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Sept. 22, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:57
September 22, 2011, Thursday, Hour #3
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Time Text
466 points down today on the DJI.
That's I think we're down around 750 points, the Dow Jones industrial average, over the past two days since Bernanke made his announcement yesterday that he sees a recession down the road.
That's what everybody's reacting to on the markets, that in Europe.
I'm going to tell you, folks, I don't think we got any bridges that are in danger of collapsing, but we might have people who are going to start jumping off of them.
And that might, and by the way, you know, Obama's, I think he's got this Spence Brinch bridge he's going to there that links Ohio to Kentucky.
He's going to try to tell everybody it's state of district pair.
He ought to show us how brave he is and go stand under that bridge while making his appearance.
So the Dow was down 283 yesterday.
It's down 466, 459, maybe 460.
So people might be getting ready to jump off bridges here.
And I don't think anybody's worried about a government shutdown.
Greetings and welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, the House of Representatives unexpectedly defeated a bill that would fund the federal government past September 30th yesterday as dozens of Republicans broke with their party to push for deeper spending cuts.
When I saw this, I said, what in the name of Sam Hill is this?
Didn't we just fix this through the end of the year, barring what the super committee does?
Didn't we just raise the debt ceiling?
And yes, we did.
But guess what?
This is another one of those continuing resolutions that exists purely because neither the Democrats nor Obama have presented a budget.
And there is, this is the way the AP, sorry, Reuters has written this.
I mean, it's supposed to be a news article.
It's more like an editorial at issue.
Here is a bill that increases government spending by another $24 billion over what was agreed to five months ago.
The bill failed by a vote of 195 to 230.
But somehow, and I'm sure you've detected this, somehow it is the 48 Republicans who voted against the bill who are to blame for this.
The conservatives, conservative Republicans bashed for not compromising, even though five times the number of Democrats voted against the bill, as did Republicans.
And the Republicans want to cut spending further.
The Democrats want to double it and not pay for any of it with matching spending cuts.
But they're not the problem to Reuters and everybody.
No, no, no, no.
It's these 48 Republicans that Boehner lost control of, they're saying.
So this is a fascinating thing because what's really happened here, these 48 Tea Party Republicans have actually changed their mind since April.
In April, when Paul Ryan presented his budget, they signed onto it and were all for it.
Many of the people who were voting for the Ryan budget back in April with this vote yesterday have signaled that they're now abandoning the Ryan budget and running from it.
They want even more spending cuts.
Now, that tells me that these Tea Party people are damn serious and they are listening to their voters.
They're listening to the people and they understand the problem.
They're dissatisfied with their leadership.
I think Reuters is right to look at these 48 as the problem, but they're totally missing why.
These 48 are dead serious about the problem.
And they really changed their mind so much.
The bill adds new spending, but they have signaled that the Ryan budget, they didn't say this, but they've signaled the Ryan budget is no longer their cup of tea.
There's $24 billion in new spending for FEMA, basically, for disaster spending in this thing.
And of course, the possibility of a government shutdown is mentioned by Reuters in this story and others.
And of course, if that happens, scientific research and healthcare and national parks will be shut down.
It's the same paragraph, cut and pasted.
Every other government shutdown story that there is.
So the Democrats want to double the amount of disaster aid in the bill and make sure that there's no spending cuts associated with it.
And the FEMA guys are running around saying they're out of money and this and that and the other thing.
But I have to tell you, I was shocked when I heard this because like everybody else, I thought, wait a minute, I thought we did this.
Why are we voting on the debt limit again?
Why are we voting on anything to do with the budget?
I thought we did this through the end of the year.
No, we didn't.
Democrats want more spending.
And the House leadership was prepared to go along with it.
It's just $24 billion.
And these 48 are saying, hey, what are the spending cuts?
Ever heard of PAYGO?
What did happen to PAYGO, by the way?
Audio soundbites.
Jeff Zelany is a New York Times reporter who has ended up as a member of the Fox All-Stars.
A New York Times reporter is now one of the commentators, rotating commentators during the All-Star segment on special report with Brett Baer every night.
And he wasn't happy.
Jeff Zelany of the New York Times, not happy with Obama's speech to the UN yesterday.
It was a big moment, but a disappointing moment, I think, for the president.
I mean, he's tried to thread this needle here, really going back in the first opening months of his presidency.
I remember being in Egypt, in Cairo, he gives the big speech to the Arab world, and he gives a lot of Arabs and Palestinians hope on this.
And a lot has changed that actually not happened since then.
So today, he tried to thread the needle.
He didn't do it very successfully.
And he now is so besieged by so many other things.
Oh, so besieged, so put on, so over-besieged by so many things is our poor president.
Big moment, but a disappointing moment, I think, for the president.
Did the president leave the podium yesterday?
You know, it's a disappointing moment for me.
No, I'm sure he thinks he hit a grand slam.
He always does.
So there's such a disappointment after the promise of Cairo.
Oh, yeah, he was going to make speech after speech after speech.
It could change the world.
They actually thought that.
Liberals actually thought there's a world governed by the aggressive giving of speeches.
And that's all we needed was our aggressive speech giver, Barack Hussein Obama, out there giving speeches.
And that was great in Cairo.
But yesterday, not very successful.
David Gergen, Anderson Cooper, 174, said this.
What was interesting today is how frustrated he is.
You know, a year ago, two years ago, when he first came into office, he had these grand visions.
You know, he went to Cairo and talked about this transformative change that was going to come between the U.S. and the Arab nations.
More than a year ago, he promised he'd have a deal by now between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
He had these grand hopes.
And today, we heard a very, very frustrated President Obama saying, you know, peace is a really hard thing to get done.
Is that what he was?
Frustrated?
I just thought he was out of words.
Very frustrated, President Obama.
So really frustrated UN.
Very, very frustrated.
You know, peace is a really hard thing to get done.
It's really, really hard.
Yeah, it's a job.
We don't elect presidents expecting them to tell us how damn hard the job is.
You think a year ago Obama was worried about losing the Jewish vote?
Now he is.
Of course, there's all kinds of stuff.
So he had to give up.
He's having to say things.
There's things he said in that speech yesterday about Israel that I'll bet you when they rehearsed this, that they had to tie him to the chair and say, you're not getting out of this room until you promise you'll say what we've put on the teleprompter here.
Because he's never said it before, and he's not going to say, he may say it again a couple of times in the campaign, but all of the lavish praise, the understanding circumstances that the Israelis face, he's never said it before.
He wasn't worried about a Jewish vote a year ago.
He could go out.
He promised the Palestinians anything.
And now that reality has been turned upside down.
And if he was frustrated, Mr. Gergen, it's because of what they made him say yesterday about the Mideast peace process and the shoe exchange strategy.
You'll remember that.
It really was breathtaking.
A president of the United States at the United Nations saying, no, we're never, never ever go saw this till the Israelis able to stand in shoes as Palestinians be what it's like.
And when he said that, they cut to a picture of Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian head honcho, and he just had his head in his hand, shaking his covering his eyes.
Oh, oh, my Allah, what are we going to do with this?
It just you've got to stop and think what these world leaders thought they were getting.
What our media and everybody else told them they were getting, and then what they thought they were getting on their own.
It just hasn't worked out.
All right, a brief time out here, ladies and gentlemen.
El Rushbos serving humanity simply by showing up.
We'll be back and move right on right after this.
No, my friends, my only point here on this, let me say it more clearly: holding the line on spending.
If you're an elected official, if you're a Republican, holding the line on spending is a winner for you.
The more Republicans in Washington who understand that, the safer they are going to be.
These 48 House Republicans, I'm sure most of them Tea Party people, but all of them, no doubt, conservatives, simply saying, no more spending.
I don't care what your reason is.
We had a deal.
I'm not going back on it.
I'm certainly not going to have new spending.
It's not paid for because we don't have the money.
And they, even they, are politicians.
They did this knowing full well this is got the support of their constituents.
This is not rogue.
The others are rogue.
These 48 are essentially what you and many Republican voters have hoped you were electing for the last 10, 15 years.
Who's next?
Tim in Salem, Oregon.
You're next on the EIB network.
Hi.
Hi, Brush.
You're a great teacher.
Thank you, sir, very much.
I appreciate that.
I would like to answer Ms. Warren's questions about business owners.
Yeah.
I may.
I started a business and had to provide the initial capital.
I took the risk that the service would be accepted.
I had to hire employees, pay their salaries from savings.
And I provided additional funds to support growth.
And I provided training, too.
But the funds I provided represented 96% of my accumulative savings over 40 years.
So I didn't get a lot of those things from government.
I put everything in it.
Well, of course you're right.
But were I, Elizabeth Warren, it would be easy to blow holes in what you're saying.
How so?
Well, who set up?
Who regulates and who sets the interest rates for your savings account that allowed you to earn money?
The government.
Who is it that protected the bank and saw to it that your deposits were insured so that you didn't lose it to marauding bands?
Government.
This is the point.
Were you born in a public hospital?
If so, they've got their hooks.
This is the way this woman looks at.
You're exactly right in your analogy.
You're 100% right.
Wealth creation makes all the rest of this possible.
In anything other than a tyrannical dictatorial society.
As I said, you can build roads without capitalism.
The Romans did it.
They just used slaves.
It can be done.
But there's no wealth generation created, and there's no private property.
There's no prosperity, period.
Obviously, except for the elites who run the show.
I'm glad you called, Tim.
I appreciate it very much.
Harland in Texas, this is Regan.
Regan, you're next.
Great to have you with us, sir.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
My name's Reagan, like the president.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Yes.
Homeschooled Fight in Texas, Aggie Dittos.
This whole thing with the in-state tuition for illegals has been mischaracterized.
The bill states that in order to get in-state tuition, you have to have first applied for citizenship.
And that's in there because the United States Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to deny public education through illegal aliens.
That's right.
And it was passed by over two-thirds of the Texas legislature, which is what it takes to overturn a governor's veto.
So if Rick Perry had vetoed it, it would have just been overturned again.
Well, he's still, he's catching heck for it because he's leading in the polls and his lead is widening.
And in fact, Reagan, I don't know if you've seen this.
It's kind of meaningless right now, but I forget what it is.
I didn't bother printing it out because it's a presidential poll and it's 14 months away.
But Obama's only four points ahead of Perry in a prospective presidential race, five points ahead of Palin.
And so Perry, having announced and is an actual candidate, is a target.
Did you notice, by the way, Reagan, did you know there were two executions in America yesterday?
No, I didn't.
Well, there was one that took place in Georgia that everybody was all hept up about.
And there was one that took place in Texas that nobody cared about.
The one that took place in Georgia, the execution was of an African-American who had killed an off-duty cop who denied it.
There were 50 anti-death penalty protesters outside the prison where it happened.
And of course, around the world, activists were paying attention.
And then in Texas, a white supremacist was executed for killing a black man by the name of James Byrd.
This was back during the 2000 campaign, presidential campaign.
You're 16, so you might not remember this, but James Byrd was attached to the back of a vehicle and driven to his death, being dragged behind it by this white supremacist.
So he was executed last night.
There wasn't one syllable of protest.
Not one.
But the Reverend Sharpton was all over television.
I even went to Georgia trying to make hay about what had happened there.
And that kind of surprised me because the execution of the white supremacists took place in Texas.
It would have been an excellent opportunity to go after Rick Perry.
Well, you know, but they didn't because of race.
The race of the victim and the race of the convict who was executed.
This is fascinating.
Now, that's not what you called about, but it does relate to Perry.
I take it you're a big Perry supporter.
Oh, yes, sir.
Why?
What do you like about him?
I love his state's rights support.
That's one of my main issues.
How did you get interested in that at age 16?
Well, like I started, I started reading some books and I started learning about our founding.
And like people like Dr. David Horseman and books like the Cosmopolitan Club Dossier and things like that, it's really enlightened me.
And just the founding is full of states' rights and nullification.
And I think that's one of the main things we need to bring back.
Well, you're right.
Rick Perry is profoundly a state's rights guy.
People often misidentify Perry as anti-government.
He's not anti-government.
He's a big state government guy.
He loves us in state government.
But he is anti-federal government out to wazoo.
But he's when you start with state government.
Well, that's an interesting thing.
It would be interesting to see how he would make that transformation since he loves state government.
He believes in the benevolent use of it.
He's not, from what I can tell, interested in very many limits on state government power.
But federal government, get them out of my eyesight.
I don't even want to smell them is his attitude.
If he gets elected president, and if he keeps that attitude and he's, I think he's articulating his view on federal government overreach, regulation, too much power extremely well, it'd be fascinating to see if that attitude about the federal government held up when he's got the reins of power.
I remember Schwarzenegger.
Schwarzenegger, if I had been governor and been treated like Schwarzenegger was, I would have been happy to get it over with and get out of there.
But he said, oh, God, can I miss it?
The power.
All that power I had.
And I'm thinking, what did it get you?
It must be something you and I can't relate to.
Having never won elections to run a state or a government of any kind, I don't know.
Here's a shocker for you.
Shell Oil gets Alaska drilling go ahead from the EPA.
Shell Oil set to tap Alaska's vast oil reserves now that the EPA has issued a final air quality permit to allow exploration development north of the Arctic Circle.
The permit allows Shell to set up its Noble Discoverer drill ship in the Chukchi Sea along with a fleet of support vessels, including icebreakers and oil spill response craft.
The company will be allowed to operate them no more than 120 days annually starting in 2012.
The permit sets strict air pollution control limits on the drilling equipment.
So for an entire four-month period, an unelected regulatory body is allowing a private business to work.
And you probably go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what happens?
Good news here.
But yeah, but you look at it a different way.
The EPA, unelected regulatory bunch of people.
Yeah, we'll let you drill four months out of the year.
Who are they?
Well, they have immense power.
But there's a sentence in this story.
Environmental groups are enraged at EPA's decision.
Now, the hitch always has been pollution from their boats.
That's what the EPA has used to shut this down up till now.
Air pollution from their boats, not the oil, not the possibility of spills, air pollution from the boats.
And the denial, the EPA's denial of the permit up to now was based on computer models.
They had a bunch of computer models which predicted what the air pollution would be from the support vessels and the actual drilling rig.
All right.
I don't know where they got the models.
I have no idea.
But nevertheless.
Snirdly, are you a Netflix customer?
Dawn?
Brian?
I'm not either.
There's the story about Netflix in big trouble here because they changed their pricing structure.
And I don't use it.
So when I saw the story in the original controversy erupt, I was, I don't care, I don't use the product, but I looked into it and this is a teachable moment here.
The founder of Netflix is now running around apologizing for not realizing how his customers would react to a major price increase and change in subscription plans.
Apparently, 600,000 customers have said no to the change.
And the stock price of Netflix took a nosedive.
Now, the founder of Netflix is a guy named Reed Hastings.
He's got a successful company here.
But he admits to not realizing how his customers would react to a major price increase and change in subscription plans.
I guess he didn't do any market research in advance.
It just came out with a decision.
There are people out there who believe that central planners like this Elizabeth Warren babe or Barack Obama.
Many members of the Obama regime ought to make winners, their decisions, pick the winners and losers.
Figure out who the winners ought to be, who the losers ought to be, what the price of anything ought to be, the supply, the demand, all of that should be done by central planners, people of government.
These are the people that know best.
Here's an example of it.
Here's a guy in the private sector who actually is acting like a central planner, just dictating what it is.
It's his own business, his own country, company.
But what an astounding mistake here to make.
I find that taken to task for splitting the formerly unlimited DVD and streaming video options into two categories and then bumping the price by 60% is what he did.
Netflix co-founder Reid Hastings offered a very public mea culpa in a missive to 25 million Netflix subscribers with an open letter on the company's website.
Thousands of Netflix customers took to the blogosphere in outrage.
The stock price tanked.
Third quarter guidance was revised downward by a million subscribers.
Hastings apologized for his arrogance in fumbling communication of the plan when it was announced in July.
Now, this is a classic example of central planning in the private sector.
It's exactly how central planning happens.
A bunch of people who think they know what they're doing.
The difference here is that the customers of the company were able to raise hell and get out of it if they didn't like the price.
Central planners in government make a mistake like this with every winner or loser they pick.
Hello, Solyndra, and we're stuck with the bill and we can't do anything about it.
Richard and Fort Myers, Florida.
Hi, great to have you on the EIB network.
How are you, Rush?
I appreciate you taking my phone call.
By the way, Netflix is not lowering the price.
They're just apologizing.
They're not changing the price structure.
I am a Netflix customer.
Might not be in the future.
That's a pretty steep price increase if they didn't know what was coming.
I know.
Well, I appreciate everything you do.
I tell you that.
But for you and a lot of other talk show people, we wouldn't have any idea what's going on.
Well, I appreciate that, sir.
I really do.
Mike, my biggest concern is I don't hear anyone asking the question, who sent the FBI to Solendra?
And why?
Yeah.
Did the president call the Attorney General and say, get in there and, you know, how'd that work out?
That's a very logical question to have.
And where did all the records and computers go?
Well, it went to the government.
I know.
And now, of course, all of the heads of Solendra, of course, it's now a criminal matter and they don't have to testify.
They're going to take the fifth.
No, but, you know, in fact, I doubt very seriously if we'll ever find out.
Well, they indicated earlier that they were going to participate, that they would answer questions.
And it was this week that they informed everybody through their law firms that bundled campaign donations for Obama that they're going to plead the fifth.
Well, it's a great question.
The government has their records.
Well, no, they could still testify.
I mean, the government has the records.
They could check it if they wanted to.
They're an FBI there.
They obviously got the impression that there's a criminal investigation that they might be involved in.
So they've, of course, been advised by the attorney.
Well, look, it's very, very logical to connect some dots here.
Who could...
Who could blame anybody for thinking, okay, give these guys $523 million and it's gone and a company's bankrupt and it was never a thriving business.
It was never even a real business.
Obama made it a centerpiece of the future of this country, green jobs.
This is the future.
This is how it's going to happen.
Now it's belly up.
And a day or two after they file for bankruptcy, there's the FBI carting everything out of the company and out of the homes of the CEO and the CFO.
Now, very logical to say who ordered the FBI in there and for what?
Is the government going to make the case that these guys misled and lied to Obama?
Or is there stuff in the records here that if it's turned up and made public, it looks bad for Obama?
That's a natural thing.
I'm sure that's what you're thinking about out there.
That this is a raid to hide evidence, not produce it and uncover it.
Anyway, I appreciate the call.
I got to take a quick break.
Folks, I've delayed mentioning this.
I will not be here tomorrow, and it ticks me off.
I have something to do tomorrow that can only be done tomorrow, and it involves the time this program is on.
It's one of those rare things, and it really Mark Stein in here is going to be fine, but it ticks me off because I'm going to have to wait till Monday to tell you what happens in the debate tonight, what it really means.
Normally, I would do that tomorrow.
But I'll have to wait till Monday.
I'm apologizing here in advance.
It's just one of these weird things that can only be done that includes the hours this program is on.
Can't be done on weekends, can't be done at night.
So it is what it is.
And very frustrating, especially happening on the day after the debate.
But it is what it is.
Don't worry, Monday will come around soon enough.
And at that point, it'll still be fresh enough.
There will be other debates, but this is going to be a big one because the Florida straw poll has been Saturday.
And the Florida Republican guys are running around saying, you know, trying to build up interest in their straw polls.
Hey, the winner of our straw poll is going to be the nominee.
We'll see.
Did you see, by the way, Ron Paul said that he would hire Dennis Kucinich in his administration if he's elected president?
He did.
Yeah, yesterday he didn't say, I didn't see if he mentioned a specific post.
Does Ron Paul want a Department of Peace?
I don't know.
That's right.
It was Kucinich who wanted a Department of Peace.
But I wouldn't put it beyond Paul.
Well, I hope that comes up in the debate tonight.
I hope you said that you would put Dennis Kucinich in your cabinet to explain why.
You know, it's shouldn't say this.
Never mind.
Never mind.
I see Huntsman.
Yes, I see Huntsman's running third in some polls, which has got him worried because that's not, he doesn't, he doesn't want to win this.
Doesn't want to win this.
Where did I see this?
Somebody put this idea in my head.
I better not utter this because I don't remember who did it and I don't know if it's got any validity to it or not.
Better not, better not, better not.
We'll know soon enough anyway.
Welcome back, Rushland Baugh, here on the cutting edge of societal evolution.
Andrew Breitbart has a piece today at one of his websites.
This book that's out about Sarah Palin by Joe McGinnis.
McGinnis has sent emails to people admitting he has no proof for anything that he's asserted or some of the most explosive things.
And Breitbart publishes one of the emails in the email below sent January of 2011.
McGinnis reveals that his manuscript, then under legal review at Crown Random House, could not prove its most headline-grabbing allegations.
And yet many of these salacious stories that lacked proof in McGinnis's own words, the author's own words, ended up in the book and on television shows everywhere during his current media tour without proper sourcing and without any apparent new evidence to support them.
Now, this looks like the makings of a very lucrative lawsuit.
And Breitbart says, was Random House aware here that the author was making a desperate overtime bid to save face?
And if so, why did it allow him to come forth with most of these tawdry accusations without proof or proper sourcing?
And the email from McGinnis is to a guy named Jesse Griffin, who is the author of another low-rent anti-Palin blog that's now defunct, who was obsessed over who really was the paternity of Trig Palin.
So McGinnis is typing emails, writing emails to this guy.
Dear Jesse, legal review of my manuscript is underway, and here's my problem.
No one's ever offered documentation of any of the lurid stories about the Palins.
And this guy's just finished.
This is the guy that rented a house next door to him.
And the book gets published, and there's no sourcing.
There is no solid backup for any of the salacious allegations in the book.
This is, and I'm not surprised.
You get ticked off about stuff like this, but it's just the desperation.
These people are telling us who they are afraid of, and they'll stoop to anything.
They'll even sacrifice their own integrity and character if it requires it.
Got to be a break.
Got to take it.
Back and wrap it up after this.
Stay with us.
Okay, folks, it's been a blast here, and I really am going to miss not being here tomorrow.
I'll be able to watch the debate, but I'm not even going to have an opportunity to call in tomorrow.
I don't think.
Maybe.
We'll see.
But definitely back here on Monday.
Mark Stein will be here tomorrow holding down the fort.
You have a good one tomorrow, a great weekend, and we'll see you back on Monday.
I literally can't wait.
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