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June 2, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:12
June 2, 2011, Thursday, Hour #3
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Well, they're right, Snerdley.
I am stringing them along.
If it's a if it's a secret project, it wouldn't be a secret if I told them what it is.
Hey, welcome back.
Great to have you.
Ill Rush, both the EIB network and the Limbo Institute.
Where we serve humanity simply by showing up and by being here, we bring sanity to the rest of the media.
I'm guessing that the number of uh wiener jokes will be reduced by over half today.
Well, I mean, bringing serious discussion here to things.
I mean, I I I wasn't distracted by it on Tuesday.
I didn't get into it for the second hour.
The economy news was too important.
It is today.
Now, Heather in Blacksburg, Virginia, hang on.
I'm coming right to you.
But this, folks, I have to tell you they are popping the champagne corks in the oval orifice right now, right before the top of the hour.
Moody's, the rating service, the investor service, said that there is a very small but rising risk of a short-lived default by the U.S. if there's no increase in the debt limit in coming weeks.
I got two versions of this story.
One from the business insider, the author here, Joe Wiesenthal, and you'll see his opinion.
Moody's is out with a comment saying that if there's no imminent progress on a debt ceiling fight, the U.S. credit rating will be cut.
Makes total sense.
And we applaud Moody's for doing their job, identifying the imminent real issue and sensibly advising ahead of time about what could be a threat to U.S. debt holders.
This ought to help put an end to this idea that a technical default would be just fine, and that somehow all this brinksmanship would be good for U.S. credit somehow.
Back in January, we here at Business Insider called for Moody's to do exactly this.
Threaten a ratings cut as a way of warning about the harmful effects of this fight.
And they've done exactly that.
So these guys at the Business Insider blog website, they want the debt ceiling raised.
And of course, Reuters can barely contain themselves.
They're thinking about sending out pictures of everybody's crotch over there.
Moody's investor service said on Thursday there's a very small but rising risk of a short-lived default by the U.S. If there's no increase in its statutory debt limit in coming weeks, in a statement Moody's said, if there's no progress in increasing a debt limit, it would expect to place the triple A sovereign credit rating on review for a possible downgrade.
If the debt limit is raised and default avoided, a triple A rating will be maintained.
However, the rating outlook will depend on the outcome of negotiations on deficit reduction, Moody's said.
And here's here's another sentence from the Reuters report on the news.
The prices of longer dated U.S. debt hit session lows on Thursday after Moody's said the U.S. risks a credit rating downgrade if legal borrowing limit is not increased.
So the Democrats and the Republicans go bipartisan in voting down raising the debt level without some spending cuts, and here comes Moody's to the rescue the next day.
Obama popping the champagne corks over there in the Oval Office.
All right, back now to Heather in Blacksburg, Virginia.
And to set the stage here, uh in the first hour of the program, I made mention of the fact that universal respect of public figures is something that's uh long gone in the country.
It used to be that a lot of people had universal respect.
I'll give you an example.
Walter Klondike.
Walter Klondike, and what do they say about Klondike?
Klondike said that the man uh most trusted man in America.
But no longer.
Uh because it was revealed that Klondike was just uh Cronkite, I'm sorry, it's another in a long line of media liberals who was agenda-focused and agenda-oriented.
Um the wiener, the wiener business has has to me that the the point of this is is that here we have all these people claiming to be better than we are, smarter, uh capable, qualified to rule us.
And they're reprobates.
And they're the ones that make fun of Middle America.
Uh hardworking people who make the country work.
They make fun of people who care about morality.
They make fun of people who care about virtue.
Uh, And then they go out and engage in this kind of uh in this kind of behavior.
And with all this social media out there now, with everybody vomiting everything there is about themselves.
We find out what has always been true, that everybody's flawed.
Even those who had universal respect longer, everybody is flawed.
So what's happened now, and this is my major problem.
I mean what was happened now is that the flaws are becoming badges of honor that we are to respect.
And it's kind of a vicious circle.
Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged, was pointed out to me, uh, wrote that flawed leaders and leaders who admire the flaws of human beings make the most despicable feel welcome to follow a leader.
Flawed leaders and leaders who admire the flaws of human beings make the most despicable among us feel welcome to follow the flawed leader.
Those who uh hold themselves to higher standards are left to wonder what in the hell is real anymore.
What what why even try to be moral and virtuous when depravity is rewarded and is claimed to be enlightened and advanced.
And I think it's a problem because I think people need people look up to.
People need heroes.
And the the the dumbing down of our culture, the watering down, the defining deviancy down, is just um huge detrimental thing to our culture.
Now we have Heather who graciously held on during the break, who wants to weigh in on this.
And now, thanks, Heather, for holding on.
Now it's your turn.
Thank you, Rush.
And I definitely agree with what you just said, but I also see those same liberals that um welcome depravity and say, you know, come on and jump on my bandwagon and we'll uh welcome you with open arms.
They're also the same folks that are saying that man is in control of his of his ultimate destiny, and that you see in climate change, you know.
If we make enough changes in law and how we live, we can control the climate.
You know, it's also seen in in um in youth.
You know, if we eat the right things and we do the right this and we do the right that, we'll be young forever, or at least for longer.
Um so it's almost the sense that we are in control, and we can manage all of this.
So as a result, we can also control our flaws, and if we only work a little harder or make some changes, then guess what?
We can minimize, if not eliminate our flaws.
Okay, now let's also go back.
Well, let's go back to your example of Bush and Clinton.
You said they're both flawed, yet Clinton womanizers, you know, sex freak, whatever mania uh uh addict, and and and and uh W had uh his uh bout with alcoholism.
Your your point was that W made changes because of it.
They tried to improve Clinton, excused it, and lives off the reputation now, by the way.
Exactly.
I mean, there are women who write of Bill Clinton.
I would give Clinton a Lowinsky myself just to thank him for keeping abortion legal.
So you have this is this is the whole point of this kind of stuff being celebrated.
Look at uh look look at um uh Hollywood.
Movies used to have heroes.
And by the way, uh this this is just an observation.
I'm not sitting here wringing my hands over this one, but movies used to have genuine heroes.
Now those guys actors and and roles are laughed at, John Wayne.
The heroes of today's movies are the guys that get away with it.
They're the guys that get away with poking authority, guy the the the roguish lovable criminal gets away with it.
Those those are the heroes.
Um the heroes in movies today are probably the most flawed people of among us.
Uh Any movie star, pop star, sports star, rap star you might want to name.
Flawed from beginning to end, but yet still idolized.
Well, I think that speaks to the liberals as well.
They speak on both sides of their mouth because both of what we're saying is true.
You know, they welcome uh uh depravity, and yet they also expect that there can be perfection.
They don't make sense in anything that they do in life.
They see it from both sides, and they try to um get us to accept both sides.
They just use whichever argument happens to be expedient for whatever issue they're doing.
See, there's a there's another there's another element to this, though.
And that is and I also made this point brilliantly, I might add, in my opening monologue.
That is that conservatives are not permitted this rehabilitation.
Bush was not credited for Exactly.
Uh uh because and the reason is hypocrisy.
The left uses hypocrisy as a weapon.
Right, conservatives, the moral majority, the Christian right, uh, the morality and virtue crowd, uh, you know, when they fall, as everybody does, they're laughed at point of aha, you have no right to be preaching, you got no right to talk to any of them.
Look at who are you who are you?
Uh the other side never claims to be anything approaching virtuous, and so they're they're allowed to totally violate and get away with any social norm or more, because they're not being hypocritical about it.
And in fact, they are the ones we're told that are more genuine and that we should uh we should emulate.
And so when you have people who are given role models like that, that's how you end up with uh what, 47 million on food stamps, in my opinion.
Uh and and it's it's how you end up with so many people scratching their heads out there.
Look at I'm playing by the rules, I'm trying to do everything I can as close to the right way as possible.
Nobody ever succeeds at this hundred percent of the way, but uh they're the ones that are laughed at.
The ones that that that try to be virtuous, the ones that try to have some modicum morality morality, they're laughed at as fuddy duddies, old-fashioned, made fun of.
Nobody wants to be made fun of or laughed at.
So it isn't cool.
But it's cool to be roguish.
It's cool to get and and to get away.
Clinton is loved not only because of his roguishness, but because he got away with it.
Yeah, but he's loved by a part of the culture that I do not admire, nor do I want to emulate.
So, you know, it's happens to be in terms of media, and this is my point going back to the beginning, the dominant culture.
That's true.
Well, that's why we're thankful for you, Rush.
Oh, no, no.
I don't I don't qualify here.
I've I've um I uh well, yeah, yeah, epitome of morality I know you could.
You can trust your wife, your girlfriend, and Motel 6 and your pets uh overnight with me while you're out on a so-called business trip.
Yeah, I epitome of virtue.
I I was um where was I?
I was uh made a speech at the uh Heritage Foundation down at uh the the four seasons here in in Palm Beach, and Dr. Larry Arne of Hillsdale College introduced me, and he was going on and on and on about all the efforts that have been made to uh destroy me.
He was talking about my resilience in his introduction.
And I strode to the microphone to begin my remarks, and I tried to uh calm the nervous waters of the audience.
And I said, folks, don't worry.
I have tried destroying me, and it didn't work.
It it it can't be done.
I've tried.
So you don't you don't have to worry about it.
Um that's that's that's the whole point.
I I um it is it's like I remember uh back in the early days of this program, late 80s, in talking about the uh defense budget big argument back then, the size of it.
We'd have liberals calling you, you didn't serve.
You never went to Vietnam, what right do you have?
So the argument was, well, if you've never been in the military, you have no right to talk about the defense budget.
So I said, okay, that so I've never been to the moon, so I can't talk about the space program.
That's right, Mr. Limbaugh.
You simply you're not qualified.
And so this is another way of of uh restricting or denying or impugning uh people.
You see my my point has always been that everybody knows right and wrong even if they do wrong things.
It doesn't it doesn't mean that um you just didn't listen to a little voice in your head telling you not to do whatever it was but it doesn't mean you don't know the difference between right and wrong.
Doesn't mean that it doesn't mean that you're not qualified to talk about right and wrong.
In fact you may even be more qualified talk about right and wrong when you have been to the dark side and seen what's uh what what what what's there and how you don't want to be there ever again.
Anyway, Heather, is there anything else?
I know I asked you to wait, and it's been a long time, and I don't want to shortchange you.
Is there anything else you wanted to add before I have to go?
Just want to say thank you.
Appreciate all that you're doing, Russ.
You're more than welcome.
Call Catherine hello.
All right, will do.
Will do.
Thanks very much, Heather.
We'll be back and continue right after this.
And it's another, see, I told you so.
What happened to that freedom movement?
In Egypt, a Muslim Brotherhood leader.
What is this clown's name?
Masri al Yoom the Muslim Brotherhood would apply Islamic Sharia if it came to power in Egypt said leading brotherhood figure Sobi Saleh adding that Sharia protects non-Muslim citizens.
Terms like civil or secular state are misleading.
He said Islamic Sharia is the best system for Muslims and non-Muslims.
That's who we backed in Egypt.
It was an outbreak of democracy there.
It was the Arab Spring.
Yep.
Laurel Merrill, this is Bert.
Great to have you on the EIB network, Bert.
Hello.
Thank you, Rush.
19-year student of societal evolution under a tutelage.
Thank you, sir.
First-time caller, and wow, is my heart pounding.
Yeah.
If I may relax by first saying hello to my beautiful wife of 18 years next week.
Hello, honey.
But I want to discuss how you mentioned people are so surprised that the workers are exiting the workforce.
One thing I've heard, reinforced by you here at EIB, is that history is important.
If I understand correctly, our friends across the pond with their social programs and government, health care, etc.
in Britain have seen an exodus of about one-sixth of their workforce, who now exist on government support alone.
And so my question is, you know, what have the Democrats done here except to tell more people they need to rely on the government?
They've extended unemployment, stimulus, and people.
I agree is I don't know what you're getting at here I think you're saying it's all on purpose.
Um yeah I mean everything from cash for the unions I mean cash for clunkers to um everything I I'm No it's like this debt ceiling.
What what what was what did Greece do?
Greece was told to raise their date ceiling.
And they did.
Look what they got them.
More trouble.
Yeah, look, it all ties in.
It all ties in.
There's virtue in not working.
We had news stories on the virtue of not working.
Get closer to your family.
Spend time with people you haven't seen in a long, long time.
No, let me try to make this clear.
This flawed business, it's understandably confusing because nobody's perfect.
here's here's another stab at this nobody is expecting people to be Christ like It's not possible.
However, people do admire the effort.
But if if the notion is that flawed people cannot promote a better and more moral society, then what's left.
Simple basic existence requires that we try to improve ourselves and our society.
But at the same time recognizes the obvious fact that perfection is unachievable.
And yet, isn't that really the underlying theme of the left that there is a utopia?
That there is a perfection.
And that they are it.
That they and their policies way down the road would just stick.
They embody that perfection.
Which is so hypocritical because they end up representing the highest of flawed people.
By the Midster, Mitt Romney was in New Hampshire this afternoon.
Announcing his candidacy for the presidency of the United States.
We have uh see what we have here.
Two sound bites plus one of me.
Here's the first of the Romney soundbite.
A few years ago, Americans did something that's really quite American in its nature.
It's the sort of thing we like to do.
We gave someone new a chance to lead the country.
Someone we hadn't known for very long, someone who didn't have a long record, but someone who promised to lead us to a better place.
At the time we didn't know what kind of president he'd make.
Yes, we did.
It was a moment of crisis for our economy.
We didn't.
And when Barack Obama came to office, we wished him well and hoped for the best.
Now in the third year of his four-year term, we have more than slogans and promises to judge him by.
Uh jeez.
Barack Obama has failed America.
Yes.
Right on, right on, right on, right on.
Thank you.
Now you people know, you know, I I like Mitt.
I uh let a respect for Mitt.
I just and I know what they're doing here.
I know you gotta you gotta Rush.
You can't go out there and you run for president, you can't, you gotta get you gotta attack Obama's policies.
You can't you can't attack Obama.
I I disagree with that.
And I'm I want to get in a before this program ends today.
I want to tackle this whole notion that somehow uh we we cannot mention Obama.
We could mention his policies.
We gotta go after his policies.
We can't mention him.
I'm gonna I'm gonna deal with that straight up before we finish here today.
But at the time we didn't know what kind of president would make.
Yes, we did.
Huh.
Admit it, you did now I can understand people having hope.
I can understand people having uh I mean, even some of you people, I can understand you hoping but for crying out loud, it's not leftist liberal.
There was Reverend Wright, there was Saul Alinsky, there was Bill Ayers that we knew.
We knew what he had said we played the sound bites from 2002 about single-payer health care.
We we knew we knew it all.
And so I, El Rushbo, January 16th, even before the regime was immaculated.
I don't need 400 words, I need four.
I hope he fails.
Well, what are you laughing at?
See, here's the point.
Everybody thinks it's outrageous to say.
Look at even my staff, oh, you can't do that.
You why not?
Why is it any different?
What's new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails.
Liberalism is our problem.
Liberalism is what's gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here.
Why do I want more of it?
I don't care what the drive-by story is.
I would be honored if the drive-by media headlined me all day long.
Limbaugh colon, I hope Obama fails.
Somebody's gotta say it.
I said it, and they lived off of it for a year.
And of course, the Republicans running around, well, we I don't really uh hope the president fails.
Well, if you didn't hope he failed, and you had to be supporting of his policies.
If you didn't want if you didn't want Obama to fail.
See, this is why I could never do politics.
It's what I I I could I could never I could never do it.
I would I if if I if I had made a speech, said, we all hope the president fails succeeds, and we're holding up, I'd go home.
I would, I would tell myself I had been disingenuous, dishonest, and I gotta get back there the next day and apologize for misleading my audience.
Now, Mitt then um went on to pledge to repeal Obamacare and return the responsibility to health care to the states.
I will cap federal spending at 20% or less of the economy, and finally, finally balance the budget.
My generation, your generation will pass the torch to the next generation, not a bill.
And I'm going to insist that Washington learns how to respect the Constitution, including the Tenth Amendment.
Now we're going to return the responsibility and authority to the states for dozens of government programs.
And that will begin with a complete repeal of Obamacare.
Radio Rado Rado and Radon.
Okay, let me try again.
I it's amazing.
I uh I've lit some kind of fire here with this flawed person business, and apparently the more I say, the more questions I raise.
Um existence, I mean, being alive.
Being alive requires that we try to improve ourselves, that we get better, learn from mistakes, and at the same time we improve our society and our culture while realizing that perfection is unachievable.
Confronted with people who actually think there's a utopia out there.
We have people to believe they are perfect, but that we are flawed.
The leaders are perfect, but the people are flawed, and the people's flaws have to be fixed.
The people have created global warming.
People destroying the environment.
The people caused homelessness and so forth.
So we got we have to have leaders who are not flawed because they're better than us, telling us what we need to do to improve.
And the Wiener situation is a reminder to me, another reminder that we allow politicians to run our lives at our own peril.
They are not the super smart people that they claim to be.
They are seeking power over all of us.
And what do we really know about them?
you So Wiener sends out this picture, or somebody sends out a well, whatever here.
How many people said, gee, I th I I really thought I knew this guy?
Why did you think you knew him?
When's the last time you ran into him?
Who is it that's told you that Wiener is whatever you think he is?
I think it's a just a real danger.
These are the people that want to rule us, folks.
Now, for those of you who say, and not the for those who say, don't attack Obama, attack his policies.
I told you once that I had a meeting with um a Republican who was pondering seeking the Republican presidential nomination, and his point to me was uh we have to attack these policies.
Can't really attack him.
That just won't work because the historical uh nature of his presidency and and so forth, we will will be sidetracked by criticism that we get because of that, and the genuine criticism of his policies will not be heard, be deflected.
We have to focus on the policies.
Now, in an overpriced university classroom or faculty lounge.
That might be a fun concept to discuss and maybe employ.
But how do you do this?
How do you attack Obama's policies and not attack him when his policies are sold under false pretenses?
When socialism and crony capitalism where sheep's clothing.
Why waste time debating the sheep?
Examples.
Obamacare.
Obamacare was promised.
We were assured, even though all of us knew this is total BS, because we know the math.
We were nevertheless promised that Obamacare would reduce the deficit and the cost of health insurance policies, and the cost of health care itself.
That's what we were told.
It was promised that consumers would have more choice, greater access, on and on and on.
Premiums would be reduced by twenty five hundred dollars.
We were told that Obamacare would reduce the deficit, that it would not cost anywhere near a trillion dollars.
Now President Obama deliberately lied about this monstrous piece of legislation, as did all the other Democrats in support of it.
The legislation was never released, so it could be read or debated.
Republicans were shut out of the process entirely.
There were no hearings.
There were no panels of experts brought in, as is the case in any other major piece of legislation.
The man is his policies.
The policies are the man.
They are one in the same.
You cannot achieve some position on a tightrope of saying you are objecting to his policies, but not to him.
Obama's policies are not a different personality.
He's not Sybil out there, where he's got this weird set of beliefs, but then personally, what a nice guy.
Barack Obama is his policies.
And in Obama, we have someone who continues to advance an agenda that is damaging to this country.
Which means there's something out of kilter with this man.
There is something wrong.
Something wrong with his thinking, something wrong with his knowledge, something wrong with his ideology, his attitude, the way he was raised, but he continues to advance an agenda that is damaging this country, and we're supposed to say, well, we disagree with the policy, but not the man.
The man is the policy.
Obama gave his word on all these health care, whatever other issue, cap and trade, you name it, he gave his word.
And there was no legislation to debate, and he never still hadn't presented a budget.
He never had his own health care plan.
So how do you how do you attack a policy that's not published?
And the guy who's guaranteeing it prevaricates.
What do you do?
Put up a graph?
Politely show that he was mistaken?
Well intentioned, but mistaken?
Obama promised shovel ready jobs.
His vice president promised five hundred thousand new jobs a month via a one trillion dollar porculus bill.
He promised to create three and a half million jobs, ninety percent of them coming from the private sector.
That wasn't true.
It was a slush fund, a money laundering scheme to keep Democrat public sector workers employed so their dues would collect and continue to funnel the Democrat candidates.
We know that.
We supposed to ignore that.
Why give up that advantage?
How does one advance a counter argument against policies that are lies without identifying the schemer or the architect?
Nobody does that in their daily life.
Why will Republicans shackle themselves with this impossibility?
Attack the policies but not the guy on the ballot in November twenty twelve, what's going to be on the ballot?
The name or the policies?
We're going to be voting on the policies Is there going to be a line on the ballot for Obamacare up or down?
We don't get to vote on his policies.
In order to vote on his policies, you got to vote for or against him.
You can't separate them I gotta take a break.
This is one of few shows, folks that doesn't phone it in in the last half hour, by the way less than one hour before Mitt Romney was to announce his second presidential bid Sarah Palin appeared in his hometown and set about picking apart the healthcare plan he supported as governor of Massachusetts she suggested Mitt Romney may have a
to repeat Sarah Palin one hour before Romney announces his presidential run takes to her own microphone in front of her own crowd claiming that his fatal flaw might well be Romney care in Massachusetts.
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