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July 6, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:54
July 6, 2011, Wednesday, Hour #3
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No, my friends, say it isn't so.
This is the worst news that Anthony Wiener has had.
Gosh, and I don't know weeks.
CNN has canceled client number nine's show.
That's exactly right.
A New York Times website, they're even shedding tears over this.
I mean, my website, my computer screen's wet.
Tears.
When I go to the New York Times to read about this, CNN has canceled in the arena with client number nine, Elliot Spitzer.
After only nine months, what they're going to do, move Anderson Cooper's 360 show from 10 o'clock to 8 o'clock.
They're going to move John King from 7 p.m. to 6.
Wolf Blitzer, I don't know, Wolf, I guess it's going to go 4 to 6.
I don't know.
And they got a new show with Aaron Burnett at 7, the former street sweetie from CNBC.
So client number 9, and now they did not say, they did not say that Elliot Spitzer is gone.
Now, the Ditzer is probably smiling, Kathleen Parker.
She was originally part of Spitzer's client number nine show.
She was at PowerPlay.
Spitzer moved her out.
We called it, you know, affectionately, here we go, the Spitzer and Ditzer.
We assume that the Ditzer is probably smiling here.
So that means Elliot Spitzer is going to be home at night.
Well, theoretically, theoretically.
Greetings, folks, and welcome back.
Great to have you here.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network, and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
The executive in charge of CNN U.S., Ken Jaughts, said within an internal memo that the channel currently in discussions with Elliot Spitzer about an alternative role.
But Spitzer's own statement casts doubt on that possibility.
It concluded by saying, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at CNN.
So Spitzer is letting it be known he's gone.
CNN is trying to make it sound like they're trying to find a place for him.
I don't know when the changes are in effect, Snurdley.
Snurdley seems genuinely excited about this.
I don't know what.
Yeah, I don't know why he's got a TV show in the first place.
Figure that out.
I mean, how in the world does that happen?
That's why I say that Wiener, I'm sure wasn't, well, there's hope for me.
If Spitzer get a TV show.
But now those hopes have to be dashed.
One more thing on this final shuttle mission, these two astronauts that I met, this is probably six weeks ago now, two months ago.
There's a female astronaut on this crew, and there's four of them.
And I asked, in addition to having them try to explain to me how that thing comes down.
And by the way, each time, this is maybe the third time I've had a chance to tell a space shuttle astronaut that I just don't understand how that thing comes out of the sky.
Because here's why.
If your average Boeing 747 were to lose power in flight, do you think it's going to glide?
And I mean, it's got a glide ratio.
You never hear of it happening.
You seldom hear of a commercial aircraft losing power.
But if it does, the results are not good.
Let's put it that way.
But here's the shuttle with no power from 200 some-odd miles.
And it comes down on target, and somehow they managed to slow.
In order to maintain orbit, it's at least 17,500 miles an hour.
Then they have to slow it down to get it to come out of orbit.
They managed to get that thing down.
I forget what the landing speed is.
300 miles an hour, 200 miles an hour.
By contrast, your commercial jet probably lands 140, 150, your average commercial jet.
120, depending on what the jet is.
This thing is, it's landing fast.
No power.
Every time I mention this to these astronauts, they act like it's nothing.
Oh, it's nothing.
I know.
NASA, the one government agency with innovation exploration shut down.
You know what?
I was, in fact, flying to Joplin.
I got on the plane at 5 o'clock on Monday.
Flight attendant always has the day's newspapers laid out on the credenza.
And she had the Palm Beach post there.
And there was a headline on the front page of Palm Beach Post.
NASA job losses will not affect Florida economy.
I said, how in the hell can that story be written?
NASA's expecting 7,000 jobs to be lost with the shuttle program being shut down.
Now, actually, this may not be so bad because this is going to get privatized.
Space travel will be privatized, and it will continue to happen.
So it has hopes.
But still, do you think if George W. Bush were president shutting down NASA, 7,000 jobs lost, that the Palm Beach Post would run a headline, no big deal.
Job losses will not affect Florida economy.
I looked at that and I said, you know, I just laughed.
But I've been amazed.
These astronauts, and I guess it's understandable, it always works, and they don't seem to worry about it.
But they told me the way they train for it is in a Gulfstream 2 with the thrust reversers deployed.
And then I also knew there were only four astronauts in the crew.
I said, why the thing holds many more?
It's the last mission.
Why only four?
He said, because there's no possibility of a rescue mission.
Every other shuttle flight, there's always a shuttle that can be ready to go up to the space station where this one's going or to a stranded shuttle and get and rescue.
This, there's no possibility of a rescue.
So they'll have to stay.
If something happens to the shuttle on the way up or up there, they'll have to stay the International Space Station and come down on a Russian Soyuz, which doesn't hold, doesn't have a high passenger capacity.
So that's why there's only four crews.
They're kind of looking forward to it having all the room.
In fact, Mark Kelly's mission, Gabby Gifford's husband, they only had four on that one too, for the same reason.
There's no possibility these shuttles, as they've completed their final missions, they're effectively mothable.
We are stopping the shuttle mission basically because of the age of the fleet.
And the International Space Station is essentially built, which was its primary mission.
It's, I mean, that's what they say.
Ask Obama.
In fact, I don't know that Obama actually shut down the shuttle program.
This might have happened before Obama, and he's just saying, too.
I'll have to check the timeline on it.
But that's, I think, those are the reasons.
Florida today, February 2010, 23,000 now expected to lose jobs after shuttle retirement.
The Palm Beach Post headline, losing shuttle program to hurt Space Coast far worse than Palm Beach County.
That was Sunday, July 3rd, 2011.
But there was another headline that said something different.
Well, but that was back in February 2010.
And that was Florida Today, which is USA Today's Florida's version.
But the Palm Beach Post headline, losing shuttle program to hurt Space Coast far worse than Palm Beach County.
Well, maybe that was the headline.
I thought there was a different headline that said it wouldn't hurt Florida much at all.
So anyway, they go up Friday.
This is it.
And by the way, if you're interested, there is, and it's fascinating, there is an iPhone app, and I think it also works for the iPad.
And I'm going to have to get the name.
I don't have, you know, if you go to the app store on your iPhone or iPad, just search shuttle.
I'm sure you'll find this app.
It will track this mission.
It'll track based on your GPS.
The phone knows where you are.
It'll tell you where the shuttle is as it orbits the Earth.
What's so funny, certainly?
Oh, well, that's nothing new.
The phone knows where you are.
It knows your GPS coordinates.
It doesn't know that you're who you are, but it.
Anyway, just for the purposes of being able to show you, apparently, graphically, it's a fabulous app, and it's a freebie, and it's an app built just for the last shuttle mission.
It's not the NASA app that tracks every mission.
This is the one for the, I think, 135, STS 135.
I think that's the name of this mission, 135, last one.
Okay, we got, before we go to the break, we have the audio.
We dug deep and we found, here's Christina Romer, April 12th, earlier this year, Washington University in St. Louis.
She is the former chairwoman of Obama's White House Council of Economic Advisors.
USB, I think what we're experiencing is, in fact, closer to a growthless recovery than to a jobless one.
Because GDP started to grow more than a year and a half ago, but with the exception of just a couple of quarters, growth has not been noticeably above its trend rate of about 2.5% a year.
I don't rejoice at the news that we added 216,000 jobs in March.
About 100,000 of that 216,000 is needed every month just to keep up with the growth in the labor force.
At this rate of job growth, it would take most of a decade to replace the 8.5 million jobs that were lost in the recession.
It's worse than that, but at least she got pretty close to that.
But how about the notion here of a growthless recovery?
There's no such thing, folks, as a growthless recovery.
I mean, by definition.
But this is what she was telling the young skulls full of mush at Washington University in St. Louis.
We got to take a break.
When we come back, you know, the global warming crowd is in a panic because there hasn't been any warming the last 10 years.
Wait till you hear.
Wait till you hear the reason why.
In a French news agency story, say, all of you on hold on the phones, I want you to hang in there and be tough.
I'll get to you.
I really will.
There's a great bunch of people on hold here, but I promise this global warming story, it's from the French news agency.
And this is China's soaring coal consumption in the last decade held back global warming as sulfur emissions served as a coolant, according to a study that takes head-on a key argument of climate skeptics.
Now, I would think this would prove that climate skeptics are right.
Was not the burning of coal the worst thing we could do to create greenhouse gases?
Try again.
Was not burning coal the worst thing we could do to create greenhouse gases that elevated the Earth's temperatures.
Obama wanted to put the coal business out of business because it was the number one contributor to global warming.
And now the planet hasn't warmed in 10 years.
And so they're saying China and its soaring coal consumption is the reason why.
While 2005 and 2010 are tied as the hottest years on record, no, that's BS.
I don't even want to get distracted with that.
Skeptics have charged that an absence of a steady rise from 1998 to 2008 disproves the view that people are heating up the planet through greenhouse gas emissions.
Robert Kaufman, a professor at Boston University, said he was motivated to conduct this study after a skeptic confronted him at a public forum, telling him he had seen on Fox News that temperatures had not risen over the decades.
This guy panics.
He hears that somebody said on Fox News that the temperatures are going, so he had to go out and do a study.
Nothing that I had read that other people have done gave me a quick answer to explain the seeming contradiction because I knew that carbon dioxide concentrations have risen.
And of course, it was simply out of the realm of possibility that carbon dioxide levels do not cause an increase in global temperatures.
They can't let go of the theory, but they don't.
I mean, folks, here's the summation.
This is truly hilarious.
A scientist set out to prove the global warming skeptics at Fox wrong, which, by the way, is the epitome of bad science.
That's not how you do science is to go prove somebody else wrong.
Anyway, he wanted to find an explanation for the lack of any global warming over the last 10 years.
So he blames China's burning of coal because that prevents the sun's rays from reaching the earth, which is exactly what they used to call the greenhouse effect, which is what they used to call global warming.
So I don't know how to accept this.
The very culprit is now being cited as the savior or the explanation for why there hasn't been any warming.
So by this guy's study and reason, we ought to start burning coal left and right if indeed there's global warming going on.
We ought to throw away this green energy crap right now and just go all coal all the time.
More hilarious, the study claims that temperatures rose in the 70s after nations started to take action to curb sulfur emissions.
So the real culprits to blame for global warming are the environmentalists who made us cut back on our use of coal.
That's what we have to conclude here.
China's coal burning stopped global warming.
How many of you, seriously, ask yourself, how many of you have heard for years now that coal leads to global warming?
Now the temperatures didn't rise.
They didn't go up out there for 10 years and they panicked.
And experts as Fox were saying, see, there's no global warming, so this yucket-yuck had to go into action, get into action, try to figure out the explanation.
Okay, Tom in San Antonio, Texas.
I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the EIB Network, sir, and hello.
Hello, Rush.
Thank you.
I just wanted to comment.
You've covered it a bit already, but on the hypocrisy of the president lecturing us now on deficits.
And it's even, I think it's even worse than what you covered before because it's such recent history just from January on.
You remember the State of the Union in January after the shellacking the Democrats took, largely based on out-of-control spending, the president presented a speech that outlined all the investments we needed to make, and then a budget that locked in trillion-dollar-plus deficits for the foreseeable future.
Right.
And totally kicked the can down the road, to coin a phrase, on the entitlement problems that we are facing now.
And then after Paul Ryan and the House Democrats jump off the cliff, present an adult budget that starts to get to dealing with some of those issues the president is lecturing on us now, he gets a do-over.
I've never seen it before, the do-over budget, where he remember that speech he gave with Paul Ryan sitting in the front row and the president's up there lying about what, literally, about what was in Ryan's budget proposal.
Right.
Oh, he was staring daggers at Ryan.
He was staring daggers at him.
He couldn't stand what Ryan was saying at that meeting.
Exactly, exactly.
And frankly, every time the man opens his mouth now, I get that fingers across the chalkboard feeling because it's so obvious that what he's saying is an attempt to completely rerun.
And this isn't just the past history of the two years.
This is just four or five months.
Yeah, I know.
I know.
And by the way, I'm glad.
Now, this is an example.
Tom here has been waiting since the first hour of the program to make this comment.
And I really appreciate that.
If you just joined us, what we're talking about is the deficit or the debt limit meeting that happening tomorrow at the White House and what Obama's trying to do.
And we made a point the first hour here that all Obama is going to try to do is to get the Republicans to go along with raising taxes.
And the Republicans in the House, I don't know about the Senate Republicans, but the Republicans in the House are not going to do it.
Well, they'd better not.
They can make Obama cave on this.
The Republicans in the House can force Obama to cave on this.
Clinton is out there telling Obama that the Republicans in the House will cave.
That's how I know that they know their position is weak.
There's Bubba's out there.
Hey, I don't want you to hang in there against these guys.
I mean, I remember it was like 1995.
I rolled these guys.
I rolled Newton.
I know how to deal with these guys.
They'll cave.
They'll cave on it just as fast as you before you even know it.
They're worried about it.
But in addition, here's Obama positioning himself after all of this destructive spending, all of this debt that he authored, that he wrote.
He is the architect.
All of a sudden, now he gets to talk about fiscal responsibility.
He gets to have the Congress up there and start lecturing them about fiscal responsibility as though he's been a spectator for two years.
That's the thing about this.
It rubs me wrong.
Now, I want to go back to this French news agency story on the lack of global warming and the explanation for it being way too much coal being burned by the Tchicoms.
The cherry on top of all this, the study was co-authored by none other than Michael Mann.
Disgraced from the University of East Anglia, the Hadley Climate Center.
Michael Mann is the author of the bogus hockey stick chart showing warming trends since the 1700s.
Everybody now admits that the hockey stick chart is wrong.
Some won't admit that he fabricated it, but everybody knows that it is wrong.
Oh, that's right.
Obama's doing that stupid Twitter town hall right now.
What a, you know, what's the maximum number of characters on Twitter?
140?
Right.
So there's some really in-depth questions you can ask when you have a 140-character limit.
These people just...
Twitter Town Hall.
Somebody...
Somebody sent me an email saying that Boehner twitter to Obama, where are the jobs?
Now, that obviously didn't happen.
Somebody pretend.
Somebody pretended.
God, I wish it had.
Obama said that John needs to work on his typing skills.
It did happen.
Okay, it's got to be a pretender pretending to be Boehner.
Well, I wish it wasn't.
Obama called it a slightly skewed question.
Where are the jobs?
A slightly skewed question.
Coco Jr., get me the audio on that.
MSNBC is having orgasms over this thing.
We've got to have audio of that.
Back to the phones.
This is Joey in Austin, Texas.
Joey, thank you for waiting.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello.
Mega Dittos from the South Austin Barbecue Society, and what an honor it is to speak to you.
Thank you, sir, very much.
I'm a young man, but I feel like I've been waiting my whole life for this occasion.
Now, having gone through Joplin recently with my wife, unfortunately, we missed you by just a week.
And I've been listening to the remarks made about Joplin.
In yesterday's show, you kind of made remarks that there weren't any other than local political people there that there were any major.
And that sparked a thought experiment in me, which was what would have happened had someone say like the president showed up to Joplin for this event.
And I think it's a good analogy for private versus public, what you get.
If the people of Joplin had got the president, then they would have had to pay for his flight.
They would have had to have paid for all of his security.
They paid to have his teleprompter set up, probably waited for him.
And the only thing he would have brought would have been gifts of higher taxes, wealth distribution, problems for small businesses, and a message that they should have waited for the federal government to rebuild their town rather than build themselves.
However, and I'm making some assumption here, but being a listener, they're educated assumptions that Rush Limbaugh came to town.
I would assume that you paid for your own flight.
You didn't need a teleprompter, and you came bearing a truckload of free gifts.
And that's the difference between what you get from the private sector versus the public.
Now, that is a fascinating way to look at this.
You're right, of course.
I paid for my own flight, but I always do.
I did bring a truckload of tea.
And you know what else we did?
I do want to admit, because it was funny the way it happened.
Catherine, we loaded some money, cash, as Al Sharps say, cash money.
We put some cash money in some envelopes because we felt bad.
We're going in there with about 3,000 cases of 2F by T.
And there are vendors out there selling hot dogs and other beverages.
So we went in and we gave each vendor an envelope of cash money.
And Catherine went around and she said the reaction was hilarious.
That didn't want to say, what is this?
They didn't believe it.
They thought this is weird.
No, I don't want to get anywhere near this.
And finally, they understood they took it.
Some did.
I think most of them did.
But we didn't want the truckload of tea to cost any of these other people any other money or any money.
And I remember I got a note from a guy in Tulsa who said, you're crazy.
I mean, probably more vendors showed up there than otherwise would have because you were there.
Well, maybe so.
They estimated a crowd at 35,000.
Look larger than that to me.
But I think if people in Joplin would have, they would have appreciated it just as much if Obama had shown in there.
I think he did go.
He stopped at Obama a week after, and Joplin, a week after the tornado hit when he got back from Europe.
But Joey, it's a nice thought.
I appreciate it.
I love the thinking.
But Obama would not have brought any gifts.
That visit, what we can say?
Not gifts that he paid for.
I mean, he has a tendency to re-gift things that you already owned, from my understanding.
From your understanding.
He tends to re-gift things anymore.
You're exactly right.
And hands them out as his own.
I appreciate it.
Joey, here's Brittany from El Segundo, California.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Thank you, Mr. Limbaugh.
I'm a rush baby, turned wayward youth, turned true believer, so it's an honor, sir.
Thank you.
Heard some comments you were making about NASA and wanted to hear more about your position on what are the merits or necessity of agencies like NASA and other federally funded scientific endeavors.
I'm a scientist and work in the aerospace industry, and it's my opinion.
No one loves space more than I do, space research and development and things like that and advances, but I don't think it's the proper function of the federal government to spend people's tax dollars on huge, expensive endeavors like that.
I believe there's a purpose for it, there's a value, and that if the private sector is allowed to pay for it, there's people that will benefit from the research being done in space, and they're the ones that should pay for it and develop the science.
Okay.
They're just wanted to hear more from you.
All right, fine.
Now, NASA actually has a bunch of phases.
The NASA that I refer to as The home of innovation is the NASA of the 60s.
Now, I grew up in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and my father was an aviation aficionado.
He loved aviation flight.
He was an expert, as much as he could make himself.
I remember once, you may not know this name, one of the early PR, and this sells him short to refer to him as PR, but one of the space agency people that went around the country and became quite famous in selling the concept of NASA and manned spaceflight in the moon was named Shorty Powers.
And he was named Shorty Powers because he was short.
And Shorty Powers came to our little town in Cape Girardeau, Missouri in the arena building and gave us a speech on the space program at the time.
I was probably nine or ten.
This was maybe 12.
This is the early 60s.
My father took me to it.
And it was the most fascinating thing I can remember hearing Shorty Powers was laying out for everybody that showed up.
And there were about 800 people could squeeze in this room.
He was laying out what the plans.
And this is back in the day, Brittany, when this was happening, this was the essence of patriotism.
This was, we were going to put a man on the moon.
The Soviets had Sputnik up there.
We were responding.
We were talking about manned spaceflight.
The Mercury program had been announced.
The astronauts had been chosen.
And NASA's out there selling it.
They've got some guy running around from Washington going community to community and really talking it up.
And it was the essence of patriotic at that point.
And the things that became a part of everyday American life, affordable advances in lifestyle, were directly attributable to scientific discoveries that were necessary for spaceflight.
I remember a list that my dad had, and he gave speeches about it.
I don't remember all of the things, but you remember Tang?
You, I'm sure you know what Tang is.
Do you know what Tang is, Brittany?
Lots of things.
It wasn't just Tang.
Diapers were invented by NASA.
Okay.
Well, then you know what I'm talking about, but there were countless things.
I wish I had that list in front of me.
It was impressive.
And at that time, that was those advances and innovations had a profound increase on the lifestyle of the average American.
So many things became affordable to them because they were necessary for manned spaceflight.
Now, I think those are the glory days of NASA.
Those are the glory days because it was necessary that...
The politics, it was a defense necessity for the space race in the 60s, and it was for political posturing against the world.
No, there were some defense.
Now, wait a second.
Now, there were some defense ancillaries that resulted from this.
Because don't forget, even though Sputnik was benign, the fact that the Russians could put a satellite up there and perhaps the next one would be armed, it was scared to death out of us.
So there was a defense component to it back then.
Now, are you asking me if I'm being a little bit hypocritical today in suggesting...
No, sir.
No, sir.
Not at all.
I've been listening for a long time and I agree with everything you say.
Just today, I did hear a note of tenderness and warm feelings toward NASA, and I just wanted to get that position clarified, and I think you could explain it.
I just, I don't know, it's a huge chunk of change, NASA is.
And I don't think that regular people should be, well, also in the industry, NASA is way less efficient than the private public sector companies that are starting up doing the same exact thing.
It's run by the government.
It spends huge amounts of money on things that everyone else could do so much cheaper.
I don't disagree with that.
But back in the 60s, there was no private sector entity capable of doing what we embarked on.
No one had enough money to do what they were doing in the 60s.
Exactly.
Exactly.
But I don't want to misunderstand.
What is your point about that?
Well, that now I think the government should not have such a large role in NASA.
I don't think so much money should be spent there.
I think that the government should step back, pull some of the capital out, or maybe hold NASA to a higher standard, but regardless, allow the private sector to take over more of the financial responsibility and the financial benefits.
Well, I don't think there's any industry.
I don't think there's any allowing to it anymore.
It's a necessity now because Obama's turned NASA into Muslim outreach.
Yes, that's true.
You said you're rocket scientist.
Yes, sir.
I'm an orbital spacecraft propulsion systems engineer.
An orbital orbital spacecraft, you know, satellites, propulsion systems, the way that the satellite or orbital spacecraft gets into space and then oriented the way it's supposed to be so it can talk to Earth or, you know, point the cameras at it or whatever it's doing.
Cool.
Cool.
You're actually a rocket scientist.
Yes, sir.
And so you work for private sector concern?
I do.
I worked for Boeing for a few years, and now I work for a private contractor, but it's a defense contractor.
I work, you know, one way or another for the government.
Well, that's cool.
That's cool.
Brittany, look, I'm really short on time and I have to go, but I'm glad you called.
Thanks, sir.
I'm honored and flattered.
Thank you so much.
No, I'm honored and flattered that you're in the audience.
I really am.
Rush Baby from the get-go.
Shorty Powers, John Anthony Powers was his name.
He was known as the voice of the astronauts, the voice of Mercury control.
He was the eighth astronaut.
He was an American public affairs officer for NASA from 59 to 63, and it was great.
And I remember he came to Cape Girardeau, Missouri when I was like 10 or 11, and I got to meet him.
That was big stuff then, folks.
We were racing the Soviets, and they were riding ICBMs.
The Soviets, there was definitely a military component to what they were doing.
It was spectacular.
We're scared to death here.
I'm getting notes here about the T-38.
The Air Force guys call it the white rocket.
And it was supersonic, or it is supersonic.
I mean, literally, we'll post a picture of one at rushlimbo.com.
You can see what sitting in one's like, you're literally on a rocket with the shortest little white wings.
It's the astronauts' limo.
For what I have been told about this Obama Twitter town hall, and provided Coco Jr. had been paying attention and is not lazing it up up there, we are going to have a treasure trove of audio tomorrow from this Twitter town.
Obama's apparently talking up tax increases.
If we just go back to Clinton tax rates, oh, we could pay for Medicare.
You know, garbage like that.
So we'll have that.
And of course, whatever happens else between now and then that's worth it.
Discuss it.
See you then, my friends.
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