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Aug. 29, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:52
August 29, 2011, Monday, Hour #2
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And we are back having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Rushlin Baugh behind the golden EIB microphone, telephone number 800-282-2882, the email address ilrushbow at EIBnet.com.
I was not kidding.
I realize some of you might think I was simply trying to recycle a long-ago bit.
The New York Times over the weekend, should ugly people get affirmative action.
And the economist, Daniel Hamermesch, and I get a picture of the guy.
It raises a question, who's ugly?
He does not define it.
How do we define ugly?
Who gets to do that?
One person I can think right off the top of my head would be Michelle Obama.
And don't misunderstand me on this.
She said that for the first time in her life, she was proud of her country when her husband was running.
So she's got an idea of who's ugly and who isn't.
But what this tells me, where did this run?
This ran the New York Times.
New York Times is oriented toward what?
Liberalism, socialism, the left.
Which tells me that the New York Times thinks that there are more ugly liberals than there are ugly conservatives.
Otherwise, they wouldn't be concerned about it, and they wouldn't be concerned about affirmative action for ugly people.
So if it's obvious here that they think there are more ugly liberals than there are conservatives.
If not, there'd be no effort to give ugly people some legal protection.
So it pretty much acknowledges the abundance of ugly people among liberals.
Now, that is empirical evidence, as I say.
Here you have the newspaper of record of the left worried about affirmative action for ugly people, and they obviously concerned.
Now, what kind of anecdotal evidence can we find to support this?
I would submit to you cable news networks.
I don't think there's any doubt.
You take the look.
Hey, the New York Times brought this up, but they didn't go far enough.
They did not define it.
If you're going to sit there and say the ugly should get affirmative action, who are the ugly?
Now, when I first courageously tackled this problem back in 1984, I made it very, I thought, very compassionate.
First step was to make it voluntary.
On the theory, the ugly know who they are.
They get up, look in the mirror, and they know.
But then I worked with a guy who had one of those 1950s ducktail swept back buffant hairstyles and wore two-tone green leisure suits purchased at Kmart.
He thought he was cool.
He thought he was a style maven.
He was very ugly, but he didn't think so.
So I began to think, maybe my voluntary program won't work.
Maybe the ugly don't know who they are.
But if you go to a bowling alley, you can quickly see the ugly tend to marry each other.
So it's, but it's really a tricky, tricky thing.
A cable news network.
Oh, you want to go back to cable news networks?
I mean, I don't want to mention any names here, but simply compare on the female side your average Democrat strategist or Republican strategist.
Fairly obvious.
Well, anchors, anchors.
It's going to be a little tougher call there, but I still think that the citation holds.
Folks, look, simply reporting here what was in the New York Times over the weekend.
If ugly people are going to get affirmative action, do not we need to know who they are.
And I think the New York Times, by definition, is telling us that there are more ugly liberals than there are ugly conservatives.
Otherwise, they wouldn't be concerned with affirmative action.
Now, some might say, well, we're going to have the beautiful people are the ones who get to decide who's ugly.
Do you think beautiful people know that they're beautiful?
Do you think a beautiful woman, for example, gets up, looks in the mirror, and says, I'm hot.
You think that happens?
Dawn is shaking her.
Not as you should shake your head.
No, it doesn't happen.
It doesn't happen.
Whoa.
Now that's fascinating.
Who has self-esteem issue?
You telling me that the beautiful have self-esteem issues?
Beautiful people have self-esteem problem.
Beautiful women have self-esteem issues.
This is our noted female expert, Snerdley, saying this.
You can't hear him, but he's the one proffering this opinion.
Well, it's out there now.
I mean, 84.
I got it out there.
Now, affirmative action.
And the thing is, folks, you know, you're laughing.
This is not going to go away.
This is now an official mission of the left.
It's in the New York Times.
I don't know how this is going to manifest itself in the future, but it is now going to become something that the left will pursue.
It's another excuse for expanding government, more spending, creating more dependency, sympathy, victims.
I mean, it's all built in here with a brand new category of people in need.
And that would be the ugly.
Only 17%, the storyfromthehill.com.
Americans have a more favorable view of every other industry, including oil and gas, than of the federal government.
According to Gallup, only 17% of Americans surveyed have a positive view of the federal government.
I think that's great news.
And this is the first time the federal government has ranked at the bottom of a list of industries.
More historical points for Obama.
Look at what Obama's done for the reputation of government.
He's taken it to the ash heap.
Big oil is more popular with people than government is.
By the way, the Congressional Budget Office released a report last Wednesday morning projecting a $1.3 trillion deficit for 2011, the third largest deficit in the past 65 years.
$1.3 trillion deficit for this fiscal year, which ends on September 30th, the largest economic shortfall in the past 65 years.
Now, I mentioned in the previous hour that Byron York, back on August 20th, so a week ago, last Monday, had a piece posted at the Examiner.
Spending, not entitlements, created a huge deficit.
It's conventional wisdom in Washington to blame the federal government's dire financial outlook on runaway entitlement spending.
Unless we rein in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, the conventional wisdom goes, the federal government's headed for disaster.
And in the long run, that's true.
But what is causing massive deficits now?
Is it the same entitlements that threaten the future?
Some conservatives say yes.
And they favor making entitlement reform a key issue in a 2012 campaign.
Bill Crystal said, we're $1.5 trillion in debt.
Where's the debt coming from?
It's coming from entitlements, he said.
Well, there's no doubt federal spending has exploded in recent years.
In fiscal 2007, the last year before things went haywire, the government took in $2.5 trillion in revenue and spent $2.7 trillion for a deficit of $160 billion.
Now, stop and think of this.
In 2007, which was a Bush year, the deficit was $160 billion.
Four years later, according to the CBO, the government will take in $2.23 trillion and spend $3.6 trillion, a deficit of $1.4 trillion, from $160 billion to $1.4 trillion in four years.
So the question is, is that because of entitlement spending?
That somehow Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid just go wild the last four years?
Social Security hasn't.
As you know, they've been saying there hadn't been any inflation.
So there had been no COLAs, cost of living adjustments.
So how do you go from $160 billion deficit to a $1.4 trillion deficit?
How do you do that?
Was there a steep rise in entitlement spending?
Did everybody suddenly turn 65 overnight and begin collecting Social Security and using Medicare?
Well, obviously the answer is no.
The deficits are largely the result not of entitlements, but of an explosion in spending related to the economic downturn and the rise of Democrats to power in Washington.
While entitlements have to be controlled in the long run, our current spending problem lies elsewhere.
It's in the Oval Office.
It's with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
A lot of the higher spending has stemmed directly from the downturn.
There is, for example, spending on what's called income security.
That is for unemployment compensation, food stamps and related programs.
In 2007, the government spent $365 billion on income security, 2007, a Bush year.
In 2011, it's estimated we will spend $622 billion, an increase of $257 billion.
Then there's Medicaid, the healthcare program for the poor.
A lot of people had lower incomes due to the economic downturn.
Federal expenditures on Medicaid went from $190 billion in 2007 to $276 billion in 2011, increase of $86 billion.
You put that together with the $257 billion increase in income security spending, and you have a total of $343 billion.
You add to that the $338 billion in decreased revenues, you get $681 billion, which means nearly half of the current deficit can be clearly attributed to the downturn.
Now, there's no line in the federal budget that says stimulus, but Obama's massive $1 trillion stimulus increased spending in virtually every part of the government and raised the baseline.
So the point of Byron York's story here is that while a lot of people, including Republicans, are focused on entitlements, we got to get entitlements under control.
They are 60% of the budget.
No question that's true, but they are not the reason.
We have gone up to 14.3, and that's 16 because of the debt limit being raised, $17 trillion national debt.
It is not entitlements that have done this.
It is the Democrat Party.
It is Barack Obama.
And I think this is a fascinating point.
Now, it might take an issue away from the Republicans who are focusing on entitlement reform, but then again, it might be helpful.
Entitlement reform is a third rail.
I mentioned to you earlier, Celinda Lake, respected Democrat pollsterette, says that there's a 10% chance that Obama won't be the nominee.
Well, now, if you look at the entitlement spending here, cannot explain all of this.
The regime wants to focus on entitlement reform.
They want the Republicans to take the blame for it.
And yet Obama proposed some entitlement reform as part of the raising of the debt limit deal.
And that's when the Democrats started defecting.
And that's when there was real anger from people like Pelosi and Reid and the Reverend Dax and Sharpton.
When he actually mentioned cutting some entitlements, that's when all this scuttlebutt of genuine anger from the left at Obama began.
And now we're at a point where Celinda Lake is saying there's a 10% chance that he won't be the nominee, pull an LBJ.
Now, 10% is 10%.
That's a 90% chance he will be.
But it's being discussed.
And entitlement reform and his willingness to entertain that has caused real friction between him and his buds on the left.
So if the focus of this spending, which is the reason for the Tea Party and its existence and its growth, and believe me, the Tea Party is continuing to grow.
And believe me on this, the Tea Party is drinking tea.
I happen to know.
To Ifbyt.com.
Are we have evidence?
But anyway, the the point is that if the focus can be taken away from entitlement spending and properly put on Obama in the campaign, it takes all this danger of being associated with entitlement reform third wheel of politics off the table.
I think uh, it would be a brilliant move for the Republican presidential nominee, whoever it ends up being.
Go ahead and talk about entitlement reform over the long haul obviously has to happen, but it doesn't explain this massive indebtedness.
Obama is solely, and the Democrat party solely, responsible for that, and that is a point worth being made and pounded until people understand it instinctively.
So basically what Byron York is saying in his piece in a nutshell, the increase in spending was from unemployment, Medicaid and the stimulus, and Obama wants to extend all of those.
That's how he's going to get us out of the recession.
That's what his plan it's jobs plan coming next week.
Everybody waiting with bated breath.
Remember that his big jobs plan.
And you know it's going to be stimulus too.
I have not forgotten.
I predicted it before I left on vacation and it's going to be double.
I'm i'm telling you we're going to get a stimulus in the range, a requested stimulus in the range of one and a half to 1.6 trillion.
The Republicans will oppose it, which is exactly what Obama wants.
So he can say, look, my plan would work, except they're standing in the way of it.
Republican instruction don't want help for the unemployed.
They don't want help for the sick.
You know that.
I know that's what the plan is, and then it's going to get really vicious once we have a nominee.
Mark my words, don't doubt me.
Okay, we're going to go to the phones and we're going to start.
Ocean Town, New Jersey.
Eli, great to have you on the program sir, you're up first today.
Hello hello, great to speak to you, Rosh.
Just a quick point.
I think it's uh, actually a quite integral point, this whole storm thing.
I think it proves one point, and that is, you repeat something enough times.
Everyone believes you.
They could say the same thing over and over and over.
We look outside, it's hardly raining and was like, oh my gosh, there's a hurricane, there's a hurricane, and there was nothing, even there the whole time.
Yeah, but I wonder how many people did believe it.
Well, I don't know.
They got the with all those people talking.
And you see what's going on with Obama, how he becomes president.
It's the same thing.
They say the same things over and over.
It's this guy's fault, that guy's fault, and then that's it.
You become president.
Well this yeah, I know, but that's what I said at the top of the program.
The disparity between the truth of what this hurricane was and the forecast of the prediction was so great that even people who pay scant attention are talking about this.
Now this is a huge discussion item.
What hurricane?
How can they say this?
75, 80 mile an hour winds?
There weren't any, maybe at flight level 30 maybe, who knows?
You know what.
You know how they even started excusing this, something I had.
Now I know this is true, but I had never heard this as part of official Hurricane Center warnings.
As the storm Irene approached New York, they started hedging their bets.
Well, you know, on the street level, the winds, you get up 30 stories.
Now we're talking The stronger winds in this storm are at the higher altitudes.
30 stories like 300 feet, 350 feet, the winds might be 20, 30% stronger up there.
Of course, there won't be anybody up there to know because they've all been evacuated or what have you.
I think by the same token, the exaggeration and the large gap between truth, reality, and fiction is such that a lot of people will now start asking the same questions about general news reporting.
So we're supposed to believe them about global warming.
We're supposed to believe all these weather people about global warming when they are willing to lie to us about something as obvious as a hurricane.
Folks, it was right out there for everybody to see.
This hurricane was not what we were told it was.
They continued to tell us something that wasn't true.
We could all see it.
I mean, I find myself watching the coverage and laughing.
I'm watching Fox.
They got their in-studio anchors, and they're throwing it to John Roberts, who's standing on the beach in North Carolina in the middle of a hurricane, and there isn't any wind.
His hair is not even must.
And there's a few sprinkles, and yet the commentary is about how disastrous it is.
I'll tell you where it was disastrous.
Inland.
It was not a coastal storm.
It was an inland storm.
You go inland in North Carolina.
Farms were destroyed and flooded.
Ditto.
Parts of Virginia.
This was a flooding, and there are still a lot of people without power.
You go to Vermont underwater.
It was not a coastal destructive hurricane storm.
This was a rainstorm.
But ever since Hurricane Katrina and the success they had in politicizing that, every subsequent hurricane has been looked upon as a political opportunity by people in the media.
And I don't care if they're weather people, if they're sports people, or if they're news people, they're liberals.
If they're journalists, they're liberals.
They politicize everything.
And folks, once you understand liberals' lie, the rest of it is easy to understand and easy to predict.
It isn't difficult at all.
Let's go to audio soundbite number 28.
We'll go back to this December 6, 2009.
The biography channels, Shatner's Raw Nerve, William Shatner, interviewed me.
And during a discussion about healthcare reform, had this little exchange.
Here's my premise, and you agree with it or not, that if you have money, you're going to get health care.
If you don't have money, it's more difficult.
If you have money, you're going to get a house on the beach.
If you don't have money, you're going to live in a bungalow somewhere.
That's right, but we're talking about health care.
What's the difference?
The difference is we're talking about health care.
No.
Not a house in a bungalow.
You're assuming that there's some morally superior aspect to health care than there is to a house in a bunch.
It's not moral at all.
I want to keep the subject for the moment on the health care thing.
All right.
All right.
So now it's the health care.
I'm talking about health care.
Okay.
So talk about health care.
So isn't the premise, isn't this valid, that the healthcare system today is breaking the country?
No, it's not.
I don't believe it is.
And if we're told that it is.
Of course we're told that.
But how do that get us to act like sheep and go along with it?
But how do you know that?
You know, the sum total of what I want to ask you politically is how do you know?
It's my job.
It's my life.
It's my career.
It's my passion.
I've studied this stuff.
I want the best country we can have.
And this is not the way to get it.
We're going backwards.
I want to go forward.
How do you know?
That's a sum total.
That's all I really wanted to ask you here in this whole show.
That's all I really wanted to ask.
How do you know?
And the answer is, I know liberals.
And I know that that sounds simplistic, and I know you might think I'm trying to be insulting or funny or what have you.
No, I'm being as serious as I know how to be.
I know liberals.
For example, here is a Wall Street Journal piece.
And I don't, I think this Peggy Noonan, I'm not sure if it's a piece on Rick Perry.
It was the Beltway elite warning Rick Perry, he better tone it down.
And I'm told, I had spies while I was gone.
I'm told that a lot of people took advantage of my being away to counter what I would say were I hear about this.
So people who would normally hold back fired both barrels.
And one of the things that being said while I was gone was, Mr. Perry, you better tone it down.
You had better dial it back.
You're going to really tick off the independents.
You just can't speak the way you're speaking.
And yet he pulled away from the pack.
Rick Perry stormed away from everybody in polling in the Republican Party.
Why?
Precisely because he's engaging in straight talk, not inside the Beltway elitism, not defensiveness, not politically correct talk.
And it was clearly refreshing to voters based on the polls that were taken last week that launched him.
And so the people who don't want Perry to get the nomination on our side, because they're people competing, and talked about this, it's quite okay for different factions in the Republican Party to want to be the controlling power in the party.
They want their nominee and they want their guy to be elected president so they run the town and run the country.
That's what primaries are all about.
Perfectly fine.
But in this case, with Perry pulling away, the people who don't want Perry to pull away, you better tone it down.
You better dial it back.
They're going to tell him to stop doing exactly what's working because they don't want it to work.
Now, here comes Jeb Bush.
Now, this is when this job gets difficult because I like Jeb Bush and I've met him.
The Bush family has been cooperative, nice, over the top with me.
The Bush family has been very welcoming.
So this is when the job gets tough.
But I totally disagree with what Jeb Bush said to Politico while I was gone.
Former Governor Jeb Bush warned Republican presidential hopefuls against ideological intransigence and knee-jerk opposition to President Obama last Tuesday, saying they risk turning off middle-of-the-road voters.
My friends, middle-of-the-road voters have abandoned Obama.
This is the same trick that has been played against our people for years, and it really frosts me.
The idea that Republicans speak conservatives speaking openly and honestly about conservatism is somehow going to cause independents to run away and to wear a party populated by the meanest, most extreme bunch of people in American politics today.
We're told independents want bipartisanship.
We're told the independents want people to get along.
And so here comes a conservative who's not combative.
He's just being honest.
The independents don't like that.
You're going to send it right back to the Democrats.
There's no meaner political group of people in America today than today's Democrats.
There's no more combative group of people in American politics today than America's Democrats.
There's no more extreme group of people in American politics today than the Democrat Party.
Where is it written that these independents are going to flock to that?
They're not flocking to that.
They're flocking away from it.
Jeb Bush said, look, it's fine to criticize Obama.
That's politics.
But just to stop there isn't enough.
You have to win with ideas.
You have to win with policies.
If you're a conservative, you have to persuade.
You can't just be against the president.
Conservatism is something.
Conservatism is not opposition.
Opposition is the result of being a conservative.
Conservatism is policies.
Conservatism is smaller government.
Conservatism is responsible spending.
Conservatism is belief in the power of the individual.
Conservatism is faith in people to be the best they can be.
Conservatism is founded in love of all people and a desire for everybody to maximize the great gift they have of being born in America.
Conservatism is not opposition.
Conservatism is not obstructionism.
Conservatism is action.
It's positive.
Conservatism is respect for tradition, the institutions and traditions that made this country great and keep it so.
And why can't we just be against the president?
If there's ever been somebody it's worth being against, it's this guy.
That's what this is all about.
I am totally opposed to this guy.
You can't just be against the president.
Yes, you can.
Not only yes, you can, yes, you must.
Anybody who cares about this country has founded must be against this president.
What was the Democrat platform but being against President Bush during all those years?
The comparisons are eerie here.
They said the same thing about Reagan.
And that's why people started saying, well, you just get the consultants away from him and let Reagan be Reagan.
Do you remember that?
Because the same type of people started trying to tone Reagan down.
Other people said, let Reagan be Reagan.
People vote on the basis of likability.
This is what the news media fear about Perry and Palin.
I'm telling you, they are likable.
Nothing dislikable about Rick Perry, and there's no reason for him to shut up.
And there's nothing dislikable about Sarah Palin.
There's no reason for her to shut up.
There's no reason for any of us to shut up about opposing this president.
Duty, I want to look at it this way.
Duty demands that we oppose this president.
It is not ideological intransigence.
It's not knee-jerk opposition.
It is the essence of substance.
The reason people oppose this president is pure, 100% substance.
They oppose this president precisely because of what he has done and what he wants to continue to do.
It is not a sign of intransigence or obstinacy or whatever else here.
Conservatism is an idea.
And the policies flow from a conservative ideological formation or foundation.
Jeb Bush says if you're a conservative, you have to persuade you can't just be against the president.
Yes, you can.
You must be.
We have to be against this president.
We have to be, because being against this president is being against massive spending.
Being against this president is not being against a black guy.
Being against this president is not being against a person.
It's being against destructive policies that are destroying people's children and grandchildren's future and their opportunities.
That's what being against this president is.
And by the way, that view has majority support, including among the nation's independents.
All right, let's grab our phone call here, folks.
The whole show can't just be all me.
Well, yes, it can.
But people have been patiently waiting.
This is at Byron Center in Byron Center, Michigan.
Hi, Ken.
You're next.
Great to have you here.
Hey, Rush.
Nice to talk to you.
Thank you, sir.
I'm another good-looking conservative like yourself, alluding to your initial monologue.
I'm not sure how I got through.
I'm sure it was extraterrestrial being.
I think that's a politically correct term now, not space alien.
Okay, I was just reading from the story, space aliens.
You know what?
You know, I'm in Michigan.
I think we pronounce it now, hmm, hmm, hmm, Michigan.
Bobbing around on my boat this weekend.
And not that I wish any hardship or menace on my fellow human beings, but I was a little disappointed that the whole East Coast didn't just get like decimated.
Because I was thinking that, think of all the jobs that could create.
Isn't that what liberalism is all about?
I mean, just spend some money on stuff that didn't necessarily need to be spent on?
Well, I really don't know how you happen to end up on the air.
Jared in Boulder, Colorado, you're next.
Welcome to the program, sir.
Can you save us?
Or is this show going to have to revert back to being totally me?
No, I can talk.
Make a Ditto's Rush.
Thank you, sir.
I have a couple of comments.
First, about the UK Guardian article that you mentioned last hour, about the alien attack, and second, about Hurricane Irene, if there's time.
Yes.
I'm working on my PhD in meteorology at Penn State University, and I know two of the authors personally of the UK Guardian, the scientific study that was mentioned in the UK Guardian article.
About the space aliens wiping us out for global warming.
Correct.
Correct.
And the UK Guardian got it wrong.
The Guardian initially reported that it was a NASA report, and I think that was a version of the story that you mentioned earlier, and it was not.
It was a NASA-affiliated scientist and two Penn State-affiliated scientists, but it was done completely on their own free time.
It was not funded by taxpayer funds whatsoever.
Okay.
That's not a concern to mine.
I don't care who paid for it.
Right, right.
I mean, granted, they still are on the left wing of the political side of my state.
They've worked for NASA, right?
Yeah, one.
Okay, so NASA has hired people who put a report together saying that there are space aliens monitoring us and our carbon emissions.
And if we go too far, they're going to come here and wipe us out to save the planet.
What the article said was, I mean, granted, it's not a scientific article because anything talking about...
You're not going to try to defend these guys, are you?
Yeah.
No, no, I think the study is kind of ridiculous myself.
Well, good.
Okay, thanks.
But I just wanted to clarify that it's not an official NASA report or anything like that.
Okay.
Well, that's I appreciate that.
We're all happy to.
And we'll be back, ladies and gentlemen.
Jonathan Martin asks in the Politico, is Rick Perry dumb?
Just like they did with Reagan.
The dust being blown off a Democrat playbook and the tired attack on a conservative's intelligence, just like they did with Reagan.
We got more coming up.
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