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April 1, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:51
April 1, 2011, Friday, Hour #2
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Yes, America's Anchorman is away today, and this is your undocumented anchor man sitting in, Mark Stein.
Honor to be with you.
No supporting paperwork whatsoever.
Rush will return live on Monday.
But in the meantime, you know what the end of the week means.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
From S I wish it were I wish it uh uh cl cl close enough.
We're we're we're we're j we're in the general hemisphere, aren't we?
I uh I don't know, I'd uh I'd uh I'd find that uh more amusing uh if if uh if we weren't in the snowbound Northeast.
But we're not actually in sunny Florida.
Nevertheless it is.
Open line Friday, one eight hundred two eight two eight eight two.
Uh that's about as accurate uh I uh I I paid in I paid in a check from New Zealand.
I deposited a New Zealand check at my bank in New Hampshire, and they sent it for collection to Australia.
And by the time it came back, it had expired.
Uh because they'd sent this uh New Zealand check to Australia for collection.
They couldn't understand why I was upset about it.
They thought, hey man, we're in the general ballpark, that's close enough.
Uh likewise uh open line Friday direct from sunny South Florida is close enough.
1800-282-2882, whatever you want to talk about.
Uh I mentioned earlier that Al Qaeda spokesman Abu Yahya Al Libby, yeah, got my Yaya groove thing working today.
Abu Yahya Al Libby, Al Qaeda spokesperson, has uh has called Hillary Clinton uh the old lady of malice.
Uh and um I uh what was it I was saying uh there was an old lady from malice who went to bomb Gaddafi's palace or whatever it was.
If you can complete that uh limerick, you may be eligible for a federal cowboy poetry grant.
Uh so that that's uh that's something.
Get that get that pencil, get that piece of paper, that'll cost you about seventy-nine cents, but your federal poetry grant may be, you know, fifteen thousand dollars or whatever, so you'll come out ahead.
It's worth the seventy-nine cent investment.
Uh Hillary Rodden Clinton, the old lady of manus, also talking about Musa Coosa, the defecting apparently there's now something like twelve cabinet ministers who are planning on defecting to the United Kingdom.
There will be more Libyan cabinet ministers than British cabinet ministers in London uh within forty-eight hours.
Uh so there are big developments on the Libyan scene.
Uh and we will uh and we will keep track of those.
1-800-282-2882.
I just want to return to uh a point that Roe made.
Uh Roe was basically saying, Look, you know, we should settle for what we get.
What counts is who we elect in twenty twelve.
Uh I think it's more important than that.
I I think this is make or break time for the Republic.
And I mean that.
And I've said I've I've said this before, because uh I think that uh I think that in a sense we've become complacent uh about the state of the world.
We assume the s that that the way things are is a permanent feature.
And we don't understand how bad things can get and how how fast they can get bad.
Uh and I I think uh I think we're uh uh uh approaching a crunch time on that, uh and that uh what we require is more and more ordinary citizens of the United States understanding the reality of that situation.
And when more and more citizens understand the reality of that situation, then eventually, like these fellas uh responding to turbulence in the Middle East, uh the the elites will be uh obliged to respond.
And I'm encouraged by that.
That's why I'm encouraged by that Rasmussen poll, the where fifty percent fifty-seven percent of likely American voters uh say that uh say that spending cuts are more important than a potential government shutdown.
Here's another uh uh example of this.
Global warming uh now ranks uh last in uh in importance uh even among even on environmental issues, according to a new poll of Americans conducted by Gallup.
Only twenty-five percent of responders worry, quote, a great deal, unquote, about global warming.
Why is this?
Why is this?
Uh because these things are indulgences.
You worry about climate change, you worry about a one degree increase in temperature across the course of the twentieth century when you don't have anything real to worry about.
Right now, today more and more Americans have something real to worry about, and saving the planet has to be moved to the back burner.
We don't need to save the planet.
We need to save ourselves.
And we need to save our cities, and we need to save our states, and we need to save uh this republic.
That's more important than saving the planet.
The plan will do just fine.
The planet'll still be here.
But it it's it's a kind of decadence.
It's a kind of decadence uh by a by pampered elites uh who have become disconnected uh from the primal impulses uh of life uh when they when they sit around saying, well, you know, I I think we should pass a carbon tax uh and and attempt to change the very atmosphere of the planet rather than dealing with what's going on down here on the ground.
And I'm encouraged by th I'm encouraged by uh polls that show fifty percent uh fifty-seven percent of likely American voters uh uh regard spending cuts as of more important than a government shutdown, and that global warming is sliding down the list of uh priorities uh even for people who are concerned about uh environmental issues.
But that's why and this is why I think Roe uh maybe uh slightly uh uh uh I think being slightly too cautious, uh is that there is an element of urgency about all this.
Uh I mentioned earlier that there's a story in the Wall Street Journal today by Stephen Moore.
Stephen Moore's written a column headed We Become a Nation of Takers, not makers.
He points out that there are now nearly twice as many people working for the government uh than in all of manufacturing.
There's twenty-two point five million people working for the government.
Uh there's about eleven point five million uh working in manufacturing.
Uh California has the highest budget deficit in America, highest budget deficit in the history of this country, and it has two point four million government workers.
Now, do you think that those two facts are are unconnected?
Uh the cost of state and local governments in the United States.
So we're now not talking about the federal debt.
We're not talking about the federal deficit.
We're not talking about the twenty percent of federal revenues that are going to be going toward paying just the interest on the federal debt.
We're now talking about state and municipal uh government, which is an entirely separate thing.
State and municipal government costs two point two trillion dollars.
Half of that, one trillion dollars of that uh is for the pay and benefits of state and local employees.
Now that is a ratio.
When you're looking at a business that size, that is a ratio that would be extraordinary uh in any other business, in any other business.
Uh yet it is yet it is entirely normal in the business of government.
Uh just uh here's uh here's just a you know, the sort of story that turns up uh on on the new pages uh almost every day uh now.
This is Reuters.
Uh Washington, D.C. has become the favorite area for wealthy young adults, with the nation's highest percentage of twenty-five to thirty-four-year-olds making more than a hundred thousand dollars a year.
Now, why do you think that Washington, D.C. has the highest percentage of twenty-five to thirty-four-year-olds making more than a hundred thousand dollars a year.
It's a Yeah, it's the uh it's it's it's the biggest percentage of money, but it's the biggest also the biggest percentage.
It's it's becomes a magnet where people go to make money.
Uh once upon a time, it used to be a great mercantile centers.
Uh once upon a time when you went to a steel town in America, you'd see the big houses on the residential avenues.
Now the uh the steel towns look like hell, all the uh all the porches are sagging and the clabards appealing, and the uh and the railroad depot where all the America's products used to be shipped to the world has been converted into a heritage center with a federally funded cowboy poetry festival, and all the money, all the money is in uh i is in uh Washington, D.C. Uh every time I mention uh every time I mention Detroit, uh I get into trouble, so I don't want to dwell on this.
But the fact the fact that since Detroit became uh uh converted itself from an industrial base uh to a government base uh uh to it to a welfare base, and it's seen this uh immense uh deterioration in population and everything.
People go where uh power is.
And power in America is no longer in manufacturing centers, in mercantile centers, uh it's in government.
Uh of the fifty counties with the biggest percentage of young high earners, sixteen uh are in the District of Columbia area.
Uh of the top ten counties with the highest percentage of young high earners, only two, only two of those counties are not near either Washington, D.C. or a state capital.
This is from Reuters.
Uh Reuters put this um fascinating analysis in the lifestyle section of its news briefs, which is uh which makes sense because the easiest way to a lifestyle these days is a government job.
And that's the problem in a m in America.
Uh Stephen Moore in his article today in the uh Wall Street Journal uh says that surveys of college graduates, college graduates, these are people in other words, who've uh who've had six-figure educations.
They're finding out that more and more of these college graduates want to work for the government.
Uh, because government work uh has lifetime security.
What kind of country is this gonna be when uh when twenty-three-year-olds aren't willing to take career risks?
When twenty-three-year-olds uh want to work for government, not just because that's where uh that that's where the big money is, uh that's where the big benefits are, that's where the index-linked health care plans are, but also that's because that's where the lifetime secur uh security is.
Uh the American dream now is to work for the DMV.
The dream of these young people is to work for the DMV.
This this it is not possible to have the United States of America in any recognizable form under this scenario.
And that is why Roe with respect to Roe, I think I think the issue here is not the twenty twelve election.
I have you know, I'm a pessimist in that extent to that extent.
I never underestimate uh the the likelihood that the Republican Party will screw up the nominating process.
Uh and we will end up we will end up with the usual disastrous character.
I I remember my memory of uh my whole uh approach to the Republican Party was formed by watching the Bob Dole campaign close up, uh, where I would watch Bob Dole campaign uh he would go to high schools in New Hampshire and they'd set up these crowd control barriers for a Bob Dole speech, right?
Crowd control barriers.
And then they'd realize there was no crowd to control.
They should be so lucky as to have a mob of Bob Dole groupies so fired up they want to rampage past the barriers and mob the guy.
There was no such thing.
Uh and well then we had that all then we had that all over again with the McCain thing.
Uh I don't underestimate the ability of the Republican Party to screw up the nominating process one more time.
So what's important is to change the facts on the ground, uh to make the candidate to do what Milton Friedman said.
Uh you can wait f to you you can try to elect the right people to do the right things, but in the end it's more important to put to force the wrong people to do the right things.
Uh if you can force Susan Collins and Olympia Snow to stay on the reservation during all the health care debate, that's an important lesson, and that's that's how Republicans uh should be thinking.
Twenty tw the twenty twelve election will come and go, and on the morning after the twenty twelve election, regardless of who wins, this country will still be the brokest nation in history.
And that is the crisis of America.
Uh and we have to change the facts on the ground with millions of American voters to make them understand that.
1800-282-2882, Mark Stein Infor Rush.
Let's go to Kyle in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania.
Kyle, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Great to have you with us.
Great to be with you.
How are you?
I'm do I'm doing good.
How are you?
Oh, not too bad.
For a start-up private business owner and worst economy in the history of the country.
Yeah, well, that's that's your big mistake right there.
You sh you should have gone for a government job and you can retire at uh fifty-three on eighty percent of your salary with uh index linked uh health care and pensions and benefits And uh and and spend the last three decades of your life uh sitting around at taxpayers' expense.
That's that's that's the economic model for the future, Kyle.
Yeah, unfortunately, since I was just a C grade student in high school, I wasn't smart enough to figure out I should have got a government job.
I actually put forth effort and work.
Yeah, yeah.
Well that that effort and work model, that uh that was fine for like uh sturdy nineteenth century republic of yeoman farmers, but does it it's not gonna fly in the uh new twenty first century knowledge economy.
In the knowledge economy, the knowledge you need is uh where's the government office, go there, uh fill in the form and get a and get a government job.
You're exactly right.
Oh, I do you know you hit on something earlier that that really just sounded like something I say a lot.
I don't understand why everybody thinks that just because they go to college and pay a lot of money for their education, they're automatically have some sort of value that they should make uh scale wage or they should make, you know, twenty-five dollars an hour out of the gate or seventy-five thousand dollars a year's salary with with all their benefits and everything.
It it just doesn't make sense.
I don't understand why some of these people don't focus more on a on a vocation instead of an education.
Well well, I think one of the problems is that mo most of the uh you can't have the massive expansion of college education that America has had since the second world war and still have it be uh a college education in any recognizable sense.
In nineteen forty, the majority of Americans had an eighth grade education.
That that eighth grade America built America.
Everything that was great about America, uh all its great industries, uh were was built by eighth grade America.
Since then, we've doubled the length of time in effect that people spend in school.
Uh and uh and the idea that you can possibly that that the that these people would possibly be uh studying any genuine scholarly discipline in this massive expansion of uh university education, Kyle, is is uh is completely preposterous.
Most people are just sort of killing time there uh till what less enlightened societies would call early middle age.
Uh and I think that's actually a big part of the problem that if you're used to if you go to uh if you go to college and spend half a decade doing uh anything with the word studies in the title, you know, uh uh uh gender studies, uh Latino studies, queer studies.
The great uh the the great thing about studying any uh discipline with the word studies in the title is it involves very little studying.
Uh and you do that for half a decade and then it uh th it seems kind of great to why why would you then want to start working?
You've kind of you've had you've had your early part of your adult life uh has been uh this kind of extended leisure.
Why not become a diversity consultant like Michelle Obama for three hundred and fifty thousand a year?
It was such an indispensable job to the University of Chicago hospitals that when she got promoted to first lady, they didn't replace her.
That's why the that's how indispensable Michelle Obama's three hundred and fifty thousand a year diversity consultancy gig was to the University of Chicago hospitals, so when she goes swanning off to the uh uh oval office to grow organic vegetables and tell us uh uh you y you know, tell her unruly subjects let them not eat cake, uh that the University of Chicago hospitals didn't even bother replacing her.
They the three hundred and fifty grand diversity consultant turned out to be entirely unnecessary.
And that and that in that sense, Kyle, the Obama model.
You know, Obama is now you know the other thing he's doing, uh it's not enough that we've had this massive expansion of the government workforce.
He's saying that uh everybody else, when you borrow money to go for college to go to college, you gotta pay it back.
But he says if you go into quote public service, unquote, uh your your college uh your college debts will be wiped out after ten years.
You won't have to won't have to repay them.
In other words, he wants to divert even more uh uh members of the productive class into the government class, Kyle.
There's no end to this.
There's no end in sight.
It's just it's absurd, you know.
I uh it just frustrates me because even at a time when when we have the highest unemployment that we've had in forever, uh they're still not really employable people if you're looking for employees.
They're they're people that that don't want to work hard, they don't want to start somewhere, you know.
If you can't pay them at least double what they're getting on unemployment, they're uninterested to come out of their house for the most part.
And it's just aggravating.
So it makes a guy like me who says, Well, you know, if I build time for X amount and I gotta pay you half of that plus your workman's comp and everything else, why do I want you?
Why don't I just work a few more hours a day and make all that money for myself because I am motivated.
Well, no, no, Carl, you're that's the wrong model.
Instead of not hiring someone, you should basically give your company to somebody and uh on condition that they hire you as the as their diversity consultant.
And then you'd have very little to do and you'd be making a nice salary.
That's what people want.
They want people want a well paying non-job.
People want to be a community organizer or diversity consultant.
They don't want to be there but doing backbreaking work, not getting home till late in the evening.
Uh that's that's your mistake, Kyle.
Give the company to somebody on condition they hire you back as their diversity consultant slash community organizer.
Rebuilding America's economic model for the twenty first century, Mark Stein Infrarush, it is open line Friday, lots more still to come.
Yes, Rush returns live on Monday.
Uh I mentioned uh earlier that uh Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda uh had uh had denounced Hillary Clinton as the old lady of malice.
Uh and I threw out a couple of li what what did I say?
I think there were the there was the old lady an old lady of Malice uh who who went to bomb Gaddafi's palace or something, and so it said if you can if you could finish it, uh there might be a federal cowboy poetry grant in it for you.
Um I'm I'm uh I got one from uh a fellow called Nevada Chuck, uh, who certainly sounds like a cowboy poet, but uh th the the second line, the old lady of malice rhymed with the word phallus, and I don't think I don't think I can read it on the air, but undoubtedly if you were to soak the poem in urine, you could probably get an NEA grant for it.
Uh and then Sharon, Sharon said me, there was uh an old lady of Malice who was dowdy frumpy and callous.
Should she run just in case to appeal to her base, she bombed Colonel Gaddafi's palace.
That's not bad.
That's not bad.
Uh thank you, uh thank you, Sharon.
Ah, that's worth a fifteen thousand dollar uh fifteen thousand dollar grant.
Let's go to Rudy in uh Idaho.
I don't know uh whether uh are you anywhere uh specifically in uh in Idaho, Rudy.
Yes, sir, I am.
I'm uh just north of Weezer, Idaho, and you all know where that's at.
Right.
I got it.
My my mental GPS is uh hovering above you like an unmanned drone right now, Rudy.
That's uh that's excellent.
Thank you for clearing that up.
First, I must tell you, sir, it's a great honor to get to speak with you.
Well, it's it's great to speak with you too, Rudy.
I I love your great state.
Uh I'm I'm uh I'm Canadian, so I should be loyal to uh Prince Edward Island potatoes, but I I gotta say I like those Idaho ones too.
Oh, you betcha.
I have been hearing you catching a lot of flack on this cowboy poetry thing, and I think you need a little bit of support on this.
I have been involved with cowboy poetry since its uh rebirth some thirty some years ago.
Right.
Uh you are right on the money with this Elko thing.
Over thirty years ago, I attended a meeting where Hal Cannon, the director, uh proudly talked about the federal monies he was getting.
At that time, he said, We are receiving over one hundred thousand dollars in arts commission monies to produce this show.
Right.
Wow.
I'd like to make this really very clear.
They were the granddaddy of re the rebirth of cowboy poetry, they did not invent it.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
No, that's okay.
Now, he he boasted or rather Harry Reid boasted of hundreds of thousands of people coming.
Their annual attendance is approximately six thousand people.
Right.
Now, they are only one of over two hundred such events that take place across the United States and Canada.
Now, is there still a cowboy poetry private sector in the United States then?
And uh and presumably in Canada too.
I would have to say a private uh sector, if I'm hearing you right on that.
Uh all of these events are are funded by private sponsors, uh, which are usually car dealers, grocery stores, and so forth.
The largest event I helped with uh the development of this program takes place in Lubbock, Texas.
When I left them five years ago, they were bringing over thirty-five thousand fans annually.
So they've got six times as many in Lubbock as Harry Reed's federally funded cowboy poetry boondoggle in Elco.
Absolutely, sir.
Absolutely.
And none of these other two hundred plus events receive any federal tax money.
Right.
I produced the Idaho State Cowboy Poetry Gathering for eighteen consecutive years.
We were bringing that those numbers of fans to Idaho without any federal money.
In fact, the arts commission people went to war with me to get me banned from any support.
So they were basically so like the feds the feds are like uh are like coming down on you uh like uh Pinkerton men in the old West uh to force you to force you to take uh the federal money or something like that.
Well they they want you you're you're out there you're out there in the territory and they and and and uh and they uh and they they don't want uh they don't want to let you they they want to they th they're just uh yeah right now we're here to help federal marshals it it isn't it isn't quite as generous as that years ago I I drew a picture a metaphor for Hal Cannon to understand.
He asked me at that particular meeting when I caught on to what was going on.
And I said I'm not real bright.
It took me about the second year to see what was going on and he said well how do you see it?
I took a piece of paper from him we're sitting across the table and I drew a picture of a wagon wheel.
I said here is what's going on in my understanding.
I said if you take the the axle of this cowboy poetry movement and you label that how canon if you make the hub Elko Nevada then you take the spokes and you put them under the control of the local arts commission and the wheel in the rim are the cowboys the approved cowboy poets and cowboy singers.
Wow this is one awesome metaphor.
So like the axle is this guy canon and the hub is uh the the hub is Elko and the s and the spokes uh are the federal funding and then uh and then the rim is are the cowboy poets is that right he made that same statement he said that's a interesting metaphor.
Right.
He said what is wrong with it?
And I said well nothing really it's really quite brilliant if you have a wheelbarrow.
But a wagon has four wheels there's more than one wagon on the prairie you're not going to control it all.
So he'd literally put the cart before the horse.
Yes it was it was been so funny they have uh featured the same three or four main characters under Elco control uh as their main entertainment.
So now that that's what so with under federal funding just like you get the uh Barney Frank for life you get cowboy poets for life.
So you got if you can imagine when they came near losing their federal funding because they used the same people over and over again and they call themselves a national event.
Right.
Uh they came well they were threatened to lose their their financial support from the government they devoted their next show to the Hispanic influence on cowboy poetry.
Right.
That year they featured the same four people that works well the next year they featured the Native Americans influence in cowboy poetry.
Fabulous fabulous and guess who they feature have they have the the same four poets.
I've got the hang of it now next year it's the uh Belgian influence on cowboy poetry and it'll be the same four cowboy poets well as uh they are a poetry event they brought in and now this has nothing to do with cowboys.
They started bringing Australian poets, Brazilian poets, poets from Argentina.
Oh, great.
So now we're subsidizing other countries'cowboy poetry.
It's the same money.
Have they had any Libyan cowboy poets yet?
No, the Libyan poetry is not even cowboy.
What caused a number of us to walk out was he concluded that by saying, this is an arts commission function, So we are now going to have special programs of blue poetry.
Right.
And you know what blue poetry no no I'm sure the guy who said me there was an old lady for Malice and it rhyme with Phallis.
I'm I'm no stranger to blue poet.
Now, but you're basically saying that now, no uh under this pr program, you can sponsor Brazilian uh cowboy poets.
And they uh w what are they down there?
Uh Gaucha.
No, that's Argentina, the gauchos, isn't it?
And then Libya, uh Libyan cowboy poets, they don't have cowboy, they got sheiks, they got the desert uh the desert chic uh uh yeah riding in riding into town on camels.
Uh so no cowboy poets actually need be involved in the cowboy federally funded cowboy poetry event.
You can just uh absolutely not.
In fact, they went to war, I mean literal war, against all those who were not sanctioned by the Elco people.
Oh, this is the this is just this is credentialism.
So so you're saying unless you're if you're not a federally accredited cowboy poet, you're you're you're in noncompliance with with the uh Federal Bureau of Cowboy Poetry compliance.
This has to do with you must be approved by the arts commission.
Right, right.
This is uh you have been right on the money.
I've listened to people come in and try to straighten you out, and it's it's not fair.
It's just not a right analysis.
Uh when I put together the Idaho gathering, they it was incredible what they did.
And I can document all of this with newspaper clippings uh and articles that they had written where they were saying nobody would come to a cowboy poetry uh thing that I put on.
Because you were just some like wild lawless western cowboy poetry beyond uh, you know, beyond the bounds of the of the of the federally of the tamed federally licensed uh cowboy.
I'm not I'm not looking too entertain anymore.
I have been the politically incorrect cowboy, which has worked for me.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I I like that.
Don't uh don't fence yourself in.
Uh that's uh that's that's the way to that's the way to think of it, uh Rudy.
I I'm I'm actually heartened by what you said because I thought I was depressed when I heard about all this federally funded cowboy poetry, because I thought it was like, you know, you're out in Elco, you're right out of town, uh, and you're caught in this kind of stampeding uh stampeding hooves the dust of like thousands of federally funded cowboy poetry uh uh stampeding to get the last hitching post outside creative writing class and live high off the hog on the federally funded cowboy poetry.
But you're saying that it's it's basically just five or six of the same cowboy poets.
Uh they'll be doing the Hispanic influence and cowboy poetry, Native American influence and cowboy poetry, Al Qaeda influence on cowboy poetry, and it's just the same uh half a dozen of them every time.
Uh please don't miss you know, get me wrong with this.
There are a lot of real cowboys that have gone down there.
Right.
But all they get to be is support for those pretending to be cowboys.
Oh that's just so they're just the like they're like the window dress.
Well, thank you.
Thank you for your call, Ruby, because you've uh Rudy, you've cleared up a lot of this.
Uh he's out there in Idaho.
He's such a genuine cowboy.
He's uh he he didn't even have a town on the call screen.
He wasn't even identified by town because he's actually out there on a range.
Uh unlike these other uh unlike uh uh uh uh north and just north of Weezer, uh Idaho, and uh and these other federally cowboy real cowboys are just down there as window dressing.
They're just the extras.
Well they're these uh federally accredited cowboy poets.
Uh it is actually a lot to it.
It's it's uh it is a kind of metaphor for uh uh American decline in a tragic way.
Uh Mark Stein Infrarush, I'm glad Rudy cleared up the uh the cowboy poetry issue, because your instincts are right on this.
Uh it's a low overhead business.
Uh i there are networks of people who love cowboy poetry.
They're all over the country.
The idea that you don't count as a cowboy poetry uh pa cowboy poet until Harry Reed's uh sluiced some federal tax dollars to you and got you down in Elco uh to do the uh the Flemish influence on cowboy poetry festival, uh the idea that that's the only model for cowboy poetry in America.
That's what government does when you when it's like the same thing with health care.
If you have government health care, it eventually squeezes out non-government health care.
If you have government cowboy poetry, eventually it'll it puts the pressure on uh non-government cowboy poetry.
So thanks for clearing that up, uh Rudy.
1800 282-2882.
Yeehaw!
Federal bonanza at the Elco Cowboy Poetry Festival.
We're gonna need a ten trillion dollar hat.
Woo!
Uh thank you to Rudy.
Thank you to Rudy in Idaho for clearing up the uh the uh the uh world of cowboy poetry.
Let's go to Valerie on Open Line Friday, Mark Stein in for Rush.
Valerie's in Kansas City.
Great to have you with us, Valerie.
Mark, it's wonderful to talk to you.
On behalf of all your female listeners listeners, I have to tell you, you are the perfect man, intelligent, informed, and hilariously funny.
Well now that women always say they're looking for a sense of humor, but they never actually are, Valerie, believe me.
They'll take I don't know.
I'm I'm driving down the road, I'm trying not to hit anything because this is the funny.
I'm just laughing my head off.
People think I'm insane.
Okay.
Okay.
Anyway, uh my my comment is uh regarding the congressional budget cuts and stuff, your your first call a row talking about you know, meet in the middle and compromise and and look for the election.
I think we ought to go the other direction.
I think if uh if the Senate doesn't like our sixty billion dollar cut, the next one we send is ninety billion.
If you don't like that one, okay, we'll send you our hundred and twenty billion one.
Yeah.
Oh, it's not going down.
We have to pick one.
Yeah, I think I think that's right.
I think the the the uh the the what what people need to do, what effective conservative politicians do is move the center of the debate.
Uh that's that's what Reagan did, that's what uh Thatcher did.
You don't you don't reach across the aisle and meet your opponents halfway.
You move you widen the aisle so that they, to meet you halfway, they have to they have to come closer to the side of sanity.
Uh and I think I think you're right.
I think they should not be uh they they should not actually be uh uh be b be offering to compromise on this.
They should be raising the stakes.
They should be raising the stakes.
You're that's an that's an absolutely excellent point, Valerie.
And I and I'm Paul have a a 200 billion dollar, you know, in cuts or something like that.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I mean, uh and and as you say uh as Paul Paul Ryan and a lot of these other fellas uh uh have have come up and demonstrated how you can cut this and you can cut that and you get serious, meaningful cuts.
And so every time the Democrats won't uh won't uh agree to small discretionary partial cuts, you're saying, hey, okay, that's that's great.
We're gonna uh we're s gonna slice away even more.
We're gonna slice away even more.
Every time because you demonize everything as uh as extreme, brutal, heartless cuts anyway, so we might as well, you know, make them ever more extreme, brutal and heartless until you guys get serious about negotiating.
That's a great point, Valerie.
How do we make them do that, Mark?
Well, you know, I think that that's I think the I think that's where it comes to hanging the tag of extremist around them.
You know, there's nothing caring and compassionate, by the way.
They talk about all these programs.
There's nothing caring and compassionate uh about giving all this stuff to people uh with money that is yet to be earned by children that have yet to be born.
It's actually immoral, it's actually wicked.
You know, Barney Frank, Barney Frank and Chuck Schumer, uh there's nothing compassionate or caring uh or or progressive or liberal uh uh about actually saying we're gonna spend money that does not exist, uh, that we have to borrow from the Chinese and then pay back uh with the hard work of children who have not yet been born.
That's actually wicked and immoral, and we should never stop hanging that round Chuck Schumer's and Barney Frank's neck.
And that's why it's in it's uh it's imp it's important to change the terms of the debate, and then they will have to play uh according to those rules, Valerie.
I think that's the that's the most important thing we can do.
Hey, thanks thanks for your call.
Thanks for your call, and I uh I think that's the great way to look at it, by the way.
If they don't want to discuss sixty billion uh uh six uh sixty billion dollars worth of cuts, we'll come back and talk about ninety billion dollars worth of cuts.
Uh and we're gonna keep doing it that way until you guys get serious.
Valerie in Kansas City, Mark Stein in for Rush on the EIB network.
Lots more to come.
Mark Stein in for Rush on the EIB network.
Just before we uh leave Valerie in Kansas City, we should say a word for Jim Lemke, one of the state senators, uh, who turned down uh uh ex uh accepting federal money to extend unemployment benefits, uh, saying, quote, this is about sending a message to the federal government from the state of Missouri that enough is enough.
Uh the federal government is sending us money they don't have, unquote.
And that's that's the point.
This is a corruption of federalism.
This is a decayed federalism.
When states think they can uh dodge uh their own fiscal problems by accepting money from uh a federal government that represents the collectivity of 50 states.
There is no money anywhere in the 50 states for any of this stuff.
This money does not exist.
The only choices are to borrow it from hostile powers or print it.
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