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May 20, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:53
May 20, 2011, Friday, Hour #2
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Yeah, I see that.
Obama and Netanyahu are going to hold a joint press conference.
That could be fun, but I have my doubts about that.
I see Netanyahu under a giant thumb at this press conference.
I don't think whatever happens at this press conference, it will not be representative of anything that might happen privately between those two.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday, serving humanity, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Great to have you with us, my friends, on Friday.
You who call and who succeed in getting past Mr. Snurgly and get on the air can talk about whatever you want.
A golden opportunity for those of you who feel discriminated against Monday through Thursday, who feel hemmed in, who think it's unfair that you can only talk about things that interest me.
We'll never forget this is a benevolent dictatorship.
There is no right to speech, free or otherwise, in this program other than for me.
But as I say, the dictatorship is benevolent.
And on Friday, whatever you wish to talk about, you can.
Telephone numbers 800-282-2882 and the email address LRushbo at EIBnet.com.
This could be the last Open Line Friday.
What with the Rapture Tomorrow?
Well, you never know.
It's out there.
This same preacher made the same prediction back in 1994.
And the preacher's church is worth a lot of money.
On the last figure I saw, the church is worth $72 million, which is not bad, you know, for a one-room church.
Anyway, my friends, no, I have to go to a party.
I've got a giant weekend party.
I've got to go to a wedding.
I've got to go to a rehearsal dinner and then the wedding and the wedding aftermath.
And then the reception and then the aftermath of the reception.
Well, there might not be.
The wedding is scheduled at 4.30 tomorrow.
So it is nip and tuck as to whether or not there will be a wedding.
But if there is, we'll be there.
We'll be in position to attend it.
Rasmus has a pollout.
I don't know what it's really worth, but 71% of likely U.S. voters believe that Palestinian leaders should be required to acknowledge Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.
Only 8% disagree and say this is not essential for a Middle Eastern peace agreement.
21% aren't sure.
I can tell you that it's irrelevant, except for the fact that Obama's on the wrong side of the issue as it relates to the mindset of the American people.
Folks, this next story, there's certain things that get to me that really bother me for the future of the country.
Obama is one as an umbrella, and everything that happens underneath the Obama umbrella that happens portends problems for the future of the country.
But there's some cultural things out there that I'm sure bother you too.
But this one continues to gnaw at me.
And I ask myself, maybe I'm taking it too seriously or assigning too much weight to it, too much importance.
Maybe it's not that big a deal.
Story is from Forbes.
Nearly 60% of parents provide financial support to adult children.
And not mentioned in the story is that many parents have their kids on their health care program until they're 26 to boot.
This month, young adults across the country are donning graduation robes and tweaking resumes while parents get the cameras and the Kleenex ready.
At the podium, guest speakers will motivate and inspire, but they will likely omit one tiny detail.
Many of these graduates will remain financially dependent on their parents for years.
According to a new survey, 59% of parents provide financial support to their adult children who are no longer in scruple.
An online poll by Forbes Woman and the National Endowment for Financial Education.
1,074 U.S. adults, non-students aged 18 to 39 and their parents was conducted by Harris Interactive in May.
Parents are continuing their involvement longer than we expected, said the chief of the National Endowment for Financial Education, Ted Beck.
Financial pressures are higher for this generation.
If I was in their shoes, I would be concerned.
Young adults are feeling the heat.
65% of young adults in the survey say the financial pressures faced by their generation are tougher than those faced by previous generations, and one in three parents agree that their offspring are worse off.
Today's young adults graduated into one of the worst recessions since the Depression.
They carry a crippling college debt burden.
Above the national average of 9%, unemployment rates spiked to 14.2% among 20 to 24-year-olds, 10.2% in the 25 to 29 bracket.
Meanwhile, the average four-year college student borrowed $24,000 in 2009, double the $12,000 borrowed in 1993.
Parents were expecting their kids to get jobs that were high-paying enough to manage payments, but they're finding that they can't.
Said Gene Chetsky, the financial editor for The Today Show.
You just don't want to see your kids struggle.
In fact, among the parents offering financial support, 43% say that they are legitimately concerned for their kids' financial well-being.
37% say that they have struggled.
They don't want their kids to struggle, too.
That's understandable, but that's not good.
This idea that kids shouldn't struggle, kids should feel no pain, that kids should have a paved road, it's not good.
Thus, the parents are providing financial assistance in record numbers and on a scale that ranges from occasional cash to complete dependence.
The majority of parental help is housing, 50%.
Living expenses, 48%.
Transportation costs, 41%.
Insurance coverage, 35%.
Spending money, 29%.
Medical bills, 28%.
New York-based psychologist and author of Face It, Vivian Diller, PhD, believes the trend extends beyond the economy.
In the last 20 to 30 years, the family structure has become more child-centered.
Boomer parents, very willing to make sacrifices for their kids, giving them the sense that it would continue until they were on their feet.
Now parents are supporting their kids' lifestyles.
Diller says the trend may be bringing families closer.
Yeah, just like unemployment.
Unemployment was bringing families closer.
You notice all these stories that have to do with economic hardship.
Why?
There's always a silver lining.
Why, in fact, there is a profound benefit to economic hardship.
Parents are once again united with their kids who ran away to go to school, but now the kids can't live on their own, can't find jobs, can't support themselves.
Parents don't want to see Proto-Johnny and Mary suffer.
So Big Johnny and Mary show back up, live at home, live off their parents, and get closer together.
What a crock.
Big Johnny and Little Mary are out the door as fast as they can, even when they're living at home.
However, increasing financial support could have dangerous side effects because they've been protected.
Some children don't learn reasonable ways to manage money.
They run into trouble, Diller warns.
You can enable kids to become more independent, but you can disable them too.
Look, I know I don't have kids, and people say, you really don't know how you would react in a situation like this, Russian, unless you had kids.
That's probably true.
So all I have to go on is my own life experience.
And I couldn't wait to get out of the house.
I could not wait to be living on my own.
I didn't want to be in the prison of dependency.
I didn't want that at all.
I just, I look, these are, you see these stories every now and then.
This is a step beyond the stories we get about graduating college students moving back home because they can't afford a house.
But then you find they're staying there until they're age 35 or 40.
And at some point, you have to ask yourself, well, now, wait a second, how is it the parents are doing so well that they can continue to support their kids long into adulthood and the kids can't do one thing to help support themselves?
What a dramatic drop-off we've faced here.
What a dramatic, I mean, you talk about the difference between the rich and the poor, the gap.
Well, that's my point.
How many parents have this endless supply of money to be able to provide for their kids living at home until they're 35 or 40 years old?
Where do parents get all this money?
This is, I don't know, does not bode well for our culture and our society, if you ask me.
Folks, you know, things are tumultuous in our country right now, and they're economically challenging, there's no question, but they have been in the past as well.
And people handled adversity differently in the past.
Now, it's almost like if these stories are really representative of a genuine cultural trend, then it would seem to me that there's been a real change in fortitude, mental makeup of today's kids.
That the first sign of adversity, it's cave-in time.
What do you mean before the first sign of adversity, it's cave-in time?
I just, it's, you know, I hear people talk about how tough things are.
And I, you can't deny that.
But, you know, I've got this belief.
I'm a baby boomer.
And we had it easy compared to our parents.
Like I love to say we had to invent our traumas to tell ourselves what a tough time we were having.
Because everybody wants to think they're living through tough times.
And everybody wants to think they're triumphing over adversity.
And a lot of people do.
But when you have to start inventing your traumas, my parents, my grandparents' generation, did not have time to wallow in the poor me aspects of life.
They didn't have time.
They had to fend off the Russians and the Germans and whoever the heck else.
They didn't have time.
They created abundancy and prosperity.
Their offspring have the time to be so self-aware and self-focused.
But I look around the country and if there's any group of people doing well, it proves to me that somebody else can do well too.
But not if they tune out and forget it and say, oh, well, gosh, I got all this debt and I can't get a job.
I'm going to move back home with the mom.
And I realize I'm ruffling some of your feathers out there.
I know what you're saying.
You don't know what it's like, Rush.
You haven't lived it, blah, blah.
Now, that's where I would disagree with you.
I have lived it in a different time.
But I have lived it.
Well, I left home for good when I was 20.
Left home for good when I was 20.
And I did go back for three months when I got canned in Pittsburgh.
Well, no, my mom probably had to kick me out.
Because see, I never, I was working from the time I was 14 on.
So I never really had summer time or any of that.
So I was kind of catching up on lost leisure time.
But so I hung around for three or four months at home.
When I was, what would have been 23, my mom got a phone call from a Kansas City radio station, and I said, get a number.
And she took the call and told me I was going to Kansas City the next day to meet with the program director of a radio station she had set up since I didn't have the guts that I want to get off the chase lounge and take the call.
But that's even instructive, isn't it?
Today's parents appear to want their kids hanging around the house.
All I know, maybe I'm making too big a deal of it, and I'm not trying to be an old foe, fogey about it, and say that only the way it happened when I was young is the right way or any of that.
But just something gnaws at me that this is that too many people giving up too soon, cowering in the face of adversity that everybody faces multiple times in their lives.
You can always come up with an excuse for not doing something.
You can always construct an excuse for failing that does not involve you.
Anybody can do that.
It's just it seems so commonplace.
So many more people happen to be doing it these days.
At any rate, must take a break.
Don't want to take away from your precious time.
Open Line Friday.
We'll get back to the phones when we return.
Open line Friday, Rush Lindbos serving humanity simply by showing up back to the phones, El Paso, Texas.
Scott, great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello, sir.
Hi, Rush.
How are you doing?
Very good, sir.
Thank you.
I've been with you since 1988, and I'm thrilled and honored to speak with you.
It's my pleasure, sir.
I wanted to bring up today the point of male circumcision.
We're told consistently by liberals and Democrats that the government should not be in charge of women's uteruses or their vaginas.
Yeah, keep your hands off my body.
In San Francisco, they want to put their hands on our penises.
And I think that once it starts there, it's going to go across the United States.
I reject it.
I think the government should keep their hands off our penises.
Yeah, it is an interesting way to look at this.
Although they're not talking about hands, they're talking about sharper.
Well, actually, they are talking about hands now that you mentioned it.
Yes, you're right.
You're right.
Well, it's just aerodynamic.
What gives them the right exactly right?
The same people, and these are San Francisco libs.
You're right.
Same people who say, my body is my temple.
You can't tell me what I can and can't do with my own body.
Now I want to move.
It will be interesting to see how this vote goes.
They got 12,000 signatures or 7,000 signatures to qualify.
I'll be fascinated to see how, because this No Circ bunch, folks, has been working on this for 25 years or whatever it is since 1984.
It's the National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers.
They want to eliminate circumcision.
At least up to age 18.
After that, you can choose to be circumcised on your own on your 19th birthday.
But up to age 18, you can't do anything about it if you're born in San Francisco.
It's kind of a funny thing to say.
Citizens of San Francisco, keep your hands off our penises.
Shalom, Cleveland, Ohio.
You're next on Open Line Friday.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
Proud Jewish Republican Dittos from Cleveland.
Thank you, sir.
Hey, before I get to my point, I just wanted to thank you for snapple and breathe right nasal strips.
Wow, you do.
You go back a long way.
Way back, Rush.
Way back, Rush.
Okay, the point I wanted to make as a Jewish person is to sort of answer your question, what you asked at the beginning of your show.
Why are so many Jews liberal?
And I think the short answer to that is because most Jews are not religious.
Hmm.
Now, that is, that is a, you have to throw that in as a factor.
You certainly do.
What he's saying is here, if you're an irreligious Jew, then the tithe of Israel wouldn't be anything more than a foreign policy issue.
Wouldn't matter to you nearly as much.
You may have a point, but we'll be back.
Hey, look, there's another reason why people are liberal, not just Jewish people.
And it's probably one of the simplest reasons why people are liberal.
They're simply misinformed.
It's no more complicated than that.
It is amazing how simple sometimes the truthful answer to a question, a complex question is.
They're just misinformed or uninformed, which is why God created radio, which is why we are here to correct and deal with the misinformed and the uninformed.
By the way, for what it's worth, the joint press appearance of Obama and the Fanyao, now more than an hour later than previously scheduled.
That is, it was supposed to start an hour ago.
By the way, in addition, the AARP has been granted an Obamacare waiver.
Oh, yes.
Oh, yes, I kid you not.
The old folks have been granted a waiver from Obamacare just until 2012.
After 2012, nobody's going to get a waiver after 2000.
Well, not necessarily.
The big donors, people are really pony up big, because then the next project, if Obama wins re-election, well, even if he doesn't, the next project will be the Obama library that they will start collecting money for.
And you're always going to be able to buy your out, buy your way out of Obama misery with the right kind of money, just like you could buy your way out of Clinton misery.
All right, when I go to the sound bites, we're going to start at number 19.
I'm going to replay some things that we had yesterday.
I'm fully aware.
I don't seem to be able to avoid it.
I am fully aware that this is going to cause quite a lot of anger and angst in the state of Indiana.
Doesn't seem to be avoidable.
Mitch Daniels in 2009 spoke at the Ripon Society.
The quality here is not the best, but those of you who can hear shouldn't have any problems with it.
June 10th of 2009, Mitch Daniels, some sound bites here as he's addressing the Ripon Society, in which he doesn't use these words, but his point is that we really need to stop being so disagreeable with our opponents, with the Democrats.
We have to, before you can persuade anybody, they have to like you.
And we're not liked right now.
The first task we have is to be liked.
So here we go.
The next Republican majority will have to emphasize those things that unite us, as opposed to those things about which we are in conflict or divided.
It seems to me that this is a message I've never heard Dick Luber speak divisively.
That, you know, the whole concept of a wedge issue should be foreign to us if we really want to come back.
We've got a tall mountain to climb.
We not only are out of favor right now, but the demography of this country is not moving in a positive way.
We're standing on a political base that's left of us.
So we better be thinking about those things that unite us, and we better be extraordinarily understanding of those who disagree.
Bend over backs.
I mean, we're all Americans.
Now, this is 2009.
Now, keep in mind, this in June of 2009, we are well into enough time having passed to show that the porculus bill isn't working, that not one aspect of the Obama economic agenda is working.
June 2010, however, at that point in time, I'd have to go back and check a number of things, but I think that in June of 2009, there was still primarily one voice in opposition to Obama, the big voice on the right.
Now, there had, I think I had been joined by that time by others, but none in the Republican Party.
The Republican Party was still kid gloves, still running scared.
Now, we were in the full throes in June of 2009 of Barack Obama and the Democrat Party beginning to wreak havoc on the U.S. private sector, job creation, wealth creation, and they had made no bones about it.
Obama had run around the world a number of times already apologizing for this country.
And there were people who said, Yeah, well, we lost, Rush.
We lost big.
The country really expressed a preference for the other guys.
We are not liked right now.
I had people telling me this.
We are going to have to make these people like us.
We cannot be confrontational.
We had our lunch handed to us.
And of course, my retort was, no such thing happened.
We got beat by a bunch of spin.
We got beat by phony baloney plastic banana good time rock and rollerism.
We didn't get beaten by substance.
Conservatism wasn't defeated in that election.
A lot of people voted for Obama as an empty canvas.
But back then, nobody in elected Republican channels still had the wherewithal, the chutzpah, whatever you want to say, to stand up in opposition.
So here was Mitch Daniels.
Look, we're out of favor right now.
And demography is not moving in our way.
We're standing on a political base that's left of us.
We've got to have those people like us.
And here he said it again in a different way.
Next sombite.
The next Republican majority or its representatives, not to be trivial about it, ours needs to be a friendly sort of politics.
People have to like you a little bit before they'll listen to you.
Or at least they can't actively dislike you that you expect to persuade them.
And by the way, I think the door is open to us on this.
The meanest people I see in American politics right now are on the left.
That's not the caricature.
By the way, it comes naturally.
If you believe that you are a superior person, intellectually or morally elite, and therefore well-suited to order the affairs of everybody else, then a power and access to it means everything to you.
And you'll do anything, just about anything to get there.
Okay, the next Republican majority or its representatives, not to be trivial about it, but ours needs to be a friendly sort of politics.
People have to like you a little bit before they'll listen to you.
Or at least they can't actively dislike you if you expect to persuade them.
The door is open to us on this because they're the angriest people, the meanest people.
Yeah, but the meanest people happen to win, didn't they?
The meanest people happen to.
You ever noticed, folks, that and Mitch is right about this.
Is Mitch Daniels, if you're just joining us, that's whose soundbites we're playing.
The meanest people, they have their share of wins.
And have you ever heard anybody on their side say, you know, we got to stop being so mean?
We got to make those Republicans like us.
No, they never dialed back on their meanness.
And they win, don't they?
They win.
They don't win all the time, but they win.
We've got ourselves believing we can't win if we are who we are.
Because the fact is that who we are is this racist, sexist, bigot, extremist stuff.
We got to convince people we're not that.
So he had his head.
He took some shots at him here.
If you believe you're a superior person, intellectually or morally elite, and therefore suited to run everybody else's lives, then of course you're going to end up being mean.
But to persuade people, we've got to be liked, which is all well and good.
I know everybody wants to be liked.
I'm just convinced in the process of trying to be liked, you cease being who you are.
That simple.
Well, no, no.
We are not liked by the left-wing base.
That's what he's talking about.
We are not liked by the left-wing.
And frankly, I would have to agree with Mitch in one thing.
I probably, In terms of the rabid, angry left-wing base, I don't know that anybody's going to persuade them, but they're not who are in our crosshairs anyway.
But you're right, there is this assumption that we're disliked.
Who dislikes us?
It's so easy to fall into these cliched, stereotypical traps.
And a lot of people on our side do.
And they believe that conservatives are disliked and hated, the meanest, racist, sexist, and all these clichés.
They believe they fit.
And so that dictates a defensiveness on their part, which is some of what we're hearing here.
So let's take you back to December 10th, 1994, in Baltimore, Heritage Foundation Congressional Freshman Orientation.
House freshman, freshman class 94 orientation.
They asked me to speak.
We all are susceptible to human nature, and we all want to be liked.
We all want to be loved.
And you all want to live in surroundings which are not hostile.
But inside the beltway, for people like us, this is not possible.
And so sometimes to avoid the hostility, we say things and then begin to do things designed to gain the approval of those who are hostile toward us.
I want to warn you against it.
I want to warn you, you will never ever be their friends.
They don't want to be your friends.
Some female reporter will come up to one of you and start batting her eyes and ask you to go to lunch.
And you'll think, wow, I'm only a freshman.
Cokie Roberts wants to take me to lunch.
I've really made it.
Don't, seriously, don't fall for this.
This is not the time to get moderate.
This is not the time to start trying to be liked.
This is not the time to start gaining the approval of the people you've just defeated.
Okay, now that's me contrasting with Mitch Daniels.
Mitch Daniels was in 2009.
I'm in 1994.
I'm warning the freshmen, don't go out and be liked.
I leave it up to you as to which approach you sign on to.
I'm just telling you, the quest to gain the approval of people we've just defeated is deadly.
Politically deadly.
One more Mitch before we go to the break.
Again, from his Ripon Society address June 10th of 2009 in Washington.
I don't believe that that's the kind of politics ultimately the American people respond well to.
And I think we ought to step back and not take the bait and try to be have a sunny disposition, even about those who disagree.
Now, when I think about these sorts of traits, I think I'm describing the Ripon Society where the people who've led it over the course of time.
Inclusive and open and friendly and deeply concerned about particularly those not yet well up the ladder of mobility and American life.
Always looking forward, aspiring to be a party of hope.
Now, I'm all for a sunny disposition.
I'm all for being cheery.
That's how you persuade.
You know, that's what they say about Reagan.
Reagan was always of good cheer and laughing.
And I'm not opposed to that.
But not because you think you've got to prove that's who you really are to people.
You know, attitude counts and matters in so much.
You know, why you're doing something.
What is your motivation?
The attitude you have while you're doing it counts as much as for what you're doing.
And you can be doing the right thing for the wrong reason and bomb big time.
If you're trying to be good, cheer and nice and warm and sunny and all that, simply to prove to people that you're not the other way, Then all you've done is grant their premise.
And you're forever on the defensive.
And I'll tell you this, nobody ever persuades anybody else when they come at it from a defensive posture.
We have an air conditioning update by any chance.
No, we don't.
We don't.
No, we don't.
What, 20 minutes?
Is that what it's going to be?
20 minutes.
Oh, he's not even here yet.
Oh, all right.
So it ain't going to be fixed before the program's over.
It's kind of like the Netanyahu Obama photo op.
It started out being a joint press conference, but now this is going to be a photo op.
Obama's going to say something, and Yahoo's going to stand there and steam and not say anything, which is exactly what I'm doing here.
Except I have to talk.
I have to temper my being steamed.
David, in Warminster, Pennsylvania, Openline Friday, you're next.
Sir, great to have you on the program.
Great, Rush.
Hope you're having a great day.
Thank you, sir.
I am.
I wanted to just express my gratitude.
You are a driver of this economy.
I didn't realize that you make more wealth for people in one segment than Congress does in, well, decades.
I started an advertising agency with some people, and we specialize in radio, direct response radio.
Right.
And, you know, we're starting customers and putting them on your show locally.
And I'm actually going to have a couple customers launching on National Rush in September.
So it's just, it's amazing, you know, what the right advertising can do.
Well, there are secrets to why this works.
There are, you know, the business model of this program has never really been fully explored, which is fine with us.
Of all the curiosity there has been about this radio program, the business aspect of it has really never been looked at.
People are quite understandably fascinated by the content side.
And they assume that the content side explains the revenue side.
And while it does, in a way, that doesn't quite cover it all.
There is a precise business model.
There are different kinds of advertising strategies.
When we started on this program, the most common network radio advertising strategy was called CPM, which is translated cost per thousand, which meant that Campbell Soup would go out and buy as many syndicated radio programs as possible, just trying to make sure as many people as possible heard the commercial.
Just get the brand name out there.
And so the advertising rate was based on how large the audience being assembled was by combining a whole bunch of programs.
Well, we couldn't get those advertisers.
Campbell Soup and the General Motors, whoever, the big, they wouldn't touch us because of the so-called controversial nature of the program.
And they didn't want complaint letters, which are always fake anyway, from activist listeners trying to have a negative impact on the business side of our program.
But it didn't matter.
Every letter they assumed was real and they didn't want to deal with it.
So of course, we had to sit here and devise a different strategy if we were to make it.
Because while the content, of course, is crucial.
Without business-side success, any content's academic.
Without business-side success, nobody's going to hear the content.
Not going to be there.
So we have to devise a strategery.
Had to find a way to get sponsors and advertisers who had never used radio before, national radio.
We went out and we found people who were in the same situation.
We were startups who were willing to take risks, go outside the conventional wisdom and the bounds of how it was always done, because this radio show blew those boundaries away anyway, why not do it on the advertising side?
And it did it.
He gave it away here.
He used a, He used the phrase here.
That has made the difference.
If you missed it, I'm not going to tell you because it's still a trade secret.
But basically, he's an agency.
He's an advertising agent.
He was calling here to essentially thank me, the host, for the profound success that advertisers on the program have.
And I appreciate that because that, if that doesn't happen, folks, all the rest of this really is academic.
So thanks for the call.
We'll be back.
Well, the emails are pouring in now, just as I predicted from Indiana.
Shut up about Mitch!
And by the way, it's Rippin' Society, not Ripon Society.
Fine and dandy.
Rippin'.
But shut up about Mitch.
They're very, very touchy.
I may not be able to ever go back to Indiana.
Super Bowl's there.
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