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Sept. 7, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:54
September 7, 2011, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Hang on a minute here, folks.
I'm looking at something on the Soundbite roster that anyway, here we are.
Already Wednesday.
It's amazing how fast the week goes by when you have Monday off.
Nevertheless, fastest week in media rush Limbaugh back at it behind the golden EIB microphone here at the distinguished and prestigious Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
The telephone number, if you want to be on the program, is 800-282-2882, the email address, El Rushbo at EIBNet.com.
Libyan leaders or rebels, I should say, the Libyan rebels are now saying that Colonel Muamar Gaddafi is completely surrounded.
So maybe now Gaddafi will be forced to give them some details about his new jobs plan.
Wait, I'm getting my stories confused.
It's Obama who has the jobs plan.
But he's also surrounded.
He's surrounded by events, Snerdley.
Obama is totally surrounded here.
They're not going to give any details of the speech because they want ravings.
They want people to watch.
If they give any details of the speech, you're afraid nobody's going to watch.
Although some details have already leaked out, $300 billion more.
Obama said to seek $300 billion jobs package.
So you add that to the $800 billion stimulus, and you've got $1.3 trillion that will be totally asked for.
It's added to the baseline of the budget.
But still, look at this in the New York Times.
Jeff Zelany has a story here.
And I mention this story mostly for the humor of it.
The headline of the story, a campaign challenge defining Obama.
They are still trying at the New York Times to define Barack Hussein Obama.
I know the $780 trillion didn't create any jobs.
$300 billion more.
I'm surprised it's that small.
I'm surprised it's only $300 billion.
It's got to end up being more than that.
It's got to be enough that the Republicans will object to it because that's a whole point to come up with something Republicans will object to.
Oh, do you know that Pelosi's ticked off?
This is funny, too.
Pelosi's ticked off because the Republicans are not going to respond.
The Republicans have decided there's a football game after the president's speech, and we're not going to give a response.
Thereby signaling that this is an insignificant event.
Pelosi's all ticked off that they're not taking it seriously enough.
There needs to be a response.
What Pelosi knows is that all these responses to official presidential speeches before joint sessions, the response looks small.
And Pelosi is really, she's upset that Obama isn't going to be criticized.
He's upset that Obama is going to be ignored.
There will be no official Republican response.
She's also forbade the use of the word stimulus.
Yep, can't use the word stimulus anymore.
It's just because it's got a negative connotation.
Look at all the words liberals have destroyed in our language.
Anyway, Jeff Zelany here, the New York Times.
President Obama may have escaped the burdens of a Democrat primary challenger, yet the battle to define him is rapidly escalating, not only by Republicans competing to run against him, but also within his own team inside the White House.
We're three years in and we're getting who is Obama stories from the New York Times.
These are the guys that led the pack on creating the image of the Messiah during the 2008 campaign and all of that.
The Times claims that in trying to lay claim to a broad swathe of the electorate, Obama risks pleasing neither the center nor the left.
But by the broad swath of the electorate, the Times must mean union members, anybody receiving a government check.
Who else could he care about?
So there's that.
Then the Obama said to seek $300 billion jobs package.
This is from Al Hunt at Bloomberg News.
President Obama plans to propose sparkling job growth, to propose sparking job growth by injecting more than $300 billion into the economy next year, mostly through tax cuts, infrastructure spending, and direct aid to state and local governments.
He wants another stimulus package, by the way, to make sure that teachers don't get fired, which how many stimulus plans have we had for that?
Obama will call on Congress to offset the cost of the short-term jobs measure by raising tax revenue in later years.
This would be part of a long-term deficit reduction package, including spending and entitlement cuts, as well as revenue.
None of this is ever going to happen.
And once again, what it amounts to is the guy who's done it all, the guy who's done all the spending, who's done all the wreckage, now pretending he has just arrived in town, looked at and assessed the damage, and decides we've got to do something to fix it.
This is sort of like Colonel Sanders walking into the chicken slaughterhouse.
There aren't any chickens alive, and he wants an investigation.
Who did this? asks Colonel Sanders.
I mean, F. Chuck Todd at NBC, our pollsters are concerned.
Did you hear that?
Yeah, let me find that bite.
It's around 14 or 70.
It's number 14.
This is F. Chuck Todd.
He's the political director, the White House correspondent for NBC, was on the nightly news last day.
He's out in Los Angeles or the Simi Valley for the Republican debate tonight.
Brian Williams said, now we turn to our NBC News Wall Street Journal poll.
Some bad news for the president tied to some very bad feelings about the current state of our economy.
Our political director and chief White House correspondent, F. Chuck Todd, here with us in California for tomorrow night's debate with a look at the numbers.
Now, listen to this.
This has taken a big hit on the president politically.
44% approve of the job he's doing.
All-time low of his presidency.
But one important number that our pollsters say is in there is this idea that is this a long-term setback form or a short-term one.
54% said long-term.
Our pollsters are concerned.
That's the kind of numbers you have when the public starts to give up on a president as a problem solver.
Our pollsters are concerned.
Our pollsters are concerned.
That's the kind of numbers you have when the public starts to give up on a president as a problem solver.
54% say that long-term setback.
Pollsters.
They just come out and say it.
Our pollsters are very concerned over what this means for Obama.
Our pollsters.
I've told you.
This is, you know what this really means?
It's worse than this.
It's worse because these pollsters are not reflecting public attitude.
They're trying to shape it.
These networks use their polling units to make news, but this must be so bad that they don't dare massage it too much because they do have their own credibility, quote unquote, to worry about.
So, you know, this is what the New York Times says they need to redefine Obama.
And F. Chuck Todd comes along as our pollsters are concerned.
The public is catching on to this.
The public's catching on.
The Tea Party is growing in numbers.
The left is in the middle of a conniption fit.
Here, let's go to the audio sound bites.
This is the forehead, Paul Bagala.
Last night on CNN, Anderson Cooper 43.
Cooper said, Do you believe, forehead, that it is in the Republicans' best interest to get this thing passed?
There's all kinds of Republicans.
Some truly deeply want to help.
I know they do.
But there's others, I think, who frankly understand the political physics here, which is if America fails, Republicans succeed.
Rush Limbaugh, their intellectual leader, of course, famously said he hopes the president fails.
So there is at least several Republicans, I think a lot of them, who frankly don't mind seeing the economy fail if it means that they succeed politically.
Yeah, they've got it backwards.
I sit here and laugh, but frankly, I don't know about you, but I'm just irritated all the time every day about the state of this country and where it's going.
It's just plain irritating.
All of this is so unnecessary.
All of this wreckage on purpose, so unnecessary by a rank amateur who now even his biggest supporters are running around saying, who the hell is he?
We don't know who he is.
And I've known all along who he is.
And that's why I wanted him to fail.
And he hasn't failed.
I don't know how there can be a Democrat intellectually honest looking at what's happened to this country and can somehow still try to focus blame on me for this.
Rush Limbaugh, their intellectual leader, said he hopes the president fails.
Well, he hasn't failed, Paul.
He succeeded profoundly.
He has done exactly what he intended to do, and it's only taken him three years.
It's shocking the damage that's been done to this country in three years.
And they talk about Republican obstructionism.
There hasn't been any Republican obstructionism.
The Republicans for two and a half years didn't have the numbers to obstruct anything.
We're not even talking about backbone here.
They didn't have the numbers to obstruct anything.
Now, here's Trumka.
He was on CNN Piers Morgan last night.
He's the AFL CIO honcho, used to be the United Mine Workers guy.
Piers Morgan said, Mr. Trumka, Tea Party, sons of bitches.
Jim Hoff is speaking for the anger that millions of Americans have.
These people are taking, playing political brinksmanship, not being willing to help us create jobs, not being willing to help us get the country moving.
Some of them even announced that they want the president to fail in his attempts to get the economy right.
That's wrong.
They shouldn't be doing that.
And they don't have the right to say that they're truly the only patriotic ones out there when they want the country to fail and 25 million people not to get back to work.
Well, this is frankly just absurd.
Because I'm going to tell you something.
Trump was flown to Detroit for that Labor Party rally on Air Force One.
He's in bed with Obama.
He's part of the destruction.
You take a look in this country, wherever there is severe economic problems, you're going to find a union involved.
Wherever you go, wherever you go in this country, in the private sector, and you're going to find problems, you're going to find either a Democrat president or a union somewhere involved in the mix that's making the situation worse.
What?
What?
Snurdly says, how do I feel about Trumka identifying me as the SOB, as the head SOB?
You think that's what's happened here?
Okay, well, let's listen to it again.
See, I don't think about myself very much.
And I really, as you know, Snerdley, I don't take anything personally anymore.
I don't give people that power.
Okay, the question, Trump, Tea Party, sons of bitches, here's again the answer.
Jim Hoff is speaking for the anger that millions of Americans have.
These people are taking, playing political brinksmanship, not being willing to help us create jobs, not being willing to help us get the country moving.
Some of them even announced that they want the president to fail in his attempts to get the economy right.
That's wrong.
They shouldn't be doing that.
And they don't have the right to say that they're truly the only patriotic ones out there when they want the country to fail and 25 million people not to get back to work.
Okay, so you may have a point, Trumka calling me the SOB that Hoffa's talking about.
That's how you interpret it.
Because when he says they're, some of them even announce they want the president to fail.
I'm the only one.
I'm the only one that announced.
Okay, so this is still, I'm still living rent-free in these people's heads.
The foreheads, no doubt Obama's, and now Trumka's.
And then they talked about this this morning on PMS NBC, Scarborough during a discussion about Hoffa and his remark as a Tea Party bunch of sons of bitches and Jay Carney's refusal to condemn the remark.
Joe Scarborough said.
It's very interesting.
This is the same White House that attacked Rush Limbaugh from that stand for what he said.
They have constantly used that bully pulpit to go after people who are on the other side when they say irresponsible things.
Now it's like, what is he talking about?
And I know that Joe in his own way is trying to come to my defense.
But what did I say?
What's he referring to here?
Very interesting that this is the same White House that attacked Rush Limbaugh from that stand for what he said.
They still talking about the failure business.
But anyway, he's got a point.
But they are, in fact, the Dan Pfeiffer, the communications director of the White House, we're not going to be the speech police here at the Democrat Party.
We're not going to be the speech police.
So they're standing by.
I said yesterday, everybody says Obama going to repudiate what Hop is.
Obama wrote it.
I'm sure Obama approved it.
This is right out of Sololinsky.
I got to take a brief time out here, my friends, because time is racing by.
We'll be back before you know it.
Hi, welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, America's real anchor man, truth detector, and doctor of democracy.
All combined into one harmless, lovable little fuzzball.
Here we go to state-controlled AP, America's sickly economy.
Can be healed with jobs, jobs, and more jobs.
On that, everybody agrees.
Figuring out how to produce them is what's stumping everybody, says AP.
Other than letting time take its course, Washington lacks a clear answer on how to create permanent new jobs on a national scale.
Forecasters suggest it's going to take 20 million new jobs over the next 10 years just to repair recession damage and to keep pace with adult population growth.
Lots of schemes have been tried or floated, first under President George W. Bush and now under Democrat Obama.
More than $2 trillion have been plowed into spending.
Anyway, this thing goes on to say that, quoting Douglas Holtz Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, neither side can make a definitive case that they really know what they're doing.
So the newest spin is that neither side has an answer here.
And of course, this is patently absurd.
Other than letting time take its course, Washington lacks a clear answer on how to create permanent new jobs on a national scale.
How about stop trying?
How about get – I'm going to have to watch my – I – I am on the brink here.
I almost had the F-bomb.
I know we've got a 40-second delay and I almost said it anyway, just to get it out of my system.
Just get the hell out of everybody's way.
There's a story in here.
Another CEO has come out and basically said the same thing.
A series of CEOs has said, just gets to stop this.
Washington, just get out of the way.
Stop doing all of this.
Here it is.
It's on CNBC.
President Obama's highly anticipated jobs package will be unveiled Thursday in front of Congress.
Ahead of the economic speech at NBC Wall Street Journal poll, we talked about that.
The pollsters are very concerned.
John Schiller, chairman CEO of Energy 21, said if the government would just get out of the way from a regulation standpoint and let us do what we do, you'll see us continue to hire and grow the economy.
And that's a message from across the board.
John Farachi, CEO of International Paper, told CNBC to create jobs, what we need is demand.
The economy is 70% consumer demand.
We need consumers spending some of their discretionary income.
We need less regulation, less taxation.
We need the government to just get out of the way.
Everybody on the right has a good jobs plan.
Now, it really is frustrating.
And I'm doing my best here.
I'm actually working hard at having fun.
And that's not how it ought to be.
Neither side can make a definitive case that they really know what they're doing, said this former director of the CBO, Douglas Holtz Eakin.
That's patently absurd.
There's history.
There's over 230 years of history in this country.
The economic cycle.
Know what's happened when job growth has taken place.
We know what caused it.
Why are we blind to history?
What in the world is so unique about now other than for the first time we've got somebody actively trying to destroy the private sector job creation that has always defined this country's greatness?
Well, if we know that, then we also know what to do, and that is defeat this guy.
But this story gets even worse.
Holtz Eakin said, and I'm not going after him, don't misunderstand, I'm going to the whole Washington mindset that if they can't come up with something, then there is nothing to do, which represents the whole problem.
The world does not revolve around Washington.
This country does not revolve around Washington.
Washington is nothing but a gigantic boulder in our highway to progress.
I'm not saying this in a reactionary way.
I'm not saying it even in an ideological way.
This is pure, unadulterated fact.
You simply cannot have this level of regulation on people who want to create jobs, who want to grow businesses, start, but you just can't have this kind of shackle around them and expect magic to happen.
You also cannot expect after you've spent $800 billion ostensibly to create jobs when none of it went to create jobs, it all went to Democratic union workers, you can't expect for 300 billion more to create jobs magic.
This is all insultingly absurd.
Holtz Eakin said that while different theories abound, economists have yet to satisfactorily explain business cycles.
Who the hell are we talking about?
Economists, are these the ones that are always surprised at every bit of economic news every week, from the unemployment numbers to economic growth rates?
Who the hell are these economists?
Who do they think they are?
Economists have yet to satisfactorily explain business cycles.
How many times have we heard Clinton and these other guys say that business cycles, we've defeated it?
There aren't anymore.
Wrong.
We're in the middle of a down cycle.
We have them all the time.
We have recovery all the time, except now.
Why?
The answers are clear.
It's complicated by the fact that we don't live in a textbook world.
In fact, government's capacity to do stuff is not infinitely wise.
Government has nothing to do with it proactively.
All government can do is destroy or redistribute wealth.
It cannot, by definition, create it.
Obama favors a mix of new short-term deficit spending on tax breaks.
Well, right there, we're defeated.
The idea, the American citizen keeping more of what he earns equals more government spending.
I don't care, folks, whose idea that is, we are doomed to failure if that is the thinking, because it's going to lead to budget creation that's going to be ineffective and furthermore, even more destructive.
Obama favors a mix of new short-term deficit spending on tax breaks and jobs programs, including ones for roads, bridges, and other...
How stupid do they think we owe the...
What was the first $787 billion for?
We were told anyway.
Roads, bridges, schools.
How many times are they going to go back to the same excuses or the same reasons, the same objectives?
Do they think we don't remember anything over three months?
We've got to somehow spend on roads, bridges, and infrastructure to keep the economy from falling back into recession.
It never got out of recession.
We are at 1% growth.
And that's only happened.
There's no private sector growth.
And when government growth accounts for economic growth, there is no growth that benefits people in the private sector, pure and simple.
The need for infrastructure jobs is one of the few areas where there's anything approaching consensus.
The concept has won the support not only of Obama, but such rival groups as the Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO.
The differences come in how to pay for it.
I could go on.
Remember, the whole point of this story is that nobody has an answer anymore.
Neither side has answers.
Neither side has answers.
Why can't you go back, if you're serious, if you're in Washington, you're serious about it, why can't you go back and look at American history and find when we were in great periods of expansion, what was responsible for it and be honest about it?
Oh, we know the answer to that.
That kind of growth is impossible when Democrats are on the show.
It's just not possible.
And they don't want that kind of growth when they run the show because it would render them irrelevant and everybody would see it.
But all this is just insulting.
Flat out insulting.
And I, frankly, I don't blame the Republicans for not bothering to give a response to this sham of a speech tomorrow night, which isn't even going to contain the whole plan.
White House admitting now that all they're looking for is ratings.
Jobs is crucial, yet it could wait for the end of Obama's vacation.
Let's grab a phone call here.
Where are we going to start?
Who wants up first here?
That would be Mark in Philadelphia.
Mark, welcome to the EIB Network.
Great to have you here, sir.
Hey, Rush, man.
It's so exciting to talk to you.
I'm so glad you take my call.
You bet, sir.
Yeah, I'm calling you because I was really inspired a couple weeks ago.
I mean, I've listened to you for a long time.
I was inspired by Ryan Rhodes and what he did.
Just being polite and asking the president a question, but being upfront about it and just how he's outspoken and just getting out there.
And I, you know, for the longest time, I'm just hoping you could point me in the right direction because for the longest time, I've been wanting to get more involved.
I want to do more.
You know, I've written my favorite GOP candidate offering my support and assistance.
I sound like a broken record to my friends and my family.
I listen to you every day.
I just want to do more.
Is there any advice you can give me?
Well, first, so people know who you're talking about.
Ryan Rhodes, a Tea Party guy that challenged President Obama at one of Obama's many jobs forums.
And I ended up giving the guy a Mac, I think.
Because he was using, yeah, he was using an answer.
Yeah, I think you fall into the category a lot of people.
You are looking for leadership.
Yeah, I want to know how I can be a leader, too.
That's what I want to step up and do.
I mean, I'm a young structural engineer.
I work in Philly.
I just want to find a way to break into an area where I can have a voice.
I mean, I love listening to your voice.
I learned so much from your show.
I do a lot of research.
I just want it.
I really want to do more.
I know there's people who like to sit and listen and have an opinion, but there's people who really, really want to do something.
And I just, I really want to do something.
Well, don't lose your passion and don't lose your desire and remain patient.
Stay on the course that you're own.
Opportunities will pop up as long as you don't have a goal structure that's too narrow.
Now, you basically, you want to have impact.
You want to matter.
You don't want to just sit around and think and be on the right side when your thinking is correct and so forth.
You want action associated with it.
Yes, sir.
And I think one of the best things that you could do.
How old are you?
I'm 25.
25.
I think an interesting project for you would be to start honing skills of persuasion with people your age.
You say you want to make a difference.
You don't have a microphone yet.
You don't have a TV show, but stand by because everybody does at some point in their lives have a radio show.
You too will have a radio show someday.
It'll be a podcast.
It'll be on Facebook, Twitter, somebody.
You too.
You will be broadcasting yourself until that opportunity pops up.
Wherever you find the right time and the right opportunity, be it in a bar after work or wherever you congregate with people who disagree with you, start honing your skills on persuading them.
And even if there are people that don't care, try to make them care.
Yeah.
I just had a golf trip in Hawaii with a usual bunch of guys.
And some of them couldn't care.
They don't care.
And others of us, all we do at dinner is talk and get passionate about this.
And the ones that don't care get bored and frustrated.
And so we tried to make it try to get these guys to care.
They've got kids.
We tried to make them understand why this is important.
A lot of people don't want to care because that's a commitment.
You're ready to make a commitment.
You're ready to make a commitment to actually do something.
You want action behind your thoughts.
A lot of people, well, that's just too much of a commitment.
They've got too much else going on in their lives, earning a living or whatever it is.
And it's all going to work out however it works out.
And they'll deal with that as it happens is their attitude.
You don't want to wait for things to work out.
You want to impact the way they work out.
Yes, sir.
But don't become a community organizer.
I'm not suggesting that you become a community organizer.
Snurdley's afraid that you're going to go out and become Obama Jr.
With my advice.
I'm just saying whenever you have a chance, you have conversations with people about this stuff, do you not?
Oh, every day.
Every day.
And some of them, what's the percentage of them that don't care?
Oh, I would say 75%.
And of the remaining 25%, how many disagree with you?
Half and half.
Okay.
So your focus is the 75% that don't care.
And I'm telling you, that is a very important thing.
Make them care.
Find a way that you will have immediate feedback, immediate satisfaction, because once you succeed at this, they will then become evangelists or converts and start trying to do the same thing.
And as far as strategies to make them care, some of them may have kids, some of them may not.
Some of them are going to have kids someday.
I'd approach it from that standpoint.
Tell you, I have a lot of friends who are just, and they're in their late 50s and 60s, who are just now realizing that politics does matter.
That it's not just the Republicans and Democrats are pretty much the same.
And every election they might share power and change, and the Republicans run it for four years, then the Democrats run it for.
They're now realizing there's big differences between the two: that the Democrats are harmful, that the Democrats are the impediment to growth.
If you can get a hold of people your age and make them understand that politics matters, as you understand, your passion is going to be the biggest selling point you've got here.
But yet you don't want to come at them too forcefully and drive them away.
Just work on this.
This would be your project.
Figure out a way to persuade the 75% that you know that don't care that this stuff matters.
All right.
Do that.
I will do.
Thank you, Russian.
Report back.
We'll see you.
Back after this, folks.
Don't go away.
Interesting question.
What do the people who don't care about politics talk about?
What do the people now see?
We couldn't ask that question.
I could say, those of you who don't care, please call and tell us what you talk to each other about.
But everybody listening to this program talks about, cares about politics.
Well, I happen to be, I know people that don't care, and I know what they talk about.
It's a question to ask yourself.
What do people who don't care about politics talk about?
And when I say politics, I'm talking about jobs.
I'm talking about the future of the economy, the future of the country.
I don't mean conservative and liberal and Republican and Democrat.
And well, I don't mean that.
I mean, when politics is how we manage our affairs, people that don't care about that, what do they talk about?
Okay, what Lady Gaga wore?
What was on American Idol?
Who Dr. Phil interviewed?
Who stole Dr. Dre's headphones?
That stuff, right?
That's what they talk about.
Pop culture, worthless crap.
Or, or, well, not so much.
Not now.
The people I know are not trying to worry, worry how they get more money out of us.
Well, wait a minute.
I rethink that one.
In the meantime, Bob Lutz, yesterday he was on MSNBC.
Dylan Radikin asked him about the remarks made by Jimmy Hoffa, Jr., the SOB remarks.
Roberts said, who's Roberts?
Oh, Thomas Roberts was the fill-in host.
And he said, is there a war on the working class right now, Mr. Lutz?
Is that what the country's seeing?
No, it's a ridiculous statement.
And I'm sure that if Mr. Hoffa were to think about it again in the cold light of day, he probably wishes he hadn't said that.
And, you know, why would there be?
Everybody benefits from a vibrant economy, and a vibrant economy is only possible if as many people as possible are at work and being paid for productive jobs.
That way they consume and everybody becomes wealthy.
And the idea that there is some sort of war against the middle class or working class is, I mean, it's pretty far-fetched.
All right.
So he's responding here to Hoffa.
And he said, I think in the cold light of day, Hoffa probably wishes he hadn't said it.
Hoffa has said he's glad that he said it.
Now, you know, I know Bob Lutz.
I've met him a couple times, cigar dinners and at his office at General Motors in Detroit.
And he and I have had a falling out over the government buying General Motors in the Volt.
We've had a falling out.
And I deeply regret it because I have profound respect for a guy.
But I'm going to tell you, Mr. Lutz, you're wrong.
There is a war against the middle class.
There is a war, and Hoffa is wrong about who's waging it.
The war against the middle class is the war against the U.S. private sector, and it's being waged by Barack Obama.
Well, the new White House line is that Obama did not hear what James Hoffa said.
Jake Carney, yeah, those weren't comments by the president.
He didn't hear it.
I don't have any comment beyond that.
Just that he didn't hear Reverend Wright.
Makes sense.
He didn't hear Reverend Wright.
Now he didn't hear what Hoffa says.
How can he repudiate what he didn't hear?
They said, they're not going to be the speech police.
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