's all you need to jumpstart the economy.
So do you believe this state income tax, 66% state income tax hike, that's temporary.
And you believe that, don't you?
Like kind of if you think about the federal income tax that was going to end at the end of the war, which I thought was 1945.
Right.
Well, Denfier, what's the one from the Spanish-American War?
Spanish-American War, which as soon as that ends, then that temporary tax will cease too.
So as soon as the Spanish-American war is over, then we'll have toll roads in Illinois, and the toll was going to end as soon as they were paid off.
And my best recollection was that was 25 years ago.
We still pay toll, except we pay a higher toll now.
And you know what's interesting, by the way, about your state, President Obama's state, the business income tax has also increased by 46%.
46%.
So, you know, if you're in the moving truck business in Illinois, I would imagine that's the business to be in.
You can probably withstand, if you're in the moving van business in the state of Illinois, you can probably just about withstand the 40%, 46% increase in business tax from all the people who are going to be calling and demanding your vans take them to some other state or some other country.
I should think at a certain point they're not picky and they'd be happy to load up the van and for you to drive them to Uzbekistan or wherever a more favorable business climate can be found.
I mean, what is it with the people of Illinois that don't understand that the issue here is not the revenue, the issue is the spending.
When you've got a hole that is a bottomless pit, no matter how fast you tax, you can't throw enough money down there fast enough to fill it up, Drew.
How come your fellow Illinoisians don't get that?
They elected Blogoyevich, didn't they?
That's true.
But at least he was interested in creaming the system for his own benefit, as far as one can tell.
I don't think even he would have enacted a 67% tax increase.
But the point here is, why would you run a business in Illinois when you've just had a 46% increase in small business tax?
Why would you be there unless you're actually physically strapped down to that state?
Why wouldn't you just get the hell out?
I think anybody who is mobile and can move their business will, without a doubt.
Without a doubt, if they don't, they're dumb.
I think you're absolutely right, Drew.
Thank you.
Thank you for your call.
You know, these things, as long as we talk about it in these terms, we are doomed.
Because when somebody is talking to you about revenue, when somebody is talking to you about increasing taxes or introducing a VAT, and even when they're talking about temporary things, then all they're doing is licensing the spenderholics to spend even more.
And when, in fact, you feed a spenderholics habit, all he's going to do is spend at an even greater rate.
Now, Obama, Obama said, the genius orator, the Cicero of our time, said a couple of days ago when he got some favorable economic indicator.
He said, we're digging ourselves out of a hole.
Well, you know something?
If you dig yourselves out of a hole, you don't get out of the hole.
The hole gets deeper.
So when you get a 66% income tax hike, like they've just got in his state, and you keep digging, you're just digging the hole deeper and deeper and deeper.
And as every grade school kid can tell you, when you dig a hole deep, deep, deep, deep down, you keep digging, eventually you come out on the other side of the planet somewhere like, you know, for instance, China.
A kindergartner understands that.
When you're in a hole and you keep digging, you come out in China.
But the geniuses in the Illinois legislature who voted to increase taxes by 46% on businesses and 66% on individuals decide that what we need to do is the Obama way of dig the hole deeper and deeper and deeper.
Mark Stein and Farash, more to come.
Mark Stein in Farash on the EIB network.
By the way, by the way, one solution to the debt is that anyone now, under a bill proposed in the Hawaiian state legislature, anyone will be able to get a copy of President Barack Obama's birth records for a $100 fee.
This bill has been introduced in the state legislature by Hawaiian legislators who hope that it will finally dispel claims that he was born elsewhere.
All these stories that he was born in the coastal hospital in Mombasa and he's really a British subject and all the rest of it.
And I think this is a good idea because I'm confident that so many people will be applying for a copy of President Barack Obama's long-form birth certificate for $100 that we'll be actually able to pay off all the debt to the Chinese.
By the way, I'm an immigrant to this country, and I need to show my long-form birth certificate every time I apply for a library card or anything, so I'm not quite sure what's going on here.
Rush will be on the Golf Channel tonight, three episodes back-to-back, starting at 7 p.m. Eastern.