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Oct. 6, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:28
October 6, 2011, Thursday, Hour #2
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Hey, greetings to you, music lovers, thrill seekers, conversationalists all across the fruited plane.
It's El Rushball, America's real anchor man, the doctor of democracy, and America's truth detector, all in one, a harmless, lovable little fuzzball bundle.
Great to have you here.
Our telephone number is 800-282-2882.
The email address LRushbow at EIBNet.com.
Folks, back to Obama here for just a second.
I think we have a president here with a perverse mind.
Now, let me sum up this press conference for you.
This news conference where no news was made.
Obama said, if the jobs bill doesn't pass, the economy could get worse.
If we don't pass the jobs bill, the economy is getting worse.
It has been getting worse since his first day in office.
It will continue to get worse if he is in office.
This guy is the biggest fraud to ever sit in the Oval Office.
He has created widespread long-term unemployment.
We're now told this is the new normal.
99.2, 9.5% unemployment, really 11.
I mean, the job universe is down.
The number of jobs available in this country is down by 2 million since he took office.
If there were as many jobs available now as when he took office, the unemployment rate would be 11.3%.
That's some James Peffek Kukas at Reuters.
So he creates widespread long-term unemployment, comes up with a massive tax bill, which he calls a jobs bill, and then says if it's not passed, the economy is going to get worse.
This is the creation of a perverse mind.
Hold that thing up.
The economy is going to get worse if we don't pass this.
I don't know about you.
I don't like a president who threatens me.
I want him threatening our enemies, but he makes me feel like an enemy.
I've got a job.
I'm paying taxes.
And I'm made to feel like I am his enemy.
And you know why?
Because I am.
It's true.
He looks at me as an enemy, just as he looks at everybody else.
When he starts rabble-rousing here, this is community agitating on parade.
This is community organizing.
If you've never really been quite clear what it is, take a look at Occupy Wall Street.
That's community organizing, and he's the organizer.
The money furnished by George Soros.
I want to go back and make one more point about Steve Jobs and profit.
Capitalism, American exceptionalism, the American dream, what have you.
At the end of the day, Steve Jobs was all about profit, not market share.
Apple made its money on profit.
Up until the iPod, they didn't have a mass market product.
They had a niche product.
The Mac was a niche product.
It still is compared to number of PCs out there.
But it's more profitable than any other PC is, unit by unit.
Last year, this is a fascinating story.
Last year, the founder of the Stanford Social Innovation Review called Apple one of America's least philanthropic companies.
Yeah, they accused Apple of being not charitable at all.
And one of the reasons why is that Steve Jobs had terminated all of Apple's long-standing corporate philanthropy programs within weeks after returning to Apple in 1997.
And the reason he did it, he had to cut costs until profitability rebounded.
So he got rid of the philanthropy and a number of other things.
But the philanthropic programs have never been restored.
He didn't bring them back once the profitability hit.
And so he was attacked by all these people that judge and measure the philanthropic activity of various corporations.
CNNMoney.com had the story.
Now, Kevin Williamson at the National Review had a comment on this.
He says, CNN being CNN misses the point.
Steve Jobs' contribution to the world is Apple and its products, along with Pixar and his other enterprises, 338 patented inventions.
His work, not some Steve Jobs Memorial Foundation for giving stuff to poor people in exotic lands and making me feel good about myself.
Because he already did that.
He gave them better computers, better telephones, better music players.
In a lot of cases, he gave them better jobs too.
In a lot of cases, he gave them a better life.
You stop and think, how many jobs exist in the world today because of Steve Jobs?
How many worldwide, just the Apple supply chain, the components in every one of their products.
How many jobs did Steve Jobs create in pursuing his dreams and his passions?
And it reminds me of our old buddy Walter Williams.
Walter Williams said a bunch of things I like, but one of my favorites is his tirade on this whole notion that the successful have an obligation to give something back.
Why?
They don't have an obligation to give something back.
Their inventions, their creations, their success is its own contribution.
The people who need to give something back are the literal thieves.
People who are stealing from others, people who are engaged in criminal activity.
Those are the people who need to be giving it back.
What did Jobs have to give anything back for?
Or Bill Gates or anybody.
But this is political correctness.
And this is another thing.
Jobs was fearless.
He didn't care what the philanthropist community said of him.
He didn't care about lawyers.
I'll tell you something else.
Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs had another thing in common, and that is they were sued constantly over patent, patent infringement.
Samsung is trying to sue Apple out of business right now in France and Spain and a number of other places.
Apple is counter-suing, saying Samsung is stealing their stuff.
Samsung supplies a lot of components for Apple stuff.
It's intricately involved.
But Jobs isn't afraid of lawyers.
How many people don't do something because of the fear of being sued or having some sort of investigation, illegal activity surround what they do?
So there's a lesson.
Don't be afraid of lawyers.
It stands in the way of creativity.
There's a lot to learn from Steve Jobs.
And I guess that's another fascinating aspect.
Folks, I firmly believe that one of the fundamental elements of remaining young at heart is a never-ending quest for knowledge, an insatiable curiosity.
Keeps you going.
It keeps you engaged.
I speak for myself.
It keeps me engaged.
It keeps me going.
Wondering how something happens or happened, wondering how something works, wanting to know that.
For me, anything that engages my brain keeps me young, keeps me from thinking about me.
And a lot of people spend way too much time thinking about themselves.
It's not productive and it doesn't help anything because mostly when you think about yourself, you're not thinking good things.
It's just the way we're wired.
One exception is Obama.
He probably sits around and worships himself.
But most people don't do that.
You know, I said I was going to take phone calls here, but brain started up again, folks.
I'm sorry.
I'll shut up here in just a second.
I just want to try to tell one story here.
I could spend an hour trying to develop this, but I'll try to do this quickly.
All through my life, every success I've had, I feel like I missed out on the real fun.
For example, I started as a DJ in 1967 and moved to Pittsburgh when I was 20.
Started four years after I started as a DJ at age 16.
I left home.
And all during the ensuing years, I got fired all those seven times and went through the rigors.
I look back on those years now.
I asked, could I do that again?
I mean, the things I actually went through, they're no different than anybody else.
They're no harder.
They were no more difficult.
But I think back, and it was simply my pure passion and love for radio that helped me endure in a constant belief.
I don't know where it came from, a constant belief that everybody who told me I had no talent fired me when it was wrong and that it someday I was going to be the best that ever did this.
It just kept propelling me.
And all the while, there's a golden age going on.
At ABC, there's Howard Kosell, there's Monday Night Football, and it's rare.
Back then, media on-air talent was rare.
There were only three networks.
There was no cable.
There wasn't 250 channels.
There were three.
And those people who were on those three channels, I'm talking about the network level.
Those were stars.
Those were actually, they might have been comedy bastards, but they were good.
They were good.
And that was a golden, it was something, it was a success in that era was unique.
It was rare, and it had to be rarefied air those people are breathing.
And I so much wanted to be a part of it.
But I wasn't.
I just, it passed me by.
Now, a friend of mine says, you know, you don't understand.
You've created your own golden age.
You, I don't look at it that way.
I still have to struggle with whatever success I've had.
I wish it had happened 20 years ago or 30 years ago when I could have worked with all my idols.
I know this is hard.
I know.
I know I helped bring down the three networks.
I'm not talking about content here.
I'm not talking about content.
That's why to really do this story justice, I would have to spend an hour on it, which I'm not going to do because I don't have the time.
There's too much other stuff here to do.
But well, okay, Open Line Friday.
Maybe I'll spend some more time on it.
But it's still, it's a quirk, and it's probably not entirely healthy.
But every element of my success, there's a part of it that says, damn it, I wish it would have happened then so I could have been a part of that.
Because that was so rare.
Now everybody's got a freaking radio show.
Big deal.
Everybody.
I mean, everybody has a blog.
No, no.
Yeah.
I know.
I know everybody has a radio show and how many number ones are there?
And everybody has a radio show and why do they have it?
I understand all that.
Don't misunderstand.
I am not unhappy.
I'm trying to explain the allure of greatness to me.
And I have a yearning.
I would love to have been a part of what happened at Apple.
I want to be a part of greatness.
It just is a fascinating thing to me.
I would love to have been inside those buildings when all this is going on.
See how it was done.
Just being a consumer, anybody can do that.
Except if you don't have money and you're protesting on Wall Street.
Okay, and now I get to fulfill a promise.
And we go back to the phones, to the phones, because we haven't been there yet.
Will in Amanda, Ohio, you're up first.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, thanks, Rush.
Hey, don't you think the one common denominator between the Tea Party and the protesters on Wall Street is a lack of justice.
And what I mean by that is the lack of criminal prosecution from anybody in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Wall Street, the banking industry, or even our own government officials.
Not one prosecution, Russ.
You want prosecution.
Oh, not one prosecution.
I'm trying to, what's the correlation of the Tea Party?
Well, that's what the Tea Party gathered great strength after the bailouts that they tried to stop.
And I think without the prosecution of anybody for crimes that have brought this country to its knees.
Okay.
Name for me a crime and who you think should be.
I'm not disagreeing.
I just, I've, Obama was asked this question today.
Rush.
And somebody asked him, how come you have any prosecutions?
Who?
And for what?
So you're going to have to untie the other half of your brain for this one.
Think about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Okay, well, I think Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
I think Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.
I think a bunch of them.
Okay.
But look at the comp, look at the collusion that's taking place between Wall Street and the banking industry and selling the mortgages or giving mortgages to anybody because we know we can sell them off over here.
We don't care if they're qualified or not.
You think there was a lack of fiduciary responsibility?
No, I think there was fear of government.
What?
I think there was fear of government.
You talk about all these mortgage-related products.
Why did they exist?
That doesn't justify crime.
I'm not.
No, no, no, no.
Wait a minute.
I'm not trying to justify crime, but when you have the, I don't know, Barack Obama is telling the banking industry what it can and can't charge and what profit he will accept and what level of profit he won't accept.
Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter came up with this scheme that resulted in the subprime mortgage crisis.
They said it was unfair that poor and minority people didn't have houses.
So we're basically going to give them houses.
How are we going to do that?
We're going to make the banks loan them money, knowing full well they can't pay it back.
Janet Reno threatened a number of Wall Street bank people with all kinds of investigations and prosecutions if they didn't make these loans.
Now, it's risky saying this because I sound like I'm coming to the defense of bankers.
My total anger here is related at big government, oppressive government, leftists from Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, now Barack Obama, wanting to micromanage and centrally plan the private sector economy in this company to the point of eradicating it and destroying it.
So these guys at the banks have just been told to give away money.
Okay, fine.
They have to show profit for their shareholders.
They have to stay in business.
And how can they if they give money away?
So what do they do?
You may call it criminal.
They came up with ways to pass the buck down the line.
They created a bunch of products that had no value, but they touted value.
Now, you may think that's a crime.
Could well be.
And I'm not saying it's justified, but if you want to get to the root of it, you have to go to who demanded it with the full force of government threats of prosecution behind them.
And that's William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, aided and abetted by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who took the opportunity to personally enrich them.
The executives at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac saw what was going on, and they personally profited from all this money that was being generated and floating around.
There was a literal rainstorm of money.
This reached grab a handful of it, put it in a back pocket on Monday, do the same thing on Tuesday.
So much money going out, circulating around that what they stole wasn't noticed for a while.
Even the regulators in the Bush administration who want to put a stop to this were shouted down by Barney Frank.
Now, we played the audio of it on this program.
We had it.
Don't get it again, Cookie.
I don't want to get sidetracked on this.
I got to take a break here.
Put them all in jail for all I care.
I've decided that I'm not through.
I'm not through with this.
How many of you remember that when it came to these bailouts, most of the banks were forced to take a minimum of $25, $50 billion?
The chairman of Wells Fargo blew the lid off this one.
What happened was that the then Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, called them all into an office and shut the door at 3 o'clock in the afternoon on Friday.
And he gave them a piece of paper to sign.
The piece of paper was a request and acknowledgement asking for and getting the bailout.
And he told them, you are not getting out of this room until you all sign this.
The Wells Fargo chairman didn't want the money.
He didn't need a bailout.
A couple of other banks didn't need the bailout.
They were forced to accept the bailout.
The banks have paid back their bailouts with interest.
The government has made a profit from the bailouts.
Erin Burnett has her own show on CNN, and she traveled down to Wall Street.
She was interviewing one of these lugheads down there.
And this guy was saying, they took bailouts and they took it.
They haven't paid any money back.
And she said, oh, no, no, they did.
The banks have all paid the bailout money back with interest.
And this guy, typically, I mean, it's just totally uninformed, just dumb, just stupid, like they all are down there.
Oh, really?
Okay, well, I'm going to stop protesting.
He left.
And then she started getting grief from other people for having blown the lid on the truth.
So the banks were forced.
Now, the regime, the Obama regime, as we speak, is making banks go into minority neighborhoods.
The subprime thing is being rerun.
This time, not just loans to the poor.
They have to open branches in poor and dangerous neighborhoods.
The regime is forcing this.
The regime is putting limits on their profits.
The regime is telling them what they can and can't charge for fees.
Obama lit into them again today.
So it's clear that Obama is going to run for office against the banks.
He is going to run for office against Wall Street.
He's going to try to get you to hate the banks.
Now, before he tried to get you to hate the banks, he tried to get you to hate oil.
And before he tried to get you to hate oil, he wanted you to hate the health insurance industry.
And before that, he wanted you to hate the people in charge of student loans.
And on and on and on.
Before that, they hated the car companies.
And before that, it was Walmart that was going to kill you.
And before that, it was the drug companies that were going to kill you.
And before that, it was somebody else.
And back then, it was oil all over again.
For as long as I've been alive, the Democrat Party has been telling us that all of these industries are out to kill us.
They are out to kill our customers and destroy the earth with their evil practices.
So it's just the banks who are the latest target of the American socialist left.
There is a war on the entirety of the private sector.
It is the private sector that employs most of you, that services most of you, that creates the economic prosperity that our nation has enjoyed.
And there is a war on that private sector, and it's being waged from the Oval Office.
And its foot soldiers are on Wall Street and in other cities around the country by design and with organization.
Nothing spontaneous about this.
And there's nothing that this bunch has in common with the Tea Party.
First and foremost, everybody at the Tea Party had a job or recently did.
They worked.
The Tea Party is their first ever involvement in anything like it.
These people are the perpetually lazy, spoiled, rotten 99% white kids who don't have anything else to do except sit around and be told how rotten their lives are while they use iPhones, iPads, automobiles that everybody else worked hard to make for them that they now think they have to put out of business.
The EPA, the famed environmental protection agency, is attacking farmers and truckers and fishermen and coal miners.
The Interior Department is attacking people who work at oil drilling sites and refineries.
HUD, the Justice Department, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac have destroyed the housing market, not the banks.
The government has destroyed the housing market.
Starting with Bill Clinton and going all through Chris Dodd and Barney Frank and every other Democrat who had anything to do with the subprime mortgage thing.
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and People's Home was the most important investment most families make in a lifetime.
And Obama sits up there today.
Stands up there today lamenting how bad he feels about all this.
But if we just pass his $450 billion jobs bill, why everybody get their house back and everybody get their job and everybody get a road repaired and no more bridges will have any problems.
$450 billion.
Damn right, do it now.
Why didn't the first $800 billion do that?
Why do we need another $450 billion?
We did this once before.
And we've doubled down on it numerous times since the first time.
Massive deficit spending authored by Barack Obama is destroying investments in stocks, bonds, pension plans, and savings accounts.
All these people who have pensions, they expected to be paid for life after working for 20 years.
Guess what?
They're underfunded.
And many of them are invested in the very stock market Barack Obama is trying to tell them to hate.
Obama is attacking every business.
He is attacking every employer and employee.
He is attacking the system.
He has a perverse mind.
One day he targets one group of business.
The next day he targets another.
Never, never does he take responsibility for any of this mayhem.
Oh no, he's just an innocent bystander.
He's a spectator.
After running up debt heretofore unseen in this country, he tells us we have to get control of our spending.
Now, he is desperately trying to save his pathetic, destructive presidency.
And to get re-elected, he does not give a damn who he hurts in the process or what he damages.
The only person who does anything at all, truism and selflessness is Obama and his fellow liberals, right?
You believe that?
They're the ones with all the compassion.
They're the ones who have all this concern and caring for the downtrodden while they sit there and destroy them.
Dirty little secret, folks.
Obama is not only for occupying Wall Street.
He also wants to occupy Main Street.
Everything he said in that news conference this morning was in reality a frontal assault on Main Street.
All this talk about tax cuts for small businesses that hire veterans or give raises.
There are no tax cuts.
There is a tax credit that is the stupidest deal in the world.
So you go out and you hire somebody, pay them 50 grand plus the benefits, and Obama give you a $2,500 tax break.
Big whoop.
So you have a net cost of $47,500.
Yep, you get a tax cut.
He's got crosshairs aimed at every business, large and small, on every American who's trying to work for a living and better his prospects for himself and his children.
There is a tax increase for everybody working in this country.
There is a tax increase for everybody who still has a job.
Now, I got a story.
It's political today.
This is really crazy.
Democrats are increasingly abandoning their biggest talking point on taxes.
Families earning more than $250,000 a year are wealthy and should pay more.
It says here the Democrats are running away from that.
I didn't hear any of that today.
Did you hear Obama running away from that?
That figure, $250,000 for a household, has been on the tip of the tongue of so many Democrat candidates and lawmakers the past few elections.
It's become ingrained in the party's tax philosophy.
But they've taken a beating from Republicans and have grown increasingly divided on the issue since that income level would not only cause tax increases for a lot of small businesses, but also did they actually admit that in the political?
Who did this?
This person doesn't have a job for long.
Manu Raju.
That's good knowing you, Manu.
Hope I can read where you're right next.
That income 250 that would cause tax increases for small businesses.
I've never seen this admitted to in the state-controlled media.
Manu, hide.
I'm probably too late.
So Democrats on Capitol Hill or White House are settling on an easier sales pitch.
Tax the millionaires.
Believing that public opinion is firmly on their side, that the truly rich should pony up more cash as the economy struggles.
Yeah, it's their fault.
Bright.
It's the rich's fault that the economy is struggling.
Yeah, the rich.
They're hoarding everything.
Yeah, it's the rich.
They're the ones to blame.
That's what Obama's selling.
That's the ticket to ride back to the oval orifice in 2012.
The rich are to blame.
And the magic potion to fix the economy and to get you working again is for the rich to pay higher taxes.
Shazam.
Well, that's easy.
Perverse, sick thinking.
So, the Democrats are not abandoning taxing people at 250 grand.
They're abandoning saying so.
They're just going to say millionaires and billionaires for now.
They're not going to talk about 250 grand anymore because that's a lot of small businesses and their taxes are going to go up.
They're still going to tax you.
They're just not going to say it now.
That's what the story is saying.
The new rhetoric could force a serious rethinking of a Democrat approach toward the Bush-era tax cuts for high earners that they vilified for the past decade.
Lawmakers said Wednesday, this is a crock Democrats rethinking.
This is total BS.
The only place that might have some validity is Democrats in the Senate who are facing re-election.
Quick time out here, folks.
Sit tight.
We'll be right back.
And up next is Lake Ron Konkama.
Always like getting calls on Lake Ron Konkama.
I wanted to say it.
Lake Ron Konkama, New York.
This is Don.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hi.
Hey, Rush.
It's great to talk to you again.
Thank you very much, sir.
Listen, yesterday we lost a technology visionary and a success story, but maybe even more important, we lost a role model.
In a world where we have role models like Steve Jobs who contribute positively to society, they're not in short supply.
They're just not put in the spotlight.
And we have these pandemonium protesters down at Wall Street and all over.
And they don't look at realistic role models, but instead to whiners and complainers.
How do you get through to them, Rush?
You know, I used to be, back in the early days of this program, mildly obsessed with that premise.
How to get through to the mind-numbed left.
I mean, I steer as many people to your program as I can.
I have your Limbaugh letter, and I use your Limbaugh letter and your program to educate.
That's as good as anybody can do right there.
I mean, I couldn't come up with anything better than that myself.
But seriously, I've thought about it over the course of the years.
How do you get through to the robot left?
I mean, these people have literally been brainwashed.
And so the question I've always had: okay, what's called for here?
Engage them on their level and try to persuade them in their own context or to give them tough love.
Now, Herman Cain, let me find this.
Well, I think we got a soundbite for it if I can find one for you.
Herman Kane is stick with me here because I know it's number 13.
Here's what Herman Cain said.
This would be an example of tough love.
He was on the Wall Street Journal's website, the big interview with the deputy managing editor Alan Murray.
And Murray said, Occupy Wall Street.
Mr. Kane, what do you make of that?
I happen to believe that these demonstrations are planned and orchestrated to distract from the failed policies of the Obama administration.
Don't blame Wall Street.
Don't blame the big banks.
If you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself.
It is not a person's fault because they succeeded.
It is a person's fault if they fail.
Right.
So he's saying, hey, success is not a failure.
You know, I was thinking maybe these protesters will get a brainstorm idea and develop a new and market a new industrial strength deodorant.
They've been down there for a week.
Well, that's part of the allure.
I mean, the psychology of these people is what I finally determined makes it almost impossible to get through to them.
As a group, you'd have to, I don't think if I were to walk down there and commandeer a microphone at a podium, I don't know that that's the way to get through to them.
We're dealing genuinely here with mind-numbed robots.
These people have been indoctrinated and programmed.
You couple it with the fact that the main problem that they have is that they are bored and they feel worthless.
They feel like their lives don't mean anything.
And they are desperately seeking relevance.
They want to be noticed.
And, you know, I could lie to them.
I could maybe get their attention by standing up and saying, folks, I'm with you on one thing.
Let's just cancel all debt.
Now, I'd own them for a while.
I'd have right in the palm of my hand for a while.
But I think these, rather than get through to them, the people that represent them have to be defeated.
That's the real solution to this.
Just vote.
I don't know where the time is going here today.
Just looked at the clock.
I just realized it's the second hour is over.
Darn.
All right.
Well, we still have one more to go.
And as always, you're going to be jam-packed.
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