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Feb. 18, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:57
February 18, 2011, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24 7 Podcast.
The occupation of the Wisconsin Capitol continues for a third day.
Those are not my words.
That's the headline of a story in the Communist Party USA's People's World website.
And according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the AFL CIO National President Richard Trumpka.
Expected to join thousands of demonstrators at noon in Wisconsin today.
And sort of like the head of the Muslim Brotherhood showing up at Therries Square in Cairo.
Live from the Southern Command in Sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
Yes, sir, Rebob, here we are, already at Friday, and the fastest week in media.
A check of the headlines around the world.
Is very upsetting.
It is not comforting.
None of this was supposed to happen.
It was all supposed to be sweetness and light out there.
Love and cherish.
A utopia was supposed to have settled in by now.
But it hasn't happened.
How are you, my friends, Rush Limbaugh at 800-282-282.
Nice of you to join us, Mr. Snerdley.
Telephone number 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, open line Friday.
We relax our requirements on callers on Friday.
Normally, callers have to talk about things that interest me.
Remember now, the number one objective.
You you you callers need to remember this.
The number one objective purpose of a caller is to make the host look good.
Not by endless compliments and that kind of thing, but rather uh as someone who uh uh inspires the host to even greater greatness.
If you want to go the email route, you can do that.
It's uh L Rushbaugh at EIB net.com.
It is amazing to look at this.
Then this is this is tipping point.
It it has it has been reached.
The occupation of the Wisconsin Capitol continues for a third day, and Richard Trumpke doing his best impersonation of the Muslim Brotherhood is showing up in Madison himself today at 12 noon.
Uh, ladies and gentlemen, have uh let me ask you some questions.
Have any of you heard how poorly paid Wisconsin teachers are?
Why haven't we heard that?
That's right, because they're not poorly paid.
If the Wisconsin teachers are poorly paid, the media would be plasting their salaries and benefit schedules and pen pension plans all across TV news and the front page of every newspaper, but they aren't doing that because the Wisconsin public sector salaries are way out of line compared to most people in the private sector.
They cannot paint pictures of hardship.
By the way, we always hear about liberals and everything they do is for the children.
Does this constitute for the children?
Does this not look like a bunch of bullying to you?
I thought we were teaching in schools about bullying and how not to be bullies and what to do if you are bullied.
And who now are the bullies?
The Democrats, the leftists, their media supporters, the union members.
Wisconsin has more than 300.
Now listen to this.
Wisconsin has more than 300,000 public sector employees.
Now, reportedly, many of them, such as teachers in Madison, get health care benefits worth more than $22,000 a year.
Free, quote unquote, free, meaning they don't pay much for it.
And that's one of the changes that the governor wants to implement.
Have them pay a little bit of their own health care benefit.
300,000 public sector employees, many of them teachers.
Health care benefits worth more than 22,000 dollars a year.
You do the math.
Just health care benefits, 22,000 times 300,000.
Speaking of the media.
Where are all the headlines about the protesters in Wisconsin throwing a temper tantrum?
We always hear about Tea Party temper tantrums, voter temper tantrums.
Here we have one.
We have a genuine, petulant, immature, childish bunch of bottom feeder freeloaders acting in a temper tantrum.
The unions in Washington are hiding behind the children.
The unions in Wisconsin are hiding behind the children.
They're using children as human shields.
Just like leftists and terrorists always do.
Well, how else would you describe this?
I have to admit, I've seen all these demonstrators and the kind of people involved.
Now this, I don't really hope this, but I'm saying this to make a point.
What would happen if the unions win and Governor Walker's reforms get defeated?
Then the unions won't be protected from layoffs, as Mr. Walker has promised.
Look at they have a balanced budget amendment that they have to abide by in the state of Wisconsin.
If they don't get this, if this deal goes down, there are going to be a lot of these people laid off rather than kept on the job, having to pay a little bit for their benefits.
A lot of these people are out screaming in Madison will lose their jobs if they win.
There will be layoffs.
And Walker's not backing down.
We got the audio sound bites coming up.
Had you heard Walker blame his predecessor?
Have you heard Walker talk about the rotten situation he inherited?
Like our boy child president Barack Obama always does.
Scott Walker's predecessor, the previous governor, left him a $3.6 billion budget deficit.
Obama would be blaming his predecessor all day long in every public statement that he made.
And the media would show Obama nothing but sympathy.
And would join the chorus.
Oh, how whoa is Scott Walker.
Well, the difference is Walker's a Republican.
He doesn't have time to blame anybody.
He's got to fix it.
And the media would not be on his side anyway.
And speaking of Obama.
Obama has clearly taken the side of the Union.
Obama backs Union uproar.
The United States president is now interceding in a state matter.
Well, you know, folks, it's almost as though he wants a civil war of this nature.
It's almost as low he wants this unrest.
So that maybe he can pretend to be Abraham Lincoln and solve it and fix it.
Probably got his version of the Madison address written.
As opposed to the Gettysburg Address.
Who knows?
But Obama's constantly telling everybody.
We all have to make concessions in these difficult times.
We all have to make sacrifices.
Everybody has to have some skin in the game.
Apparently he means everybody except the unions or any other Democrat foot soldiers who might help him get re-elected.
They're having protesters bust in from all over the country here.
Ohio is next, Kentucky is next, Tennessee is next.
That's why this is the tipping point.
Obama says Wisconsin balancing its budget is an assault on unions.
Obama says Arizona protecting its citizens is an assault on federal law.
Only a central planning authoritarian thinks this way.
What's at issue here is an assault on states' rights.
And Barack Obama, the president of the United States, is leading the charge in the assault on states' rights.
I've got a story here.
The media is all concerned about the Republican assault on Obama's budget.
The Republican assault on Obama.
The real assault is in Wisconsin.
The real assault is in Arizona.
And future assaults, federal assaults on states' rights, are right around the corner.
From his unconstitutional mandate forcing individuals to buy government approved health insurance to suing Arizona from smearing a police officer to organizing unions to agitate against the duly elected state government of Wisconsin.
We have a pattern here of bullying and a flagrant disregard for states' rights being exhibited by Barack Obama.
It's no wonder 26 states have sued the regime to protect themselves from Obamacare.
The president is determined to run the country from the White House, and these puny Republican state governors are not to interfere.
The great constitutional scholar, Barack Hussein Obama.
Mm-mm.
Not only ignores rulings from the judicial branch, he ignores states and their laws.
Apparently, they didn't teach federalism in community organizing school, which is where Obama has his real degree.
Look what's going on in Madison.
Look at it.
It's a perfect example of community organizing.
It's a perfect example of community agitation.
This is what we elected.
We elected a guy who thinks Saul Olinski was a founding father.
Obama is organizing, encouraging teachers walking off their jobs, bullying everybody, forgetting the children.
He's giving thousands of students that get out of class card because Democrats got shellacked in November.
And this from a man who lectured the nation while making political hay after a tragic shooting spree by a madman.
Here's what he said at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized.
At a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do, it's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.
If, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse.
Let us remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy, it did not, but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation in a way that would make them proud.
Well, I guess we've forgotten about the dead in Arizona.
We've forgotten about making them proud.
We've forgotten about all this talk about civility.
We have forgotten every word about it.
Whoever wrote the memo and whoever distributed it, whoever read it, has forgotten it.
Now bullying is being encouraged, assaults on a state government are being encouraged, cowardly Democrat senators flee the state of Wisconsin for a bar.
A bar in Illinois.
Maybe those Democrat senators who fled the state in a short yellow bus were confused.
Maybe they thought that yesterday was St. Patrick's Day.
St. Patrick's Day is really March 17th, as you know.
But did you see where it was reported by the local news in Wisconsin that the Senate Democrats there ended up at a bar across the border in Illinois with a leprechaun?
They weren't running away.
They were just feeling particularly Irish yesterday.
So have make of it what you will, but these cowardly Democrat senators get on a bus, leave town, leave the dirty work to a bunch of bust-in agitators, head to a place where they serve adult beverages across the state line in Illinois.
While the president intercedes once again in a state matter, just as he has in Arizona.
All of this talk post-Arizona, a bunch of B.S., Barbara Streisand meant to censor those who oppose our agitator-in-chief.
Well, let you and the American people see who the radical left is again.
We saw them when they bribed senators to pass an unconstitutional health care law the American people don't want.
We saw them when they took tax dollars to create a slush fund for their union foot soldiers, i.e.
the stimulus bill.
We saw them when they shut Republicans out of the House and Senate for two years.
We saw the president appoint radical after radical as a czar to run our lives without benefit of confirmation hearing.
So what we have on display is community organizers versus the American people.
Parasitic sector unions against the people who pay them.
Parasitic public sector unions against the people who pay them.
So let's play this out now.
President wants to play petty political games with the budget, wants to shut the government down, make no mistake he does, so that his state control media can distract the nation from his economic and foreign policy failures.
This country is in a mess.
He promised the opposite.
It is in an absolute free fall mess.
Defined as Barack Obama's normal.
This is his comfort zone.
This is what community organizers do before they remake their target.
This is a political fight.
It's going to go on in state after state after state.
This is a political fight the American people will win.
The American people will not be distracted from the reality of Obama's games and his failures.
The American people know that Barack Obama is not the gipper.
He's not the comeback kid.
They know he has not moved to the center.
Sure.
Barack Obama is on his way to the bottom.
Let me take you back.
Recent history, the riots in Greece.
Do you remember, ladies and gentlemen, on this program?
We asked, as an educational exercise, which side of the barricades would Obama be on?
Would Obama be on the side of the government barricades?
Or would he be out there throwing the Molotov cocktails?
Now we know.
We knew back then too, but now we know for sure which side of something like this Obama would be on.
By the way, aren't these anti-government protests going on in Wisconsin?
The people elected a government, they elected a governor and a legislature, the legislature is acting, the governor is acting, half the legislature splits leaves the scene, a mob shows up protesting what?
Government.
Duly elected government.
And Obama spoke out so quickly on this ten minutes after the protest.
Took him forever to fumble out something on Egypt, but here for once he moves fast.
That these are anti-government protests.
That Barack Obama is encouraging.
Just wanted to point it out.
Barack Hussein Obama encouraging anti-government protests.
Here's the dirty little secret, the bottom line, ladies and gentlemen.
The unionistas, the rabble rousers, the freeloaders, the protesters in Wisconsin have as much chance of winning in the long run as do the protesters in Greece or Spain or the Utes burning cars in France.
There is no choice.
They will have to lose.
We do not have the money.
They are 3.6 billion dollars in debt in Wisconsin.
They cannot.
You think they're going to be able to secure loans with this kind of thing going on?
And borrowing money is not going to help the situation.
They have a balanced budget amendment.
We do not have the money.
Either the states and the country will go bankrupt and collapse in total economic anarchy or the unionistas will lose.
There's no other outcome here.
We don't have the money.
It's just that simple.
We are either on the side of the Wisconsin protesters or we are on the side of our country, which can only have economic future if we make these cuts.
I didn't set up these circumstances.
I'm just commenting on them.
But how else would you describe this?
I don't know.
You're on the side of the protesters, or you're on the side of the country.
The country doesn't have any money.
The state doesn't have any money.
You got a bunch of people demanding money.
Somebody tell me the win-win here.
Wisconsin's not a bank.
It's not the Federal Reserve.
They can't print any money.
Didn't Obama oppose the Tea Party rallies because they were anti-government protests?
National Review Online, Katrina Trinco, Governor Scott Walker said today that it would be wise for President Obama to focus on Washington, not Wisconsin.
He said, We're focused on balancing our budget.
It would be wise for the President and others in Washington to be focused on balancing their budget, which they're a long ways from doing.
The governor of Wisconsin is telling Obama to stay out of his business.
I just got an email from a deranged liberal.
He's writing the FCC right now to complain because it's 20 minutes and I had not taken a phone call yet.
Yeah.
So he's he's writing the FCC snurdly, this deranged liberal.
He's really ticked off.
Twenty minutes, and I hadn't taken a phone call.
By the way, a another group has targeted John Boehner's house in uh in Washington.
When did demonstrating at the private homes of politicians or corporate executives become an acceptable way to voice one's political opinions?
Twenty-four activists from DC vote swarmed Boehner's house 7 30 yesterday morning chanting, don't tread on DC, no taxation without representation.
Speeder Baker, Speaker Bader coming to our home telling us how to spend our money.
We decided to go to his house and tell him to leave Washington alone.
This is the same tactic used last month by protesters who don't want Walmart to open a new store in Washington.
It's the same tactic Obama inspired, sending members of his protest groups to the homes of AIG executives to protest bonuses.
And then telling them that he was the only thing standing between them and the pitchforks.
Barack Obama, the unifier, ladies and gentlemen, the man who is going to bring peace and love and a utopia to the United States.
His White House and his association or associated organizations are inspiring this new kind of protest.
Now you've got you got chaos going on in the state of Wisconsin, and the Governor Scott Walker says he's not backing down, and he told Obama stay out of Wisconsin's business.
Take care of his own, stay out of ours.
We're focused on balancing our budget to be wise for the president and others in Washington to focus on balancing their budget, which they're a long way from doing.
Walker emphasized he has no wish to degrade public employees.
I've said repeatedly, good decent people work for the government, but they shouldn't be excluded from what everybody else in society is going through in these tough economic times.
We've all got to be in it together.
Plus the fact he doesn't have the money to meet their demands and to pay them.
He just it's not there.
Let's go to the audio sound bites.
This is yesterday in Madison at the state capitol, the governor Scott Walker, and a press conference.
I continue to work, and I'm calling on the members of the state Senate to show up and do the job that they're paid to do as well.
On behalf of the people who pay their salaries, show up to work.
Get paid to come to work.
And they should be coming to work.
You can't have conversations if you're not at work.
Precisely.
They don't want to talk about it.
This is pure intimidation.
It isn't going to work.
Last night he appeared with Greta Van Susterin.
She said, it was expected today there would be a vote in the state Senate, and you need one more state senator to show up a Democrat.
Where are they tonight?
Do you know?
They're hiding out in another state.
They're hanging out in hopes that somehow that will test or resolve if anything.
I think it's made the Republicans and the Assembly of the Senate stronger.
They're not going to be bullied.
They're not going to be intimidated.
Bullied is exactly right.
That's what is being attempted here.
Bullying.
All the things these very people teach our children about bullying.
All of the very things our teachers try to instruct our young skulls full of mush and how to deal with and how to punish bullies.
What we need to do about bullies.
If somebody, God forbid, gets hurt with all the heated protesting going on in Wisconsin, will the media blame Obama?
He's encouraging this.
His websites are inspiring this.
They are encouraging this.
I am dead serious with the question, Mr. Sturdley.
I've had to sit here for 22 years and listen now I'm responsible for all this.
And I never once encourage anything like this.
You know I've got I can't tell you I've got three or four requests from people urging me to get the news out that there's going to be a Tea Party rally here or a Tea Party rally there.
That's not what the purpose of this program is.
They're going to get there on their own but Obama's encouraging this.
Now if somebody gets hurt is somebody gonna blame somebody as a finger of blame going to be pointed someplace be interesting to see public servants seem now to become uh protected species like snail darters.
What else in history have public servants gotten more pay better benefits better retirement plans than the people who pay them overlook that aspect of this organizing for America that's Barack Obama's website.
His organization are bussing people to the protests they're making calls to whip up the protest to heighten the rhetoric it's been Barack Obama who said they bring a knife we bring a gun Barack Obama get in their face he's clearly an inspiration for this CBS early show today co-host Chris Raggy interviewed Scott Walker,
governor of Wisconsin questioned Democrat state senators have all fled the state screws have been closed the statehouse for all intents and purposes is a mid-house right now and you've talked about potentially mobilizing a national guard.
Has your position softened at all here this is a bold political move but it is a modest request of our employees and in fact I should make it very clear there are 3000 state local government employees the vast majority of them for days have been showing up to work just like we pay them to do the state senators who are hiding out down in Illinois should show up for work have their say have their vote add their amendments but in the end we've got a 3.6 billion dollar budget deficit we've got to balance and I think for most people in the middle class outside of government they understand what we're asking for is still a lot less
than what most of our average taxpayers are paying.
Once again the unionistas the protesters in was in in Wisconsin have as much chance of winning in the long run as did the protesters in Greece or Spain or anywhere else because there's no choice they'll have to lose we don't have the money we do not have the money either the states and the country will go bankrupt and collapse into total economic anarchy or the protesters will lose there is no other outcome here.
Even kicking the can down the road just delays the inevitable I know it's been kicked down the road but some people don't think this is the end of the road others do.
This is what the governor is trying to say at the end of the road.
He was elected to do this, just like Chris Christie was, just like Bob McConnell in Virginia was elected.
So Chris Raggi, co-host on CBS, says, well, you say this is a modest request you're making of the teachers.
Some state workers have been hit harder than others.
A teachers union, which votes Democrat under normal circumstances, hit very hard.
Yet your cops, state trooper, fireman's unions, who all supported and endorsed you don't get uh touched in any of this why why is that actually it's not true there are 314 four of them endorse me all the rest endorse my opponent for us it's simple uh we cannot compromise for one minute public safety in this state uh We've seen what's happened, unfortunately, with a number of our schools.
It is illegal to strike in this state.
We can't compromise our public safety.
The millions and millions of taxpayers in the state have a right to be heard as well.
and we can't raise taxes to balance this budget, it will cripple the economy that already has about a 7.5% unemployment rate.
To show that we're open for business, we've got to make it easier to put people to work here.
And asking employees to pay half the national average for healthcare is truly a modest request.
Asking employees to pay half the national average for health care is truly a modest request.
Seems to be.
Chris Raggi, CBS co-host, finally says, but you understand their position with some of the state workers saying you're essentially taking away their voice by trying to break these unions.
You understand that?
Our workers have protections today.
They'll have protections after this bill passes.
What you've got are union leaders who don't like the fact that they're not going to be able to mandatarily enforce that every one of the workers here in state local government have got to be a part of the union.
And that's why they're here.
That's why the national money's here.
That's why the national union leaders are coming here.
And I think the majority of taxpayers in the state understand.
He nails it again.
Absolutely nails it again.
This is what the voters of Wisconsin voted for.
Make no mistake about it.
Aren't the protesters in Wisconsin trying to shut down the government?
Are we told that's just about the worst thing in the world that could possibly happen if somehow the federal government shut down?
Oh no, no, what are we going to do?
What are we going to do?
They're trying to shut down the Wisconsin State Government.
They have the Democrats have shut down the Wisconsin state government.
We have a montage here.
Protesters whining about what they want.
I've been teaching for over 25 years, and I deserve respect for what I do, and I don't deserve to have my rights taken away.
Walker wants to take away my rights and everybody else's rights.
We're making history.
We're making change it's necessary.
This is like the 60s all over again.
I think we've lost the sense of democracy.
I feel like what people in Egypt are fighting for right now, that's exactly what I feel like I'm fighting for right now.
What an absolute idiot.
It's a crying shame that this d this glittering jewel of colossal ignorance is teaching students.
Comparing this to Egypt.
What was Egypt about?
Do you even know, ma'am?
Bottom line, it's not about what they want.
We all want things.
Very few of us run around demanding that somebody give us everything we want.
Most of us have more class.
Most of us have more understanding.
Most of us are more mature.
And to run around whining.
I want my I want my respect.
I want my then, I want my home carrying.
Well, go earn it.
It's not about what you want.
In your case, it's about what can be afforded.
Trying to make themselves out to be oppressed.
Not an Egypt.
Bunch of people who feel entitled to be freeloaders.
From Mark Knowler at CBS News.
President Obama is urging governments involved to show restraint in responding to peaceful protesters.
That's Mark Knowler, CBS News.
I don't know who he's talking about.
I don't know whether Obama is talking about the Middle East or Wisconsin.
My guess is he's talking about the Middle East.
Ladies and gentlemen, for decades...
I'm into my third decade hosting this program now.
We've been saying that all of this would eventually happen if there was no stopping this runaway train of liberalism.
This constant, never-ending claim on more and more of public money, more and more public budgets.
If there wasn't a stop put to it, we would eventually get to days of reckoning like this.
So those of us on the right have gone about trying to fix this in the correct civil constitutional manner.
The first thing we did was write letters, sent emails, faxes, made telephone calls, talked to our elected officials, went to town meetings.
When that didn't work, we gathered to march and protest in unthreatening polite ways and watched ourselves be denigrated, impugned, lied about, infiltrated, and the like.
When that didn't work, we supported, financed, and got people elected who promised to fix this mess.
Meanwhile, we took our objections to the court system.
As in the case of Obamacare, half the states have now sued the federal government on Obamacare.
We've done this all the way we're supposed to have done it.
Within the confines of the Constitution and the rule of law.
The Democrats, the media, have done nothing but ignore, lie about, demoralize, demon, demonize, demean, and marginalize all of this effort over two years.
Every effort has been made to impugn and lie about who Tea Party people, for example, are, and what they're doing and what their objectives are.
In the meantime, the real rabble rousers, the real bullies, the people who are encouraging violence are on the left.
Vote Democrat.
Do all of this outside the bounds of civil discourse.
And they're very happy and proud.
They seem like they're eager for a civil war here, and their president seems to be encouraging all of this.
Which is why they feel um enthused and emboldened.
Is Governor Walker going to try to sneak through his reforms on Christmas Eve when everybody's out of town during a lame duck session?
Illegal use of the budget reconciliation process.
Everything I've just described is how the Democrats got Obamacare through.
Nobody wanted it.
They had to lie about what's in it.
They had to lie about what they were doing.
They had to be extra-constitutional in their efforts to get it done.
And all the while, we have to hear how the Tea Party, the teabaggers, are the ones who pose a threat to quote unquote our constitutional way of life.
Uh, both of the phones here quickly.
Erica in Benzonia, Michigan, you're up first on open line Friday.
Nice to have you with us.
Hello.
Hi, good afternoon, Rash.
Thank you for taking my call.
You bet.
Um, I am an elementary teacher myself, and I think what the teachers in Wisconsin are doing is deplorable.
I myself in Michigan can't find a job because I have a master's degree equaling too much money.
They can hire two newbies for one of me.
But off of that, here they are walking off the job, teaching their students that it's acceptable to just call in sick if you don't like what's going on.
No, no, no.
So I think that it's I just it blows my mind that that they're even considering and tolerating the actions of these immature teachers in Wisconsin.
Let's uh let's put one thing to rest right now.
And that is the last people they care about are the children.
The last people they care about are the kids.
The last thing they teach about is education.
This is not about students, this is not about education, this is not about teaching, this is not about learning.
This is about themselves.
It's narcissistic.
It is narcissistic.
It's also hypocritical.
These people have been getting by for years on the notion that they are devoted, that they are sacrificing, that they are subordinating themselves to the lofty ideals of The children and their education and so forth.
And it isn't about that at all.
It is about them.
The children are just pawns.
Just pawns.
As so much, so many of the so-called little guys, the Democrats are trying to help, they're just pawns.
In the game of how these people take care of themselves.
Dan Amira from the website Daily Intel has an interesting point, says that runaway Wisconsin lawmakers will quickly go mad without sex.
He says there is a precedent for this.
In 2003, Democrat legislators in Texas fled for Oklahoma, then New Mexico to deny a quorum to vote on a Republican backed redistricting plan, which, by the way, ultimately passed.
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