All Episodes
Previous Next
May 12, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:44
May 12, 2011, Thursday, Hour #2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Views expressed by the host on this program documented to be almost always right in 96.
No, 99.6% of the time.
And I am Rush Limbaugh, the big voice on the right with show prep for the rest of the media.
Which follows.
That, after all, is what this program is.
Looking forward to chatting you up.
Telephone number 800-282-2882.
And the email address L Rushbow at EIBNet.com.
So I did my usual review of emails here in the top of the hour break.
And understandably and almost predictably, there were a few who thought that our first caller of the day, and to some extent me, I, Rush Limbaugh, a little tough on Karen Gallo, the woman seven months pregnant, thought she had been hired in a secure job only to learn she might be laid off at the zoo in Washington at the town hall meeting day, asking Obama what he would do.
Thought that the first caller was a little bit insensitive to her circumstances, and that I perhaps myself was um not exhibiting a proper amount of compassion.
Let me deal with that for just a second and try to explain something and expand on a theory that I developed many, many moons ago.
I developed this theory back in the eighties.
I was working in Sacramento, and at the time, the South African regime was under assault, apart Nelson Mandela getting out of prison.
And the Reverend Jackson and others in the American civil rights movement were leading a an effort to boycott all investment in South Africa.
And of course, the left, universities and certain businesses, decided that'd be a great thing to divest in South Africa, a bunch of racist creeps.
So the race was on to divest in South Africa.
But after a while, it lost its steam.
And in Sacramento, people would call me on the air there and ask me why I thought that story had such a relatively short lifespan.
I said it's because of one thing.
People's emotional reservoirs are just not that large.
They have to continually be replenished, and you can only feel sorry for something for so long, and after that, you lose patience with it and say, look, what's all what good is all of this sympathy doing.
What action is somebody taking to resolve the situation?
Fine and dandy sit here and wring our hands and talk about how sad it is, but then what?
I think in this country.
As I said, there are two types of cultures.
There are two types of people.
One type expects things to be provided to them in some form or another, either ongoing in perpetuity by their parents or by government, and any other type of person in our culture wants nothing to do with that, certainly not with the government, and they want to fend for themselves.
They want to take care of themselves.
They don't want to be obligated, and they don't want to be in this prison of always having to depend on somebody else, because there really isn't any comfort in that.
One of the reasons this woman's such a state of angst is that she for some reason doesn't think she can depend on herself.
And so the left is trying to create a society of only the first kind of people, where the federal government's going to take care of everybody, is going to answer every complaint like this, where people who have problems are going to first go to someplace in government to get them solved.
I think the second group of people wants no part of that are offended by it.
In fact, I know they are.
I know the people that traditionally self-starting self-reliant people don't have a lot of patience.
For otherwise intelligent people who seem to just want to sit around and wait for somebody else to do it for them.
But in addition to that, ever since the 90s, given I say the current generation, current culture, current political atmosphere.
The campaign of the 90s, and I did predates this, obviously, you can take it all the way back to the 60s, but I for the modern era that people, everybody listening now is old enough to be able to understand what I'm talking about, related to the 90s.
We have had as part of our daily politics this argument, who should provide for who?
And it has gone on and on and on.
And the Democrat Party has become more and more intense on suggesting people like this woman, I mean, they look at what they've done.
They make a circus out of every unfortunate event in life, and they bring victims, a parade of victims, up to congressional hearings and Senate hearings.
People don't have medicine, they don't have food, or they don't have a job because of those guys on the other side of the aisle, the Republicans.
After a while, your emotional reservoirs fill you is empty.
You just don't have any more room to feel sorry.
You finally start to say, well, do it yourself.
What do you expect me to do?
I got enough problems in my life.
I don't know, for example, who takes a job expecting it's forever.
So when the woman first thing, I expected it was to be secure.
What world are you living in?
Is the reaction most normal people have.
No job is forever.
People change jobs constantly.
They either get fired or they move up on their own.
This goes without saying.
So it's not folks a lack of sensitivity.
And it's not a lack of sympathy, it's realization that this woman can ask the president all day long what he would do, but he's not going to do a damn thing for her.
A, he doesn't know what to do himself, B, he doesn't have the time, and B, she's just a prop.
Or C, she's just a prop.
When I say that we conservatives love people and that we want the best for everybody, something that's understood in that.
That is that we instinctively know that there's nobody better at looking out for you than you.
Nobody can look out for you better, nobody's going to care as much about you, and nobody is going to be as concerned about your welfare as you are.
So just willingly throwing yourself on the mercy of other people when you sound on a soundbite like you're totally capable of handling the situations, and when it's something everybody else goes through.
There's just, I think what it is in this country, given the abundant opportunity, the abundant prosperity, this comfort with being a victim, it just rubs a lot of us the wrong way.
I have no desire to be a victim of anything, but more and more people apparently do want to classify themselves as victims.
She relates her circumstances.
And she says, Well, what would you do?
Well, he would probably sue the government for discrimination, is what he would do.
He would, if it were, if he were in her shoes, that's what he would do.
That's what he taught students at the University of Chicago to do, you sue everybody on the basis of discrimination.
So it's not a lack of compassion, it's not a lack of sensitivity, it is more than anything just the end of patience.
How long?
How many more decades?
How many more years are we going to be subjected to these sob stories?
And by extension, how many more years are we going to subtly be blamed for all of these problems other people face?
And that's at the root of this.
Most people go through hard knocks their whole life, and most people find ways to overcome the obstacles that are placed in their way.
It's what life is.
So complaining about something that's normal, obstacles in the way of one's life, and then asking the president to do something about it.
That's not a success track.
That's not a route that most people utilize.
And so frustrates people more than more than anything else.
And then if you add to that, people like that are held up as um role models or examples of this is why we ought to be doing what we're doing.
That's uh it just it just rubs people the um wrong way.
Because what if everybody was that way?
What wouldn't there would not be a United States of America if everybody was that way?
But this regime wants to put as many people in her shoes or her situation as possible.
Her question music to Obama's ears.
What can you do for me?
That's exactly what he wants, as many Americans as possible, asking government, agency here, agency there, each and every day.
I mentioned the oil company executives.
They're up there today being grilled on how unfair they treat people unfairly.
Here's an opening statement.
This is um the Senate Finance Committee is doing the hearing of the Conico Phillips chairman of CEO, James Mulva, testified.
Here's a portion of what he said in his opening remarks.
For our company, we earned 11.4 billion dollars last year.
And we paid $8.3 billion in income taxes as well as $3.1 billion in other taxes.
So our total worldwide taxes paid actually equaled our income.
So any fair-minded person would likely agree that we pay our full share.
Do you hear that?
Total worldwide taxes paid equaled their income.
And these people are being told they're not paying their fair share.
Senator Schumer asked an oil CEO if he thought that calling for an end to oil subsidies is on American or not.
And the oil exec tried to answer, and Schumer interrupted, cut him off, said yes or no.
Yes or no, is calling for an end to oil subsidies on American or no.
Trying to trap these people in sound bites.
Now here's John Watson.
John Watson is the uh Chevron Corporation CEO.
Senator Jay Rockefeller interrogating him.
How much profit on a barrel of oil do you have to make to uh to not be needful of these subsidies?
Now we think you don't need, but you say your life depends on we don't think you need these subsidies at all, but at some point, you know, you you wouldn't need the subsidies.
I I think you're there already, but you don't.
You don't.
So at what point do you think you don't need these subsidies?
As we've described, we don't receive subsidies, Senator.
What we do require is a reasonable return on our invested capital.
And I would tell you that I don't think the American people want shared sacrifice.
I think they want shared prosperity.
And what we have to do is we have to offer it statement.
But do you understand how out of touch that is?
We don't get to shared prosperity until we get to shared sacrifice.
Our oil field workers that are unable to be unable to work today because we can't receive drilling permits or there are leases that are not being made available.
They feel that.
Not rolling over, folks.
The oil execs are not rolling over.
And of course, here's Jay Rockefeller wouldn't have a dime were it not for the oil industry.
Would not have a dime were it not for the oil industry.
As we've described, we don't receive subsidies, Senator.
Uh we require a reasonable return on our investment.
And of course, the point he made that we want shared prosperity.
Oh, that's that you can't say that to a liberal because it hits home.
That's like grand slam home run.
So Rockefeller has to recover quickly from wait a minute, wait a shared prosperity.
You don't talk about prosperity when liberals are running the show.
That's not how they advance their game.
Shared misery is what they want.
Shared anxiety, shared depression, shared misery, shared prosperity, those are those that that's code words for conservatism.
No, no, no, we're not gonna have that here.
So Rockefeller says, You understand how out of touch that is?
We don't get to shared prosperity until we get the shared sacrifice.
Was somebody care to try to define that for me.
Is he saying that the oil companies do not provide shared prosperity?
Because they most certainly do.
Well, what does this mean?
You don't get the shared prosperity until we get to shared sacrifice.
It ought to be incumbent upon Rockefeller to define shared sacrifice.
You and I know what it is.
The American people ought to be told what they mean by this.
I wonder, is Jay Rockefeller ever been in touch with the so-called common man?
Why isn't Richard Trumke, the AFL CIO hooligan?
Why isn't he up there about the damage that he's done to industry and jobs?
Richard Trump and his union guys have done far more damage to jobs and industry than the oil execs have.
Why isn't the SEIU up there explaining how they destroy jobs and drive up costs?
And why isn't Rockefeller divesting himself of all those trust fund monies he inherited from the old Standard Oil?
Without that, he wouldn't have a dime.
Why isn't he exhibiting leadership here?
Quick timeout.
We'll be back.
I'll grab your phone calls when.
Folks, what could be more out of touch?
Then believing or thinking that increasing taxes on big oil by 21 billion dollars over the next ten years is going to lower the price of gas.
How out of touch do you have to be to believe that?
We're talking 21 billion dollars here.
Chump change is not a factor in the price of gasoline.
It's just another show trial.
It's predictable.
Every time the gasoline price goes up, this kind of thing happens.
Every time.
It's I'm sure it's part of a revolving door joke made between all the participants.
The problem is that when the Democrats prevail in this stuff, they actually do harm to people.
That's the problem with it.
Somebody really needs to tell uh tell Jay Rockefeller, uh, folks, and the rest of the Democrats that most of the oil in the world is owned by government.
Governments.
Did you know that?
It really is.
Five percent of the world's oil resources are owned by big oil.
Ninety-five percent, ninety-five percent of all oil reserves and resources are owned by governments.
Private sector controls just five percent of it.
And that's according to the April 16th, 2007 edition of uh Forbes magazine.
So all of this dog and pony show.
Over five percent of the oil.
And in fact, even Max Baucus, top Democrat here.
Gas prices are not the issue.
Our bill removing subsidies from the oil companies is not gonna change the price of the gas pump.
Mac Max Box, a Democrat saying this.
You know, this is not gonna change the price at the gasoline pump.
That's not the issue.
I don't see that as an issue at all.
The issue I see is who shares.
Right.
But the issue of the American people is the price of gas.
A witch hunt is not what they care about.
So this is not about the supply, it's not about the price, it's not about it's a it's a show trial.
Democrats to show how tough they are against big evil oil.
Rachel in Cincinnati, glad you called.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Russ.
Thanks for taking my call.
It's an honor to talk with you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much for all that you do getting the truth out.
Really appreciate it.
I have two comments.
One is related to the chick at the town hall.
Yeah.
And um, you're right, I guess I call on the heartless where I listen to that, and you know, I have no compassion for that.
I want to say where is your sense of personal responsibility?
The first thing is you get your priorities and you don't get the house if you don't have a job.
And it sounds like she's got a husband there, so maybe she should talk to him instead of asking Barack Obama what you want.
Well, we don't know anything about the husband.
That's one thing we don't have the full slate of information.
We don't know what her husband does.
And We presume she's got a husband because she's pregnant.
But that's the only reason why.
Well, she says that her husband and her are building the house, so she puts them out there.
And then the other question I had was you know, if um related to that is if Obama interferes and she gets to keep her job, what about the other person that's number eight that now becomes seven, whatever on the list and loses their job.
Um they get to go to the president and ask for help so they keep her job.
My guess is that precisely because of that, a miracle will take place, and and and somehow uh the reasons for letting go of these seven or eight people will have been found to have been in error.
Uh and because of the intercession of uh our compassionate president, everything is gonna end up being fine.
If I had to guess the outcome here.
Okay, we went to the Smithsonian website, and we've got a miniature version of Karen Gallo's resume.
Now, this is interesting.
Uh stick stick with me on this, because I'm gonna take this in a different direction than you might expect.
Although, you know, at the same time, folks, before we get to that, I just want to suggest this.
The president uh what was it?
Yes, day before yesterday or yesterday, days run together with me.
Whenever he went to El Paso, was that Tuesday?
He went to El Paso and he said that we want to build a moat.
We Republicans want to build a moat and put alligators in it.
Uh as a means of uh dealing with our immigration problem.
This woman is gonna be losing her job at a zoo.
Well, if if if we Republicans indeed gonna build that moat, put alligators in it, she works in a zoo, maybe she can watch the alligators for us.
At the moat.
Be responsible, make sure they are fed properly so they don't kill anybody else.
Uh got zoo experience.
We we like come up with creative solutions to these problems.
That's what we conservatives are known for.
And somebody's gonna take care of the alligators in the moat.
According to the website, Karen Gallo is the senior public affairs specialist at the Smithsonian National Zoo.
She in the past has been the public relations manager at Six Flags America, a senior account executive at TBS, Turner Broadcasting System, slash at the NBA, slash at Golan Harris, senior public relations specialist at SeaWorld.
She was educated at Bowling Green State University.
She is or was married.
Her maiden name is Korkowski.
All this, by the way, you could have found yourself if you wanted to go to their website, which we did.
Now her job title, Senior Public Affairs Specialist, Smithsonian National Zoo.
So she's got media outreach experience.
She's PR.
It sounds like a high-paying job, or well paid job, which you'd have to be well paid to be able to build a house in Washington these days.
So uh it's from LinkedIn.
Is it the website LinkedIn?
I get you know, I don't do it, but I'm every now and then maybe three times a week now, I get an email from a friend of mine who says uh so-and-so wants you to join LinkedIn with him, and I just I delete it.
I don't even go there.
But that's where we went to find this.
Now, let's take a different tack here at Karen Gallo.
She shows up, she works for the Smithsonian, she was a zoo, she's sh she shows up at the town hall.
We will not ask how she ended up there if she was random or she was chosen.
We're not interested in that, at least for this little exercise.
But if you go through her soundbite, if you if you listen to it, she was and the tone of her voice, she was doing what she thought she was supposed to do.
Job federal government.
Uh she's Billy House, her husband.
Uh she's uh trying to climb her corporate ladder.
She's trying to improve on every previous job that she's had.
Now Stick with me on this nerdly.
Don't start getting cynical on me yet.
She's married.
She's having a kid.
She's building a home.
She's working, she is.
I mean, that's in some people's minds a pretty good description of the American dream in progress.
She's it.
I mean, she's the package.
PR specialist.
In fact, Obama might even hire her for the campaign once he finds out what she does.
She went to college.
She graduated with honors.
I mean, she's got, you know, there's a there's a method in this country.
There's a track.
You do this, and you're going to end up okay.
And this woman appears to be it.
She appears to have followed all of the guidelines and all the conventional wisdom instruction.
However, panic has set in.
You can hear it in her voice.
She's done everything as she was raised to do.
She's done everything she was taught to do.
She's gone to college.
She has gotten prestigious jobs, we assume well paid.
She has climbed the corporate ladder.
And now, after doing everything that she thought success required, she has been overcome with panic because it's all on the verge of falling apart.
Stick with me on this.
Why is she in the midst of panic?
Why does she fear that things are starting to fall apart?
Why does she fear losing her job?
Why does she fear maybe not getting her house?
Obviously, she got a construction loan that has to be converted to a mortgage.
And that's what she's waiting on.
That's why she's worried about what if she can't get that loan.
We hear horror stories day in and day out.
People can't get loans.
Banks, places others are not lending, other than to people who can't pay them back.
More on that in a moment.
So she's got panic all around her.
It has set in because she followed every prescription, and it's about to blow up.
And so the question is why?
Why is the panic setting in?
And the answer is simple.
Democrat Party policies.
She is where she is precisely because of the Democrat Party.
She is not alone.
A lot of people feel they're falling off the same cliff that Karen Gallo thinks that she's falling off of.
And people are scared.
A lot of people's jobs are vanishing.
A lot of people's homes are underwater and worthless now.
A lot of people have to genuinely be concerned about the price of gasoline.
And are they going to be able to be as mobile?
Both getting to and from work and in leisure activities.
And then when you look down the road, there's no hope for any improvement.
There hasn't been any hope for any improvement two years.
So in her case, what can she do?
Well, she ends up at a place to ask the top dog.
And this is where when we hear it, oh gosh, that was the everything I said at the beginning of this hour, our emotional reservoirs are tapped out here, folks.
We just, at some point, you want to grab these people by the shoulder and say, don't ask him, do it yourself.
Well, in her mind, she has been doing it herself.
It's all falling apart on her.
What does she do now?
Does she decide to open her own business?
Well, probably she'd be pregnant.
The birth is uh in early June.
Get a different job in the private sector?
She did make the mistake assuming this was a secure job.
There's no such thing as that.
But what if she does maybe stay home and raise this kid in an apartment if they can't get the loan to finish building the house?
And she's even right, folks, in this scenario, she's even right in who she chose to ask what to do.
Because she's asking the architect of the problem.
So she gets a chance to ask Obama what would he do?
And the truth is that's who we all ought to be asking.
What the hell do we do now that you've done what you've done?
We're all asking, how the hell do we undo his policies?
How do we undo the damage that he has wrought?
Because it's causing all of us to have fears like Karen Gallo expressed at the town hall today.
We need help in undoing the moratorium on drilling.
We need help on undoing and repealing Obamacare.
We need help on making sure he doesn't raise taxes.
We need help securing the border and making sure that all the issues that are accompanied of that do not balloon out of our control, further placing us in debt.
We do need help in getting loans and making sure the only people who can get them are people who can pay them back rather than people who can't.
And we do need help in getting rid of all kinds of regulations that end up as obstacles to progress and so forth.
So we've looked at it from both ways here.
Now I have no clue, and it doesn't matter to me now for this purpose, what her politics, I don't care if she voted for Obama or didn't, it doesn't matter.
But in terms of simple terms of sharing a lack of security and panic and fear over the future of the country, she has echoed a lot of people.
And she was asking the guy who's directly responsible for it.
Now he's not gonna give her productive answers.
All he did was tell her that her problems are due to Republicans.
That's what he told her.
She probably knows that's not going to help her.
But at the end of the thing here, we we all need to ask Obama.
Where the heck are we going?
Why are we in this handbasket?
We are in a handbasket to hell.
Why?
What are you doing?
Why are you doing this?
Here's how she describes herself on her job on her Facebook page.
I pitch all the cool news stories at the country's best zoo.
That's how she describes her.
She pitches the best cool news stories in a country's best zoo.
She would be perfect for the Obama campaign.
She'd be perfect for the Obama campaign.
And snurdly she studied broadcast journalism and public speaking at Bowling Green State University.
Thank you.
So there's a number of different my point is that there are a lot of different ways of looking at this.
I'm not being sympathetic at all.
I'm saying that whether she knows it or not, she happened to voice a lot of people's fears and concerns.
Where people break with her is what we wouldn't do is show up at a town hall and ask this guy to help us.
We might show up and say, What the hell have you done?
But we wouldn't show up asking for that.
That's where the break occurs.
That's what, if people's sensibilities are offended, it's because she shows up after having this sterling apparent career where she's done it the right way.
She's, I mean, I'm sure she got her own grades, I'm sure she got her own jobs with whatever you know natural occurrences take place, you know, networking and so forth.
But at the end of all that, she goes to Obama for help.
That's that's where the disconnect occurs.
Most of us wouldn't dare show up asking him to help us if we showed up to ask him and Amy, why are you doing this to this country?
All right, let me take a break.
It'll be a brief one.
We'll come back and resume with your phone calls.
And we have more reaction people.
Here's a great illustration.
I've got three Hall stacks of show prep here.
And I had no idea that this babe, I had no idea this babe had shown up.
I had no idea there was a town hall today until I got the soundbite roster from Cookie.
And Karen Gallo's soundbite is number six.
The whole show has been on.
Well, the one thing I prepped was the town hall did illustrate my prediction of how they're going to run the campaign.
We got to this soundbite number six, and bouncing off of that has pretty much been it since.
Which, you know, as the host here, it fascinates you.
I've got all this stuff.
Uh, and haven't scratched the surface of any of it yet.
Because it's one thing, which I didn't even know it happened until 10 minutes prior to the uh start of the program.
By the way, um, just there are other things, and I don't want to spend the whole day on this.
Frankly, I don't know what else there is left to be said about it.
I'm gonna let you, because you've been on hold to talk about it, but I mean I've said pretty much everything there can be said.
I've covered this in every angle possible, correct?
What else left to say is there?
Now, this uh latest leak of vital intel.
AP folks, by a story justifying their biased poll today.
What does it say here?
Um, some conservatives are critical of their poll.
Wonder who they're talking about there.
Some conservatives are critical.
This is the poll that showed Obama's approval at 60%.
Some conservatives are critical, and they've got a whole story.
This is how we always do it.
There's nothing new here.
They dumbfounded.
Anybody's uh scratching their heads over their rigged poll.
They make it's rigged, it's how they do it all the time.
And they've got story after story building bin Laden up.
Oh, yeah, this guy, he was still, don't give me this Khalid Sheikh Muhammad's stuff.
It was bin Laden.
Bin Laden was still running a show.
He was calling the shots, he was doing all the planning.
I was I mean, he was so involved, some of the younger Al-Qaeda guys are kind of ticked off.
He wouldn't broaden his horizons.
He did nothing but hate America.
And there's a lot of other countries to hate too.
But bin Laden only hated America.
They wanted to branch out and hate a bunch of other people.
All of this, of course, is for the purpose of establishing even more the notion that only Obama was capable of understanding this and pulling off this mission.
And of course, all this intel that we found, this treasure trove, according to the latest leak of vital intel, which are the latest news reports on the raid, bin Laden kept a handwritten diary.
You saw that, right?
Bin Laden kept a handwritten diary.
Apparently, Osama bin Laden woke up every morning and tried to figure out how to bring down America.
He sounds just like some people in the Democrat Party.
Honestly, I said during the campaign of 2004 and the campaign 2008, I said to Zev Chaffin, Zeph Chapitz was writing that big book on me, An Army of One.
I said, you know, I if everything I believed I heard echoed by people like Mahmoud Ahmedini Zad, or in a in a tape from bin Laden, I'd be embarrassed.
If if my stated views, if my stated opinions and policies for my own country I heard out of the mouths of Ahmadini Zad and Bin Laden, I'd be embarrassed.
They don't seem to be bothered by it at all.
Which is why I say he sits down and he writes ways to Bring down America every morning in his diary.
Sounds just like some people in the Democrat Party that I know.
By the way, folks, I actually I've thought about this.
I don't believe that uh Obama gave the kill order on bin Laden.
Somebody else had to do it, and I think I figured it out.
Kathleen Sibelius, I think, issued the kill order on bin Laden.
Look, bin Laden was over 50.
Uh, he needed very expensive dialysis.
Kidney failure was happening.
Uh, it sounded to me like he was just asking for it.
I don't think they wanted to spend the money to keep him alive at Club Gitmos.
▲
Export Selection