Greetings to you, music lovers, fil-seekers, conversationalists on across the fruited plain, the award-winning ProPact, ever-exciting, increasingly popular, growing by leaps and bounds, Rush Limbaugh program.
We come to you from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Great to have you here, folks.
Telephone number if you want to be on the air.
Your big shop is break, 800-282-2882, the email address lrushbow at EIBnet.com.
Look, we know that Obama, the stimulus plan, Obama's stimulus, was nothing more than a money laundering slush fund.
We know that now.
We know that in any number of ways, learning it most recently from Wisconsin.
A full 80% of the money that Wisconsin got went to the public sector unions.
And of course, that money, a percentage of that just goes right back to the Democratic Party.
But let's say, let's, just for the sake of discussion, playing devil's advocate, let's say that Obama simply is a misguided, well-intentioned statist.
And he really believes that massive government spending to the tune of a trillion dollars will grow an economy and create jobs and all that.
You need to first ask a question.
How do we define growth?
Is growth not the pie getting bigger?
Economic growth means that the gross domestic product, the economic output, the sum total of it, increases, meaning brand new jobs are created.
People with jobs are compensated with raises, higher incomes.
New products are invented, and the pie grows.
That's what economic growth is.
It can be nothing else.
Otherwise, you have stagnation, or if you have depression, you've got negative growth, which is the economy shrinking, getting smaller, which in fact is what's happening.
Okay, so we've defined growth.
Now let's say, ask ourselves, how does it happen?
The government wants our economic pie to get bigger.
And here comes Obama.
So I got the plan.
We're going to spend a trillion bucks.
And we're going to put that trillion bucks to work immediately.
We're going to inject that trillion bucks right into the economy.
Ooh, cool.
But is it going to be a trillion dollars that's not in the economy already?
In other words, where's the government going to get the money?
If the government is going to take the money from somewhere else in the economy and spend it somewhere else in the economy, what you have is not growth, but shifting.
But you have no growth.
And that's what the stimulus bill purportedly, that's not even what it ended up doing, but that was how they sold it.
Keynesian spending.
We're going to grow the economy.
We're going to put a trillion bucks in it.
Where'd they get it?
You have to borrow it, print it, tax it, or what have you.
But it wasn't created out of growth.
In fact, the way the money was procured would lead to economic stagnation.
If anything else, if anything, it would not lead to growth.
Never has.
If Keynesian economics worked, if pumping government money into a faltering economy worked, there would never be a faltering economy.
We would have learned it the first time.
It would have worked.
Every recession it came along, every near depression it came along, all we'd have to do is pump some money into it and voila be over with.
It never works, does it?
A guy at the Heritage Foundation, Brian Rydel, came up with an analogy to explain why government intervention to boost the economy doesn't work.
He used a swimming pool.
Removing water from one end of a swimming pool and pouring it in the other end will not raise the overall water level.
In fact, it won't change anything after a while.
It might make the deeper end deeper for a brief time.
It might make the shallow end shallower for a brief, brief time, but then it all levels out.
Well, it's the same premise.
If you take dollars from one part of the economy, i.e. the rich, and you distribute those dollars to another part of the economy, you're not growing anything.
You're simply redistributing.
And if in the process, the recipients of your redistribution are getting it for not doing anything, if there's no accompanying activity to warrant the receipt of that money other than they're just sitting there and they have to be Democrat voters, then you're really screwing yourself.
And that's under the best laid plans.
That's what the stimulus was.
I mean, being totally well-intentioned.
We know that's not what it was.
We know it was a slush fund.
We know, folks, it was nothing more than a money laundering scheme.
We know that now.
But if they really were just mistaken and they thought they could inject a trillion dollars by redistributing it, it doesn't work.
It has never worked and it will never work.
So the question then is, do these guys know that and are just lying to us?
Are they really economically ignorant and utopian fools who really believe this stuff?
At this point, I don't care.
All I know is that they're dead wrong, and what they're doing has been destructive.
It's got to stop.
They're destroying the housing market.
They've destroyed the job market.
They have made a college education worthless.
It really is.
I mean, look at the stories you get on that now.
College education, well, it doesn't mean anything to people.
You have a degree now.
What was one of the big stories last week?
Peter Thiel, one of the co-founders of PayPal, paying people scholarships not to go to college.
Hey, you know what?
I'll give you $100,000 to sit around and be an entrepreneur.
I'll give you, you can apply.
If I give you $100,000 to sit there and develop an idea you really feel passionate about, screw college.
24 recipients of this idea.
I'm sure some of them will make something of it, too.
Passion, desire being major ingredients of success.
So in the midst of this, and the Heritage people point this out in their Morning Bill blog today, last week, the House Republicans came up with a proposal to actually create job growth.
They wanted to reduce regulations and taxes.
They wanted to promote free trade.
Essentially, they wanted to make it easier for businesses to grow, to invest in themselves, to hire people, which would thus grow the economy, reduce unemployment.
And the left, like clockwork, went on the attack, claiming it's the same old ideas with fancy new clip art.
The New York Times described it as more of the same fixes the Republicans always recommend, no matter the problem.
But ironically, it's the left calling for more of their same ideas.
And they responded with policies last week that would, if you add them up, would equal a combined federal and state top tax rate on earnings of 62%.
That would be the top rate.
Hello, 1970s.
You know, when Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, the top marginal rate was 70%.
Democrats want to go back there.
By the time you take away the charitable deduction and all that, you end up with the other plans that they have in mind.
You have a top effective rate of 62%, top marginal rate.
Now, if you've got a rate like that, I guarantee you, there isn't going to be any job growth.
Nobody is going to be trying to earn the dollars that are taxed at 62%.
You're going to say, hell with it.
You'd be a fool.
You would be an absolute fool to spend a lot of time and industry earning dollars that you get to keep 38 cents of.
Wherever that rate kicks in, whatever income level it kicks, that's where you stop busting your buck.
You don't care about it.
It's senseless.
That's why Reagan cut the 70% rate to 50% and then to 28.
Look what happened when he did.
Economic growth out the wazoo.
Democrats panicked.
Revision historians got into gear and trying to tell us that trickle-down economics didn't work.
No, we're supposed to revel in what's happening now.
We're supposed to have faith in what's happening now.
We're supposed to be patient.
Don't change horses in the middle of the stream.
Why, our plans are just now starting to take root.
If we stay with these plans, the site is not going to be pretty.
It is going to be a wanton economic destruction that's so unnecessary.
Brought about by people who have a grudge or a chip on their shoulder or whatever it is about this country that they can't stand.
And they think it's time that this country paid the price for whatever transgressions these people think the United States has committed.
In the meantime, look at what's happening.
Wherever you go, wherever the economic news is, it's not just bad, it is disastrous.
Utter disaster is happening right before our eyes.
The only growth that this regime is interested in is in the growth of government and those who are dependent on it.
That's the growth they care about.
They want more people earning less money, depending more for supplemental income on the government.
That equals voters.
How well, ladies and gentlemen, how well would it have worked for General Motors to have borrowed money from Ford to try to get out of their bad debts and pensions?
How would that have worked?
Well, what are we doing but borrowing money from our economic competitors, the THICOMs?
That's what we're doing.
Whether it's accidental or whether it's by design, we're on the wrong horse.
And we need not just to change horses in the middle of the stream.
We need to reverse direction.
We need to turn around with somebody else on the horse.
Illinois, Illinois just raised their top tax rate to 66%, and it still isn't working.
And there is an increase in exits from the state of Illinois.
They are in worse shape than ever.
Why would it work for the U.S. government?
The only difference is you cannot leave the United States.
You can leave Illinois.
I mean, you can leave the United States.
Nobody wants to have to do that.
What kind of an option is that?
Silly to have to bring it up.
Sit tight, my friends.
We're back.
More of your phone calls coming up.
Kyle Smith, by the way, had a wonderful op-ed piece in the New York Post yesterday, The Prophets of Doom.
It's about the population bomb doomists and the environmentalist wackos and all of the predictions they have made that are dead wrong.
And they are the creme to the creme of liberal science.
And it was fascinating reviving my fertile memory.
Reading his piece, I'll share some of it with you when we get back.
Plus, I know we got audio soundbites from the great bus tour, Sarah Palin, who, by the way, looks much better in a helmet than Michael Dukakis ever did.
Yeah, Brian says, there's something wrong with your voice.
I said, yeah, I was yelling at myself all weekend.
You don't want to know why.
No, no, no.
I was yelling at myself all weekend.
It's amazing how the longer I do this, the less I know.
Email.
Dear Rush, you don't know anything about it.
You've just lost a lot of respect from millions of us regarding your totally uninformed rant about the public just not filling out the paperwork to receive a loan modification.
Rush, it is and was not the homeowner who faltered.
It was Obama again.
He pays these banks to review every request for loan modification, yet he failed to put any oversight and penalties with the funds.
The banks can't make modifications because they don't know who owns the loan, since 90% of these mortgages have been securitized multiple times, meaning bought and sold by other people.
The paperwork's minimal.
It's the bank statement, etc.
Copies.
But the real problem is the banks keep saying they lost it or they didn't receive it.
So they can keep collecting the fee from Obama.
I said ours in seven times, and the few who did receive a modification are still required to pay the delinquency plus interest and tons of fees.
The modification is only temporary.
Then all the reductions, the missed payments and fees accrue at an interest for the maximum of five years, and they're due in a balloon payment.
Plus, the homeowner signed off any right to defend any further actions.
No one's getting anything for free.
I've asked you in the past many times to educate yourself on the greatest robbery and attack on property ownership in America.
Even you will be shocked.
Please stop trying to rabble-rouse on foreclosures when you don't even know what you're talking about and you don't even know who you're slurring.
Who did I slur?
Who in the world did I slur?
Especially talking about a loan modification program.
The caller was making the caller was ramming blaming the people loan modification on the paperwork.
Now, you might want to say I slurred some people when talking about the stimulus and the redistribution of money when all you have to do to get it is nothing.
But I wasn't talking about the loan modification program.
I was talking about the stimulus at that point.
Regardless.
If I did anything, I slurred into the truth, which is what happens.
See, the longer I live, the less I know.
I know they're touchy, and they think this woman obviously thinks that I was criticizing her.
Obviously, thinks that I had her in my crosshairs, and I was somehow lighting into her as the problem.
I don't know how you get that.
I do not know.
Here I am.
This whole show has been a defense of average Americans against the onslaught of this stupid regime.
All right, who's next on the phones?
Greg, Kansas City, Missouri.
Craig, great to have you with us on the EIB network.
Hi.
Thanks, Rush.
It's an honor to speak with you.
Thank you.
I think Obama is beatable, and I think so because he is an expert Chicago politician.
And in cooperation with the media who are experts at social engineering, I think they will make it happen.
What, you say he's unbeatable or beatable?
Unbeatable.
Unbeatable.
We can't beat Obama.
Well, I mean, we could beat him, but I think it's unwinnable because Chicago politicians know how to make it happen when it comes to elections.
And he has a media who are experts at social engineering, and they know how to make it happen too.
Right.
Okay, so what do we do?
Hope for a miracle.
What would that be?
What would the miracle be?
It's just a miracle.
I don't know.
I can't describe it, but it would just have to be a what I want to do?
Yeah.
I mean, you've just told me that he's unbeatable, and it's unwinnable because he's so good.
The media is so in bed with him.
And plus, Chicago politics is such they don't know how to lose that we're left with hoping for a miracle.
I don't want it to be that way, but I think it just is.
Okay, so you think they're going to be relying on buying votes, for example.
I mean, how do they do this?
How does your Chicago machine pull it off?
Why are they so invincible?
Nothing sticks to him, Rush.
I mean, anything he's ever done bad, you know, his poll numbers are still decent for the most atrocious president in our history.
And that's saying something right there.
And I don't know how they'll pull it off, but they'll find a way, you know, foreign policy-wise or anyway, you know, just to make him look great and the other person look awful.
And it is very difficult to defeat a sitting president.
There's no question.
Very difficult to beat an incumbent.
I just happen to think.
But silly me, what do I know?
The longer I live, it's apparent I don't know diddly squat about anything.
It just seems to me that there's not one, not one, zero, not one thing which recommends this guy get four more years.
There's not one thing that suggests he's earned another four years.
Executing assigned host studios flawlessly, zero mistakes.
L. Rushboe behind the golden EIB microphone.
He's got an email.
Hey, you know, Rush, you're always running down moderates, but you ever lose.
I mean, I enjoy.
Why don't you someday show us what a moderate radio talk show would sound like?
I don't know that I can be that boring, but it might be fun to try.
I can only do it with callers.
I don't think I could pull off being a moderate from a standing start, but I might be able to do it with callers.
We'll see.
I want to move on to Sarah Palin now.
You know, the Beatles' magical mystery tour?
You know what that was actually, ladies and gentlemen, an experimental movie that the Beatles made about a bus tour.
And nobody could figure out what the Beatles were up to either.
But the same token, nobody knows what Palin's up to.
They're all trying to figure out drive-bys are going to figure out what Sarah Palin's up to.
Now, the interesting thing is that whatever it is she's doing, she is doing it bypassing the media.
She's doing an end around the media, and they're not happy about it.
They do not like this a bit.
We start with a media montage of Palin getting under the skin of the drive-bys.
Governor Palin likes to call us the lamestream media, and her organization refuses to give us a schedule.
We don't have a schedule, we don't know where she's going to be popping up.
There's no published schedule, no advanced team.
She's been a bit mum about her schedule.
There is no official schedule.
She has no advanced teams out.
We know that she's going to show up.
She wouldn't even give out her itinerary.
She seemed to be avoiding answering questions.
You need some advance notice.
You can't just have this all be by the seat of her pants.
That's Jonathan Alter there from where is he now?
MSNBC, Daily Call.
Those newsweek guys have all been blown up.
They're in other places now.
So they're ticked off.
She won't tell them where she's going to be popping up.
There's no schedule.
No press availability.
No, why do they care?
She's an idiot anyway.
What does it matter what Sarah Palin's doing?
She's stupid.
That's what they think.
Why should she give them anything?
Now, she did.
This ticked them off even more.
I guess she invited Greta Van Sustrin on the bus.
She had Greta with her because this morning, Foxnews.com, Greta's on the record page, webpage, they posted a clip of tonight's interview of Palin.
Van Sustrin said, Everybody trying to find out where you're going, what you're doing.
What do you say about that?
Because everybody seems to be talking about it.
I don't think I owe anything to the mainstream media.
I think that it would be a mistake for me to become some kind of conventional politician and doing things the way that it's always been done with the media in terms of relationship with them.
Tell them to come along and we'll orchestrate this.
We'll script this and we'll basically write a story for you, media, about what we're doing every day.
No, I want them to have to do a little bit of work on a tour like this.
It's not about me.
It's not a publicity-seeking tour.
It's about highlighting the great things about America.
And the media can figure out where we're going if they do their investigative work, or they're going to keep kind of, as you put it, going crazy trying to figure out what we're doing here.
You know, she's got a point.
They're sitting around waiting for an itinerary so they know where to go.
She said, I can do a little work and I can follow us.
All they got to do, a little investigative work, and follow us.
I mean, the bus is clearly viewable.
It's not invisible.
I kind of like this.
What, you don't like that, Sterling?
Well, of course, well, now, Snerdley certainly says it's not going to sit well.
Nothing she does is going to sit well.
This she knows.
Now, yesterday, yesterday on Fox and Friends, Peter Doocy talked to Palin.
They taped this Sunday in Arlington, Virginia, is on the Rolling Thunder Tour.
And Doocy said, Are all of your events on the bus tour going to be this loud?
Because she was with the biker boys.
It would be a blast if they were this loud, if they smelled this good.
I love that smell of the emissions.
I love the smell of emissions.
You know, I have been known to say On the tarmac at airports that I love the smell of Jet A.
I do.
I love the smell of kerosene.
So she loves the smell of emissions.
Last night, ABC's world news tonight, the correspondent is Yunji Denise interviewing Palin at the National Archives on her Rolling Thunder bus tour.
Denise said, certainly looks like a campaign bus.
If you're not running for president, why the tour?
This isn't a campaign bus.
This is a bus to be able to express to America how much we appreciate our foundation and to invite more people to be interested in all that is good about America.
All right, so she's taking the family on a trip to the archives, to Mount Vernon, to a number of other places.
Just happenstance, she's going to end up in New Hampshire.
I know she is.
It's what I said on Van Cestron's show last week.
I said, she's finally, I think, at peace now.
She's toying with them.
It's like a mouse trapped in a corner by a very adept cat.
The cat just kept pawing the mouse and so forth, not killing it.
She's toying with them.
And these guys are frustrated as hell.
Where's she going?
Why doesn't she tell them?
What's the real purpose of this?
Whatever she's doing, she's doing it all bypassing them.
Unidentified correspondent, the next question, is this a family vacation kind of thing?
What is it?
We're meeting a lot of good folks already.
The mission that we are on is to highlight America's foundation.
And that's a nice thing that we are getting to do, bring the family along for the ride, but making sure that people are aware of where America came from, how it is that we have built ourselves into the most exceptional nation, and how important it is to restore what is good about America.
And we're going to highlight some of these sites on this trip.
That was a security guy shutting it up.
Okay, guys, thanks.
Thanks very much.
Thanks very much.
And she was in Gettysburg.
Went to Gettysburg in Pennsylvania.
Said this to reporters about the 2013 election.
I think the Republican field is already quite strong.
It's going to change up a lot.
And I think that there will be more strong candidates jumping in.
The field isn't set yet, not by a long shot.
So this morning on the Daily Rundown on PMS NBC, they talked to Charlie Cook, who is the dean of political analysts and pollsters and so forth.
He's got the Cook political report.
It's eponymous.
It means it's named after himself.
And the co-hosts were F. Chuck Todd, Savannah Guthrie.
So now let's talk about what Sarah Palin said.
She thinks that the field is going to change up.
There are going to be more strong candidates.
Her words, more strong.
Is she right?
I think she's just trying to stay relevant as long as possible.
I really, really, really don't think she's going to run.
Why should she give up her million-dollar year contract with Fox, $75,000 a speech?
She's making more money than God ever intended her to make.
Now you have to say she's really irritating him now.
She's making more money than God ever intended her to make.
That's exactly right.
How does this dumb broad make this kind of money and we don't?
How can this dumb broad have figured out to con people out of this kind of money and we haven't?
There's something unholy about this is just they think they've destroyed her.
They think they're confident that they have seen to it that she's nothing but a blip On the radar screen.
Now, I've never heard Charlie Cook talk about anybody this way, much less say this about anybody.
I've never heard Charlie Cook talk about anybody this way, much less say something.
He's never said, well, Al Gore making more money than God ever intended him to make.
I would, by the way, support that assertion.
Not finished.
George Will.
ABC's this week, the roundtable yesterday.
Christiana Anpour, the hostette, said, George, what's up here?
Is Sarah Palin going to run?
Two things are infinite.
One is the expanding universe, and the other is media attention to Sarah Palin, who's a genius at manipulating it.
She has several political problems, the first of which is there's no undecided vote in this country anymore about Sarah Palin, surely.
Second, the threshold question.
It's not usually asked, but it's in everyone's mind in a presidential election.
Should we give this person nuclear weapons?
And the answer answers itself then.
Okay, so George Will is convinced that there's no way the American people would ever give Sarah Palin nuclear weapons.
We would readily give them to Barack Obama.
No way would we ever give Sarah Palin nuclear weapons.
And would one of these soundbite tours be complete without, ladies and gentlemen, the contributions of David Brooks?
No, New York Times.
He was on Meet the Press during the roundtable on Sunday, and this is what he said about the rolling Thunderbus tour with Sarah Palin.
She can manage her brand, but running for president is not an American idol.
And I think people may agree with her.
They may like her, but that doesn't mean they're going to vote for her.
She's just not a team player.
This is a team sport.
Just take one little thing she did this week.
She's taking her bus up to New Hampshire.
She doesn't call the Republican Party in New Hampshire, tell them where she's going to appear, what she's going to do.
So you've got to play as part of the party.
You've got to play as part of the team.
She's not a team player.
She's just not doing anything the way she's supposed to.
Not doing anything according to the rules.
Not doing anything according to the way the ruling class elites say it should be done.
She's not doing anything.
Right.
Well, I don't know what he thinks would tick off the rank and file.
I don't know whether she's running or not.
I just find their reaction to her over the top.
They are totally discombobulated.
They can't stand it.
They can't stand any.
They can't stand the fact that she's happy.
They can't stand the fact she's making money.
They can't stand the fact she's got a bus.
She got the family on the bus.
She traveled around.
They can't stand the fact that she's not telling anybody where she's going.
They can't stand the fact she didn't call a Republican Party in New Hampshire.
They can't stand the fact she's not a team player.
Of course, when she was on the team, where were they?
They were doing everything they could, and they weren't stabbing her in the back, snurry.
They're stabbing her in the front trying to get rid of her.
They weren't stabbing her in the back.
David Brooks, one more before we go to break.
Let's see.
Norris.
Who's Norris?
Michelle Norris.
I'm sorry, this is Friday night.
All things considered on NPR.
And it co-hosted Michelle Norris.
And she's talking to Brooks.
She said, Governor Rick Perry of Texas says he's now considering a run in 2012.
Perry is one candidate we really haven't spent much time talking about.
Should we assume that a governor from a big state like Texas will automatically shake up the candidate pool?
There was a general view among Republicans that governors of Texas have been tried, and maybe they shouldn't go back to that well again so soon.
I would say this week sort of belongs to John Huntsman among those who talk about those things.
The former governor of Utah, his stock has suddenly risen, and I would say he seems to have entered the big three of Huntsman, Palenti, and Romney.
What is this among those who talk about those things?
Among those who talk about those things, Huntsman.
Huntsman's stock has risen.
Yeah, because he's so much in support of cap and trade and a number of other things that no Republican is ever going to be elected on.
One more, one more bite before we go to a break.
It's Andrew Sullivan.
He was on the Chris Matthews syndicated show on Sunday morning.
Andrew Sullivan is gosh, where he shows up where?
Daily Beast Blog the Dish, it says here.
At any rate, Chris Matthews said to Andrew Sullivan, let's go to Palin.
You love Palin.
Some strange way, you're fascinated by her, Andrew.
As I've said many times, she started running the day after the 2008 election ended, and there's no reason to believe she isn't running.
I do think Washington has misread her, underestimated her.
Andrew Sullivan, Washington has misunderstood her.
Misread her.
Hey, finally, they got to McCain on this too, by the way.
McCain was on Fox News Sunday.
Chris Wallace talked to him.
Move ahead here to Sun by 13.
Chris Wallace said, Can she win Senator McCain, the Republican nomination, and can she beat Barack Hussein Obama?
Of course she can.
She can.
Now, whether she will or not, whether she'll even run or not, I don't know.
Well, there you have it, McCain.
Of course she can win.
Of course she can.
There's no doubt about it.
Whether she'll run is the only question McCain has.
Back to the phones.
It's Jasmine in Chicago.
Jasmine, hi, glad you waited.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
As a former registered Democrat and as a Hispanic woman who used to work in the media, I got to tell you that that other Chicago caller, the guy who says that the Chicago media will win for Obama, it's not true because I've been doing a little digging on my own as a stay-at-home mom and a part-time self-employed woman.
And I found something that was quite startling.
And it was A.B. Culverhouse, a prominent Washington attorney who was counsel to Ronald Reagan.
He did the vetting for Senator John McCain for the vice presidential pick.
And he told at a National Press Club conference that he had that they asked Sarah Palin if she was prepared to use nuclear weapons in the defense of the American homeland.
And he said that she knocked it out of the park.
So all people have to do is actually don't go to the old media.
I wouldn't even call them mainstream.
They're such a dying breed.
Get rid of the old media, go and do their own homework.
You can find this on C-SPAN.
C-SPAN aired it.
And Culva House himself said that she impressed even his most cynical colleagues.
So George Will has it completely wrong.
He should do his own homework.
It was an interesting comment.
He said it's the unspoken question that everybody asks, and it's hardly ever stated aloud anymore.
When it comes to Palin using nuclear weapons, there's not a soul in the country that would ever give her authority and control over their launching, the use.
You are right about something in the vice presidential vetting process.
That is something that is delved into quite deeply.
And this Culverhouse guy, yeah, look at there's a lot in the conservative media that I wish I could explain to all of you in a cogent, simple way, explain it, but I can't.
I don't know.
All I can do is speculate.
The best I come up with is ruling class versus non-ruling class and that kind of thing.
Clearly, they're vetting her.
Well, they think she's an idiot.
It just boils down to nothing more than that.
They think she's stupid, genuinely, intellectually stupid.
And that's what frightens them about it.
It's the fastest two hours in media and one exciting hour yet to go.
Still lots of stuff to get through here in our stacks.