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May 27, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:58
May 27, 2011, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
You see, where we're giving U.S. and Europe are going to give $20 billion, the Arab Spring.
That means we're going to give $20 billion to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
It's Friday, my friends.
Great to have you here.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
One of our favorite days of the week.
Oh, yes, you never know what's going to happen on Open Line Friday.
And that's because it's the one day of the week where I do not act as a total authoritarian dictator and demand allegiance to subject matter that only I care about.
On Friday, I don't have to care about it.
If you want to talk about it, you have free reign.
800-282-2882 is the phone number, the email address.
Lrushbow at Eibnet.com.
I want to start out here today with a little bit of a uh a lesson.
This is a story here in the Dailycaller.com Chatsworth Osborne JR'S website and this story, I dare say, will never see the light of day in the drive-by media.
But here we go.
According to a recent SAX Mason Dixon poll and Mason Dixon's a credible bunch according to their poll, obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller a large majority of the public backs an amendment to the constitution requiring a balanced budget, a reform some lawmakers say is on the table in the debt ceiling debate.
Now here's the number.
Does that surprise you, does me?
We're talking the?
U.s Constitution.
65 of the public supports a balanced budget amendment to the?
U.s constitution 65.
Only 27 percent oppose, 8 percent are undecided.
81 percent of Republicans support the idea.
68 of independents support the idea.
Even a plurality of Democrats, the party that typically resists spending cuts, backs the amendment by 45 to 44 percent.
Alia Faraj Johnson, partner and executive vice president of RON Sachs Communications, SA C H S this is the bunch that commissioned a poll said Americans are concerned about our nation's deepening deficit and, as a result, an overwhelming number support a balanced budget amendment.
A large, Large plurality, 46 to 21%, also say they would be more likely to vote for a presidential candidate who backs the amendment.
Okay.
Now, what is the lesson here, ladies and gentlemen?
Because I'll bet you beyond the internet and this program and maybe some other talk shows, you're never going to see the light of day.
This show will never see the light of day on any mainstream news outlet.
Instead, they're out there hammering Medicare reform, continuing to distort that and lie about that.
And I'm not stressing the fact that it won't be heard or seen in the mainstream media because they're liberal.
The point here is, and the little lesson here is that people ought not get down in the dumps about our agenda.
Our agenda is a majority agenda.
Folks, I know it is a tough thing to resist the media onslaught every day.
It's tough.
Even I, El Rushbo, have to consciously figuratively slap myself in the face sometimes to avoid getting caught up in the everyday media narrative.
The everyday media narrative is that Obama is overwhelmingly popular.
The vast majority of the American people want a socialist welfare state.
The vast majority of the American people are unconcerned and uninformed about budgets, spending, and debt.
The overall media narrative each and every day is that liberalism is preferred, actively supported by a large margin.
That's the everyday mantra and narrative.
And of course, accompanying that is the notion that all of us are a small minority, really disconnected from the mainstream of our country.
That we're just oddballs.
And our concerns are so old-fashioned and irrelevant.
And in fact, even sometimes embarrassing.
That's the attempt every day.
I don't care what the story is.
I don't care whether it's foreign policy news, domestic news, cultural news, whatever it is.
The overriding narrative and template that I just cited is what guides the media every day.
A great illustration of it was that paragraph excerpt from that hapless Rolling Stone piece on Roger Ailes and Fox yesterday, which said that 31% of Fox viewers actually believe scientists who say that there's a debate about global warming.
I mean, that's one of the greatest illustrations yet.
It's that those realities, these liberal lies, the whole leftist agenda, lie after lie after lie, is so etched as unalterable truth that anybody who opposes it, oddball kook, very weird, small in number.
It's just the opposite.
We need to be positive about our agenda.
We need to be enthusiastic about it.
We need to be unapologetic.
The public supports our agenda, 65% balanced budget amendment to the Constitution of the U.S.
And there are other items, other policies that poll similar to this in terms of support.
The public supports conservatism.
The public lives their lives, a majority of them, as conservatives.
It's also true that conservatism scares the left and liberalism more than any other force on the planet.
And conservatism is a force.
It is a powerful force.
And it frightens the left more than anything else, more than any other enemy.
The public, the voting public, the people who make this country work support cutting spending in big numbers.
They support reforming entitlements in big majorities.
They support limiting government in big majorities.
The Republican leadership needs to learn this.
The Republican leadership needs to accept this, happily so, and then run on these issues.
They need to have press events every day.
We hear next to nothing from the Senate leadership, and the entire leadership is mostly reacting to liberal attacks or liberal policy premises rather than going on offense.
As of course, I frequently mention here, it's an oft-repeated refrain on this program, always on defense, reacting to their premise rather than going on offense and establishing our own.
One of the areas, for example, that I think could qualify as a subject for everyday press conferences, the concept that lowering taxes increases revenue.
Now, you and I know this.
We believe it.
We've lived it.
We know it's the truth.
We also know that there's an entire political party and ideological apparatus devoted to convincing people it's not true.
Democrat Party, liberalism, high taxes, they also have people believing that they're concerned about raising revenue.
They're not.
If you really want to raise revenue to the Treasury, you lower taxes on all activity that generates revenue.
Corporate capital gains, personal income, you lower the rates and get out of the way.
It works every time it's tried.
And we've got – there's a point, by the way, where you can't lower rates and raise revenue, but we're not at that point yet.
That's what the laugher curve is.
It shows you where you reach that point.
Art laugher.
But we're not there yet.
Got plenty of room to lower rates to still create that's worth shouting every day, particularly in this climate.
It's worth getting behind every day.
It would establish and serve to educate and inform while making the policy point at the same time.
Now, the Washington Post, of all places, has published a poll just a few days ago which showed the American people are far more worried about borrowing more money, raising the debt ceiling, than they are about defaulting on the debt.
We reported it.
We shared it with you from the Washington Post.
So the public is with us.
The public is us.
We are the public.
We are and represent a majority of the thinking in the country.
So we need not, again, we need not get depressed or get down about our agenda because the public supports it.
It's waiting to be tapped by a clever, engaged candidate.
Speaking of which, the media is just, they're going nuts with the Sarah Palin bus trip.
We'll play some sound bites and we'll have some on-the-spot analysis of this as we come back from our first obscene profit time out here on our Memorial Day weekend show.
Something else.
You know, my staff, ladies and gentlemen, playing tricks on me.
There must have been five of you on the staff since Wednesday have said, Are we working Monday?
I'm scratching my head.
We've never done a live show on Memorial Day.
What's changed here?
What's going on that I don't know about?
I said, no, we're running a best of show on Monday.
We've got the details of the best of show right here.
Are you sure?
Yeah, I'm sure the boss, of course, I'm sure.
I'm not going to be here Monday.
We're going to have a best of show.
Well, you know, you're always saying you're getting tricked on these Monday holidays.
I said, yeah, that's President's Day.
I always end up getting tricked into working President's Day because nobody ever, yeah, and Columbus Day, nobody ever tells me in enough advance that those are Monday holidays.
I don't think of it because I'm not oriented, you know, toward holidays, that kind of stuff.
So everybody's wrong.
Are we working Monday?
Of course we're not.
It's our 22nd Memorial Day.
Of course, we're not working at Best Up Show.
Just to be clear, I should have known it was a job.
I know the staff doesn't want to come in here and work on Memorial Day, contrary to our tradition.
The best of show on Monday is three hours from the week that Obama killed Osama.
It starts that brilliant, sensitive, very cogent monologue praising President Obama being the only one qualified, the only one smart enough to understand how to do it.
The best of show goes through the media not getting my brilliant monologue because they didn't want to get it.
They wanted to believe I was being sincere with them.
Different versions of what actually happened and the Michael Jackson, Marlon Brando, Liz Taylor road trip, which we also discussed.
So that's the best of show on Monday.
We'll be back and resume this one.
I know every show's a best of show.
How do you pick them?
We just, you know, it's kind of like, no, it's not tough.
That's why I spin the bottle.
We just point to a date on the calendar.
Every show's best of, so it doesn't matter what the count on is.
It works.
Open line Friday, Rush Limbaugh behind the golden EIB microphone at the distinguished, prestigious Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
According to a report in thehill.com, the new head of the Democrat National Committee, Debbie Blabbermouth Schultz, who went away has no relation ship to Ed Blabbermouth Schultz on MSNBC.
You heard what Ed Blabbermouth Schultz did.
Oh, Laura Ingram a talk slut.
Did you hear Laura's response?
Ed Schultz, does he have a radio show?
That's what she said.
Now, Ed's done a serious mayoculpus, taking him off, taking himself off the air for a week to reflect and spend time with his family and all this.
But now there's some petitions out there.
Fire Ed Schultz and this kind of stuff.
It's not necessary.
There's no audience there.
It's Basically, a caricature and leave them alone when they're going to present jokes of themselves.
Get out of the way.
Best thing to do.
No, Debbie Washerman, Debbie Wasserman Blabbermouth Schultz, no relationship to Ed Blabbermouth Schultz.
And she's demanding everybody buy an American car, just like she doesn't.
Debbie Blabbermouth Schultz does not drive an American car.
The Hill claims that Ms. Schultz drives an Infinity and a Nissan.
She doesn't even own a Subaru.
Okay, Snerdley, why are you laughing at that comment?
I wanted to see if anybody would get that comment.
What is funny about Debbie Blabbermouth Schultz not owning a Subaru?
Okay, it sounds funny, but you don't know why it's funny.
Okay, that's good.
But it's still funny because it sounded funny to you.
All right, good.
And it also has the added benefit of being true.
Debbie Blabbermouth Schultz does not own a Subaru.
Believe me, there are some who understand this.
And the fact that you don't maybe is just fine for now.
The good news is that she does use a domestic brand of mayonnaise in her hair to compensate for the fact that she doesn't buy an American car.
Well, she's doing something to her hair.
Looks like mayonnaise.
I don't know what.
So during the break, the usual complaints.
Okay, so you say balanced budget amendment, 65% support the American people, and that you conservatives, you have 60% support and all these other issues.
What are these other issues?
I noticed you didn't mention any.
All right, you want me to mention them?
Abortion.
Gallup poll yesterday, 61% of the American people opposed to abortion, immigration issues, closing the border.
That's easy.
Well over 60% of the American people oppose amnesty.
Well over 60% of the American people oppose the Obama Democrat Party solution for our immigration problems.
They oppose it, clearly.
Obamacare, that number close to 70% now, the American people who oppose Obamacare, cutting government spending.
Well, we just had the balanced budget amendment, 65%, lowering taxes.
Does somebody want to show me the poll that shows 55, 60% of the American people favor raising tax?
You can't.
That poll doesn't exist.
Repealing regulations.
Speaking of which, there's a great piece today.
I'm going to get to this in the first hour of the program today.
It's actually a column by a Yale professor who ended up on a train or an airplane with a small business owner.
And the Yale professor says, you know, this is really worth my while.
We professors deal in the abstract.
We don't deal with human dynamism.
One of the most often leveled observations and complaints by me on this program.
Faceless people, statistics, plugged them into policies and watched them behave according to the way a computer or a statistical mathematical formula would say they would behave.
But you put a real person into it, a real business owner, and start tacking on taxes and regulations.
It's really a, I got to praise the Yale prof for being honest about what he learned from a small business owner about why the small business owner will not hire.
Now, the Yale prof also, in a continuation of yesterday, thinks the economy is growing when it's not.
And by the way, there's another 60%.
I'll guarantee you, 65% of the American people do not think that we're in recovery yet.
Democrats are in a minority, issue after issue after issue, and it's time for us to understand it and act like it.
Hey, I just got a funny picture.
I just got a very subtly funny picture.
I'm going to show it to you.
Oh, no.
Well, somebody has misplaced my.
Yeah, finally found it.
Who knows?
A good thing.
I need to turn the ditto cam off and I need to tighten it up here.
I've got a funny picture.
I'm going to show those of you watching the program today, rushlimbaugh.com.
Zoom a little tighter here.
Hang on.
I know this is tough for you who are not going to be able to see it.
What I have here is, let me back off just a little.
This is, ladies and gentlemen, here we go.
Look at this, Snerdly.
This is a picture of DSK with Michelle My Bell Obama and Barack Obama.
And look where Obama's hand is.
And look at the greedy look on D.
This DSK guy looks like he could attack Michelle Obama right there on the stage.
Looks like at the Clinton Global Initiative or something.
Obama's got his hand in a restraining way on old DSK.
DSK is leering as though he just swallowed some Viagra.
I mean, that doesn't say at all.
This guy is, he looks like a wolf prowling.
He's leaning, looking towards her.
You know, Obama clearly, when this picture was taken, clearly knew of the reputation of old DSK.
Obama knew what he was dealing with.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the guy that's now on an ankle breastlet brace in a house arrest for all.
I mean, that's funny.
Okay, turn the ditto cam off and now zoom back out after showing you that hilarious photo.
Want to go to the audio soundbites here, ladies and gentlemen.
Sarah Palin announced her bus trip yesterday to take place over the Memorial Day weekend.
Now, I want to spend some time trying to analyze something here.
I don't want people to be confused when I say that the Democrats will always tell us who they fear.
That is true.
And I believe, I firmly believe that the efforts that have been made to take Sarah Palin out are rooted in fear.
At the same time, there are Democrats who do think she is a blithering idiot, love to make fun of her, and honestly do believe that she would be a snap to beat.
There are both kinds here.
In other words, it's not universal that every Democrat and every Obamaite is scared of Sarah Palin.
There are some.
Like we make fun of Biden.
Biden would not frighten us at all, right?
Biden would not frighten us at all, correct?
We laugh at him, make jokes about him, but it's not because we fear him.
You can tell who we really fear by virtue of who we don't laugh at.
Now, while they laugh at Palin a lot, they also have undertaken serious efforts to destroy her.
Now, people that amuse you, people who are there that you think you could just wipe the floor with, you're really not going to waste time, resources trying to destroy.
They're there, they're entertaining, and so forth.
So don't it's a it can be a little confusing, but I still firmly believe because of the efforts they have made to destroy this woman's life and the lives of her family, they have done their best to totally destroy Sarah Palin's ability to enjoy life.
That's another way of putting it.
Not just destroy her, but to make her life miserable and unhappy.
They have done that.
It is my contention that you don't do that to people who amuse you.
You don't do that to people who you don't take seriously.
You might TP their house.
You might do a couple things a couple times, just to be bullied, but you don't devote as much time as they have to it.
So let's go to the audio soundbites.
First up, this morning on MSNBC's daily rundown show, the co-hostess, Savannah Guthrie, talking to the Atlantic magazine senior editor Josh Green about Sarah Palin, the bus trip, and what it must mean to Obama.
Do you think the White House is just rubbing its hands together, hoping that Sarah Palin is the nominee for that?
Absolutely.
They can barely contain themselves to the point where they will say to reporters on background that they're really hoping it will be Palin.
I think that's a little dangerous, but clearly they figure that they would match up better against Sarah Palin than anybody else in the Republican field because she would provide such a sharp contrast in a way that they think will favor them.
That's exactly why I think they fear her.
Or any other conservative, by the way.
I just ran through this list of items that we have 60% in the polls.
Issue after issue after issue where our side is in the majority by 60% or more.
And by the way, that 60-65% majority we have, that's not just expressed in the polls.
That has also shown up in an election.
Last November, 2010, that's never mentioned by the drive-bys.
We swept the House of Representatives with and because of issues where we have 60 to 65% majority support.
A number of elections, not just House races, but look at all of the local and state races where Democrats got shellacked as well.
Now, the Democrats win one little election that hardly anybody knew was happening in New York 26.
And because of that, the Republicans should change their whole value system.
The Republicans should totally abandon their agenda.
And that's what they want the Republicans to think.
And don't doubt me on this.
One of the reasons for all of this attention by the media, by the Democrats, on New York 26 is to create self-doubt, to create lack of confidence, to make Republicans think, you know what, maybe we better drop this Medicare business.
They want us to drop the Medicare business.
It's a loser for them.
They want us to drop budget reform because if we don't, it's a loser for them.
That's why they're piling on Ryan.
That's why they're piling on, I guarantee you, the people who threaten them.
So Palin and her bus trip, oh, they're rubbing their hands together in the White House, man.
I was on Greta Van Sustrin last night as a phoner.
And by the way, the reason I do phoners with Greta, folks, it's not very complicated.
I just look too hot.
If I walk on TV, nobody's going to hear what I say.
He's going to be too dazzled by my appearance.
That's always been the problem with television.
I've told you about it.
Nobody hears what you say on TV.
I've even asked them, you know, don't even put any pictures of me up there, good or bad.
All they are is just distracting.
Just, you know, just put my name up there.
And I said that the White House would really prefer a moderate Republican.
They would really prefer a McCain type.
That's who they think they can beat.
White House can't wait for a moderate rhino-Republican to run.
That's who doesn't scare them.
It is people who can draw this striking contrast that worries them.
They know the polling results on these issues I went through.
65% want a balanced budget, immigration reform, tax cuts.
You name it.
Abortion.
They're in the minority.
Even Obama is in a minority on his approval numbers now.
There's nothing in this record that says, let's have more of it, re-elect Obama.
They can't.
All they can do is try to frighten everybody else about the Republican nominee.
I think their calculation is very simple, folks.
I want you to listen to me very carefully on this.
I think the Democrat Party and Obama, the White House, number one objective is going to be to depress the Republican base.
I think you, we, are their targets.
They are going to do everything they can to make us feel like we're members of a very tiny minority.
They're going to try to dispirit us so that we don't even vote.
That's their objective.
And they think they can do it by misrepresenting public sentiment issue after issue.
They think they can do it by laughing at, impugning, making fun of the people we love, the people we adore.
They think they can cause you to get depressed and disinterested, dispirited by making fun of Herman Cain or Rick Santorum or Sarah Palin, Tim Polenti, whoever it might be.
They think they can finally just force you to throw your hands and say, oh, you know what?
I'm not even going to vote anymore.
I don't care.
Republicans, I don't care.
That's what they want.
They are not going to focus their reelection campaign on four more years of the Obama agenda because nobody wants to run on that.
There isn't anything Obama's done that people are clamoring for more of.
People want less Obama-ism.
People want less Obama.
But the Obamaites want to get re-elected.
They want to win.
I don't care how.
They just want four more years to continue this path and swath of transformation, i.e. destruction of America as constitutionally founded.
So you're the targets.
We are all the targets.
And so if they're rubbing their hands together in the White House at Sarah Palin's bus trip, it's because they think they've got another opportunity to destroy your state of mind by attacking her.
You and every other conservative voter are the primary targets of the regime and the Democrat Party.
The more they can depress you, the more they can get you irritated at your party, the more they can get you swearing not to donate, not to participate, the more they can get you so angry, you just say to hell with it, I'm not even going to vote.
I'm not even going to pay attention anymore.
That's how they win.
That's what this is all about.
We got more soundbites here, more media.
And, of course, as an added bonus, myself, ladies and gentlemen, will throw audio of me with Van Sustrin last night into this mix.
Even though Debbie Blabbermouth Schultz doesn't qualify, that's, in fact, that's even part of the joke, too.
Hi, how are you?
Open Line Friday.
Rush Limbaugh back at it, having more fun a human being should be allowed to have.
On Morning Joe today, PMSNBC, the guest panelist, Chief Foreign Affairs correspondent Henria Mitchell, in meeting Washington, was talking to White House advisor at Valerie Jarrett about Palin and her bus tour.
I know you've been following the news about Sarah Palin launching this bus tour this weekend.
Is this the best political news the Obama re-election campaign has ever had?
The best move for the president is for him to keep just doing his job and focusing on the American people.
We're not going to worry a whole lot about what is going on in the Republican primary.
He's going to focus on his job.
That's actually a sensible answer, given the way the question was asked.
Ms. Jarrett knows that when she finishes, Andrea Mitchell and Savannah Guthrie will carry her water and they'll follow through.
They'll make fun of Palin.
They'll laugh at Palin.
They'll try to get you all dispirited and all depressed.
Or maybe even better, they'll get you to agree.
Palin's an idiot.
I'm telling you, and I want to reiterate this, done a lot of thinking about this.
All of these offensive assaults, not just on Palin, but every other concern, at election time particularly, is designed to get you depressed.
It's designed to get you to tune out.
It's designed to make you feeling hopeless.
We can't win no matter what we do.
We got the greatest candidate.
I've never felt so enthusiastic about somebody.
Everybody's laughing at her.
That's what they want you thinking.
What's wrong with me?
They want you asking yourself, what's wrong with me?
The answer is nothing.
You are in the majority.
Issue after issue after issue.
National election after national election, you are in the majority.
I did appear with Greta Van Susteren last night on her show On the Record, the Fox News channel.
She said, today in your third hour, you talked about the news of Governor Palin starting a bus tour.
Do you think this is the beginning of a campaign for the White House?
It's certainly designed to get people speculating that she's in.
And it's clear, Greta, the thing about Sarah Palin to me is that she has now learned to relish and to profit from all of the attention, be it negative or positive.
And she certainly knows negative attention.
She has suffered slings and arrows.
She's got the media anal exam unlike any other Republican candidate.
And I've never met her.
I don't know, but it appears to me her skin is very thick.
And I think that she now has come to grips with the fact that that's part and parcel of the process.
And I think one of the things that she enjoys is just rubbing it right back in her face.
She knows that they are trying to intimidate her into silence, not running perhaps, being quiet or shutting up.
Here comes the bus tour.
I think she's mastering the things that she's going to have to master if she indeed decides at some point to run.
Brian, I got a question, broadcast engineer.
Whose fault was it that I can't say my ethos in that thumb bite?
Because I didn't watch the show last night, so this is the first I've heard.
Is it their phone quality up there, or is it what?
Yeah.
Oh, they were able to fix it halfway through.
Well, fine.
Joe who.
Oh, oh.
Joe works for us, not Fox.
All right.
Never mind.
I'm the only one that can communicate here.
I'm now more confused.
All I know is I'm on Fox last night.
I can't pay my epithet.
And nobody can tell me why.
Anyway, she then said, well, look, if you were President Obama, who would be the Republican you would not want to run against and why?
If I were Obama, I would not want to run against Halen.
Contrary to what everybody said, I wouldn't want to run.
You know, when they tell us that's what they hope for, it's the opposite.
I wouldn't want to run against Chris Christie if I were them.
I wouldn't want to run against Sam Torum.
I wouldn't want to run against Rick Perry.
I think the truth of the matter is in the White House, the truth of the matter is if you could get hold of their internal re-elect polls, I will bet you that they are bad.
And I think what they believe is that they have got to do everything they can to make sure that whoever the Republican nominee is not a conservative.
They think they can beat a moderate Republican.
They know they can beat a liberal Republican.
They know they can beat a Republican who's afraid to be a Republican.
But they are mostly afraid of a genuine, full-throated, passionate, articulate conservative.
Don't ever doubt me on that, and don't forget that.
Apparently, I did an immediate tweak of the day yesterday, and I didn't even know it.
There's a blog site out there, IrishCentral.com, and apparently I've really ticked them off by I suggested that we ought to start calling Obama Patty, which is a traditional Irish nickname for Patrick.
Let's call him Patty because he's out there saying he's the most Irish president we've ever had.
Turns out that they say here that my comments are bound to cause controversy with many Irish Americans because Patty is offensive and used in a pejorative context.
Really, I had no clue.
So another bunch of people offended.
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