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July 1, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
29:43
July 1, 2011, Friday, Hour #3
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By the way, Mike, we're up to audio soundbite number 12.
I'm going to skip all the stuff between what we just visited.
Pick up an area number 12.
Hi, folks.
How are you?
We're doing fine and dandy here.
Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, the nation's most listened-to radio talk show, coming up on our 23rd anniversary in one month.
And it's Friday.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line.
Live!
The views expressed by the host of this program, documented to be almost always right, 99.6% of the time.
And nobody close.
It has taken years to get there.
It takes years to stay there.
It is years that we have.
By the way, did you see the other?
I had this story.
It's a couple of days ago.
John Lennon was a closet Reaganite.
Did you hear that?
John Lennon, shortly before he died, had told friends he had a come to Jesus meeting.
And the era that he had been in when he wrote the song, Imagine, embarrassed him.
He actually loved Reagan.
He liked Reagan in 1980, even before Reagan had been elected and began serving his term.
Can you imagine what Yoko Ono, what that did to her when she figured that out, when she heard that?
Oh, man.
Yeah, I'll tell you what, that, folks, that, do you realize the shockwaves that must have sent through the entire counterculture?
It's still out.
John Lennon.
You know they don't believe it.
You know they're thinking somebody just made it up.
John Lennon bought Harold Vanderbilt's former home, El Solano, in 1980, shortly before his murder here in Palm Beach.
Did you know that, Snerdly?
Shortly before John Lennon was killed, he purchased a house on South County Road, El Solano.
South County Road, that's the estate section of Palm Beach.
Yes, sir, Rebob.
John Lennon, Palm Beacher.
Oh, just to think about the reaction Yoko Ono had in the counterculture.
It's Open Line Friday, Potomac, Maryland.
Hi, Kathy, and glad you waited.
You're next on the EIB network.
Hello.
Happy Independence Day, Rush.
Have a great time in Joplin.
Thank you very much.
My family and I recently traveled to Asia, and I couldn't wait to get back to tell you about two things.
The first is we listened to your melliscuous voice in the shadow of Chenan Square in Beijing because my husband would download the daily podcast.
And we knew as long as we heard your broadcast, we still had a country to come back to.
So it was great.
There was something curious, though, Rush.
Every few minutes, the broadcast would stop, and we were listening to it in the hotel room.
And then we'd have to wait a few minutes, and it would suddenly pick up again.
My husband said, well, I think it's because we have bad internet connectivity in the hotel.
But I said, I bet the party leaders were busy transcribing the program.
I wouldn't doubt it.
Chai comms do that.
Yeah.
I wouldn't.
Seriously, I wouldn't doubt it at all.
I wouldn't predict it, but if we learned that's happening, I wouldn't be surprised at all.
Yes.
Now, Rush, one more quick thing, because I know you have other callers.
In both Xi'an and Beijing, we saw T-shirts for sale with Obama's face on them.
Now, these were not just any T-shirts.
They were the olive-colored Army-type T-shirts.
And the picture of Obama was the one with his chin turned up in the air, and he was wearing a Mao hat.
Oh, yes.
The hat with a single red star.
And I said to my husband, boy, I bet they didn't do that to Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton or even Richard Nixon.
But they were there selling the Obama picture in the Mao hat in two places.
Now, were they honoring Obama?
Was this something they were doing in honor of him, that he's one of them?
Or was this something that?
Well, I think the shop owners were very proud to be peddling these things.
And they came up to us, oh, would you like to buy one?
And we just looked and said, no, thank you.
And they may have thought they were ingratiating themselves with us by having a picture of our dear leader on their t-shirt.
But I will bet they don't really understand why it is that they're going to be able to do it.
Well, now I'm being told here, Kathy, that Obama Mau posters are supposed to be illegal over there, that the CHICOMs said they were going to put an end to the Obama stuff.
Well, that's interesting because we saw these two t-shirts.
As I said, one was in Xi'an and one in Beijing.
One, in fact, near the Great Wall in a little tourist stop.
Right.
I wonder why the CHICOMs would want to make the Obama t-shirts illegal.
Oh, you like that word, by the way, Obamao?
Obamao.
Remember, yet one of his former, what was her name, Anita Dunn?
I think it was Anita Dunn.
Some Dunn.
Yeah, she went to the National Cathedral, and she's giving a lecture to some students, and she admired Mao because Mao knew how to get things done.
Kathy, that's great.
You're listening to the podcast of this program every day in your hotel in China, and the Chikoms are jamming it.
That's what was going on.
Chikoms are jamming the signal.
There's no question about it.
Because we listened to it in Hong Kong and Japan as well, and we didn't have those interruptions.
Yeah.
You know, Rush, I was fascinated watching the changes in the Chinese economy.
And what I did when I got back, I called up a friend at the Heritage Foundation, and I said, I'd like to talk with one of your Chinese economists to understand more of what's going on in the economy over there.
And sure enough, they got me to the right person.
So I just want to say again, Heritage is a great resource if you're going to find out.
There you go.
Kathy, thank you so much.
Thank you, Rush.
Have a great weekend.
You bet.
Let me correct myself.
I said, Catherine Brinker, I'm thinking of somebody else who wrote the book, The Miracle at Philadelphia.
It's scrolled off of it.
It's Catherine Brinker Bowen, and it's The Miracle of Philadelphia.
It's about the Constitution.
Catherine Drinker Bowen, not Catherine Brinker.
But The Miracle in Philadelphia is the title of the book, Catherine Drinker Bowen, Miracle of Philadelphia.
And it really is timely, well worth your read.
Time to read it if you have it.
Here's Preston in San Antonio.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Great to have you here.
Thank you, sir.
Rush, given your great sense of humor, parodies, and impressions, I've been dying to ask, who were your biggest comedic influences?
Who were my biggest comedic influences?
One of my all-time favorite comedians was Professor Erwin Corey.
Oh, yes.
I loved Professor Erwin Corey.
Yeah, I was wondering if you were big on Laugh In, Mad Magazine in your early years.
What it might have been.
Yeah, I like Mad Magazine.
I loved Laugh In.
I loved Impressionists.
Yes, exactly.
The rich littles of the world.
There we go.
But yeah, Byron Cohen, I laughed at Nyron Cohen.
Freddie Roman in New York.
Some of these guys were just the best.
Well, they sure rubbed off on you very well, sir.
Well, I appreciate your asking me that because it's glad to hear it.
Great to be able to mention their names.
Thanks much.
Scott in Los Angeles.
You're next.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, hello?
Yeah.
Oh, hang on a second.
Hey, Rush, I was listening to this guy calling a little while ago, and he was saying how they could just take and hire a bunch of firemen and send them down to Arizona.
Right.
And it's just amazing the lack of knowledge that firemen, just creating jobs or putting firemen in work, they don't generate any revenue.
There's no way to pay for them except for taking more taxpayer dollars.
Yeah, but what was the root of it?
We don't want to be careful here to denigrate firemen.
No, no, no, no, absolutely.
They show up first on the scene.
They do a heck of a job.
Right, but that to him was what job creation is, the government sending somebody somewhere.
Right.
To do a job.
That's what job creation is to him.
Yes.
And that's the same thing when people talk about infrastructure.
Let's just build roads, make roads, not realizing that the roads don't generate revenue unless you make it a toll road.
There's no way to pay for any of the jobs, any of the trucks, any of the cement, any of the landscaping that makes these roads.
Infrastructure jobs are just overhead.
Yeah, that's true.
And there's no revenue generated from any of these jobs.
Now, again, not to upset teachers, I love teachers, but that's something else, too.
How do we generate revenue from the schools?
All of these government jobs are just overhead.
And the only way, like for my company, the only way for me to generate revenue is I have to sell the product I make.
I can make it.
I can employ people.
I can hire trucks.
We can drive.
We can do infrastructure.
We can fix the roof.
We can come up with new products.
And we make the products and we sit there and stare at the phones.
And until the phone rings and we sell one of those products that we make, no money comes in.
And then when somebody buys it, they're not going to pay me for 30 days.
So it's not until 30 days from the time that somebody buys my product.
If they pay you in 30 days.
If they buy it, and if they pay me in 30 days, do I start getting money to pay for the salaries, the project, the rent, the electricity, the insurance, and all the taxes and everything else?
I have to have that money from the product I made or else we go out of business.
And all of these government jobs are just that.
You really are making a great point, but most people have no idea what does and what doesn't generate revenue.
What does or does not add value?
There's a romanticism attached to rebuilding roads.
Yeah, let's rebuild the roads, infrastructure.
Let's rebuild the schools.
Make work jobs.
Jobs, by the way, work that is supposed to have already been budgeted.
Work that should be done as scheduled maintenance.
Anytime you build a road or a house or whatever, scheduled maintenance should be part of the project built into the cost.
You know, people have, over the course of this program, people have called here and complained to me about how much athletes make versus how little teachers make.
And they want to talk about the relative importance of the two vocations.
And I say, well, how many people pay to watch a teacher work?
Nobody pays.
In fact, you have to be forced into the room where the teacher is.
They have to make you go there.
And then once you're in there, you are a prisoner.
You choose to go to an athletic arena.
You pay to get in there or what have you.
The difference is revenue generation versus revenue expenditure in a capitalistic system.
If you want to start assigning moral value, that's one thing.
But then you're going to have to have some tribunal set up to determine the equal pay for equal work.
Who's going to decide what job is as important as another?
Well, there are people who want a government agency to do that based on their version of or view of morality.
You know, what's important and what isn't.
You know, some people are profoundly offended that Alex Rodriguez makes what he makes.
Well, the dirty little secret is that Alex Rodriguez is generating far more than what he makes.
Same thing with any star athlete.
So I've told people who have asked me, I said, you know, one of the most direct routes, if you want it, to a high income is commission sales.
You get yourself in the revenue stream of some corporate entity, business entity, and you make yourself responsible personally, directly responsible for a portion of the income that enterprise generates, and you're going to be compensated for it when you are directly responsible.
Commission sales offers one of the greatest opportunities.
Now, there are pitfalls in it, and they've got rotten managers.
Everything's, you know, it's not magic.
But that's essentially what athletes are when you get down to brass tacks.
He snurdly doesn't understand how it could be that a professional athlete is in commission sales.
Look at it this way: and it's a stretch.
I mean, Alex Rodriguez is paid, or any high-paying athlete is paid based on a number of things, leverage, what they can demand, how much they generate, so forth and so on.
That is the key.
Now, Alex Rodriguez is not a salesman per se, but his high-level performance generates interest in the sale of tickets to the ballpark, to subscriptions to the Yankees cable network, to the sale of tickets in every ballpark the Yankees go to.
Rodriguez, because of all that he's become, he's a gossip column celebrity.
He's a professional baseball player, happens to be pretty good.
There are a whole bunch of reasons why he attracts attention and why people are willing to part with money to be where he is, to watch him do what he does.
And in a sense, he's compensated for that.
In addition to it, he's not paid simply because he's good at what he does.
Being good at what he does generates a whole lot of revenue for a whole lot of people, and he's simply getting a percentage of it.
He's a percentage player, and you can argue that maybe he deserves even more.
Others would say, nah, look, what?
$25 million a year?
Nobody needs more than that.
That's not the question.
Who needs what is not the question?
You want to talk about fairness?
Who's generating all this revenue that all these people are making?
The people generating it should get a percentage of it.
This is why, folks, when you start talking about public sector employees, they're not generating anything.
Now, they are performing a service.
They are teaching or they're doing whatever, but they're not generating revenues.
What the caller said is exactly right.
This is not to denigrate them.
I'm simply talking here about the differences in why and how certain people get paid.
My only point to you is, in all of this, is not to be critical of anybody and what they do for a living.
I'm simply telling you, people ask me over the course of my life, how do you earn a lot of commission sales is one of the fastest routes.
Now, I've been in commission sales, and what happens is nothing is magic.
I've been in commission sales, and for example, in radio, you work at sales at a radio station, they give you a list.
There are a number of salespeople at the station, and they each have a list of clients that they are to service to try to sell.
Not every client on the list is an advertiser.
You go out and get them.
Now, many times, and you'll have a lot of salesmen will know exactly what I'm talking about here.
When they start earning a little bit more money than the station thinks they should, they have certain people on the list taken away from them, and the list is given to somebody else.
And it's always a challenge.
Nothing is magic.
There's always a lot of hard work involved in it.
But I just, for me, it was real simple.
This is a business, radio, where people get fired on a whim.
You know how many times I've been fired.
I've told you.
I wear it as a badge of honor.
Only one time, maybe twice, only one time was it for what anybody would think is a fireable offense, insubordination.
The other times it was the vagaries of the business.
Format changes, radio station with Chinese opera.
They're going to automate.
There's no reason to hold on to disc jockeys and so forth.
After a while, I figured out, you know, this is this, I need ratings insurance.
I need something that's going to keep me here because the ratings are even filled with vagaries.
Back in those days, 20, 30 years ago, the way ratings were taken, it was basically a wild guess.
So I figured out if I can find a way, get myself personally involved in the revenue stream of that radio station, that business, it's going to be harder.
It'd be ratings insurance.
And everybody at some point in their life has epiphanies where they learn things.
Lights go off or somebody teaches them something that they didn't know.
Hopefully that happened your whole life.
I learn something every day.
One of the reasons I'm fascinated by computers, folks, is one of the reasons I'm fascinated by high-tech.
It's one of the things that keeps my mind As active as it as I want it to be and current and hip and what have you.
That's just something I want to happen and something I want to be the case.
And in the process, if you're open to what you're learning, doors open that you sometimes didn't even know existed.
And then you have to have the courage to walk through the door if it indeed opens up.
And that could be something no more complicated than to say, yeah, okay, I'll move from where I live to a new city where the opportunity is.
But I've always said that most people's limitations are self-imposed.
Most of the limitations are not placed on you by others, but rather on yourself.
Good and bad.
You may love where you live, and where you live might not have a whole lot of opportunity in the field that you love.
So those are circumstances and realities you have to deal with.
And it's ridiculous to feel bitter about it.
If what you love to do requires you to go to someplace else to do it, well, and you don't do it, you have just limited yourself.
It's nobody else's fault.
It's not the country's fault.
It's not the system's fault.
It's really nobody's fault.
It's just a decision that you made.
Once people can overcome this notion of self-limitation, then the world opens up to you.
And your perspective on life changes, and anything becomes possible.
Anything within your dreaming and imagination becomes possible.
And we want people dreaming.
We want little kids dreaming.
We don't want school kids being corrupted with the notion that their very existence is destroying polar bears.
We don't want little kids to be raised with the idea that their existence is destroying the planet.
We don't, but this is what liberals do to people.
Liberal teachers do this.
Liberal parents do this.
Young people need to have the vistas of their dreams as wide open as possible.
There's nothing wrong with anybody thinking they can do anything.
How many times have you heard a highly successful people say, person say, that throughout their life, everybody told them they couldn't do it?
It's common because it happens.
There are millions of people who tell you you can't do it.
They do it for a number of reasons.
Some are trying to be helpful, trying to keep you grounded in reality.
Some are bitter because they have failed.
I've always said if you have, if you want to succeed in radio, for example, don't go talk to failures.
Don't go talk to people who are bitter about it.
You know, find people who love it.
Find people who've succeeded at it.
Try to get hold of them.
Learn from them.
Whatever it is you want to do.
Find the people who've succeeded.
Find the people who have passion for it.
Find the people who love it.
See if you can absorb something from them.
But negativism is easy.
Bitterness is easy.
Comes naturally.
Nobody has ever had to write a book on how to think negatively.
But guys who write books on how to think positively have become multi-millionaires.
It takes effort.
It takes discipline.
Particularly when you haven't had any experience yet that generates positiveness.
But if you stick with it, you will.
It's the great promise and the great offer of this country.
Why so many people are working so hard to preserve what this country's always been?
Because this is a country where dreams come true.
People all over the world dream about coming here because this is where dreams do come true.
And most dreams, not talking about fantasies here, most dreams are grounded in reality.
They can happen.
They don't happen overnight.
And when they happen, they may not last.
I once heard Oprah Winfrey say that she's not one of these people afraid of success.
And I, El Rushbo, knew exactly what she meant.
A person who is afraid of success is a person who has no confidence.
What are you smirking at in there now?
Are you upset with me crediting Oprah for some?
Now, she was in an interview.
I think it was on, it might have been with Larry King.
It was not her show, snurdily.
I wasn't watching her show.
I'm not a traitor here.
In fact, I was channel surfing.
I ran across Larry King.
The suspenders blinded me, frankly.
They froze my finger on the remote.
So I couldn't keep changing channels.
I heard Oprah say she's not the kind of person afraid of success.
Now, the person who's afraid of success is a person when success happens, says, ah, this isn't going to last.
I don't really deserve this.
This, this, no, this shouldn't just.
And they talk themselves out of it.
Other people, when their dreams come true, when the hard work that they're putting in, when it results in whatever they've defined as success, when it happens, other people, all right, I hear, and then they say there's more.
That's why, have you ever wondered why somebody's got a billion dollars doesn't just stop?
You have?
You have?
You've wondered why somebody's a billion dollars just doesn't stop?
Okay, well, then fine.
There are people.
This is why you better be careful when you go to job interviews.
Somebody asks you how much money you want to earn.
If you give them a number, you've just told them where you're going to stop working.
Be very careful, folks.
You go to a job interview and they say, how much do you want to earn?
Your answer better be as much as I can.
Because if you give them a number, they're going to say, uh-oh, this clown's going to stop working when that number hits.
That's the comfort level.
It's not that you need any more.
That's...
That whole word need need not even apply.
Of course, a porcelain billion is a comfort.
Of course, a billion is comfortable.
I'm not talking about comfort.
That's my point.
I'm talking about ambition.
You know, I'm talking about self-worth, fulfilling one's sense of value and self-worth.
We happen in certain ways to define that by money.
Other ways are used to define somebody's self-worth.
It varies from person to person, so forth.
But I'm just asking you.
You know that there are people who make a billion that don't stop.
And it's not that it's not enough.
They've got more than they ever need.
Why does Warren Buffett keep doing it?
Why does Warren Buffett, he's 80 somehow, why does he still do what he does at Berkshire Heath?
Why does he do it?
If you have $38, $40 billion, he's out there saying he's going to give it all away when he dies to Bill Gates charity.
Why?
He loves it.
Pure and simple.
He loves it.
And he wants to do more of it.
He happens to keep score.
His success is determined by Berkshire Hathaway's value increase or not.
Whatever the value is, if it's $25 billion and he wants it to be $40, fine.
That's what he shoots for.
Nothing wrong with.
I got to take a brief time out here.
The broadcast engineer is going to have another conniption fit.
Folks, I really think it's starting to collapse around Obama.
Cardinal Faster and Specialty Company, Cleveland-based manufacturer of screws and bolts for wind turbines, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday.
They're having trouble obtaining working capital financing from their primary lender, Wells Fargo.
President Obama visited this company, which is in Bedford Heights near Cleveland in January 2009 before his inauguration.
He went in there to highlight this company.
Green energy, they're the future.
They filed for Chapter 11.
Everything is collapsing around Obama.
We hope that you have a wonderful Independence Day weekend at 4th of July.
And don't forget, Landreth Park Monday, Monday night in Joplin, 2 If by T, delivered in a giant semi-trailer truck.
And I will be there.
Going to be part of the celebration with everybody Monday night in Joplin, 4th of July.
Looking forward to it and hope to see you there.
That's right, my friends, from T to Shining Tea.
2 If by T in a giant truckload refrigerated rolling into Joplin, Landruth Park, big 4th of July celebration, which kicks off at 3 o'clock on Monday in Joplin.
We'll be there around 8.
A couple of big country acts performing, big fireworks display.
That's where we'll be.
And I hope you have a great 4th yourself wherever you are.
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