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April 21, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:50
April 21, 2011, Thursday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Mind over chatter, starting a million conversations.
Rushlin Boy, your guiding light, often imitated, never equaled.
Executing assigned host duties flawlessly with half my brain tied behind my back, just to be fair about it.
Telephone numbers 800-282-2882, the email address, lrushbow at EIBnet.com.
Mike, go back, grab audio soundbite number nine.
This is important, folks.
As Catherine says to me quite often when talking about me, it's important, babe.
This is important.
Here's Obama again at the Facebook seminar.
Their basic view is that no matter how successful I am, no matter how much I've taken from this country, I wasn't born wealthy.
I was raised by a single mom and my grandparents.
I went to college on scholarships.
There was a time when my mom was trying to get her PhD where for a short time she had to take food stamps.
My grandparents relied on Medicare and Social Security.
Their notion is, despite the fact that I've benefited from all these investments, somehow I now have no obligation to people who are less fortunate than me.
All right.
Okay.
So, never had an entrepreneur's family, I never had an individual who's been through all that.
But why bring up Medicare and Social Security?
Who is suggesting we cut them?
Who is suggesting we eliminate?
Why talk about this?
This is yesterday in Palo Alto.
Nobody.
Nobody.
Ryan's plan doesn't eliminate Social Security.
It does not eliminate Medicare.
Doesn't eliminate food stamps.
No, Obama did.
Obama did.
Thehill.com.
Fox News had it.
It was in August of 2010.
It was the second stimulus bill of $26 billion.
And the number one target was teachers in the various states.
This was the bill where we chronicled.
The L.A. County School District got their share of it, and they didn't spend it hiring teachers.
They used it for pension and health care for current teachers, but they didn't hire any new teachers.
Just to remind you here, the bill requires $12 billion be stripped from the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.
That's food stamps.
It was the Obama regime and the Democrats, in order to pay for this second stimulus, who cut food stamps.
When it comes to Medicare, it was Obama in Obamacare who proposed cutting $500 billion out of Medicare to pay for it.
And they double-counted that.
So in all of this, here he is out there in Palo Alto making the case for the welfare state.
His family benefited.
I wouldn't be here today if it weren't for those programs.
Not one word of thanks to the people whose work and taxes made it possible.
No, he holds them in contempt.
No, no, no.
Those are cowards.
Those people are the cowards.
He's the guy with the courage.
He said Ryan's budget.
There's no courage there.
Now, the real courage, the real courage is Obama spending the tax revenue of people not yet conceived, people not yet even thought about being conceived, when they have no stake in the game and no ability to stop it or oppose it.
That's courage.
So it was Obama who slashed food stamps.
He wasn't talking about it.
He and the Democrats did it.
Ditto Medicare, not to reform them.
He did not slash food stamps or Medicare to reform the programs.
He did it to spend them on even more government programs, new government programs, Obamacare, and Muchella's program.
He wasn't reforming anything.
He was expanding.
And yet he dares go out to Palo Alto and tell those young skulls full of mush at Facebook that it's you and I who want to cut food stamps.
So, so important to his being where he is.
Paul Ryan is trying to save Medicare.
Make it sustainable.
We all know this.
This is just more courage.
That's why it is important that you know the truth about this.
And I remember those Medicare cuts.
The Democrats, there was friction in the ranks when the Medicare cuts $500 billion.
That was not insignificant.
And there was a lot of anger on the Democrat side when these food stamp cuts were proposed.
But again, who is it left to to remind you?
It's us.
You think the drive-bys are going to remember any drive-bys when they report this?
They've had their chance.
Obama made the remarks yesterday.
They've published what they have to say about it.
Let's continue.
Here's Obama after destroying the housing market.
While at Facebook, he gets a question from Williamsburg, Virginia.
Mr. President, the housing crisis will not go away.
The mortgage financing for new homebuyers with low to moderate income is becoming very difficult.
As president, what can you do to relax the policies of disqualifying qualified homebuyers from owning their first home, Mr. President?
How can you assure the low to moderate income of homebuyers that they will have the opportunity to own their first?
So here you have a Facebook person, New Castrati, asking Obama, of all people.
Now, don't go ask your parents.
Don't go ask somebody who might ask this know-nothing what he's going to do to help you buy a house.
And then after doing that, this is what you get.
Well, it's a good question.
And I'll be honest with you.
This is probably the biggest drag on the economy right now.
The challenge we still have, as your questioner properly points out, is that a lot of people who bought a first home when credit was easy now are finding that credit is tough.
And we've got to strike a balance.
Frankly, there's some folks who are probably better off renting.
Answer, forget buying.
Forget buying.
Just rent.
Put it that's President of the United States.
Better off renting.
You are better off renting.
Don't buy.
Now, now, again, Obama said, we're paraphrasing this, the government seeks balance in giving help to homeowners.
Translated means he wants to do away with people's home mortgage tax deduction.
We've talked about that.
Owning a house, big part of the American dream.
Owning a house was maybe the, at one time, the centerpiece of the American dream, was it not?
Now the president of the United States, here you have his eager beaver Facebooker.
Eager Beaver Facebooker wants to know, credit's tight, how can I buy a house?
Obama, don't.
You'd be better off renting.
Translation: look, I've done so much damage to the housing market, I wouldn't even mess with it if I were you.
Just trying to help you.
I've screwed it up so bad, you'd be better off just renting.
Why is credit tough?
Would that be the subprime mortgage crisis, Mr. President, that you kind of, yeah, it's the equivalent, Mr. President, Mr. President?
You know, I'm a young American.
I'm big on Facebook.
I'm a Facebooker, and I have lots of friends.
I want to go, American dream is buying a house.
Credit is really tight, Mr. President.
What can I do?
What can I do?
Is it going to relax?
I can buy a house someday.
Actually, you know, we've screwed that up so bad.
You might as well rent.
Mr. President, Mr. President, my mother is 100 years old.
I want the pacemaker.
If he really has a throng will live, if he really is not even thick at all, but the doctors say, no, he couldn't take it.
Will we be able to factor in her willingness and her will to live?
No, give her a pill.
You're president, folks.
We've screwed up the housing market so bad, just rent.
You'll be better off renting.
As far as your mother's 100 years old, give her a pill.
So here's Obama.
You have a truck, a pickup, you get rid of it.
Go out and buy one of these electric jobs is going to set your house on fire one night.
If you have a house, forget it.
Rent.
The Obama prescription for America.
You have an SUV, you have a truck.
Screw you.
Get rid of it and go buy a hybrid or one of an electric car.
You have a house, sell it.
Rent.
There you have your future.
Forget your dreams.
Forget your dreams.
Do with less.
Rent.
Buy a dangerous little smart car.
And by the way, the quickest route to being able to get by is going to be in my welfare state.
Do what I did.
Food stamps, student loans.
Obama on illegal immigration last night in San Francisco said this.
Our work is not finished.
It is going to take more than a couple of years.
It is going to take more than one term for us to finish everything that we need to do.
We've got to finish what we've started.
We've got to finish what we've started.
Another term to flush the United States down the toilet.
I need four years.
I thought that I was going to be able to fundamentally transform this country to a welfare state in four years, but I'm getting more resistance from those cowards than I thought.
So it's going to take me and my courage another four years to thoroughly destroy the wealth-creating engine of capitalism in this country.
Please give me those four years.
Where is he going to get the votes?
Where is he going to get the votes to complete this agenda of destruction?
Well, he hopes to find them amidst a generous, compassionate America.
And President Obama finally got around to talking about immigration.
A big, generous, compassionate America.
Vision where we live up to the idea that no matter who you are, no matter where you come from, no matter what you look like, no matter whether your ancestors landed here on Ellis Island or came here on slave ships or came across the Rio Grande, we are all connected.
The President of the United States sees no difference between those who broke the law to come here and those who snuck across the Rio Grande, those who didn't break the law.
We're all connected because they're all potential voters for him.
Do you remember, folks, back after the budget agreement deal that averted a government shutdown was agreed to, and the drive-bys spent that whole weekend praising John Boehner?
Man, did Boehner, he really took Obama to cleaners.
Oh, man, you talk about a big win.
Remember that from Friday night all the way through the Sunday shows of that weekend?
Man, what a big win for Boehner.
Holy cow, Boehner smoked Obama.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, that was not the view of what happened as expressed by me on April the 11th.
The news media of the Democrat Party, as you know, in unison.
Fox News, everybody.
Friday night all weekend.
What a big win for Boehner.
What a huge, embarrassing defeat for Obama.
Why, the man of the hour is John Boehner.
Why?
Why, this, I mean, there's no question about it.
And if that's the case, you can bet that it's not the case.
I spent some other moments telling you something that doesn't smell right here.
That was all a setup.
It was designed, I said, at the time, to fire up Democrats who are ticked off at Obama.
More on that in the next half hour.
There are those.
And we play the soundbite from Howard Feynman.
Let me see.
Go back.
Audio soundbite number 17.
We'll get to that before number 16.
This is Howard Feynman on April 7th, four days before the comment you just heard from me.
This is on Friday night's Ape It's Hardball.
And it is Matthews talking to Howard Feynman about this whole thing.
And here was Feynman's assessment.
What I find interesting about this is I think in narrow sort of poker terms, Boehner's doing very well.
I think he's cleaning the president's clock.
I mean, he's got the White House up to $35 billion or something like that.
He's cleaning the president's clock.
And this was conventional wisdom.
This is the opinion of every drive-by media person that whole weekend.
Last night, however, on PMSNBC's The Last Word, Lawrence O'Donnell spoke to Howard Feynman, who's now the senior political editor for the Huffington Puffington Post.
And O'Donnell said, Howard, I have to join those who say that the Republicans are showing stronger leadership if leadership is defined as taking people where they don't want to go.
Yeah.
Remarkable.
Because, yes, the president was on his game speaking to a well-educated audience, but in the theater of Washington, Republicans win on theater points, but they lose on the numbers.
I think I was wrong about this when I was watching the last hours of the budget negotiations.
I even said that Speaker Boehner took the president to the cleaners on the budget negotiations.
But if you look at the numbers, the Democrats and the president actually gave up less in actual spending.
So chalk that up as a victory for the president.
So the Republicans can walk around with a big stick, but it's the president who walks softly and gets over the finish line first.
Oh, so Feynman recants now.
Boehner did not clean Obama's clock after all.
No, and furthermore, look at how winning is defined.
Look at how cleaning Boehner's clock is defined.
The president won.
He gave up less in actual spending.
That's the victory.
The victory for the drive-bys and for the president is more spending.
See, these people are not interested in solving a problem that we face, only making it worse.
So what's happening?
Obama, these soundbites that we've played for you today from Obama at Facebook in Palo Alto.
Obama is using every hateful, divisive trick in the books.
And now he's out there saying the Border Patrol is racist.
Fire all of them.
That's what that immigration comment is all about.
It's not their job to make sure aliens don't come here illegally.
This isn't about skin color, legal immigration, or your ancestors.
Mr. President, when is Obama actually going to talk about what's real and what's going on rather than his strawmen?
He never talks about what's real.
He's always creating strawmen.
And the most recent example, who is it?
Who is it that wants to cut food stamps?
Him.
Who is it that wants to cut Medicare?
Who is it that did?
Let me take that back.
Who is it that did cut food stamps and Medicare last year?
It was Obama.
Yet, talking to Facebook, big strawman, you and I, Boehner, Paul Ryan, somebody wants to do this.
When in fact, he did it.
You ever wondered, folks, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are so dead set against budget deficits, and if you listen to them talk, they are.
Democrats and the Republicans both hate them.
They despise deficits.
Why do we have them?
Why do we have a budget deficit if both Republicans and Democrats hate them so much?
Just doesn't make sense.
Until you realize that at least one of the parties realizes they can only get power by buying votes with taxpayers' money.
So when the Democrats tell you they don't like deficits, they're not being honest with you.
Pure and simple.
Who's next?
Jordan in Charleston, South Carolina.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello, sir.
Hello, Rush.
Megadittos from Charleston, South Carolina.
Thank you, sir.
I just wanted to say one thing, and I never ever hear it said, and that is that when Obama speaks, he speaks as if anyone who has made a success of themselves, anyone who has been successful, has done so at the cost of the American people and has taken money away from the American people.
And in reality, it could not be farther from the truth.
The CEOs, the inventors, the engineers, all these people of ability have given us everything that we have today.
Everything that I'm seeing in this room, someone has provided, you know.
And I never hear it said that we owe these people so much more.
You know, by what right do we have to sit and say, produce everything that I want, produce my iPhone, produce my car, produce my internet, my power, and then say, oh, and let me have all your money, too.
That's an excellent point.
Every inventor, creator, whatever provider of a service is portrayed as evil.
And has done it by stealing from you, has done it by denying you.
They've gotten rich by denying you service or stealing your money or whatever.
You're right, it is just the opposite.
And that's why I mentioned earlier your point is right on the money.
Where was Obama's gratitude for the people that made that story of his possible?
His grandmother on food stamps or his mother on food stamps and all that.
Where's the gratitude for the people that made it possible?
Where's the gratitude throughout our society for that?
There's not.
There's a resentment and a hatred that's applied to the achievers and their targets now.
And they must pay.
They must pay.
It all revolves around fairness.
Not fairness.
Some people should succeed and others shouldn't.
Exactly.
Thank you so much for everything you do.
I'm glad you called.
That's a great, great, great way of putting it.
But they just play in numbers.
As far as Obama, the Democrats, the way they look at it, there are far more failures than there are success stories.
And if you're in the game for votes, go where the votes are.
So if there are more failures than winners, go out and get the votes of the failures by telling them they are the backbone of America.
Hey, folks, another dividend of our making Hosni Mubarak step down.
The Associated Press is reporting that hundreds of Islamists are protesting in front of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.
They are demanding we release the blind sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman.
Now, this is the democracy movement the Weekly Standard told us about.
The freedom movement.
And they're protesting in front of our embassy now.
Want Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh, released as part of the Democracy Now program.
Jane in Ridgecrest, California.
Hi, and welcome to the EIB network.
Hi there.
Hi.
I am just calling.
I'm a Tea Party member.
That don't cause too much trouble.
I just want to know.
I just want to know with the low-income population always trying to find out different ways to talk them into not voting for Obama in our next election.
So what can conservatives say to Obama to these faithful low-income voters to get them not to vote for him anymore?
I mean, I've heard one point you said earlier in the second stimulus, Obama Food Stamps, and that was a great one.
But what are some other things that I can talk to somebody who makes the low-income and doesn't want to jump into any other president?
Doesn't want to jump into any other president.
Voting for another president.
Well, you're asking me, how do you go to a low-income person, convince them voting for Obama is not a good thing for them?
Yes.
What age are you talking about?
Anywhere from 18 to 45.
18 to 45.
Okay, I would, the first thing I would do, and I'm serious about this.
Now, I don't know how long you can hold their attention, but I would ask them, so you think a vote for Obama will make you wealthier?
And they will say yes.
Then you say, well, can you show me an example of where it's happened?
Can you show me the people on welfare today where they're not on welfare?
Can you show me where people who are living off of welfare or what Democrat presidents give them are wealthy and rich?
Can you show me this?
And see, that's the problem is making them understand that welfare isn't wealth.
The difference, they're so used to getting it for so many years, and that's the real problem there.
All right, then ask them this.
Ask him if they're better off now than they were two and a half years ago when he was emaculated.
He's been working for them for two and a half years.
Obama has been having, he promised them this.
That's true.
Well, ask them, are you, what makes you think it's going to get better in four years then when they tell you no?
What makes you if government made people rich, how come they're still people in poverty?
Okay.
I ask them that.
I don't know if any of this kind of stuff's going to work.
It's hard to figure out because Obama's right in the conditions you just were talking about.
Obama says he owes the poor.
No, it's easy to figure out, but these people aren't thinkers.
They're feelers.
You're dealing with people who have got deep-seated emotional problems about this.
They're not thinking about it.
And so if you approach them with things you're going to make them think, it's just going to be frustrating because they don't want to think.
That's the problem.
And I'm always wanting to find out how to get to them, how to try and get them to vote.
Well, okay, ask them if they know anybody who is on welfare, who used to be on welfare, who's now a CEO of a company or a doctor or a lawyer or whatever.
There's any number of ways here.
Okay.
But if, see, if it were me, if I were actually talking to a group of these people and I had them as a controlled, attentive audience, which they would be if I was speaking, I'd go about it an entirely different way.
And I would do it on a moral basis.
I would do it on an entitlement basis.
Look, if you're 18 years old, your expectations are way out of whack to think you're going to be rich at 18.
I would attack, why do you think country owes you something?
And why do you think Obama even knows who you are?
What are you, you know, you've been at this for two and a half years.
Obama's been prepared.
The Democrats ran Congress for 40 years.
I mean, there's all kinds of real world data to suggest these people are living in a dream world.
But if all they've got is their hope and you take that away from them, they're going to get mad at you about that.
And if you tell them, and the truth is, the answer to your question is you've got to start working and you've got to start working harder.
Well, I already worked two jobs.
Well, it's okay.
We've all worked two jobs at one point.
Some of us started working at 13.
You may have to work three jobs.
Well, that ain't fair.
Nothing's fair.
We start down that road.
These are absolutely accurate, truthful things born of evidence that these people are not going to want to hear.
Is there a certain number of years that I can tell them, okay, you got welfare right now.
If we keep going down this path, you're not going to have it, period.
Is there a number of years they've already kind of figured by now that welfare is going to run out?
Well, that's true, too.
We can't afford the welfare that we're spending now.
That's true.
Yeah, you bet.
The simplest thing to do.
My fear with this is the people you're talking about, once you make them start thinking, then it's a crapshoot.
I mean, you could lose them right then because that's what they're not doing.
And they're not going to want to admit that you're right.
They're going to be resistant, just like kids are to parents.
Parents don't know beans.
Every 10-year-old can tell you that.
And that's who you're essentially talking to.
You talk to people who don't know anything, but they know it all.
So you say, well, last two and a half years, Obama's been president, promised you all these things.
How's your life changed?
Are you any better off?
Do you know any low-income people who want to get a better job?
It really starts, do they even want to work?
Do they understand?
Remember, we're dealing, folks, with a sad, sad reality here.
Government cash handouts now top tax revenues.
Now, there's a story in the AP here today.
Obama to his supporters, his supporters are frustrated.
He hasn't closed Gitmo.
He hasn't gotten us out of Iraq.
They have not realized all this boost in their own economic circumstances.
Obama says, you know, I understand your frustration.
They're frustrated at the compromises he's made with Republicans.
And I don't know what compromises these are, but His hardcore fringe base really believes that he's a sellout in a lot of things.
Don't worry.
Don't worry.
I won't compromise, Obama says.
Now, from there, you go to this story.
U.S. households are now getting more in cash handouts from the government than they are paying in taxes for the first time since the Depression.
Households received $2.3 trillion in some kind of government support in 2010.
That includes expanded unemployment benefits as well as payments for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and stimulus spending.
But that's more than the $2.2 trillion households paid in taxes.
And remember, Jane, also, that most of the people you're talking to do not even pay federal income tax.
So 59% of our population gets some sort of federal benefit.
59%.
Government cash handouts now top tax revenues.
Have we reached the tipping point?
And then how about this story that there's a companion to that from political families still need safety net?
The recession did great damage to the middle class.
Families lost homes.
Professionals lost jobs.
As Congress debates the budget, it has to remember the Great Recession wreaked havoc on the American middle class.
But it must also focus on the plight of those who were poor even before the recession and rendered nearly invisible by the economic crisis.
Today, more than 43 million Americans live in poverty, the most in the more than 50 years we've been keeping track.
Well, how big is this freaking safety net that we've got?
Well, we know how big it is.
It's $2.3 trillion.
It's larger than the amount of tax revenue coming in to support it.
Families still need safety net.
Former welfare recipient is one of the writers here, Gwen Moore, Democrat from Wisconsin.
Still need a big safety net.
There's no end to this, folks.
From the Democrats, there's no end to this.
The more they get, the more they want.
The more they get, the worse it gets.
The reason why government cash handouts top tax revenues is because of creeping socialism in this country and an ongoing attack on capitalism and wealth creation and wealth generation.
I got to take a break.
I'm a little long.
I've got to have some time left on the other side.
So we'll be back in just a second.
Okay, so let's sum it up.
Where are we?
Let's look at things this way.
Why are we, the citizens, having to defend ourselves against a president who seeks to take our jobs, our homes, our cars, and money away from us?
Why?
When did it become acceptable that a president flies around the country, trashes citizens, smearing citizens?
And that's considered good politics, and that's what he's doing.
Our caller at the bottom of the hour was right on the money.
All these people that invent and create and provide services, they're the enemy now.
They're the ones who need to be punished.
It's okay for a president to fly around and demonize citizens, to force more and more people out of their houses, off their farms, out of their jobs, and then insist that these people be forced into the welfare state.
And after all that, that he deserves their praise, that he deserves their thanks after destroying their livelihood, destroying the engine of private wealth creation, destroying all of what is the greatness of America, then we're supposed to thank him for it.
You tell me, does Obama sound like somebody who believes this country will be flourishing in the next two to four, six years?
Nope.
Does he sound like somebody who wants this country flourishing in two to four, six years?
He does not.
He's out there touting poverty.
He's making the case for welfare and reliance.
He's outselling those things.
He's running on the food stamp program, on the unemployment program.
Does this sound like anything that you've ever experienced before in a president?
Does it sound like Reagan's Shining City on the Hills?
Does it sound like anything a man who cherishes liberty and productivity would say?
Folks, it's outrageous.
The speeches he's made the last two to three days are simply unacceptable.
He's out promising more of the same, more unemployment, more food stamps, more homelessness.
That's what he's saying.
If you think the nation's on the right track, then he's your man.
That's the bottom line.
If you're poor and you think everybody else ought to be poor, he's your guy.
If you're poor and you want to get rich, he's not your guy.
If you think the best we can do as a country with rising unemployment, rising gas prices, rising food prices, rising inflation, if you think that's what's best, if that's what we need, Obama's your guy.
Because that's what he's defending.
All right.
Another exciting excursion into broadcast excellence in the can.
Now, we've heard Obama before.
We've heard what Obama is saying before.
We've heard it from Che Guevara.
We have heard it from Mao Titong.
We have heard it from Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez.
We have heard it from every Soviet leader.
We've heard of all this hatred for the rich.
We've been where Obama wants to take us around the world.
And we've got to go now.
Back and continue tomorrow, folks.
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