All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 3, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:40
August 3, 2011, Wednesday, Hour #1
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Man, the spin that is going on out there today is unbelievable.
It's impossible to keep up with it.
On the one hand, the left is supposedly ticked off at Obama because he got rolled in the debt deal, and they're fed up, and they are.
There's a lot of leftist blogs and websites that I've looked at, and they think Obama gave away the store.
And then on the other side of the table, you've got people thinking the Tea Party were big winners in this debt deal.
Others think the Tea Party got rolling big losers.
I've been trying to keep up with this.
It actually developed into a stack.
One of my stacks of stuff has to do with all of this.
It's mind-boggling because it's such a joke.
The country lost in this debt deal.
There were no winners in this thing.
Everybody lost is the way to look at this, except maybe I don't understand the left-thinking Obama law.
I do not understand the left-thinking Obama got rolled.
Well, they didn't get the Bush tax cuts rolled back.
Look, the left is a bunch of Marxists these days.
They're not even Keynesians now.
You know, Keynes, Keynes, for all his, Keynes, his purpose was not to destroy the private sector.
Keynes was, his purpose was not to destroy the economy.
He actually was trying to level the economy out to eliminate business cycles.
These guys aren't Keynesian.
These guys are Marxists.
And Obama just not doing it fast enough for him.
So, okay, so he didn't get the Bush tax cuts rolled away.
And they think a ton of government jobs are going to be lost.
They think there's been a lot of cuts in spending.
Have many cuts in spending.
There was a one-dime spending cut.
The baseline alone guarantees that.
Obama's free to spend $2.1 or $2.4 trillion right now.
It's mind-boggling to listen to some of these people on both sides talk about how who won and who lost.
This is such a mess.
It is such a structural mess.
Try to make sense of it today as the program unfolds.
Moody's is downgrading, ladies and gentlemen, and that means they are downgrading Obama and his performance because Obama created this debt crisis.
Moody's investor service said the U.S. credit rating may be downgraded for the first time on concern that fiscal discipline may erode.
Further debt reduction measures won't be adopted, and the economy may weaken, may weaken.
It is weakened.
It is weakening further.
There are no debt reduction measures that have taken place.
Zilch Zero Nada.
There's not one debt reduction measure that took place.
And anybody who tries to tell you that there was is lying to themselves.
You think there was, certainly?
You think there was a debt reduction measure?
All right.
There was no debt reduction whatsoever.
There was no reduction in spending.
There was no reduction in the debt.
There was no attempt whatsoever.
This is a classic Washington deal that kicked a can down the road.
Now, Wolf Blitzer, this is kind of funny.
Poor old Wolf devastated the market.
It's down another 150 points today.
These guys inside the Beltway are so predictable.
And folks, they're stupid.
They really do not have any intelligence.
They don't have any inquisitiveness.
They are not curious.
They live by narratives and templates and timelines, and they just simply do not think for themselves.
And yet they set themselves up as the arbiters.
Listen to this.
Wolf can't get his mind around the fact that the big deal didn't do anything on Wall Street.
People are just shocked.
They thought, at least for a few days, the removal of this threat to the U.S. economy would give Wall Street a badly needed boost.
Eight straight days in a row, I must say, I was surprised.
I thought there would at least be a little bump as a result of this deal.
Didn't happen.
Why, Wolf, what in this deal is going to make anybody think that the United States is stronger in any way?
We didn't default.
They think we didn't default.
And so, because we didn't default, then that means everybody's going to be clapping their hands and going, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right.
Okay.
That proves my point.
Obama saved us from default.
Okay, proves my point.
Default, default, default became the narrative.
It became the template.
We can't afford it.
The Republicans got scared to death about it, as per usual.
Scared to death there was going to be a default when there wasn't going to be a default.
And then scared to death they were going to be blamed for it.
So they're operating totally out of fear.
Everybody thinks there's going to be a default.
There was never going to be a default, but everybody thinks so.
They really did.
I mean, they really, people like Wolf, they really did think.
And so when this nothing bill gets signed, and a substantively nothing bill gets signed, then they think, Nirvana, whoa, whoa, no default.
Markets are going to love us.
Moody's are going to love us.
Stock market plunges.
Why the stock market plunge?
Stock market plunged because, well, the stock market plunged because Bernanke hadn't yet promised that they're going to start printing money yet again.
QE3, the stock market will be back when Bernanke starts printing money with QE3.
That's what the stock market's waiting on.
Stock market's waiting on nothing else.
Stock market's not out there thinking that anything positive happened here.
There was no reduction in debt.
There was no reduction in spending.
They didn't do anything on taxes one way or the other.
And everybody knows that tax increases are coming with Obamacare.
Wolf, there's nothing to celebrate here.
There was absolutely nothing to celebrate.
People with skin in the game, people with money in the game, i.e. people in Wall Street, know full well what an absolute total joke this whole thing was.
You're sitting there, and the rest of you guys in the media are sitting there following your template, following your narrative.
Whoever starts it.
I mean, it's embarrassing.
The single-mindedness, the narrow-mindedness, the simpletonian aspects of the way these people think.
So Wolf is shocked, stunned, can't believe it, because Wolf is not able to think for himself.
Let's go back just to illustrate here a little flashback.
Wolf was hyping Armageddon if we didn't do a deal.
This is July 25th on CNN.
One week to go and counting Democrats and Republicans, they are scrambling to avoid a devastating national default, the desperate race against the clock to secure what President Obama is calling America's national credit card.
Just a little more than seven days from now, the country could face unprecedented default if Congress is unable to agree on a deal.
In just three hours, he'll address the nation from the White House on the looming U.S. debt disaster.
The stakes in Washington could not be higher right now.
A deadlock has left the country facing what some believe could be an economic calamity.
The United States right now is an imminent threat of default.
I never expected to hear a president say that.
I'm very gloomy about the prospects.
It is possible there won't be a deal.
There was always going to be a deal.
The calamity is Obama himself and his policies.
And here's Wolf all worried, hyping Armageddon.
You know, CNN is now a countdown show.
Countdown to Armageddon every day, whatever the Armageddon is.
Three hours and counting to the new approval number for George W. Bush.
CNN breaking news.
Three hours, and President Obama will address the nation on whether or not we're going to default.
It's two hours away from President Obama.
President Obama soon to address the nation on whether or not the Republicans are going to succeed in destroying the country and the world as we know it.
Stay tuned to CNN.
It's an hour and a half now away.
That's all it is anymore.
So they all got their deal, and the market said, you and Wolf and the rest, I can't believe it.
And we're still going to get downgraded.
Look, I hate saying, as I said, or I told you, but I did.
And a lot of people did.
A lot of thinking, a lot of engaged, smart people knew there wasn't going to be a default and also knew that this deal was not going to avoid a downgrade in the credit rating.
Our credit hasn't improved.
The CHICOMs and the Russians, hell, are back at it now.
They're all upset at all of our borrowing.
Obama's, he's off now to party time, birthday, you know, presidential birthdays, that means fundraisers and so forth.
So we face our first downgrade on debt, Moody's.
It's happening, probably going to happen.
And this deal had literally nothing to do with it.
Have you seen the story, Dieting Forces a Brain to Eat Itself?
Scientists, this explains Hollywood.
Yeah.
Nick Collins, science correspondent, UK Telegraph, like other parts of the body, brain cells begin to eat themselves as a last-ditch source of energy to ward off starvation, a study found.
The body responds by producing fatty acids, which turn up the hunger signal in the brain and increase our impulse to eat.
Researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University of New York, which, by the way, 1.6 million people have fled New York, led by me.
That's another story that's out there.
One point, what is in the last, how many years?
Yeah, between 2000 and 2010, 1.6 million people fled New York State for either better weather or no income tax states.
Anyway, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Yeshiva University, New York, said the findings could lead to new scientifically proven weight loss treatments.
Tests on mice found that stopping the brain cells from eating themselves prevented levels of hunger from rising in response to starvation.
A chemical change in their brains caused the mice to become lighter and slimmer after a period of Fasting.
So this explains Hollywood.
Everybody out there is constantly on a diet.
They're constantly starving themselves.
And that's why they're stupid.
That's why they've got no brains and their brain cells are eating themselves.
Their brains.
Now, I know what a lot of you are saying, but you've been on a lot of diets.
That's true.
But remember, folks, I got lots of brain cells.
I use half my brain every day.
That's all I need.
I have my brain tied behind my back every day just to make it fair.
I got a lot of brain cells that my other brain cells can eat.
Hollywood people do not have the surplus that I do.
Somebody ought to tell Michelle Obama about this.
You know, because she's actually encouraging people brains to eat themselves.
As usual, I have my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
How can an increase of our debt by 2.4 trillion, which is what we did?
We raised the debt limit by 2.4 trillion.
How can there be any debt reduction in that?
And by the way, for all this talk about winners and losers, there wasn't one thing done on entitlement reform.
And that's where all the problems are.
There wasn't one thing done on it.
Zilch.
Zero.
Nada.
Smoking offers at least one health benefit.
Smoking kills, but it maybe heals too.
Nicotine.
The addictive drug in cigarettes protects from Parkinson's disease.
This found a study in the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.
What a name for a group, or actually a publication.
The Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.
Okay, so smoking per se doesn't provide any health benefits, but if you feel guilty about your smoking habit, even if you don't, you can tell yourself that you're not ruining every part of your body as you inhale.
Your brain appreciates it.
Using mice, again, as test subjects, researchers found that nicotine had the potential to rescue dopamine neurons in cultures.
Slowly losing these neurons is a hallmark of Parkinson's.
So scientists believe that this shows that nicotine can be used to treat Parkinson's by targeting the brain's nicotine receptors.
So smokers, at least you have that going for you.
But you also have something else to share about.
This isn't the first positive link found between nicotine and health.
Earlier research from the Center for Neurogenomics and Cognitive Research has shown that nicotine enhances learning and memory.
Stimulating the brain's nicotine receptors also could help treat Alzheimer's.
Now, I remember over the course of the many years of this program reporting some of this.
In fact, I think all of it.
Nicotine and Parkinson's, nicotine and Alzheimer's, nicotine enhancing learning and memory.
Nicotine can also reduce depression.
Found a study in the Journal of Pharmacology.
Nicotine stimulates the release of serotonin and dopamine, which are strongly inversely associated with depression.
The study also found that smokers may be more prone to depression than non-smokers.
People with depression may be self-medicating by smoking, albeit in a deadly way.
Dopamine.
Dopamine is an interesting substance.
You ought to Google it sometime.
Dopamine is, you don't hear much about it, like neutrinos.
You don't hear much about neutrinos.
You can't see those little buggers, but they're all over the place out there.
If you get too many neutrinos in one place, you can have a volcano.
And nobody wants a volcano.
So dopamine and neutrinos.
And then, you know, all of these wonderful effects of nicotine.
The problem is, the problem is that you die.
You die before the age that you would get Parkinson's.
In most cases, you die before you reach the age of Alzheimer's.
At least that's what it says here in the story.
Even if smoking protects you from Parkinson's, you might not live long enough to develop the disease because smoking greatly increases the risk for deadly cancers and cardiovascular diseases.
Yeah, because chemotherapy is so good for you.
Anyway, so maybe find other delivery systems for nicotine then.
You know, I smoke e-cigs.
I've tried to cut back on tobacco products.
And I smoke these e-cigs.
I mean, I've got, I love, actually love these things.
They're amazing.
And one of these e-cigs, depending on how much you, and you can order the different amounts of nicotine per cartridge, that you could go all the way up from zero to 16 milligrams.
Well, I use eights.
I use eights.
And now I'm told, I'm told that an eight milligram cartridge here on the, which looks like the filter on a cigarette, the cartridge, this is the red thing.
For those of you watching on the ditto cameras, the red end of the cigarette, the white part is the battery.
I'm told, and I'm going to have to double check this, I'm told that 8 milligrams of nicotine, that this equals about a pack and a half to two packs of cigarettes worth of nicotine.
Now, what's interesting is I whipped this thing out.
People actually think that it is nicotine that's the carcinogen.
Do you think that?
You're wrong.
You're wrong.
I just got through pointing out how nicotine is good for you.
Nicotine, it wards off Alzheimer's.
It wards off Parkinson's.
It wards off depression.
It enhances learning and memory.
Nicotine is one of the most maligned, impugned things out there.
It is the tar.
It is the tobacco.
It's the residue of tobacco that is the carcinogen.
Nicotine is not a carcinogen.
Cigarettes just happen to be the primary, or the cigars, the primary delivery system.
But nicotine's cool.
I'm still confused.
If Republicans were the one putting guns to everybody's heads, how come the Democrats got away with all the money?
$2.4 trillion is a pretty good haul, even by the Democrat Party's high criminal standards.
How can it be said that Obama lost?
You know, and our guys, we got people on our side running around saying that.
This was a big win.
And you Tea Party people, I want you to be aware.
There are people trying to convince you that you won big, that you changed the game, that you changed the way things are going, and they are lying to you.
Do not give up the task.
Do not give up the momentum and don't think that you've won anything here.
This is not a victory.
I don't care what anybody tries to tell you.
They're just trying to shut you up.
They're just trying to make you go away.
They're trying to make you satisfied.
The more you're satisfied, the less rambunctious you're going to be.
You are still unwanted.
You're still not of Washington, the Washington culture.
And they don't want you to ever be.
So the more they tell you you won, the more they tell you you had victory, the theory is the less rambunctious that you will be.
For example, here's what is this ABC News?
As Senate votes, McConnell declares Tea Party won.
Reed says Tea Party disconcerting.
Let me tell you, the Tea Party is the most extensive, the most important grassroots political movement in our lifetimes, and it is still ascending.
Meaning the Democrats will stop at nothing to destroy it using smears and lies or worse.
The Tea Party is actually nothing more than what the Democrats claim to be in 99% of elections, and that is conservatives.
A balanced approach to campaigning as a Democrat is equal parts lies and character assassination.
That's what a balanced approach is for the Democrats.
Equal part lies, equal part character assassination.
Dingy Harry said of the new Tea Party senators, I welcome them all, but as a result of the Tea Party direction, this Congress, this last few months, have been very, very disconcerting and very unfair to the American people.
Reed said the Tea Party stopped us from arriving at a conclusion much earlier.
On the other hand, Mitch McConnell, and we had the audio soundbite from Mitch the other day saying, whether you know it or not, you won.
There is nobody in the Tea Party that thinks they won.
And that's good.
What's happened is this.
The rhinos and the smart leftists in Washington have figured out, because of what just happened here in this debt deal, that the Tea Party is a mortal threat.
And they're trying to tame it.
And so the message to you Tea Party people is, you won big here.
You won big.
Learn to accept it.
You don't need to push so hard to make transformational changes in the way government operates.
So go out and declare victory.
Be proud.
Pound your chest.
Revel in the fact that you become a force to be reckoned with inside the Beltway.
They know that the Tea Party doesn't want to play inside the Beltway politics.
They know that the Tea Party wants power removed from Washington and the ruling class dismantled.
But the Washington operators, all these people in the ruling class, both parties, they look at every genuine political outsider.
I mean, they run as outsiders themselves every election because they know what the mood of the country really is.
But they look at every political outsider as Somebody that is just waiting to be courted and seduced, and they really think that they can co-opt you people in the Tea Party.
They thought they could co-opt the Tea Party freshmen in the House of Representatives and in the Senate.
They thought they could.
And if there is a victory anywhere in this, it is that that didn't happen.
Not nearly to the extent that they had hoped.
So that's what's going on.
And that's why you're being told that you won.
It's basically so you'll shut up and go home.
Now, all of this false declaration of victory on our side.
And it's happening.
It's happening in our conservative publications.
It's happening on conservative blogs.
For those who falsely declare victory on our side, they are continuing to deceive about this deal.
And they're trying to defend their own integrity when, in fact, they surrendered at the first sign of resistance.
They surrendered and they operated out of fear.
They surrendered over the fear of default when there never was going to be a default.
They surrendered to a president with approval numbers in the 40s.
They surrendered to a president that over 60% of the American people oppose in policy after policy after policy.
And they surrendered because they are afraid of people like Wolf Blitzer getting away with blaming them for this default and the downgrade.
This is all on Obama.
Every bit of this economy is on Obama.
The unemployment, the new layoffs that are coming, the double-dip recession.
This is an all-out assault, folks, on the United States private sector.
And we surrendered to it.
At the first sign of resistance, we surrendered to it.
They keep saying that the Tea Party won when most Tea Party activist view this as a monumental sellout.
You Tea Party people know exactly what I'm talking about.
You think this was a monumental sellout, a monumental cave, and you thought it was coming.
You knew it was coming.
Now, the left, it's funny.
Some of these nutcases think that they lost.
Some of them are really mad at Obama.
They're mad at Obama because we're still in Iraq and Afghanistan.
They're mad that the Bush tax cuts are still there.
They're also mad that they don't have their new cars.
Oh, speaking of that, Chevy has just announced that they've sold 150 more vaults.
150 more Chevrolet vaults have been sold.
That's really going to save the environment, isn't it?
150 more Chevrolet Vaults have been sold.
So I don't know who bought them.
Maybe the government doesn't matter.
It's not enough to save the environment.
Every car on the road could be a Chevrolet Vault, and it wouldn't save the environment.
If every car on the road was a Chevrolet Vault, we'd have to be building new coal power plants to provide all the electricity to power the damn things.
Now, the left, you got to understand this.
The left views capitalism the same way we view communism.
Now, I know it's hard to get your arms around.
Hard to get your arms around the fact that there are people who were born in this country, who are Americans, who attended school, who were educated in this country, who look at capitalism the same way we see communism.
And they expect Obama to destroy capitalism within 24 hours of being inaugurated.
And that's why they're mad.
The fact that it's going to take a few more years frustrates them.
They're in a hurry.
And fast is never fast enough for these people.
To me, it is really fascinating to look at all this, this fallout, and to see what both sides are saying about victory and defeat.
The Star Ledger in New Jersey today has a fascinating cover.
They've got a split-screen picture.
On the left is one half of Governor Chris Christie's face.
On the right is one half of Obama's face.
And the headline, the lead headline, I mean, the top headline on page one: what Obama's missing?
The guts of our governor.
So the people that run the New Jersey Star Ledger think Obama's this giant sellout.
I know it's common among the left today that Obama's this giant sellout.
And I'm curious about that because look at what Obama got.
He got what he wanted.
He got his $2.4 trillion in spending.
He got this stupid commission, which is going to punt back to Congress anyway.
There will be tax increases, but it's really about the Bush tax cuts with these people.
It's really about the Bush tax cut.
Well, so they think Bush, they think Bush is continuing to beat Obama because Obama doesn't get rid of the Bush tax cuts.
Well, regardless, that's what we're up against.
That's the kind of lunacy we're up against a delusional, deranged enemy and a bunch of people who think they are a lot smarter than they really are.
They are not.
They aren't half as smart as they think they are.
And neither is their media.
And it's time to stop being afraid of these people.
It's just time.
All right, a brief timeout, my friends.
El Rushboe, back with more after this.
Don't go away.
We're back, Rushland Boss, serving humanity simply by showing up.
Everybody says there's nothing going to be any tax increases.
How is $2.4 trillion in new debt not a tax increase?
Somebody explain that to me.
Never mind.
Never mind that Obama agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts for two years and got things in exchange for that agreement.
They're still ticked off about it.
And I know that everybody is of the mind that the Bush tax cuts are going to expire.
I'm not yet convinced that the Bush.
I know Obama's going to campaign on it, and I know that he would do it if he could.
Here's the way to look at it.
If, indeed, this economy stays where it is.
And folks, give you some details of the economy.
Here's a story from Reuters: U.S. debt relief replaced with recession fear.
You see, we move from one Armageddon to the next.
In a matter of days, investor relief that the U.S. avoided default has been replaced by fears Europe's debt crisis is deepening and the world's biggest economy may be slipping back into recession.
You see this?
Every day is a new Armageddon.
So we go through all this drive-by stuff on the debt limit and on default and on Moody's and Stanard and Four's downgrading us.
And we finally, at the end of the day, we come together with a big deal and everybody is happy and everybody proclaims that everybody's a winner, that everybody's a loser, but we staved it off.
We're not going to have default the very next day, two days later.
U.S. debt relief replaced with recession fear.
Oh yeah, now we're faced with going into another recession.
Hey, the dirty little secret is we never came out of the first one.
We're still in a recession and it is deepening.
It is worsening.
There hasn't been any economic improvement.
There hasn't been any economic recovery.
The debt ceiling bill signed by the president.
Yay!
U.S. economy sliding back into a second recession.
Oh.
In a matter of days, investor relief that there wasn't any investor relief.
There wasn't even any of that.
The Dow Jones industrial average is down for eight or nine days in a row.
Where's the investor relief?
These people in the media can't tell us the truth to save themselves.
So, U.S. debt relief replaced with recession fear.
And then we have from this story is this little paragraph.
The alarm bells may already be ringing most worryingly for financial markets.
The U.S. administration's commitment to fiscal spending cuts could make any U.S. downturn worse.
The slide in U.S. growth expectations clearly comes with very poor timing, said Commerce Bank strategist Rainer Gunterman.
Now, it was just, this is Tuesday, it might have been last week.
It could have been yesterday, the days run together.
I told you, I predicted that what would be said is, after this deal is done, that all of these massive spending cuts would not revive the economy.
And Obama would say, see, I tried it.
I tried the Republican way.
I tried it.
We went with these massive spending cuts, of which there really weren't any.
And it hasn't worked, folks.
We need more stimulus.
We need now to raise taxes.
And so, lo and behold, it's already here.
The alarm bells may already be ringing most worryingly for financial markets, the U.S. administration's commitment to fiscal spending cuts.
There aren't any spending cuts.
And this administration doesn't have any commitment to any.
But that doesn't matter because nothing in the news is truthful.
Cutting spending will be said to have triggered an economic collapse.
What is the story?
U.S. debt relief replaced with recession fear.
And what is the recession fear?
The spending cuts in the deal.
Oh, no.
You see?
You see, the way the Republicans want to do this is going to destroy our economy.
Cutting spending will be said to have triggered an economic collapse.
I mean, in just two days, we're back to a new Armageddon.
And the new Armageddon is that all these spending cuts, and there aren't any, is now leading to a U.S. downturn to our recession.
Poor Obama has no choice, has to raise taxes.
I can see this coming down the road, folks.
What's the next story in the stack?
Next story in the stack?
Planned job cuts surge 60% in July.
Planned job cuts in the private sector.
What economic growth.
▲
Export Selection