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Aug. 9, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:12
August 9, 2011, Tuesday, Hour #2
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Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.
Happy to have you along.
I am Rushlin Boy, your guiding light, talent on loan from God.
You have to say God.
You just can't say talent on a load from God.
I used to watch when I was in Kansas City, he had a religious TV station.
And they had this guy.
He had the perfect evangelist hair.
Have you ever noticed those guys always have the TV evangelists from what was his name, Jimmy Jimmy Swaggart?
They had the perfect hair.
This guy probably spent hours before airtime, blow-drying it, coloring it and all that.
And this guy would set a globe on fire at the end of every program as his fundraising techniques.
And this is what's coming.
It was very effective.
Kind of like what's happening, yeah, except that his was, of course, in a satanic context, going to hell.
And with global warming, if it ever is true, that probably what it means is that Earth's going to hell.
But anyway, he'd set the globe on fire and he'd be talking about, and God, you just can't say talent on a load from God.
It just doesn't penetrate out there.
Anyway, telephone number, and we will get to your phone calls in this hour, is 800-282-2882.
The email address, El Rushbo at EIBNet.com.
Here is, you know, Obama canceled his trip here to Springfield, Virginia.
But listen, this, I think from the White House website, the preview of the trip.
Now, listen to this.
You tell me if this is in touch or out of touch.
Later in the morning, comma, the president will visit Interstate Moving Services in Springfield, Virginia to announce first-of-the-kind fuel efficiency standards for work trucks, buses, and other heavy-duty vehicles.
The new standards will save American businesses who operate and own these commercial vehicles tens of billions of dollars in fuel costs and will dramatically reduce oil consumption and cut pollution.
Now, somebody wised up and canceled this whole thing.
I mean, that's the last thing.
Even if your objective is to destroy the capitalist sector, let me just go on there and focus on that.
Anybody, there aren't any trucks.
It just has a single-minded, far-leftist agenda here that is clueless about reality on the grounds of the American people.
There is no empathy.
There is no concern for what's happening to people.
And all we're to do, if you listen to Obama, we have enemies that we're supposed to hate.
S ⁇ P, the latest Obama target we are to hate.
Yesterday, it was the Tea Party.
So many enemies, it's hard to keep track.
See, Obama wants us to hate insurance companies.
He wants us to hate oil companies.
He wants us to hate coal companies.
Fact is, if you go back and listen to the soundbite from the UK, it's exactly what those rioters and protesters are saying.
The rich people, business owners are causing this is a tactic.
This is being done on purpose.
This is not just some isolated leftists' view.
This is a strategy.
Hate the insurance companies, hate the oil companies, hate coal companies, hate corporate jet owners, hate corporate jet manufacturers, hate yacht companies, hate yacht owners, hate credit card companies, hate student loan companies, hate mortgage companies, hate millionaires, hate billionaires, hate anybody who earns $200,000 a year, hate McDonald's,
hate Fox, hate me, hate the Koch brothers.
How many people even know who the Koch brothers are?
Hate the Supreme Court, hate B.B. Netanyahu, hate the state of Arizona, hate the state of Texas, and on and on.
Have you noticed Obama is at war with an endless list of enemies?
He is at war with all aspects of our country, and particularly with the aspects of our country that generate wealth and success.
Hate Walmart, hate drug companies, hate George W. Bush, hate Republicans, not simply dislike a Republican, hate Sarah Palin.
And at the same time, they try to tell us that we are the angry white people.
We're the angry one, angry white men.
We're the ones with all the hatred that emanates from the White House, the hatred that emanates from the left is utterly profound.
You remember during the negotiations between Boehner and McConnell and Obama on the debt deal, Thomas Sowell wrote a piece suggesting that we support the Boehner deal, that it was the best we could get at the time.
We should take it, avoid being blamed, and all this.
And I read it to you, and I openly expressed my shock that Sowell had taken this position.
And I, what?
What?
No, no.
No, he's done a reversal.
He's done an about face now.
And he says Republicans were snookered in the deal.
But I remember saying that I've got no basis for believing it to be true.
That original piece didn't read like your average Thomas Sowell column to me.
And I mentioned this.
And it really shocked me.
I couldn't believe, in fact, that I was reading Tom Soule say, take it, best we can do.
I mean, it was sounding like he never sounds.
So yesterday, he posted a piece at Investor's Business Daily.
In the classic satirical book, Archie and Mahitabel, Mahitabel Alikat asks plaintively, what have I done to deserve all these kittens?
That seems to be the pained reaction of the Obama regime to the financial woes that led to the downgrading of America's credit rating for the first time in East Wall.
There are people who see no connection between what they've done and the consequences that follow.
But Obama is not likely to be one of them.
He is a savvy politician who will undoubtedly be satisfied if enough voters fail to see a connection between what he has done and the consequences that followed.
And that's exactly right.
So he can't be, he can't have people thinking that he's doing what he's doing on purpose.
He can't have people believing that.
And it's easy because most people don't want to believe the president would do that.
They don't want to believe no matter what they see, no matter what's right in front of their face, they don't want to believe it.
It's a tough sell even for me, El Rushbo.
There's no better persuasive person in media than me, and it's a tough sell.
People don't want to believe it.
To a remarkable extent, Sowell says Obama has succeeded in satisfying enough voters that he's not doing what he's doing.
He's had help from his friends in the media and Republican failure to articulate their case.
Polls find more people blaming the Republicans for the financial crisis than blaming the president.
Why was there a financial crisis in the first place?
Because of runaway spending that sent the national debt up against the legal limit.
But when all the big spending bills are being rushed through Congress, the Democrats had such an overwhelming majority in both houses of Congress, nothing the Republicans could do made the slightest difference.
So he goes on and on and on.
And then he writes this.
This is where he does the about face.
Just a week before the budget deal was made, at the 11th hour, it looked like the new Republican majority in the House had scored a major victory by getting the president and the congressional Democrats to give up the idea of raising tax rates and to cut spending instead.
But now that the details are coming out, that victory looks very temporary, if not illusory.
The price of getting that deal has been having the Republicans agree to sitting on a special bipartisan congressional committee that'll either come to an agreement on spending cuts before Thanksgiving or have the budgets of both the Defense Department and Medicare cut drastically.
Since neither side, this is key here.
Since neither side, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats can afford to be blamed for the budgets of both defense and Medicare being drastically cut.
This virtually guarantees that the Republicans will have to either go along with whatever new spending and taxing that the Democrats demand or risk losing the 2012 election by sharing the blame for another financial disaster.
I don't agree with this.
I want to reassure you right now.
I don't agree with this, but this is Sowell's analysis.
He thinks now the Republicans were snookered because nobody's going to go along with Medicare cuts and defense cuts.
And so the Republicans have been hoodwinked again into agreeing to raise taxes.
I remember bringing up the possibility of this yesterday.
Snerdley blowing a gasket in there thinking, no way, it's not possible.
Are you sure the Republicans can't be talked into?
I mean, it's happened once.
It's happened once.
George H.W. Bush, read my lips, no new taxes.
You know, they do remember what happened to him.
I know he lost.
Snerdley is shouting at me that the congressional Republicans are more afraid of me than they are Obama.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know that they're more afraid of their own voters than they are Obama.
Anyway, Tom Sowell, Now doing an about face on his support of the deal because he's realized his committee was a setup.
The committee was not a late addition to this.
There was plenty of time to oppose this deal with the knowledge of the committee being part of the deal.
We didn't, I mean, the committee is not something we learned about after this thing was agreed to and signed by Obama, right?
We knew about the committee.
So I'm still scratching my head here over this.
But here's how Sowell concludes.
In short, the GOP has now been maneuvered into being held responsible for the spending orgy the Democrats alone had the votes to create.
Republicans have been had, and so has the country.
The recent short-lived budget deal turns out to be not even a Pyrrhic victory for the Republicans.
It has the earmarks of a Pyrrhic defeat.
So he wants to back out of it.
There's just one problem with this analysis.
Just one problem.
And that is that whoever the Republican presidential nominee is will have had nothing to do with this.
One way or the other, the Republican presidential nominee is not a sitting member of Congress, and the Republican presidential nominee is not a member of this committee.
Nobody is yet.
And so the attempt here to blame congressional Republicans for raising tax, that's something that a presidential nominee can easily distance himself from and say that's not going to happen anymore with neither.
So this deal is not the death net.
It's a bad deal.
But I'll tell you what strikes me is, again, all of the smart people on our side calling us hobbits for disagreeing with it.
And all of those people inside the boat where the conservative media say it's the best we can do.
We got to take it now.
If we don't, they're going to be a default or there's going to be a downgrade.
We're going to blame for it.
Everything they told us that would happen if we didn't do the deal has happened with the deal except default.
And again, the reason, fear, fear of being blamed, fear of this, fear of that.
Opportunity to do the right thing.
We talked about the committee and what the committee could do at the time.
They can't blame Bachman for this.
Bachman's a presidential candidate.
Bachman fought all of this all the way along.
There isn't one Republican presidential nominee who went along with this.
So it's not as dire as Professor Sowell says.
Brief timeout.
We'll get to your phone calls when we come back.
Promise.
Okay, to the phones we go, and we are going to start Brighton, Michigan with Thatcher.
Thatcher, welcome to the EIB Network, and hello.
Hi, Rush.
I'm calling because I think conservatives should embrace being called hobbits by the establishment.
Because in the movie The Lord of the Rings, the Hobbits are the heroes who succeed where the elites have failed in defeating a tyranny.
The movie is about power.
There's a ring of power, and all these elites are unable to give up the power.
Whenever they get the ring, they're corrupted.
But the hobbits are the only characters in the entire movie who resist the power and are willing to relinquish the power and defeat the tyranny.
So, I mean, it's, I mean, that's not what McCain was intending.
He was intending to insult us, but actually, the people using the term hobbit are insulting us as deformed, little, irrelevant people.
Yeah, but they're the heroes.
It's not about looks.
It's about ideology.
Well, okay.
Ideology of the Hobbits is a noble one.
I mean, they're embracing freedom.
They want to overthrow the evil Lord Sauron in the movie.
And when they have the ring, they can let it go.
Look at it.
If you want to be called a Hobbit, I mean, I'll be glad to call you a Hobbit.
I don't mind it.
They're the heroes.
They're funny.
They're clever.
They're resourceful.
Okay, understand.
But that's Hobbit.
If you've read any Tolkien, Hobbit means hole dweller.
Live in holes.
That's a long thought process to try to feel positive.
The bottom line is people don't want to be insulted by losers.
McCain is a loser.
He's got no business insulting people, especially the people that elect him.
I just think it reveals their ignorance.
It's just another example.
I mean, the Hobbits, if you've watched this movie, you're cheering on the Hobbits.
You're not the troll.
I understand.
But it reveals their arrogance as well as as much as it reveals their ignorance.
Frankly, sir, as a giant in the industry and in humanity, I could never be a Hobbit.
I could be happy being a Hobbit.
But if you want to be one, and if you draw strength from it, have at it, I myself will remain a giant, happily so.
And they know it.
Don't call me a Hobbit.
Josh in Carbondale, Illinois, right across the river, well, fairly close to across the river from where I grew up.
Great to have you on the program.
Hello, sir.
Hey, Rush.
Thanks a lot, buddy.
Thank you, sir.
So I'm listening to the O media demanding that Obama call Congress back to Washington.
And I'm reminded of 08 when John McCain came back to Washington to deal with a crisis.
And that was described as utter panic.
So I'm trying to decide how things are different now.
Well, we've got a soundbite.
Do we have time to get this in?
I don't know the length of this.
Cookie, well, give me the length of Soundbite 5 anyway.
I know I don't have time to squeeze it in now.
But we have a montage here of liberals everywhere in the media trying to get Obama to call Congress back to action.
It's based and rooted in the fact that only Washington can fix the problem.
Now, we can't fix anything ourselves.
Only Washington, there is only policy that can fix this.
And to a certain extent, that's true.
It would be the elimination of policy, not the addition of more.
But let me think about your McCain comparison analogy.
And I'll do that.
And be back after this obscene profit timeout.
Thanks very much for the call, Josh.
I'll be back and continue before you know it.
Rushlin Boy Man, a legend away of life.
Okay, first the montage and then a new dispatch, a news flash from Jennifer Lovin at AP.
We have here from yesterday and last night montage of a whole bunch of people from the media and from politics urging Obama to call Congress back to Washington.
Call Congress back from a vacation.
The president should call the Congress back in.
Why doesn't the president call the Congress back in?
Why didn't the president call Congress back to work?
Call Congress back to Washington.
Call Congress back from recess and say, let's do this.
Time for President Obama to call Congress back.
Calling Congress back in.
Fire the president.
I'd call the Congress back in.
Call the congressional leaders back to Washington.
Call back Congress.
I would love to see the president call the four leaders of Congress back to Washington.
Should the president bring back Congress?
The president of the United States, he's getting pressure to force Congress into a sudden breakout of sanity.
Yeah, that's Brian Williams editorializing there.
Now, what this is all about is they want a stimulus.
These people want Congress to come back and put together a new stimulus bill.
That's what they want.
Now, Obama is not going to do this because it would mean he would have to give up his vacation too.
And he's not going to do that.
Things are proceeding just fine.
There's enough destruction going on.
There's enough angst and chaos, enough depression.
I'm talking about the attitude of the public, not economic depression, although that's there too.
He doesn't need to hurry things along here.
Everything's on course.
He's got his vacation planned up there for Blue Heron Farm at Martha's Vineyard, where, by the way, there was a fire in the main house on that estate where Obama will be vacationing.
It was a short fire, a brief fire.
It was extinguished and put out and contained.
No explanation for the fire.
But Obama is still going on his vacation.
Now, Jennifer Lovin, the AP, has recently posted, president-elect.
Wait a minute.
I'm sorry.
This is not new.
This is back January - never mind.
It's January 8th of 2008.
So the point is that stimulus and stimulus and dire consequences if there isn't stimulus.
And that's twice a day.
People have sent me news that is not relevant to what's going on today.
But they do want Obama to come back.
We had a caller say that he has he remembers McCain coming back off of his vacation or off of his campaign and it essentially ruined his campaign because it looked like panic.
The chattering class in Washington is panicking over this.
They are panicking over what they think this is doing to Obama.
Not the country.
No, no, no.
That's exactly.
They're not concerned about what's happening to their country.
No, not interest rates.
That's not what the chattering class is concerned about.
They are concerned about what this is doing to Obama.
And that's, well, I've been asking this question about tax cuts.
Don't they have bank accounts too?
Aren't their investments being pummeled here?
Don't they worry about this?
Why are these people who would be forced to pay higher taxes so supportive of them?
And the answer is liberals are liberals first.
These people think that they are going to be taken care of.
Somehow they're among the chosen.
They're in the club.
They are part of the ruling class.
Everything's going to be...
Have you ever been...
Most people haven't.
Have you ever been in a close-knit fraternity of any kind?
Have you ever been on a football team, high school, college, professional?
Have you ever been in a college sorority fraternity?
I mean, when you have that mindset, close-knit, everything could be fine.
You're different from everybody else.
But they want Obama to come back and get a stimulus going to protect Obama.
And don't forget the first story we had today from the AP was Obama happy that this is all happening because of what he thinks the political advantage that benefits him is, that it draws this great contrast between him and the Republicans.
And he thinks in that contrast that he wins.
Anyway, here's Scott in LAJ, Georgia.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Great to have you on the program.
Hello.
Thank you for calling taking my call.
Rush, I wanted to point something out as far as the proposed debt committee.
I'm in retail, been in retail for a while, and it just blew my mind when I realized that the decisions that they make and the decisions that they come up with are supposedly to be done November 23rd or 24th, which is three or four days before Thanksgiving, which begins the biggest retail season in the country.
And then, of course, they don't vote on it until, I think, two days before Christmas.
And as a retailer and someone that his livelihood depends on retail, that atmosphere completely sucks all the buying desire out of people, and it will absolutely affect the retailers across this nation.
You know, I hadn't thought about that.
You have a point.
I think December 26th, is it December 23rd when they wrap up at the 27th?
Probably 23rd.
Don't think you're right.
Either way, the entire conversation for everybody, their entire focus is going to be on debt reduction, cut spending, all that.
It's not the greatest atmosphere.
Or will there be tax increases?
Will there be tax increases?
Exactly.
Will the country go to hell in the handbasket even faster?
You bet.
And I was surprised that they did not say, look, this is what we're going to do.
We're going to get together, say, September.
We're going to wrap this thing up by the end of September.
We're going to vote on it by mid-October, and we're going to get it settled so that this Christmas season, they'll start selling.
Who did you wish or think would be saying that?
Well, I just, you know, I. Congress at large or the Republicans?
Well, I mean, somebody in control, somebody, one side or the other, quite honestly, could you imagine if Obama did it?
I mean, I wouldn't give him anything as far as what he would need to get re-elected.
But if that guy came on and said, this is what we're going to do, and we're going to get it set ahead of time, and we're going to do it so that when retail season comes along on Black Friday, it'll be the biggest one we've had in 10 years.
I don't mean to sound disrespectful, because I'm not being disrespectful, but you are laboring under a very serious misconception.
You are not wrong.
You are absolutely right in what you say.
But the misconception under which you are laboring is that you think these people want to fix it.
Yes.
These people don't want to go anywhere near this because the fix for this is going to be painful.
That is correct.
And they don't want their names tied to it.
That's why this whole deal was done in the first place.
This was nothing more than kick the can down the road.
And they're going to find a way to get out of this committee business.
I hear you.
This committee thing, you wait.
It's either going to have no teeth when it's finished or it won't happen at all.
Right.
Well, if it has no teeth, then all it will do is suck everything out of the retail season.
And that affects everybody that's in retail.
And I think that's a lot of people.
It is.
It's going to suck energy.
It's going to suck, it has the potential to suck happiness, which you and retail need.
Yeah.
Just opened up a brand new store.
And quite honestly, you know, it's in an affluent area.
And quite honestly, again, on the air, all you hear is about the debt ceiling, the debt ceiling, the debt ceiling.
Are they going to make it?
Are they going to make it?
Are people going to get paid to Social Security?
It's a tough atmosphere to open up a new retail store when most people aren't even opening stores.
They're cutting back.
Let me tell you something, Scott.
I hear you, pal.
I just started a new tea business.
Right.
2ifbytea.com.
And I knew, Catherine and I knew that doing this in this particular economic climate with so much unemployment, so few leisure dollars, that it was a tough thing to do.
But we did just, why did you build your new store?
I'd be interested to know, even because it was circumstances when you built the store were not much different than they are today.
Why did you do it?
Well, first of all, it's not my store.
I'm just the general manager.
But second of all, the reason was that one of our locations just over the years that had been there a long time was just going down and down and down and down.
It would have been much easier just to close it.
But instead, the owner, who I think the world of, he said, look, let's build a nice store.
To try to save it?
Well, no, to just, you know, instead of having a crappy store, replace it with a great store.
And that's what we did.
Okay, but that's the crap store was going to hell.
Is that what you're saying?
It wasn't even really going to hell.
It was just in a bad neighborhood.
Oh, oh, oh, I thought, but it was losing business because of the location.
Yeah, I mean, it wasn't losing business, but it was a bad reflection of what the company is.
Right, right, right.
Okay, so yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you did it for Image.
You did it to help boost sales.
You did it.
Your owner probably didn't want to lay a bunch of people off.
He was probably being compassionate.
Copyright.
Yeah.
That's the same thing.
And it was a risk on his part.
And the whole time, all you hear is, you know, debt ceiling, debt ceiling, debt ceiling.
I hear you.
That's exactly what we were doing at 2F by T.
We were, we were, we had this idea for a while and we talked about it.
And I finally said, you know, we said to each other, I'm not going to let this guy stand in the way of trying this.
It may make no sense in the world to do this right now, but I'm not going to sit here and just give up and hunker down.
And I was the owner.
And so I just hate to see it maybe going the same way with Black Friday since we're so, you know, it's the second biggest season for us.
Well, I got a plan for you.
Yeah.
I got something for your owner.
I don't know if you can do this legally, but listen to this story.
This is, well, the source didn't, it's Reuters.
I'm sorry, it is Reuters.
Arkansas, Arkansans shopped until they dropped this past Saturday, braving temperatures deep into the triple digits to take advantage of the state's first sales tax holiday weekend.
Clancy Graham, a manager at Little Rock's RK Collections Boutique, an independently owned store, said, I have never seen anything like this.
If we could do this three times a year, it would be amazing.
It has done crazy good stuff for our business.
Arkansas lawmakers approved the tax holiday in February to give parents a tax break on back-to-screw shopping for items like uniforms, clothing, and screw supplies.
A tax holiday also covers items not necessarily needed for scruple, wedding apparel, girdles, girdles, girdles?
It's Arkansas catering.
And costumes.
Officials have estimated it would cost Arkansas about $2 million in revenue.
But look what happened.
They simply took away the sales tax, and sales went bananas in Arkansas.
Now, there's a lesson.
There's an economic lesson there.
Tax cuts generating revenue.
Now, the state of Arkansas may have lost some revenue here, but the people who are in business didn't.
And the state of Arkansas is going to make it back.
Right.
So there's a lesson here.
So, you know, we find ourselves in the same situation you're in.
Yes, sir.
And the whole notion that they're going to have Congress bickering about the same old stuff, and all this does depress people.
All it does is keep focusing on the failures of the country.
Sure.
And it makes people want to hoard what they've got because they don't know what the future is.
It's the same reason people on balanced businesses are not expanding.
Yours is an exception.
That is correct.
It seems unfortunate that even though it may not accomplish anything, it may hurt something.
Well, our best to you.
I appreciate your call.
I wish I could tell you something confidently that would comfort you about this committee.
The best I can do is that I think it's like everything else.
When they get to the point in time where the committee becomes relevant, something's going to happen to make it irrelevant, worthless, not happen, or kick it further down the road or what have you.
Because nobody, particularly in election year, nobody wants to be attached to things that cause pain.
I got to run.
Take a break.
Be right back.
Don't go away.
Well, I don't know where the time is going, zipping by here.
We'll do this in the next hour.
U.K. Daily Mail, explosive Jackie O-tapes, Jackie Onassis, reveal how she believed LBJ killed her husband and how she had an affair with William Holden.
Jackie O-tapes, her own tapes made before her husband was assassinated.
She admits to having an affair with William Holden, the actor, and saying after the fact that she thought that LBJ was responsible for her husband's assassination.
Prints out to like eight pages in the UK Daily Mail.
Buzz, Greenville, Ohio.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello, sir.
Hey, Rush.
God bless you, brother.
Thank you, sir.
God bless you.
Hey, you know, one of the things that's really been stuck in my mind since all these deals have been going back and forth through all the houses and everything is the fact that when did we as the Tea Party gain so much power that we're now able to control Congress, control the way the Senate votes, control and now start to drag down the president, and then everybody blames us for all these problems when just a year ago we were a bunch of rubes and country bumpkins and a bunch of rednecks that had no power at all.
Well, in other words, nothing's changed.
We're hobbits now.
But, you know, it's just a fact.
They're scared.
Yeah, that's it.
They know that the Tea Party out there does have power.
The Tea Party can make things happen.
And if we all stick together and go forward with somebody like you on the radio continuing to progress this thing, we can make a change and we can get back to constitutional law in this country, which we desperately need.
I have no doubt about it.
By the way, there's a ⁇ I'm going to have to scroll up here to it.
There's a new poll out on consumer confidence or something that's at an all-time low.
And the Washington people, particularly on the Democrat side, fully understand.
They know they're governing against the will of people.
They know it.
They know, they can see it in the global warming.
They know that they are facing an uprising.
They are trying to figure out how to quell it.
They're trying to figure out how to stop the uprising.
The uprising will, of course, take place on Election Day.
ABC News, by the way, I'm told, has the Jackie O tapes, and they say, ABC says that the tapes do not say anything that the UK Daily Mail says the tapes say.
ABC says, nope, not one thing in there about her having an affair with Holden or LBJ killing JFK.
None of that's in there.
Two hours down and one exciting, busy broadcast hour to go, ABC News says no truth to report that Jackie O'Nassis believed that LBJ was involved in the assassination of her husband.
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