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April 26, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:07
April 26, 2011, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
I don't know if you've noticed it to this detail.
It's why I'm here.
Gasoline prices have gone up again for the 35th straight day.
I kid you not, ladies and gentlemen.
35th straight day.
Now, if there were a Republican in the White House, every network would kick off their evening news broadcast with this day-by-day count.
Instead, what do we get?
This is great news for America.
It'll put families together by keeping them at home.
It's great news for the planet.
There's less driving.
It's great news for Obama's bullet train idea.
Oh, yeah, a rising gas price is great, great news, except when they can find a way to rope Republican leaders into it.
Hi, you folks.
Great to have you here.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network, the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Telephone numbers 800-282-2882.
The email address, lrushbaugh at EIBnet.com.
Ladies and gentlemen, the, well, no, the gas price, I'll tell you, was when Obama took office, it was $1.83 a gallon.
Now, it isn't news.
It isn't news.
It's almost never mentioned by our news media.
It's not over 108%.
The gasoline prices up since Obama was immulated.
And you see that the, we mentioned this yesterday, the EPA, the EPA, a bureaucracy, has denied Shell Oil a permit to drill off the Alaska coast.
And you know why?
Because their emissions, the emissions might hurt a tiny village which is more than 70 miles away.
Kid you not.
That's the reason given.
And along the same line, it's been reported that seven more oil platforms have left the Gulf of Mexico because they couldn't get permits to drill.
Most of them have gone, you know where they've gone?
They've gone to Brazil.
They have gone to Brazil where we are subsidizing Petrobras offshore drilling.
So shell oil told by the EPA, you can't drill off Alaska because of pollution.
We got a moratorium on drilling in the Gulf.
Seven oil platforms have shut down and moved to Brazil where we are funding that nation's oil exploration.
What are we doing here?
Well, once again, we're talking about raising taxes on the oil companies and ending their subsidies on big oil companies.
And I, you know, some days this job is a job.
Most days it's not.
But some days this program, folks, is a job.
John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, has indicated in an interview with ABC that he is open to the idea of reducing the so-called oil subsidies.
And he used a phrase that has been popularized by the left.
It's about time the oil companies paid their fair share.
He's open to them paying their fair share and open to the idea of reducing their subsidies when we need them the most.
And I understand the Republicans don't want to get caught in a trap.
They think it's a trap of having to defend big oil.
I mean, when the Democrat, but this is how the left sets the agenda.
This is the left setting the premise and puts us on defense.
We're always reacting to it.
Now, My reaction is if I were a political leader and a Republican and the Democrats are hell-bent on ending big oil subsidies and raising taxes on big oil in circumstances like we are in now with rising gasoline prices, just me, this may be the difference working on radio versus working in politics, but I would defend big oil.
I certainly wouldn't start, I don't know, especially now.
We need supply.
We need to stop helping neighboring countries build up their supply, drill and add to their supply.
And we're harming ourselves.
We are purposely increasing our dependence on other nations' oil.
We have policies which are elevating the price of oil and gasoline.
It's all on Obama.
Why not say that?
So I have, as you people well know, and I don't look at the world through rose-colored glasses, but I'm going to tell you, I know who the left's enemies are.
I know who's on their enemy list.
And my instincts are to defend the people that they are targeting because I know who the left is.
I know what their objectives are.
I know what their agenda is.
And I know what their policies' outcomes will be.
And if you sit around and let the left start targeting everybody but you, eventually they're going to get to you and there won't be anybody left to defend you.
This is not to say that big oil is blameless in it.
It's not to say that big oil is above criticism.
It's not to say that they're beyond reproach or any of that, but nobody else is either.
Nobody is clean and pure as the wind-driven snow in all of this.
I remember early, oh, was it Sterdley helped me out here?
George W. Bush early 2000s, was it during the presidential campaign of 2000 or after he was elected when he said that he would not balance the budget on the backs of the poor as he was defining compassionate conservatism?
I think it was during a campaign.
Why was I flipped out?
I said, why are we using the language of the left here?
Balance the budget on the backs of the poor?
You know, we got a soundbite in the roster here.
Robert B. Rice is all excited, practically orgasmic, because he thinks the mood has shifted on raising taxes.
That's the last thing that needs to happen here.
Raise tax on anybody.
Nobody's taxes.
And by the way, Boehner is hanging tough on that.
And he's telling the president what for on that.
But boy, I guess the public pressure on elected officials to stay as far away from big oil as they can is something I can't even imagine.
And I can imagine a lot of things.
You know me, folks.
When it comes to empathy, there is nobody that out-empathizes me.
There is nobody out instincts me.
And I can understand, but I just, I don't know.
Really, Mr. Limbaugh, you would try to defend big oil and you thircum.
Yeah, in the terms of educating people, in terms of leading, in terms of educating, we're watching the country be destroyed.
We're watching our economy go to hell in a handbasket.
Even while there's handbasket shortage, we're still going to hell in handsbaskets.
It's all by design.
There's an agenda out there.
Look at the Supreme Court.
We got our work cut out for us here, folks.
The Supreme Court refused to fast track the Virginia lawsuit on health care.
Now, this plays right into Obama's hands.
And this is standard operating procedure for the court.
I mean, it's very rarely that they fast track appeals, but delay in terms of Obamacare equals implementation.
And Obama has gamed this in another way.
All the pain in his law, or the vast majority of the pain, is put off until after the 2012 presidential election.
The real arduous, painful aspects of Obamacare do not get implemented, most until 2013, 2014.
Well, he will no longer stand for reelection if there is re-election.
We could be, who knows what we're going to do, 2012, 2020, who knows what the political system is going to end up being by then.
Look at all the waivers that have to be granted now to avoid pain.
Now, look, if these waivers had not been granted, Obama would be dead in the water.
Over 1,000 waivers have been granted to companies exempting them from the law's requirements on health care would have put them out of business, which is the ultimate idea to destroy the private sector healthcare industry, insurance, and all that, and shift it all to the government after 2012, when there's no longer chance to throw Obama out politically as a result of it.
So all of these waivers have been granted for one reason, to hide the genuine pain this bill is going to cause, to delay it.
When these waivers end after the 2012 election, that's when we're going to see the Medicare advantage start to unravel.
This is very popular with seniors.
They like it.
But Obamacare punishes the plans that do not sufficiently cut costs the way health and human services are going to require.
That's going to drive up the costs of the plans, which is then passed on to the seniors.
The Health and Human Services issued another waiver for that part of the law for now.
They've waived almost every genuinely hard, painful aspect of this until after 2012.
And we've got hundreds of billions of dollars on the line.
The health care of every individual in this country is at stake.
And, you know, you would have thought the nine justices on the court would have dealt with this.
The common wisdom is that the court never does this sort of thing.
And it never fast-tracked things.
This is the normal way.
Court does whatever it wants is the bottom line.
This court's not overworked.
I mean, hell, we're coming up to their three-month vacation pretty soon here.
Travel the world giving speeches and all that.
The idea that dockets are chocked full, that judges are overworked, that government bureaucracies are overworked.
That's just an excuse for the fact that they're inefficient.
Not overworked.
So you delay the implementation of this thing.
It's going to make it very harder and harder to repeal it once the infrastructure has dug itself in.
And you have this ongoing problem with oil.
And what is this?
Every three years, we have the same argument.
The price goes up and it goes back down.
Every three years have the same argument, big oil, big enemy, big villain, and so forth.
I just, it's a circumstance where the nation, this is a nation made up of people, many of them hardworking people.
And these rising prices are having a deleterious effect on virtually every aspect of a whole lot of people's lives.
And we're sitting back and we're just watching the domestic oil industry be shut down, retarded, slowed down.
Well, we're just, you know, not dealing with OPEC in a strong way, a little cartel action they've got going.
There's no free market really there.
We've got Shell being told to go pound sand off the coast of Alaska because some little town 70 miles away might get pollution.
Meanwhile, we apparently don't care what kind of pollution happens in Brazil as long as the Brazilian oil companies do well.
Seven new platforms shut down the Gulf of Mexico, moving down to Brazil, where we are funding, investing in their oil exploration.
And our focus here somehow is that big oil.
They're going to pay.
They're going to pay.
We're going to make them pay.
We're going to make sure they Shell Oil spent.
Let me give you some numbers here.
I was watching Fox this morning and I heard this explained.
Shell Oil spent five years and $4 billion, nearly $4 billion on their plans to explore for oil off the coast of Alaska.
The leases alone cost them $2.2 billion.
That $4 billion has been lost because they have been turned down.
$2.2 billion for the leases.
The balance spent on going through the permit process.
That's how much it costs to get permission.
So Shell Oil lost because they spent $4 billion and the whole project was shut down by bureaucracy, the EPA.
Now, to an oil company, $4 billion, you probably a lot of people, well, good.
They deserve to lose $4 billion.
The way they're gouging up, that's the wrong way to look at it.
They're just going to find a more favorable place to go get oil that will not employ Americans.
That will not produce our own domestic supply, which will help us become a little bit more independent on foreign producers.
So $4 billion.
This is the, by the way, one of the reasons there are subsidies for big oil is to promote.
Looks like you're subsidizing it.
You want activity to take place.
You subsidize it.
So you want them to explore.
You want to help them cover the costs of what might be big losses.
Now we're causing the big losses.
Now this regime is causing the big loss and they're celebrating.
They probably have a party in White High.
Hey, Shell Oil.
They lost $4 billion.
And we got it.
They had to spend that money with us.
Obama's probably throwing a party.
So now we talk about how, yeah, make big oil pay their fair share.
No sense of perspective.
Meanwhile, while all this is going on, our brilliant leader, Mr. Obama, has ordered the Department of Justice to try to figure out who is driving up gas prices.
With any luck, we would witness the FBI frog-marching Obama out of the White House at the end of this investigation, along with the head of the EPA and Zimbabwe Ben-Bernaki.
You want to find out who's raising prices and everything, just go to the Federal Reserve.
It's called quantitative easing, too.
It's called stimulus.
It's called spending all this money.
It's called inflation.
That's who's responsible for prices going up, not big oil, not the American private sector, not capitalism.
This is all being caused by an activist government mistakenly believing that all of this spending will revive the private sector.
It's nonsense.
Brief timeout.
El Rushbaugh and the EIB network, the new republic, folks, so predictable.
I wish I would have voiced this prediction.
New Republic, the trouble with independence.
What if these voters are just a clueless horde?
New Republic, Liberal Journal of Opinion.
Now that they've lost the independence, well, you know what?
They're probably just a bunch of schlubs and always have been.
Rush Limbaugh living life the way it was and is supposed to be lived.
Here at the distinguished and prestigious Limbaugh Institute for the Advanced Conservative Studies, Ron Paul is going to announce his exploratory committee today.
Yip, yip, yip, yip, yahoo.
Oh, what a happy day.
Ron Paul, earlier today, Fox News breathlessly awaiting that announcement.
Meanwhile, Haley Barber has said that he's not going to be a candidate.
How long is practically all of my professional life here I have?
All right, Dawn, was the bridge stuck up?
It's broken, but is it broken up?
It's stuck up.
They can't lower the drawbridge.
That's why you are 28 minutes late.
The bridge is stuck up.
So, Brandon, I've never heard of this.
I have, why would you cry?
Why would you cry about the bridge being stuck up?
Oh, well, okay, but don't worry.
You haven't missed any calls here.
Sterdley hadn't even screened any yet.
I don't know what he's been doing in there.
This staff, this staff has the easiest.
I mean, these guys involved in phone know that we don't take phone calls generally the first hour, so they probably say, why are we here anyway before one o'clock Eastern?
So don't cry about it.
Anyway, for the bulk of my career, as you know, if you've been regular listeners, I have always been dubious of the virtue attached to independence and moderates.
I have often asked, find for me in the library the book, Great Moderates in American History.
And I have equated independence with moderates.
One of the reasons that I have done this is that we have been told that every presidential election really only is important to 20% of the voting public because 80% of the voting public, the way they're going to vote is already known.
40% going to go Democrat, 40% Republican, but the 20% independent.
Wow, that's where you got to win the battle because you don't know.
Those are smarter people than everybody else.
They don't make up their minds till late in the day.
More coming up in just seconds.
Yeah, it's a dirty little secret about Haley Barber, but one of the reasons he pulled out is he doesn't have the hair.
He doesn't really have the hair to compete in this Republican field.
I mean, you've got Michelle Bachman out there, Sarah Palin, Romney Trump.
It's a tough hair competition.
I mean, just on that level.
Now, back to this independent business.
You know, there's a lot of conventional wisdom that has just offended my intelligence and my sensibilities.
And this idea that every presidential election, the independents, if you've paid attention, you know that's what the media always focus on.
Who's going to get the independence?
These consultants, the Frank Luntzes, and they do their focus groups and their polling, and they always focus on the independents.
And what are they thinking?
You know, independents are fine people, but the idea that 20% of this country elects the president, I'm sorry, I don't go along with it.
And as somebody who seeks to expand in the education and understanding of people in this country, I certainly have a bigger target than 20% of the population.
To me, it's nonsensical, but all of these consultants make their money in that 20%.
All these people that get hired by politicians, I can get you elected.
I know how to do it.
I know how to position you to get the independence.
And largely, this is largely a factor in what makes a lot of politicians unreal.
Rather than just being who they are and trying to use genuine passion and core beliefs, they're advised on language, approach, attitude, all kinds of things to go get the independence.
Because there's something unsaid that accompanies this: that the independents are special people because they're undecided.
They're not closed-minded.
See, ideologues, particularly on the right, conservative ideologues are said to be closed-minded.
And along with that goes bigoted and racist and all of that.
The independents, now, these are people, they can't be fooled.
These people decide issue by issue.
And I've always resented this whole construct.
I've always thought, I've always known that moderate/slash independent is simply another word for liberal, particularly moderate.
Definitely moderate, another word for liberal.
But now, what's happened?
Now, these self-described independents, and I know what some of you are saying, Rush, shut up.
Now, why do you want to offend the independents?
Not on their side.
I'm not trying to offend anybody.
I'm just telling you what I think about this.
I'm not.
Don't you understand, folks?
I understand about winning elections, but nobody can ever make me believe that elections are only about 20% of this population.
I'm never going to believe that.
I don't care what kind of seasoned professional who's made it his life's work to win elections tells me this.
I'm not going to believe it because more than 20% vote.
But now the independents have swung big to the Republicans.
And it's interesting to understand why.
It's not because of anything the Republicans have done.
The Independents showed up big time against Democrats in the November election.
They were voting against Obama.
They were voting against health care.
They were voting against big spending.
Now, my obvious question is: what took them so long to wake up?
Liberals have been who they are for as long as I've been alive.
If they're so smart, what took them so long to wake up?
And if they're so smart, why will they ever consider going back to voting Democrat?
Now that they've seen As clearly as it can be seen what liberalism leads to, the destruction of capitalism, the destruction of entrepreneurism, the destruction of the creation of wealth engine.
Liberalism leads to the destruction of all of that.
I don't care if it's a liberal not yet born running for office in 30 years or somebody alive running for, it's the same thing.
Why would you ever, now if you're an independent, seen what liberalism leads to, why would you ever vote for one again?
But they will.
Sure, as we're all sitting here, some of these independents will end up voting for Obama again.
And everybody will be trying to figure out, well, why did this happen?
And of course, the media will position it as some brilliant political move by Obama to reassure them, get them back, and to warn them that they really goofed up supporting these Republicans because they're the real danger.
Well, that if that kind of thing can happen, then what and who are we really talking about here?
Which takes me to this piece in the new republic.
It's as predictable as the sun coming up, and I'm sorry I missed it.
It's by Michael Kazin or Kazin, I'm not sure how he pronounces it, K-A-Z-I-N.
The trouble with independence.
What if these voters are just a clueless horde?
So now the left, facing the loss of the independence, does what they always do, start insulting these voters as a bunch of fools, a bunch of idiots.
How can, for those of you who are independent, and understand that I love you, but I want to know how can you call yourself independent and vote for the Democrat Party, which is all about dependency.
Here's a story.
USA today, Americans depend more on federal aid than ever.
Doesn't it seem like now every day we get another report like this, it is exhausting just to read about it, let alone try to think about how to reverse this.
Wages now count for a lower share of income than ever before.
Wages, the product of people's work, now count for a lower share of personal income than ever before, even including the Great Depression.
And that was when 25% of the U.S. workforce was on relief.
So unless people have given up eating, more Americans must be on the dole in one form or another than ever before.
And the story says benefits.
There you go, my new favorite word.
Benefits have almost doubled since 1990, and we wonder why the deficit's spiraling completely out of control.
We haven't even begun to face the consequences of all the baby boomers retiring.
And meanwhile, the only solution that Obama, the Democrats, offers to keep on doing exactly what got us here in the first place.
Americans depended more on government assistance in 2010 than at any other time in the nation's history.
A USA Today analysis of federal data finds the trend shows few signs of easing, even though the economic recovery is nearly two years old.
There is no economic recovery.
And if there was one, it's gone.
Thanks to rising food and gasoline prices, which is thanks to inflation, which is thanks to Ben Bernanke.
A record 18.3% of the nation's total personal income was a payment from the government for Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, unemployment benefits, and other programs in 2010.
Wages accounted for the lowest share of income, 51%, since the government began keeping track in 1929.
And the real sad thing about this is this is the plan.
This is the 40-year plan.
This is the essence of patience.
It has taken them 40 years, well, 50 if you count, starting from the Great Depression era, to get here, maybe 60.
So in other words, folks, wages now count for a lower share of personal income, even including the Great Depression, when 25% of Americans are out of work or on welfare.
So how do you call yourself an independent and vote for the Democrat Party, which is all about total dependence?
The Democrat Party is out to secure total dependence on government.
There's nothing independent about the Democrat Party.
And now the independents have lost their virtue, suddenly confused and clueless, according to this writer.
To a sympathetic eye, this result might connote a pleasant openness to contrasting opinions, perhaps a desire to give each group of partisans the benefit of the doubt.
This is how they used to think about the independence.
Yeah, see?
A pleasant openness.
These people are not closed-minded.
A pleasant openness to contrasting opinions.
But I think it demonstrates a basic thoughtlessness, he says, at a time of economic peril, when one party wants to protect the essential structure of our limited welfare state, the other party seeks to destroy it.
Most independents appear to be seduced by the last thing they've heard.
Oh.
So the new republic claims that what's happening here is the welfare state's being destroyed.
The Republican Party has targeted it.
And the independents are being gulled into supporting this.
Now, there is nothing about the welfare state being destroyed when Americans depend on federal aid more than ever when wages are the smallest percentage of income they have ever been since the Great Depression.
There is nothing about the welfare state that's being destroyed.
This guy at the New Republic is convinced it is, and it's because you stupid independents, you clueless hordes, have lost your way.
I got to go.
Quick time out.
We'll be back and continue after this.
By the way, this author of the New Republic piece on how the independents, this is a clueless hoard, this a history professor at Georgetown University has an upcoming book called American Dreamers, How the Left Changed the Nation.
He's not out of touch or anything, is he?
American Dreamers, how the left changed.
Well, wait a minute.
You know, that may not be.
You dream of destruction.
You finally bring it about.
Could be an accurate title, depending on what the contents of the book are.
I may have jumped too quickly in there.
Julie in Toronto, Canada, as we start on the phones.
Great to have you with us today.
How are you?
Thank you, Rush.
It is so great to talk to you.
I have a question that I want to ask you.
The United States is at a great tipping point.
It's at a tipping point where it has never been in the past.
And we constantly hear different prominent people in the GOP saying that they're not ready to lead.
They're not ready.
And this is my question.
I don't understand how these people have the luxury to sit back and wait until they are ready.
And I am specifically speaking about Chris Christie.
And I'm sure there are other great conservatives.
There are.
I'll give you a couple of names of people I wish would throw their hats in.
I'll give you three.
In addition to Chris Christie, Alan West, Bobby Jindal, and Marco Rubio.
Okay.
And I want to ask them, did Churchill have the luxury of waiting until everything was right while Hitler was amassing his army, while Hitler had his agenda?
Did Churchill and the last great evil or one of the great evils in our history in the world, did he have the luxury to wait?
No, he didn't.
His country needed him, and he stepped up to the plate.
And I want to say to Chris Christie and all the other gentlemen and women that you mention all the time, Rush, that your country needs you now.
We don't need leaders four years from now.
Now is the moment.
We need you now.
Come forward.
Why do you think they won't?
Politics has got to be politics because it can't be ignorance.
It can't be that they don't see it.
Why is it that a little person like me and I see it?
They're in the midst of it and they can't.
I have no idea.
I can only guess it might be that they think voters don't think they have enough experience.
Been governor for two years.
Ah, here's a climber.
Here's the same thing.
Marco Rubio, not even a year yet in the Senate.
Now you want to be president.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know what you're really going to do.
Maybe they're afraid of that kind of reaction.
No.
They just don't have the resume yet.
Yes, but no.
We are looking for leaders.
Why are we responding to Donald Trump even though we know he's not a conservative?
Because he's leading.
We need somebody, though, who's true.
We need the Chris Christie's.
We need the guys who are going to fight, like Churchill.
And I go back to Churchill because we all recognize what happened in the Second World War and the Great Evil.
They did not have the luxury.
Hitler was coming.
What do you think Obama's doing?
Wait a second.
Churchill's the only guy that knew Hitler was coming.
Nobody else believed it.
And that may be one of the you may be.
Well, I'm out of time.
I'll explain this when we come back because I really got a time problem here.
You have to consider one possibility on this.
It may well be that none of these Republicans, unannounced or announced, really think that we are in that big a crisis.
I mean, it's possible.
It's possible that they don't look at it the way we do.
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