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June 10, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:53
June 10, 2011, Friday, Hour #2
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Hey views expressed by the host on this program, now documented to be almost always right 99.6% of the time.
I'm getting emails from people.
Well, what's wrong here?
It's been 99.6 all year.
Folks, when you're 99.6, to get it up to 99.7, you got to be 100% right for months.
It's already so close to total perfection.
It's going to take a concerted effort to get it up there to 0.7.
That's why it's going to take a while.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday.
Yes, sir, Bob, 800-282-2882.
If you want to talk to the big voice on the right, Open Line Friday, a godsend for the audience, a nightmare for Mr. Snerdley.
I don't know why it's a nightmare.
I would think it'd be easy, but that's just me.
I've never screened a talk show.
Snerdley tells me it's tougher than Monday through Thursday.
The reason I think it's easy is because you don't have to agree with me.
You don't have to talk about things that, well, you never have to agree with it.
You don't have to talk about things that I care about.
I mean, none of the rules that are in place Monday through Thursday apply here.
Whatever you want to talk about, you have a question or comment, you think we're not talking enough about something or too much about something?
This is your day to weigh in.
Pretend that if you had a show, what would you be talking about?
What are you rolling your eyes in there for?
800-282-2882 is the number from the email.
Dear Rush, you are truly a brilliant man in regard to politics and business, but you are way off base in thinking that consensus isn't important in science.
This is probably related to your lack of formal education.
It isn't necessary for everything.
Rush, as you have so ably shown, but it's useful for some things.
Science isn't at all the way you were probably taught in Haskru.
What science is, is an attempt to understand things.
A given group of data may be interpreted in several ways by multiple observers.
Consensus is definitely important in that the more observers, i.e. scientists, that agree with a given interpretation, the more likely said interpretation is accurate.
Although this is not guaranteed, the crowd has been found to be wrong in Kate.
Do you believe this?
This is, I mean, I know it's, you know, throughout the history of this program, whenever I would talk about science, the emails would erupt with people, some of them not as nice as this guy, but all of them as arrogant.
Shut up.
You don't know what you're talking.
You start talking about science and you make a fool of yourself.
So here is this guy actually, let me read this to you again.
What science is, is an attempt to understand things.
A given group of data may be interpreted in several ways by multiple observers.
Consensus is definitely important in that the more observers, i.e. scientists, who agree with a given interpretation, the more likely said interpretation is accurate.
Though that's not guaranteed, the crowd has been found to be wrong occasionally.
Well, this is precisely my point.
There is no proof.
There is no scientific, unarguable, unalterable law that says man-made global warming is happening, and yet, to this guy, we just have to accept that because a bunch of scientists think it is.
Now, i'm sorry.
Consensus has no role in real science, scientific discovery and I love the earth around the moon, moon around the earth, sun around the earth.
What if?
What if a consensus?
What if a vast majority of scientists actually believed that the sun orbited the earth?
According to this guy, that would make it true.
If enough people, if a consensus, could be produced, then it would make it true.
A scientific law is actually an observation that is so often consistent that it can be assumed it'll happen again.
Even this isn't entirely true.
Newton's laws in physics do not strictly apply in the subatomic world, i.e quantum physics.
Keep up the good work, though.
Rush Dittos on the show, but be aware you have limitations, albeit few.
Never fails, never fails.
Every time I bring up science I could find a series of emails.
Okay folks, last night I promised that I would begin reading on my own book and I did.
Reckless Endangerment, how outsized ambition, greed and corruption led to economic armageddon.
It is by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner.
He might pronounce it, Rosner, Gretchen Morgenson is a business writer for the NEW YORK Times and I have to confess, before I knew anything of the book or had knew anything of the contents of the book simply because she was at the NEW YORK Times, I figured it was going to have a obviously left-wing slant to it.
I read a review of the book, To You, yesterday by Walter Russell Mead, a well-known historian.
That was sent around by the noted Democrat pollster Pat Cadell.
And the review of Mr. Reid's was that this book is a weapon of mass destruction for Republican presidential candidates and operatives.
Because it is a credible indictment of the Democrat Party, Democrat leaders.
the Democrat Party's alliance with Wall Street leaders in creating, by virtue of policy, the entire crisis that has led to the present state of the economy, that it can be laid at the feet of Democrats exclusively.
Now, in terms of its origins.
Now, during the course, by the way, origins of which go back to 1992 and Bill Clinton.
Now, in the ensuing years, there have been Republicans that have come along and have allowed such things as the Subprime crisis and all to go on.
There were other Republicans tried to regulate against it and stop it.
So it's not entirely laid at the feet of Democrats, but its origins are.
It's a devastating book.
I've now started hunting and pecking my way through it.
I solidly read through chapter four and then, in the interest of time and economy and my book report for today, started scanning other parts of the book.
And it's amazing.
It is everything that our instincts told us about this crisis.
From subprime to the social justice nature of extending loans for houses to people who had no way of paying them back, done on purpose as a matter of policy to secure votes and to also create revenue streams for most favored participants.
The names are legion and they are mentioned throughout this book, and you know them all, except maybe for one, James Johnson.
James Johnson is the villain.
This book answers the question: what happened to our economy?
The American people know that they've been robbed.
This book tells you who robbed you.
And it was an alliance that's ongoing, by the way, of the Democrat Party and liberal-oriented members of Wall Street, usually the upper echelons.
I highlighted a couple of things.
This is page four.
Fueled by dubious industry practices supported by many in Congress and unchecked by most of the regulators charged with oversight of the lending process, the home ownership drive helped to plunge the nation into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
This truly was an unprecedented partnership.
But what few have recognized is how the partners in the Clinton program embraced a corrupt corporate model that was also created to promote homeownership.
This traces the current crisis all the way back to Bill Clinton personally, not some members of his administration, although they are included, but him personally.
The first words in the book are a quote from Bill Clinton about the need for home ownership to be spread far and wide, that it would rebound the economy, that it would give a greater sense of community to everybody.
Whether people could afford homes or not, they need to be in them.
It details and explains the subprime crisis, how it came about, what it is, and how people made money from it.
It explains the derivatives.
It explains the packaging or the pooling, if you will, of mortgages.
It traces the first such evidence of this in the private sector.
Now, and Fannie Mae is target number one, along with Clinton and the Democrats.
Barney Frank, the name Chris Dodd, everything that you thought you knew about this is documented fact in this book, Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Green, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon.
One of the questions that a lot of people have had: how in the world does anybody make money lending money to people that can't pay it back?
How does anybody make money doing that?
It's a question the average layman will have when having this whole thing explained.
Okay, so we're going to go out, we're going to loan money to a bunch of people who have no business.
In fact, Folks, it is just, this will anger you like little has.
The lending rules that were tossed aside, that were relaxed.
The one rule that used to be you had to be no more than 25% of your income devoted to your housing.
They threw that out.
Became 36%.
At some point, they threw it all out.
Credit checks thrown away.
Nobody had to prove anything.
In fact, One of the things that was a tool that was used to determine whether somebody was to be given a mortgage was to try to predict their future.
What kind of earning power were they likely to have based on computer modeling and statistics, not based on anything relevant to those individuals and the way they had lived up to that point?
It details how government forced lenders to make loans to people that had no way of ever paying them back under threat of investigation.
Janet Reno, exactly what we thought was happening is documented in this book to have happened.
So you make a bunch of loans to people that can't pay them back.
You know that going, and how in the world do you make money?
You lie to other people.
You pool those subprime mortgages into what's called a security.
You put 130 million mortgages together, or $130 million worth of mortgages together in a pool in a security.
You pool them and you sell that to an investor on the basis that the income stream from all of those mortgages in one security is going to be a gold mine, the income stream being people making their monthly payments.
You fudge all that.
You don't be, you're not truthful about who's in this pool and how unlikely they are.
But you sell this great future revenue stream on the come.
Investors go out and buy it.
And at each stage, investors learn they've bought a bill of goods.
And so each stage of investors tries to come up with a product designed to make their investment whole and pass the loss on down.
And finally, they reach the end of the line and they couldn't find any other dupes to buy these pools of mortgages known as mortgage-backed securities and what have you.
And it is all blamed specifically on liberal Democrat policy, social policy.
In March of 1994, James Johnson announced Fannie Mae's trillion-dollar commitment, a program that earmarked $1 trillion to be spent on affordable housing between 1994 and 2000.
Now, affordable housing, as Barney Frank has told us, and as we now know, affordable housing is simply another way of defining loaning money to people that can't pay it back.
All on the premise it's unfair that some should live in a house and some don't.
That's not a fair and decent country that has a circumstance like that.
For America to be fair, have social justice and to be decent, everybody should have a chance to live in a house.
Everybody should have a chance to own their house.
That's the American dream.
So James Johnson in 1994 creates the trillion-dollar commitment program that earmarked a trillion dollars to be spent on affordable housing between 1994 and to the subprimes, essentially.
A program which would reward lenders and give lenders the money to make these mortgages, to make these loans.
The money in the trillion dollar commitment would finance more than 10 million homes for low-income families, minorities and new immigrants, families who live in central cities and other underserved communities and people with special housing needs.
The company said, meaning Fannie MAE setting aside these funds, meant this quote.
Fannie MAE will transform the nation's housing finance system by working with other industry partners to eliminate the barriers to home ownership and promote a ready supply of affordable rental housing.
Now, at the time Fanny was under investigation.
They've always regulated.
They're under investigation and and the guy running Fannie, James Johnson, is trying to do anything he can to create exemptions for himself and Fanny it.
The book also lays out that the executives at Fanny in large part derived policies that were oriented solely at paying themselves lavishly.
I mean it was a giant slush fund scam to individually get rich to advance liberal social policy.
One trillion dollars even for a man with plans as big as James Johnson's, the figure was audacious, but it had to be, as those inside Fannie MAE knew if Johnson was going to secure the protection that Fannie MAE needed from regulators.
The plan former Fannie executives say was to commit so much money to low-income housing for families and communities most in need quote unquote that no one would dare criticize the other activities.
Fannie MAE is engaged, so you go out of your way, you make it possible for the poor to get into homes and then whatever else you do is ignored because you're doing the lord's work social justice back after this.
By the way, somewhere in the book Reckless Endangerment, it's pointed out that James Johnson is they refer to him as Corporate America's founding father of regulation manipulation, and that's another big part of the story here that we have so many regulations and somebody knows how to game them, can make out like a bandit and never even break a single law and get rich in the process.
But this book folks, explains why we're sitting here today as we are.
That subprime business and all of this silly financing and expansion in the housing market this it, that's the, that's it, it's 90 of what's going on and why we're here today.
Obama's the other 10, why we haven't been able to reverse this and take a new tack.
Jackie in Athens, Missouri.
As we go back to the phones and open line friday, hi hi Rush um, can you hear me?
Yes, I hear you fine.
Oh good listen um, I know you're.
It's probably not your favorite thing to insult a lot of your listeners And we all know that a lot of your listeners are women.
But due to the seriousness of this upcoming election, I don't think you have any choice but to come right out and tell them that you were under the opinion that conservative women were intelligent and thought about issues and actually acted upon their thoughts about issues,
and that you are ashamed, shocked and ashamed that conservative women are responding to Sarah Palin the way they are.
I'm ashamed of my own sex.
Well, you know, I actually spent a lot of yesterday's program doing that in my own words.
I did ask, what is this?
The whole point, the whole, the point I made was the importance of policy these days.
How come it's being subordinated to only superficial concerns?
And I was somewhat surprised by it because I've always known that liberal women run around and they're susceptible to soccer mom garbage and all that.
But I've always thought that conservative women were far more deep.
That their depth of substance on issues.
And this Sarah Palin business, it's caused me to start scratching my head about it.
It really has.
It was painful for me to try to massage this yesterday.
But basically here, what Jackie is saying is that some of you women who've called here are stupid.
And she wants me to say that.
And she doesn't, she wanted to say it herself because she knows that I won't.
But that's pretty much it, right, Sterley?
She wants me to call women stupid.
And that's just not what I do.
And we have more email to share whether you're here on Open Mind Friday for crying out loud, Rush.
You really have to work hard at not understanding this.
While it's true that a consensus is not required for something to be true, it does not follow that a consensus is forbidden in science.
What if a majority of scientists agree on something that, by a strange coincidence, is also true?
What then?
You seem to be saying that such a situation is impossible, which is ridiculous.
Paul from Oak Harbor, Washington.
What is it, folks?
I'm going to be very blunt here.
Some of you need to slow down.
You're not as smart as you think.
You just need to listen to something.
When I say that if something is said to be true because of consensus, it can't be science.
Science is not up to a vote.
I don't care if nine out of ten scientists agree on something that is true.
The fact that they agree is not what makes it true.
Scientists agreeing on something cannot make something true that's false.
Science is independent of opinion.
Science is what it is.
True scientific discovery, incontrovertible fact, whatever you want to define science is immune to whatever human beings think it is or think of it.
All I'm saying is that if we're going to have a culture that believes that there is man-made global warming because there is a consensus of scientists who say so, then we're on shaky ground because a consensus of human beings cannot make something scientifically true.
Now, a consensus of scientists can happen to agree on something that is true, but their agreement does not make it true.
The global warming crowd is trying to say that man-made global warming is true because a consensus of human beings, disguised as scientists, say it's happening.
What I'm telling you is those people have no more right to proclaim something to be scientifically true simply because they agree or are scientists with each other.
Something is true in science or not independent of what anybody thinks about it.
I don't know what's so hard to understand about this.
There's nothing democratic about science.
A majority in anything has zilch to do with it.
The sun, put it this way, the earth does not revolve around the sun because a consensus of people says so.
The earth revolves around the sun because the earth revolves around the sun.
And we have been fortunate enough to learn enough to understand that it's true.
But it isn't true because a bunch of people think it.
Same thing with global warming.
Man-made global warming is not true simply because a consensus of human beings says it's true.
But we're told to accept as science man-made global warming because Al Gore believes it and a consensus of other scientists who are being paid for.
A bunch of people who say that I'm in it for the money, who literally sell their reputations, who sell their opinions.
Politicians too will sell their votes for money.
I don't do that.
But don't try to be too smart by half here.
It's not complicated.
Dear Rush, while I very much appreciate the efforts of the writers of that book to document the biggest scam of our generation other than maybe Madoff, everything you've just read to us or told us about from that book is information you have been explaining to your audience since 1993 in real time.
Did those writers use you as a source?
No, obviously not.
That was one of the pleasures in reading the book.
Everything we instinctively believed about that now has been documented to be true.
We were able to document it ourselves independently with quotes from some of these people.
But it's nice to have it in book form.
I'll share this with you.
A friend of mine said, gosh, I hope the writer of that book's not conservative.
Why?
What does that matter?
Well, because nobody's going to believe it.
This friend of mine said, yeah, the fact that there's a New York Times writer headlining this book, that's going to help it.
Sadly, true.
Open Line Friday, we continue.
This is Ron El Segundo, California.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hello, Rush.
Good to be with you.
And good luck with your wedding anniversary.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you very much, sir.
Appreciate that.
Even I remember that.
And I was just making a point about Obama and his competence.
I think he's a very, very good politician as far as tactics.
He's a very competent tactician.
And I don't think, as you do, that he's as incompetent.
He may be more incompetent than competent, but I think he's more competent than you and other conservative talk show hosts give him credit for.
What is your view on that?
Am I making a valid point here?
Well, we're going to have to get here to find competence.
If you want to talk strictly about political tactics in order to achieve a desired result, I don't know.
Everywhere you look, a majority of people disagree with Obama.
A majority oppose health care.
Yes.
A majority oppose his financial regulatory reform book proposal.
Yes.
So I think it's a big myth that the guy's competent.
I think what fools everybody thinking he's competent is that he sounds like an intellectual.
He has a manner of speaking that conveys or connotes intellect, high intellect, or being an intellectual.
But what is smart about what he's doing?
Well, I think in a way he does things that he thinks will be advantageous for him.
For example, the Osama bin Laden killing or taking you out of.
I think he knows when to show himself to be a conservative.
During the campaign, he showed himself to be very moderate.
He said 95% will get a tax cut.
He made comments about black fathers needing to be responsible that prompted Jesse Jackson to make that comment that he thought was off-microphone.
Yeah, but now, see, now there's a record to measure all of that stuff against.
And that's where he's going to have big problems come up short.
And I think it's very ironic that the liberal media did not fear not knowing anything about Barack Obama, but fear Sarah Palin knowing nothing about her either, in the sense that she is competent.
She will be a great president, and she will help America move forward.
And that's a very, very blatant showing of what liberals really truly are.
Well, that is well stated in a number of ways.
Because one of the things, and again, anecdotal, just the past two, three days, including in the emails, all this controversy that has arisen here about Palin.
And ever since Annette called here and said, Rush, you're missing the boat.
The reason all these people don't like, Reidal women don't like Palin is because she's a 10.
She's good looking, and they're just jealous.
The firestorm that that inspired, again, this is being talked about on other broadcasts all across the country.
And the emails I'm getting obviously are in response to that, and they're basically comments are based on that comment.
But I haven't, there's maybe two emails in this, and no phone calls, two emails in this whole period of time, the last two and a half days.
Only two people said, Rush, I don't care about any of that.
I just don't think she's qualified.
I've only had two people say, I don't think she's qualified.
Now, maybe that's because her qualifications are not the subject being discussed.
Her appearance is.
But even so, the door has been open here to tell us why you don't like Sarah Palin, and nobody has said she's not qualified.
So here we got Ron Hearson.
Well, she's going to be the greatest president ever.
She's going to move the country forward.
She's going to be doing great things.
And the media, scared to death that that's going to be the case.
They didn't know a thing about Obama, and they don't care where Obama's taking the country.
They don't care.
And he's right about that.
We're sitting around.
We're watching the country disintegrate in front of our eyes.
They don't care.
All they care about is will he continue to get away with it?
Issue by issue.
How will this affect Obama?
How will this affect his reelection?
Excuse me Mr. Matthews.
Are you concerned he's destroying the economy?
Well, no, I only care about his reelection.
But they don't care.
They have no interest in that.
Because everything in Polox today politics is a war.
The decency, the goodness, what's right for the country is not what's on the table.
The left is circling the wagons to protect their wiener.
They're circling the wagons to protect Obama.
They're circling the wagons to protect liberalism.
And the country?
Deal with that later.
The media think Obama is one of them.
They think Palin is not one of them, even though she went to journalism school.
Obama didn't.
The media believe that they and Obama are one, that they are from the same class, that they are from the same ideological stripe and so forth.
And so there's a kinship there.
What he's doing to the country policy, why they couldn't, in fact, their frustration is that his approval numbers are not higher given how hard he's trying and how smart he is.
And why don't people appreciate him as much as we do?
Anyway, up against it here on time, folks.
Sadly, a brief obscene profit timeout once again, but we will be right back.
On the cutting edge of societal evolution, Rush Limbaugh, the big voice on the right, say, just once again, check the email.
Rush, what about this with Obama?
You often talk about the fact is he just is he just full, fettered leftist ideologue or is he incompetent?
Kind of what his caller has brought up.
I think, folks, it is, while it's interesting and fun, it's ultimately a waste of time to choose whether or not Obama's incompetent, unqualified, what have you, or ideological.
The fact that he is full-fledged liberal socialist makes him incompetent.
As far as I'm concerned, if you have a modicum of intelligence, especially now, you have to understand it doesn't work.
So if you have a modicum of intelligence, you understand it doesn't work and you persist with it, then we're not talking about, are you an ideologue or are you competent?
We're talking about something else entirely, an entirely different motivation or purpose or what have you.
We're not talking about somebody's accidentally screwing something up here.
Whatever is going on, for whatever reason, it is purposeful.
But to my way of thinking, incompetence and liberalism are one and the same.
Incompetence and stupidity, liberalism, are one and the same within the political realm.
This is why it was so easy for me to say, I hope he fails.
It didn't require even much thought.
You remember the genesis of this?
Wall Street Journal, before the Immaculation, was asking people to write 400 words on their hopes and dreams for the country and Obama and blah blah.
And I said, I don't need 400 words.
I can do it in four.
I hope he fails.
Kablooey.
And that was January 16th of 2000.
Who's next?
Gene in Bardstown, Kentucky.
Great to have you on the EIB network and Open Line Friday.
Hi.
It's a great honor, Rush.
Rush, when you're using the argument about consensus, scientific consensus, and trying to convince people, Galileo Galilee is a perfect example.
The church and the church scientists of his day refuted him and they chastised him and they put him under house arrest and they were going to execute him as a heretic until the Age of Enlightenment started to realize that Galileo Galilee was correct.
He would have been put to death if everybody listened to the consensus.
The consensus was wrong, but Galileo was correct.
So you're saying I should be put to death?
No, no, no, no, no.
I'm saying that consensus is not a truth.
And Galileo Galilee was the perfect example because he was correct.
Consensus was wrong, and they wanted to execute him.
I appreciate that.
Look, I am continuing to get emails from now people identifying themselves as physicists and other scientists who say you don't know what you're talking about in this consensus business.
You just, you're right.
It's Rush.
It's embarrassing to hear you like this.
You're so right, but you don't know what you're talking about in this consensus business.
Science is all about this.
One guy just wrote, it's all about when you don't know anything, you're learning.
You're in discovery.
And when a majority of scientists agree, that's the focal point.
That's what you work on.
There is consensus in science.
What is so hard to believe?
I don't know.
The consensus doesn't make it true, is my only point.
And the consensus at that time said that they stifled him and they said they wouldn't put him on the house arrest.
He can't publish anything.
He can't talk about his theory.
And yet, and then the braver, the scientists that were behind him started to come out, and the church changed its mind.
But that man could have been executed, and the consensus was one, and they would have been wrong.
That's exactly right.
I don't know what's so hard to understand about this.
It's amazing, just amazing.
And it's very disheartening, I tell you.
Well, it is disheartening because it's not that tough.
This is not that hard to understand.
These scientists.
I'm not scientists, and I understand it.
Well, but these people disagree.
They're taking this personally.
You ought to read these emails out there that I'm getting.
That's right.
Gene, I mean, they're taking this stuff personally.
I know.
It's crazy.
It really is.
We're living under very tough times.
I'm 74 years old.
I hope it gets better before I kick this life by.
It will.
It will get better in a couple years.
I hope so.
Now, you don't sound like a native of Kentucky.
No, I'm not.
I'm a transplant, New York.
I'm here two years now.
I came down to be with family, and it's quite an adjustment from New York to Kentucky.
How long have you been there?
Two and a half years.
I know, two years, excuse me.
Two and a half years.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, it's great to hear from you.
I appreciate the support.
I was just kidding with you about whether or not I should be put to death.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
The consensus was wrong, and they were getting ready to put him to death.
I know.
I know.
And there are countless examples within the scientific realm of this throughout human history, of the belief that existed and turned out to be totally untrue, and the apple carts that were upset with this when it happened.
Anyway, Gene, thanks much.
Brief timeout.
Quick one, back with more again before you know it.
Well, it's about time here.
Dr. Royce Spencer, our official climatologist, has finally weighed in.
He was, I guess, consensus building with his family and didn't have time to reply until now.
Dr. Spencer has sent in six guidelines for me to share with you.
The way he handles the issue of global warming and consensus, whether or not it is man-made.
I'll share these six points with you when we come back from your local news break here at the top of the hour.
Only one exciting hour of Open Mind Friday remaining, folks.
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