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Feb. 9, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:59
February 9, 2011, Wednesday, Hour #3
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It's the fastest three hours in media hosted by me.
Your guiding light, the all-knowing, all-caring, all sensing, all feeling.
All everything.
Maha Rushi.
Twaking the straight control media at least ten times a show.
And laughing all the way to everywhere at the same time.
Our telephone number, if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882, the email address, Lrushbow at EIBNet.com.
We got a phone call earlier in the program from a very abstute, uh, astute observant member of the audience who wanted to know what it meant that so many Republicans voted against the reenactment of the Patriot Act yesterday in the House of Representatives.
And you probably will hear as the day goes on a lot about the Patriot Act in the news cycles, the law that Congress put in place empowering agencies to protect us from terror attacks.
Now, there's some information from the Heritage Foundation that I cited in answering his uh his call about what really happened, and you won't hear that information in these stories.
Do you know how many times known terror plots have been foiled on our soil since 9-11?
36, at least 36 plots have been foiled.
Now there were 26 Republicans who voted no on extending some key parts of the bill.
Eight of the 26 Republicans who voted no came from freshmen who claimed that they felt completely uninformed by their leadership.
After the fact.
Now, let's just take them at their word because it points up something.
When there's a communication problem on the hill and it affects the outcome of a belief or a cause that is near and dear to conservatives in America, that's when you know that heritage is stepping up and working fast to fill the void.
And I will guarantee you that after they heard about this, these eight freshmen, it failed by seven votes, and you have eight freshmen here who claim they were uninformed.
Well, they now know.
I guarantee you the Heritage Foundation's reached out, got hold of them, and told them exactly what happens.
There will be another vote on this.
This vote had a two-thirds threshold for some reason, and there will be another vote not requiring two-thirds, so this probably will be done right.
Not uh the least of which is because the Heritage Foundation got in gear and got hold of these people.
Now, this vote happened last night after 5 o'clock, and Heritage was right there.
Uh all night long.
Whatever it took to get hold of those eight votes, they got hold of them.
That's why it's so crucial to become a member and support the uh efforts of these people.
They're doing the dirty work, they roll up their sleeves.
It's almost 365-24-7, Heritage Foundation.
You can join them at Askheritage.org.
I mentioned just before the conclusion of the previous hour, uh, ladies and gentlemen, that the Republicans are planning on defunding Obamacare.
That's gonna happen next week when they start voting, is similar to how the uh members of Congress defunded the Vietnam War when they couldn't convince the administration to simply declare victory and get out of there.
We've got some sound bites about this.
I still am struck by the fact that we're talking about something now that's unconstitutional.
I know it's gonna be appealed, and I know it's gonna end up at the Supreme Court, but still, as we sit here today, the law's been voided.
I know they have to go ahead and and and take votes, try to repeal it, uh, defund it, and all that.
But I think every time Obamacare is mentioned, it needs to also be said the un in unconstitutional Obamacare.
Put the word out there.
It has been voided.
And we've got some sound bites here.
The regime is not going to back off.
The regime not going to compromise on the mandate.
The mandate, the requirement that we all buy health insurance or pay a fine if we don't.
That's the source of the unconstitutionality.
Before we get to those sound bites, you've got to hear something else.
Last night on Anderson Cooper, 69.
He opened his show this way.
We begin tonight, as always, keeping them honest.
And again tonight, it is the Mubarak regime we hope to keep honest by pointing out the lies they continue to tell.
Now imagine if CNN devoted one broadcast to the lies of our regime.
Look at what they openly say here.
Anderson Cooper 69 says we begin tonight as always keeping them honest.
It's the Mubarak regime.
We hope to keep honest by pointing out the lies they continue to tell.
No lies coming out of our regime.
Nobody here misrepresenting what's going on in Egypt.
No, the only lies are coming from Mubarak in his regime.
CNN on the case.
Anderson, if you're going to go out there and check lies, I got a minefield for you.
You can start exploring in Washington, D.C. There's all kinds of lies being told there, Anderson.
And you don't have to go over to Egypt and get beat upside the head to find them.
All right.
Let's see.
I don't know.
I I really I don't know if Anderson's back.
I uh I haven't seen CNN, and I really can't tell you how long.
I can't tell you the last time I've had CNN.
Honestly, I don't know if he's back or not.
The soundbite here doesn't tell me where he is.
It just says last night on CNN's Anderson Cooper 69, uh, he opened the show and said this about his show.
And then we played the soundbite.
Where he is, where he was, where he's been, where he's going.
It's all Greek to me.
Now we move on to health care, ladies and gentlemen.
Yesterday in Washington at the White House.
The press secretary Robert Phipp.
Shouldn't he when is he leaving?
He's leaving sometime, I think it's this month.
They're replaced by Jay Carney, formerly of uh Time Magazine and now Biden's press secretary.
Anyway, during the uh QA, a correspondent from the Huffington Puffington Post, oh, by the way, speaking of that, there is a story in the LA Times by Tim Rutten today about this AOL Huffing and Puffington Post merger.
This guy just rips them.
He says the Huffington Post has the business model of one of those old galleys with slaves rowing the oars in the belly of the ship.
That the Huffing and Puffington Post is turning journalism into slave labor.
They don't sweatshops, they don't pay anybody anything.
They go out and hire people who have been fired from other journalistic operations.
They don't pay anybody.
They're setting a dangerous precedent here for the future of journalism and the ability to earn any money at it.
People working in the Huffington Post make what newspaper reporters made 30 years ago.
Meanwhile, Zhazha runs out of there.
I'm confused.
I don't know what Jajah either got 18 million or 100 million, depending on which story you read.
She sold it to AOL for 315 million.
Interestingly, AOL's stock price has fallen the equivalent of 315 million dollars today.
The stock price has fallen equal to the sale price that they paid for the Huffing and Puffington Post.
This is this has been a scam from day one.
This is I mean, funders, uh investors, lenders, backers.
It's never been a successful market enterprise.
And how somebody came with a market value of 315 million dollars escapes me.
But regardless, um, as I always look, the left will pay anything to cover up their demise.
The left will pay anything to cover up even the perception of their demise.
By the way, I am told, uh, ladies and gentlemen, Anderson Cooper is back home.
Anderson Cooper back in the United States, which one reason he's probably talking so big.
Yeah, we're here to expose the lies of the Mubarak regime.
Wasn't talking that way, they're beaten upside the head over there.
Now he's back here within the safe confines of the Time Warner's Center up there, Columbus Circle in New York.
Easy to talk big.
Well, it's kind of like it's kind of like AOL buying Air America.
What are you buying?
Anyway, the Huffing and Puffington Post did have one of these slave labor reporters at the White House press briefing yesterday, somebody named Sam Stein, and Sam Stein asked a question of Robert Gibbs.
So there's been talk on the Hill about reopening up the individual mandate in health care legislation.
Remember now, that's unconstitutional, according to the judge.
How firm is the president and the administration's commitment to that provision to the mandate, considering that at one point in time he was not supportive of it.
The president had to make a conscious decision about how to ensure that the legislation would prevent the problem that we've seen with free riders.
In other words, people did never think they're going to get sick and don't get sick, but they get hit by a bus and show up at the emergency room and then they charge us basically to pay for it.
The protections that we will have as part of this law that are derived from ensuring that it's not just a certain segment of the population that's covered, but that everybody has coverage.
He is an important foundation in this law.
The president supports it.
We've gone to court to maintain it.
Now, some Democrats want to reopen this because they think they're going to lose at the Supreme Court.
They want to reopen this whole mandate business and maybe preempt the Supreme Court ruling and unconstitutional.
They want to let's rewrite it.
Let's redo it and take that out of there.
And uh Gibbs is saying, nope, nope, we're gonna leave it in.
It's all it's all the regime cares about.
That's a and he's right, that means centerpiece of the bill.
Without that, everything else crumbles.
Here's Ben Nelson uh last night, MSNBC.
Chris Matthews asked him, said it reminds me of one of those old-time marriage jokes.
You can't live with them, you can't live without them.
How do you have a health care bill if you don't really force people to join up and share the risk?
I'm looking at finding solutions that are much more market-based to get rid of the individual mandate.
It isn't the only way to do it.
It's the way that the insurance industry suggested, and it was followed through on.
But it's attracted questions about constitutionality.
It's not publicly or politically accepted by most people.
It has not attracted questions about constitutionality.
It has produced answers.
Judge Roger Vinson said it's unconstitutional.
people.
The law has been voided.
The questions have been answered.
But you hear there, Senator Senator Nelson.
Just get rid of it.
Nobody wants it anyway.
It's unconstitutional.
We gotta get rid of Gibbs' way, not getting rid of it.
And Matthew says, Well, look, don't a lot of people wish we could have voluntary social security, but the problem with that is they'd find themselves penniless at 65 and then we then want welfare.
Well, look, I'm in favor of getting everybody into the system.
It's a question of how do we do it and what will work.
I just want to make sure that we do it in a way that's constitutional as well as a way that is uh palatable politically for the people.
Ain't gonna happen with any of you people in charge of it.
Dirty little secret.
Senator Nelson, Michelle My Bell Obama, President Obama, will you people in charge of it?
There's never gonna be a majority of people in this country support it.
They don't want you in charge of health care.
They don't want to have to go through any bureaucracy for their health care.
They certainly don't want a panel of people, nameless, faceless bureaucrats deciding if and how much medical treatment or care they get.
We have a story here from Columbia, South Carolina.
It's at the Associated Press.
They are...
They're strangely forgiving in this in this story.
An African American lawmaker in South Carolina said yesterday that stricter illegal immigration laws would hurt the state of South Carolina because blacks and whites don't work as hard as Hispanics.
State Senator Robert Ford made his remarks during a Senate committee debate over an Arizona-style immigration law eliciting a smattering of nervous laughter in the chamber after he said the brothers don't work as hard as Mexicans.
Then he said that the the blue-eyed brothers don't either.
Now, once his answers, this is this is uh State Senator Robert Ford, African American South Carolina, said that once his ancestors were freed from slavery, they didn't want to do any more hard work.
So they were replaced by the uh the Chinese and the Japanese.
Now we need these workers here, meaning the immigrants.
A lot of people aren't going to do certain type of work in this country, said Democrat, by the way, from Charleston.
The brothers are going to find ways to take a break.
Ever since this country was built, we've had somebody do the work for us.
Okay, he recalled uh to senators that four workers in the country illegally showed up on his lawn and finished mowing, edging another work in 30 minutes that would have taken others much longer, he said, and they only wanted $10 for the job.
He went on to say he recommended the workers to his neighbors, and one local lawn care businessman lost work, a story one senator remarked was hurting, not helping his case.
The executive director of the state GOP called on Robert Ford to apologize.
Ford, who ran unsuccessfully for the Democrat gubernatorial nomination last year, said that he would apologize, but he doesn't know what for.
And he doesn't know what the apology would change.
And he said, through the generations, whenever one immigrant group becomes Americanized, they stop working hard.
Black guys are white guys, they're gonna get out there, do the hard work, no way.
I'm for America.
America's a country of immigrants.
Everybody in America finds a way to take a break.
Ha.
The brothers.
The brothers won't do it anymore, and the blue-eyed brothers won't either.
We need the Hispanics.
Because once you get Americanized, all you want to do is take a break.
I'll tell you what, this guy needs to be the keynote speaker of the Democrat Convention.
This is the guy.
This is this make this guy the poster boy for amnesty.
Make this guy the lead speaker.
The brothers don't want to do any work.
The blue-eyed brothers don't want to do any.
You get Americanized, and all you want to do is take a break.
New slogan, take a break, get elected.
Montgomery, Alabama, Charles.
I'm glad you waited, sir.
You're up next on the EIB network.
Hi.
Hello, Rush.
Hi.
Uh, there are a couple of other very serious implications in our president right off the bat, asking the leader of Egypt to step down.
Yep.
One, does this mean he had no advisors in the White House to warn him against this?
And if there are.
Did he not even consider their advice?
Well, I'm told now, uh, there have been some people reporting on the Obama inner circle.
And I'm I'm told that that he has the vast majority of people, I'm not making this up now.
I forget what book or what what stories out there, but most of the people that are in his inner circle think he's God.
I he they they they idolize the guy and and they that they have a superhuman im impression of him, and he does not get counteradvice, as you are suggesting.
But that's why it's interesting.
The guy that they sent over there to tell Mubarak, you know, to nudge Mubarak away, goes public and says we can't afford for Mubarak to go away now.
Exactly, exactly.
But imagine you or I being in that position and having No counter opposing viewpoints to be expressed to us before we make a major decision like that.
I wouldn't have it.
I wouldn't have to have opposing viewpoints.
I would have to have both sides of the story.
Well if you were the president.
So I have a different take on that.
Frankly.
I've never understood, like I don't need advisors.
I don't I don't need somebody on this radio program.
I've got things I want to talk about, things I want to say.
I don't need a bunch of advice.
I don't need a Middle East advisor to tell me, you know, what I ought to say about whatever issue over there.
I understand the presidency is a huge job.
And that no president can singularly know everything.
Right.
So I understand, you know, having a council of experts for input and so forth.
But the way we construct these things, we make it look like presidents are just sponges.
And whoever has the great like look at all the new whenever there's a new ch new chief of staff.
Why you would think that guy's the president.
So Bill Daly's a new chief of staff, and look at the Washington establishment goes nuts.
Okay, how is this going to change the White House?
And how is this going to change Washington?
Well, he's not the president.
What do you mean how's he going to change?
Is the president going to hire somebody that's more powerful than he is and smarter than he?
Some of this stuff I've I've just in in the way I live my own life, I've never understood.
And I know what you're saying in this case, and I don't disagree with you, because I don't think Obama has the slightest clue what's going on in Egypt.
But apparently he doesn't want to hear from people who are going to tell him that.
Exactly.
So he doesn't hear from them.
They're not.
They have to leave the country to go express the viewpoint, which is what this Wisner or Wisner, I forget how his name is pronounced, uh, actually did.
I'm I'm I'll bet that you have uh a certain level of uh somewhat panic in the White House over things like that under the guise circumstances you just put forward.
Get this, folks.
This is from NPR, and it's about the uh health care debate.
There's a guy named Len Nichols, L. E. N. Nichols, who is a health economist, teaches at George Mason University in Virginia.
That's where Walter Williams taught.
He says that without a requirement for health coverage, Congress might have to find another way to make the consequences of not having insurance even more dramatic.
Len Nichols, health economist who teaches at George Mason University says, perhaps if people don't buy insurance when it's first available, if you ever try to buy insurance again, you'll have to pay three times the market price at that time, and we'll put a gold sticker on your forehead and say to all hospitals you do not have to treat this person.
This person has forfeited their right to uncompensated care.
This is a proposal, a serious proposal that appears on the NPR website from Len Nichols, health economist teaches at George Mason University.
If you don't buy insurance when it's first available, i.e., if you don't go out and buy when you're told to.
Then if you ever try to buy insurance again, three times the market price and a gold sticker on your forehead that says to all hospitals you don't have to treat this person.
This person has forfeited their right to uncompensated care.
Well, what's going to happen when the gold stars don't stick to the forehead?
Then you're going to maybe sew the gold star on the clothing.
And then what happens if you take the clothing off?
Why not tattoo the numbers on their arms, Professor?
Why not just do why not just tattoo a bunch of gold stars on their arms, Professor, if they don't buy health insurance when you and your precious government demand that they do in violation of the Constitution.
Audio sound bites back to Egypt.
It it it just keeps getting better and better this afternoon at the White House, Robert Gibbs, daily press briefing.
A reporter said the Egyptian foreign minister is telling PBS that Vice President Biden's call for immediate lifting of the emergency law in Egypt was well, he's amazed by that.
He felt the Egyptian government could not make such a move until the unrest had been put down and calm had been restored.
What's the response to that?
I think as we said in the readout from Vice President Biden's call with Vice President Suleiman that an orderly transition must begin now, and it must produce without delay immediate and irreversible progress.
I think it's obvious that uh they've yet to meet the threshold that uh will satisfy most of the people.
Okay, as we said in a readout from Vice President Biden's call to Vice President Suleiman, orderly transition got to begin now.
I've had stories I've shared with you all day long.
The White House is confused.
The White House is sending out different uh stories.
No, don't have to do it now.
It's gonna take uh take a while.
Might take months, might take weeks.
But now here's Gibbs back to saying the Vice President said it has to happen now, and it has to happen soon, and it has to be irreversible without delay.
So then a White House reporter said, Well, does the White House feel that it has the full understanding of all those participants and what their motives are?
Again, this is not for us to determine, Dan.
We're not gonna pick which seven people represent Egypt.
I'm not saying thinking that I'd say until you understand it.
No, no, no.
What I said was do you think that you have a full understanding of all of these players and what their motives are?
I'm not saying whether or not you're supporting them or picking them.
Do you think you have a good understanding of again?
This is something for the Egyptians to work out.
Okay, so Gibbs is saying to the Egyptians, you better change.
We've called Vice President Suleiman.
We want immediate, irreversible progress.
We want an orderly transition, transition to begin now.
Lothian, well, who?
Well, we're not picking.
It's up to the Egyptians.
So transition to what?
This is actually what Lothian is doing without saying so.
It's obvious he's bouncing off Diane Feinstein.
Diane Feinstein said, uh, we don't understand what's going on.
We don't understand it could be a militant Islamist takeover.
Well, Lothian didn't say that in his question.
But he basically meant, uh, hey, Gibbs, do you think you have a good understanding of who these people are over there?
Could this be a militant Islamist takeover?
Gibbs said, that's something for the Egyptians to work out.
We just want them to do it now.
We'll do what?
Well, that's up to them.
We're not telling them what to do, just we want it to happen now.
This is not presidential.
This is not mature, this is not intelligent, this is not reasonable, this is fly by the seat of your pants.
That's what's happening.
With this, here's Robert in Los Angeles.
Robert, welcome, sir, the EIB network.
Great to have you with us.
Hello.
Thank you, uh Russia.
It's a pleasure to talk to you.
I just want to take a minute of your time and I want to ask your opinion on on something.
I constantly keep hearing the president and government officials say that we need jobs, jobs, and jobs.
I have the solution, and I like your opinion on this.
Domestic manufacturing.
We've lost it to uh China.
We have a trade imbalance of about 200 to 300 billion dollars a year.
Why don't we either tax them at a higher rate?
Or my suggestion would be reduced the taxes on anyone who makes something in the United States, and the product that's made here has to be made with maybe 70%, 80% American made.
I like your opinion.
I have to find a story.
I do not have it at my fingertips.
It was a story within the past month on an anniversary of something.
I forget which.
And it might have been in the Wall Street Journal.
And the point of the story was that we are manufacturing more stuff today than ever before in this country.
Was it after the State of the Union?
Nah, uh was it after the State of the Union?
That just is a couple of weeks ago.
I thought this a little bit longer ago than that.
Certainly this year, but I thought it was.
We are the number one manufacturer in the world.
There's there's been this uh myth that we've shipped all of our jobs overseas.
Yeah, certain kinds of jobs have been uh have been shipped overseas.
And one of the one of the misnomers with uh uh manufacturing jobs lost.
Uh take a look, for example, just as uh uh at the Apple iPhone.
Now the Apple iPhone is assembled in China, but all the guts are not made in China.
The guts are made at all parts of play with There are parts made in America, parts made in Switzerland, parts made parts of Europe.
They're just all shipped over to Shenzhen at the manufacturing plant, and they're assembled there.
But the whole phone is not Chicom.
Just made, it's just it's just assembled there.
But because it comes from there, it is considered a Chinese-made product, when in fact the guts may not be.
And that's how you can report accurately that we still make a whole lot of number one manufacturing country in the world.
So we are, nevertheless, uh allowing the Chinese to manipulate us in a lot of ways.
I'm not saying the premise of your of your call is wrong.
We don't we start tariffs on Chinese imports, that that just never works.
It just never works.
The market is speaking.
The market here is speaking.
I re it would if if we given current labor rates and everything else, an iPhone totally put together and made in this country would cost about $1,800.
Well, people aren't going to pay $1,800 for an iPhone, and Apple knows it.
But with all the parts made elsewhere shipped to China and assembled over there, you can get an iPhone for $200.
Now with uh with Verizon thrown in as a as a as a carrier, in addition to ATT.
So I'm against smoothawley type tariffs.
I think the way you deal with the Chicoms is diplomatically.
And it's tough to deal with them diplomatically when they own so much of our debt.
Well, I'm going to tell you something, Robert.
The Chinese ran rings around us in that last state visit of Hu Xintao.
Uh we we we sit here, we talk about human rights, and we demand human rights, and we exempt them.
We talk about carbon emissions and making sure that we penalize ourselves for our technological progress, but not them.
Uh Donald Trump has some I think intriguing intelligent stuff to say about China, but he does business with them at the same time.
Trump does a lot of business with the ChICOMs.
But I get in his view, Trump does not lose money doing it, nor does he get humiliated or embarrassed in the process.
But there are a lot of myths about manufacturing in this country and the state of the trade deficit and all of this.
Uh we're we're not nearly as absent manufacturing jobs as people think.
Now we might have lost sectors.
Uh oh, I'm having a metal block.
Textiles.
We we we might have lost a lot of the textile industry, and we probably don't make very many sewing machines anymore.
But there are other things that have replaced them on the manufacturing scale.
Now we're not a uh uh a totally manufacturing-free economy.
It's just it's just one of the many myths that are out there.
I'm gonna have to find that story.
Somebody on my crack research staff, well, I'll look for it myself.
It'll take them till June to find it.
But I'll come up with it here, and I'll probably have it in the break when we uh when we get back.
And as I knew would be the case, uh we have uh a couple of stories here on the U.S. and manufacturing.
According to the Federal Reserve, the value of U.S. manufacturing output in 2008 was almost three trillion dollars, uh measured in 2,000, converted to 2008 dollars, it'd be about 3.7 trillion.
The U.S. manufacturing sector, the manufacturing sector alone, is the third largest economy in the world, just manufacturing.
GDP of top five countries, Japan, China, Germany, France, UK, USA manufacturing alone is the third highest GDP.
Just the manufacturing sector.
If the U.S. manufacturing sector were a Separate country, it would be tied with Germany as the world's third largest economy.
It would be larger than the entire economies of India and Russia combined.
As much as we hear about the demise of U.S. manufacturing and how we are a country that doesn't produce anything, and how we have outsourced our production to China, U.S. manufacturing sector is alive and well, and the U.S. is still the largest manufacturer in the world.
That's Federal Reserve numbers from the United Nations.
This is Jeff Jacoby and his column in the Boston Globe on February 6th, three days ago.
There's just one problem with all the doom and gloom about American manufacturing.
It's wrong.
Americans make more stuff than any other nation on earth and by a wide margin.
Damn it, yeah.
According to the UN comprehensive database of international economic data, America's manufacturing output in 2009 expressed in constant 2005 dollars was 2.15 trillion dollars.
That surpassed the ChICOM's output of 1.48 trillion by nearly 46%.
ChICOM industries may be booming, but the U.S. will still be uh accounted for 20% of the world's manufacturing output in 2009, just a hair below its 1990 share of 21%.
The decline, the demise, the death of America's manufacturing sector has been greatly exaggerated, says the economist Mark Perry, visiting scholar American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
That's not a liberal think tank.
America still makes a ton of stuff, and we make more of it now than ever before in history.
In fact, Americans manufactured more goods in 2009 than the Japanese, the Germans, and the British and Italians combined.
And as I've always said it's the European Union that's going to hell when it comes to manufacturing.
It's the European Union that that is in deep, deep trouble.
Aside from Germany, but you get into the France, Great Britain, uh Italy, they're in trouble.
As a competitive enterprise, American manufacturing output hits a new high almost every year.
U.S. industries are powerhouses of production.
Measured in constant dollars, America's manufacturing output today is more than double what it was in the early 1970s.
So why do so many Americans fear that the ChICOMs are eating our lunch?
Part of the reason is fewer Americans work in factories.
No denying that.
But factory employments decline because factory productivity is so dramatically skyrocketed, and not everything anymore that's manufactured in America is made in a factory or a plant.
So there.
Now, some people try to tell me that George Mason University professor is trying to mock the requirement.
The reason I didn't think the George Mason professor was mocking the mandate requirement was because NPR is all in favor of it.
All the gold stars on the forehead saying you don't deserve coverage.
But it did conflict me because George Mason does not produce those kinds of wacko economists.
So we'll get to the bottom of this.
If NPR got scammed, I'll be happy to admit my error in judgment tomorrow.
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