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Oct. 18, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:50
October 18, 2011, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Hey, welcome back, Rushland Boy and the EIB Network, the most listened to radio talk show in the country.
Well into our 23rd year.
And there's no telling when it stops.
That's totally up to me, and it's not even on my mind.
Great to have you here.
Telephone numbers, they're all smiling in there.
800-282-2882.
The guy at the tea company is not so smiling, but he'll get over it.
800-280.
You know, all I, Snurdy, you've been suspended before.
All I did was suspend a guy.
How else is a guy going to learn?
I mean, people that work for me have to have minds that are.
I can't have to tell them everything they got to do.
Otherwise, I don't need them.
So that's just, it's a learning experience.
There's no dock in compensation or pay, no reduction in benefits, no walking the plank.
I'm not mentioning his name.
Nobody.
Still humiliated.
You know the feeling.
Remember, folks, to enter the Two If by T contest.
So what we've done now, and I really, I started feeling guilty last night because we had so much, so many entries, so much response.
I really, well, on the phones, we had upwards of 75 people on hold for I don't know how long, which is why I always say you go to the website, 2ifbytea.com, and enter.
But there's a few people, understandably, are uncomfortable with payment on the internet, which totally understands.
So they hung in there with our call center.
But there's so many entries that I really, I started feeling guilty that out of all these people, there was only going to be one grand prize, which is the three days and two nights in Vegas.
So we've upped it to four.
And Catherine's all, she said, well, they thought it was going to be three.
I said, I just decided it's going to be four.
Suspend me.
And she might.
She's the CEO.
And anyway, all you have to do is enter is buy a case of tea.
And the bonus here is the best tea you've ever tasted.
They're two flavors, regular and raspberry sugar diet.
And we've got this great sponsor, and it's all good.
We are testing two new flavors, and I'm under a gag order on that.
No, can't tell you what the flavors are.
But I can tell you that they're decided, and the production run starts soon.
We're trying to copy the way Apple does business.
But no, there are new flavors coming, but I'm under a gag order on that.
All you have to do to enter the Las Vegas is open for business, sweepstakes, is buy a case of tea.
Between, you have to, you have to, will you guys stop interrupting me here until I finish explaining the rule?
You have until 1159 p.m. Pacific time or 2.59 p.m. a.m. 2.59 a.m. tomorrow Eastern Time in order to get your order in and thus be entered.
It's not 11.59 Eastern.
It's 1159 Pacific time.
So those of you who live in the Eastern time zones all the way up to 3 o'clock in the morning, you can purchase a case and be entered.
Now, they're telling me that if you're going to be like Apple, you have to lose a test bottle somewhere that somebody has to pick up, and then you have to get it away from some blogger who is going to taste it and reveal all about it.
Leave it in a bar.
Have one of the employees forget, you know, have it camouflaged, you know, as something else.
And yeah, maybe the guy we suspended, maybe it's in the underling that we suspend it out to a bar with one of the new flavors and accidentally leave it to be discovered by somebody.
Any number of possibilities here.
The ABC News has posted a story, Obama Occupy Wall Street, not that different from Tea Party protests.
This is an interview that our old buddy Jacob Tapper did with Obama that runs tonight on Nightline.
And in the interview, Obama embraces the protests, defines their purpose, and concludes that the organized Wall Street protests are not that different from the Tea Party protests.
In the interview, he confirms his commitment to remake America, as he envisions that, not as Americans do who make the country work, it's his vision, which we're in the middle of seeing and experiencing, which is a dwindled private sector and a nation in decline.
Obama wants to manage a nation in decline.
It is what we deserve.
We have been an illegitimate superpower for way too long.
We became a superpower by stealing resources from around the world with imperialism and a military.
And it's time we found out what the rest of the world has had to live like because of us.
And nobody can convince me that that is not Obama's attitude and mindset.
Now, here's a story.
What is this from thefinancialtimes.com by Gideon Rachman?
America must manage its decline.
Recently, I met a retired British diplomat who claimed with some pride that he was the man who had invented the phrase the management of decline to describe the central task of British foreign policy after 1945.
I got criticized, he said, but I think it was an accurate description of our task, and I think we did it pretty well.
No modern American diplomat, let alone politician, could ever risk making a similar statement.
And that's a shame, writes this guy.
If America were able openly to acknowledge that its global power is in decline, it would be much easier to have a rational debate about what to do about it.
Denial is not a strategy.
President Barack Obama has said that his goal is to ensure that America remains number one.
Even so, he's been excoriated by his opponents for declinism.
Charles Krauthammer, conservative columnist at Krauthammer Review Online, has accused the president of embracing American weakness.
Krauthammer said decline is not a condition, it's a choice.
The stern rejection of declinism is not confined to the rabid right.
Joseph Nye, Harvard professor, and Doyen of U.S. foreign policy analyst, regards talk of American decline as an intellectual fad, comparable to earlier paranoia about the U.S. being overtaken by Japan.
Thomas Lupe Friedman, New York Times columnist, has just published a book that's subtitled What Went Wrong with America and How It Can Come Back.
What is not permissible in mainstream debate is to suggest that there may be no coming back and that the decline of American power is neither a fad nor a choice, but a fact.
Admittedly, America's relative decline is likely to be much less abrupt than the falling off experienced by Britain after 1945.
The U.S. is still the world's largest economy, is easily its preeminent military and diplomatic power.
However, the moment at which the CHICOMs become the world's largest economy is coming into view.
The end of the decade seems a likely passing point.
Of course, it's true that the CHICOMs have its own grave political and economic problems, yet the fact that there are roughly four times as many CHICOMs as Americans means that even allowing for a sharp slowdown in CHICOM growth, at some point the CHICOMs will become number one.
And even after the U.S. has ceded its economic dominance, America's military, diplomatic, and cultural technological prowess will ensure the U.S. remains the world's dominant political power for a while.
But although economic and political power are not the same thing, they are surely closely related.
As the CHICOMs and other powers rise economically, they will inevitably constrain America's ability to get its way in the world.
And that is why America needs to have a rational debate about what relative decline means and why the British experience, although very different, may still hold some valuable lessons.
This thing goes on and on and on from the Financial Times, a Brit publication, thinking that we've got to admit it.
Our day is over.
We are Phineas, and we're only going to come to grips with this if we admit it.
And we have got to manage our decline.
What this guy doesn't get is we have a president who is doing that.
And we've had this before.
There was a president in the past whose name was Jimmy Carter.
And his four years constituted another chapter in the wishful thinking of America's decline or for America's decline.
And then something went wrong.
Ronald Reagan, who didn't believe in the whole concept of America's decline, but this president does.
This president thinks we deserve it.
This president is engaged in securing it.
Talking about Barack Hussein Obama.
And that's why the election is curious.
Get the way this guy ends his column.
And again, his name is Gideon Rachman.
He said, these days the British have learned almost to revel in failure.
They buy books with titles like the Book of Heroic Failures in large numbers.
It's quite common for the supporters of a losing English soccer team to chant, we're poop and we know we are.
This is not a habit I can see catching on in the U.S. When it comes to managing decline, self-abasement is optional.
So this guy's worried that something's going to happen, and we are going to fail in managing our decline.
But we have to admit it because it's happening.
Chikoms are going to take over.
America don't want America to be the superpower anymore.
The world hates us.
They don't like us.
They don't trust us.
Obama knows this.
What this story does not describe, you know, there's a myth here that the Chikom economy is.
I mean, they've got growth rate in 9%, and they had to revise it downward.
It slowed down a little bit.
Reported in the mid-7%, I think, maybe low 8% growth.
But there are internal, they are still a communist country.
And what they're trying to do is manage the influx of free market capitalism with communism in terms of managing and controlling the population.
And they've already got people, entrepreneurs who are succeeding, who want out.
It's not a haven.
It's a haven for manufacturing, but it's not people don't want to move and live there.
You know, and all the people I know who are scouting for some place in the world to go, if Obama succeeds, I never hear anybody say they want to go to China.
Singapore, Australia.
The only thing that bugs them about Singapore is the caning.
They know if they're shut up when I get over there.
But I don't hear anybody talking about wanting to actually live in China.
Do business there, yeah, but not live there.
The Chikoms do not have an immigration problem like we do.
So to draw this moral equivalence here is a big, big mistake.
This nation has been underestimated by people since its founding.
People around the world, socialists, have longed for the day they could bring this nation down a peg or many.
And they've come close a couple times.
Carter, but Woodrow Wilson and so forth.
But there are, there always has been the white knight riding into the rescue.
That's why we look at this election as so crucial.
Anyway, a brief timeout is in order here.
We'll take it.
We'll come back and continue.
Add your phone calls.
I got some pretty good sound bites left to go on the roster as well.
All coming up.
Okay, back to the phones.
Who's next?
Where are we going?
John in Cincinnati.
John, I don't know if you've heard this or not.
It's a great pleasure to speak with you.
Thank you very much.
The Bengals have traded Carson Palmer.
Thank God.
To the Raiders.
Yeah, I heard about that.
We're actually pretty darn happy about that.
Actually, it's a great deal.
Look, it's a great deal for the Bengals.
They got another first-round pick, so they're really set up for next year.
This new quarterback's working out well.
I'd say it, being in the same division, but it's a good deal for them.
I think it is.
I have to tell you, I was there, being a football lover, you'll appreciate this.
I was there right next to Paul Brown, his box, this last weekend with my buddy here in Cincinnati, and had a fun time watching them.
Paul Brown's an interesting guy over there.
You mean Mike Brown?
I'm sorry.
Paul Brown's dad, Mike Brown, I mean.
His son, correct.
Anyway, I know you didn't call about that.
I just try to pass off some information to you.
Yeah.
Well, listen, I've got two quick comments on the same item.
And, you know, while I'm a conservative and agree with you 99.6% of the time, yesterday you said the Occupy movement didn't have passion at its formation like the Tea Party does.
And I want to kind of put out to you that these Occupy people, I feel, do have passion.
And while it was there to be tapped into, it's dangerous, passion without reason.
And that's sort of the distinction I have from what you were saying yesterday.
That's the first thing I wanted to see what you thought about.
Well, what I mean by passion is that I don't think they efferves out of nothing.
I think they're professional political people.
They are, I mean, the unions are a part of it.
This is Obama's army.
And they're being organized.
Some of them are being paid.
But this didn't effervesce naturally and spontaneously.
This has been orchestrated.
And that's what I meant.
Yeah, I agree.
I think they'll.
Tea Party came out of nowhere and shocked everybody.
They started showing up at town hall meetings, and nobody knew what to do about it except beat them up.
That's true.
That's true.
The second comment, and I'll let you go here, is that an idea I've had is that corporations should get down to these Occupy sites, set up some job fairs, see how many people want to work versus complaining and not bathing.
Just what?
Just to make a point?
Maybe they'll find a diamond in the rough.
I don't know, but it may show the true intentions of these people if they're going to lambast these corporations who offer them jobs down there and try to treat them well, or if they're just going to.
All I can tell you is how I would react.
And I am in my own way.
I'm a businessman.
I am a not a corporation in the sense that you mean it, but I'll just tell you this.
If I were faced with the obstacles exist today to doing business that have been put there by this administration, the last thing I would do would be to do anything that appears to be cowering to this bunch of people.
I wouldn't do a PR stunt.
I wouldn't hold a job fair just to try to convince people that I am not what they say I am.
I would do what I'm doing now.
I'd say, you want jobs.
You want this company or this country to expand with opportunity.
Let me tell you what's going to have to happen.
I, as the CEO, I do not know what my cost of doing business is going to be next month.
I don't know what it's going to be next year.
The way it's shaping up with healthcare, it's a stupid thing for me to hire full-time employees because I don't know what I'm going to be on the hook for benefits-wise.
I don't know what it's going to cost me.
And until I know that, and until I can be relatively certain that I can make some long-term business plans based on these costs, I'm not going to be making gigantic big hires.
It's just that simple.
Now, most of these guys will not do that because they're scared to death that if they said something like that, that this administration would come after them.
Whatever regulatory agency that rides herd over them would make it tough as hell on them.
But why respond to this bunch?
You know, I'm sick and tired of responding to malcontents like this.
Why would anybody want to hire a bunch of whiners?
Why would anybody want to look at these people?
You want them as representative of your company?
This is, you know, I have an old-fashioned view about all of this.
And I think it's very simple.
Success tracks, I've been on one, and I've been on failure tracks, and I know what it takes.
And I know that depending on what you want to do and how far you want to go, there are certain things, unless you're the owner, that you're going to have to do.
And if you want to run the business the way you want to run it, then go out and start your own.
It's that simple.
But these people are doing nothing to recommend themselves for employment.
They're a bunch of whiners and complainers.
And the fact of the matter is they don't want to work.
Most of them have jobs.
Now, stop and think of that.
Doug Schoen found out 85-90% of them are employed.
Why aren't they on the job instead of doing this?
Okay, we're back.
Great to have you with us, Rush Limbaugh.
As always, talent on loan from God.
Get this: 35 windmills at a western Pennsylvania wind farm have been silenced at night since a bat that belongs to an endangered species was found dead under one of the turbines.
The Tribune Democrat of Johnstown, or as they say, Johnstown, is reporting that the farm shut down the windmills overnight after the Indiana bat was found September 26th.
A moment of silence.
For a dead bat.
The farm in question was built by Gamisa Energy USA, covers parts of Portage, Washington, and Crescent Townships in Cambria County, part of Blair County, 60 miles east of Pittsburgh.
A spokesman for Duke Energy, which now owns the wind farms, says it has a cooperative monitoring agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to determine whether bats are being harmed by the windmills.
So the windmills will likely resume nighttime operation about November 15th when the bats will hibernate until spring.
Until then, if you live anywhere near where these windmills power your house and you need lights at night or heat at night or maybe to make the oven work, you are SOL.
All because a turbine blade sliced up a bat that's on the endangered species list.
35 windmills.
So we can be thankful that this time of year, up until mid-November, it's never cold at night in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
Never cold there this time of year when somebody might need to warm their house or use their oven or maybe even keep the lights on.
Thinking of the song by Daddy Dudrup, Don't You Just Love It?
Don't You Just Love It from Walter Russell Mead in The American Interest.
Kevin Drum at Mother Jones.
This is the same people helping the occupiers.
Mother Jones is no, no, that was Rolling Stone.
Sorry.
I don't know if Mother Jones is involved in helping her.
It was Matt Taibi and Dylan Radigan at MSNBC who are helping the occupiers shape and form their message.
Anyway, Kevin Drum at Mother Jones has a chart showing in the last five months, Obama was hammered by the mainstream press harder than any of his Republican rivals.
That there was a 25-point gap between the percentage of Obama's coverage it was positive and negative.
These charts and other methods to referee the press are generally lame.
Assessing press coverage inevitably involve tricky qualitative questions.
But even so, even so without all the charts and so, Mr. Meade here suggests that Kevin Drum's right.
The media has soured on Obama in recent months.
We've documented that here ourselves.
And we know why.
The ideology trumps individuals.
The liberal press in particular hated Obama's approach to the budget negotiations.
Many journalists were more interested in writing about possible infringements of American civil rights than in celebrating the competence and judgment involved in the Yemen drone strikes.
The carterization meme that President Obama is out of touch and dithering rather than Olympian and visionary has taken hold.
Words that could not be mentioned in polite company in 2008, like inexperienced and aloof, now fill the air.
The truth that President Obama is more McGeorge Bundy than Mother Teresa has begun to sink in.
The problem is not, as Kevin Drummet Mother Jones seems to imply, that the mainstream press is full of closet Republicans who can't wait to turn on Obama the moment they sense weakness.
It's more this.
Many in the media are convinced that blue liberal ideas and policies could solve all of our problems if forcefully advocated and consistently applied.
When a Democrat gets into the White House and things aren't going well, liberals are much more likely to blame the incompetence of the officeholder than the shortcomings of the ideology.
If he had tried harder, if he'd spoken more forcefully, if he had negotiated less fecklessly, everything would be fine.
Just the same way the communists look at it.
It wasn't communism was a problem.
It was that idiot Gorbachev.
It wasn't that Roosevelt was the problem.
He didn't spend enough money soon enough.
What you will not hear often in the torrent of liberal criticism now enveloping the regime is that regardless of their intrinsic merit in a country in which self-described liberals are a tiny minority, less than a fifth, liberal ideas don't work very well as a governing platform.
A Congress seen as too liberal won't get re-elected.
A president seen as too liberal loses political authority and is steadily pushed to the right.
The mainstream media tone on Obama has lightened up since he decided to rebrand himself as a mild populist and get tough with the GOP.
Now, if the poll numbers go up, we're going to hear much about the revived Obama presidency.
If they go down, the media will blame Obama for flawed execution, not the idea that populism could save his presidency.
Efforts to measure bias are tricky.
But if you want to predict how the tone of Obama's coverage will change, watch his success or lack of it at translating standard liberal ideas into law and policy.
The more he succeeds, the more he'll be seen as historic visionary and magic words of hope and wonder and transformational.
The progress will be hailed, the direction for the most part, not questioned.
So it's all about the ideology.
It is exactly as my instincts have told me and as I have imparted to you.
It's all about the ideology.
They're turning on Obama because he's failing in their minds to make liberalism work.
So what I've said is Obama's problem with the media and the left, poll numbers.
Pure and simple.
He's getting a lot of stuff.
All the stimulus bills, all the wreckage of the private sector.
Obamacare.
But he's not popular and that they hate.
They think this stuff is magical.
Save the world kind of stuff.
And whoever does it right and implements it ought to be loved and adored.
And if he isn't, it's his problem, not the policy's fault, and not the failings of the ideology.
Here's Jay on the road in Ohio.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hey, Rush, Mega Dittos.
Been with you since Desert Shield.
You got to bear with me.
I'm a little nervous here.
No, no need to be nervous.
You don't even sound it.
Wouldn't have known it if you hadn't said so.
I was stumbling, stammering, whatever.
But I want you to handicap the debate tonight.
Is it going to be a gang up on Herman Cain?
And if so, does that not play into Herman Cain's benefit?
And an over and under on the number of times 999 will be mentioned tonight.
Well, it's a CNN debate, and they're worried at CNN that they got a poll that shows Republican energy and enthusiasm to vote is twice as high as Democrat energy.
So their objective at CNN is going to be to make every one of these people look like an absolute wacko nutcase fruitcake.
The Republicans on stage will go after Herman Cain and his 999 plan.
And Herman Cain will not budge.
One thing about Herman Cain is he's unflappable.
Ron Paul tonight is expected to announce his draconian $1 trillion in spending cuts.
But I in terms of handicapping how this thing is going to go, I've long given up predicting outcomes here as to who's going to win or who's going to show well.
There's always not being surprised by something that happens.
I don't think you can imagine every possible thing that could happen, event that could take place, question that could be asked, stupid answer and responses, too much, too many variables here.
But you do know that they're going to go after Herman Cain.
Okay, my impression is the more times they come after Herman Cain and his 999, the higher he goes in the poll.
We'll see.
Could well be.
I think this primary has featured Romney and the non-Romney of the day.
Michelle Bachman was the first, well, Palenti was a non-Romney, but he didn't make it.
And then Mitch Daniels was a non-Romney, and he didn't make it.
And Bachman was a non-Romney, and she has fallen by the wayside, although she's collaborating out there with Trump.
And now Herman Cain, Rick Perry, was the next non-Romney, but he hasn't been dispatched yet.
I don't think it's over at all for Perry.
But clearly, Herman Cain is now the next non-Romney.
And what I mean by non-Romney is everybody's looking for somebody but, but they all fall by the wayside at some point for some reason.
So you've got in the last debate, remember, I was shocked with all of the evidence available that nobody went after Romney for his advisors helping to craft Obamacare in the Oval Office.
Since it didn't happen last time when the news was fresh that day or the day before, I don't think it's going to happen tonight either.
Because Newton knew about it, Bachman knew about it, all these, Everett, Santorum, they all knew about it, and they chose not to hit Romney on it.
And there are many reasons why.
Maybe they all think that they're vulnerable to attack in other areas if they bring that up.
Maybe they have done things behind the scenes that nobody knows about to advance government-run health care that they don't want anybody to know they've been involved in.
And that Romney knows it.
And if they go after him, all he's got to do is say, well, Newt, you know, I remember when you took 300 grand to lobby for whatever.
I'm making that up.
I don't know that Newt took any.
I'm just saying there's a reason why these guys are not going after Romney on this.
There has to be.
And it's that some of them might be trying to hide things that they've done that they wish don't come out.
But one thing we know, to see it in debate.
And so the objective here is going to make this look like the Star Wars bar scene.
That you can count on.
And of course, there's another reason why some of these candidates might not want to attack Romney, and that would take him out of the vice presidential running as well.
Molly in Traverse City, Michigan.
Hi, welcome to the program.
Hi, Rush.
Thanks for having me call.
You bet.
And I just can't believe I've come to the part in my life where both my husband and I were in sales.
We work really hard every day.
We want to succeed.
And now we literally have to look at our statement when our paycheck comes in and be like, okay, are we going to make too much money this year and put ourselves into that new unbelievable tax bracket?
And I consider myself, I do wonderful, but I am not this wealthy that the government claims.
And I just never thought I would see this time in my life happen.
You didn't?
My God, I don't know how old you are, but back in 1984, the number that got you in trouble as 250,000 does today was 60.
Walter Mondale and the Democrats said you were rich.
You were part of the evil rich weren't paying your fair share if you made $60,000 a year in 1984.
This is a time-honored technique.
It never works for them, though.
It's quite telling.
You're actually asking yourself and your husband whether you should stop earning money once you get to 250 because you don't want the higher tax bracket.
Yeah, it's crazy.
It's not in my nature to not work.
I understand that.
I understand it, but it ticks me off.
That is not the way you're supposed to be thinking.
And this is exactly the wrong way for people to be approaching.
But I don't blame you.
Don't misunderstand.
You don't want to be launched into Obama's punitive tax bracket.
And it's totally understandable.
This is what happens in far too many cases.
And you're just one example.
But this is the way people started thinking in Europe.
And look at what happened to their productivity.
Down the tubes.
14% unemployment.
It's a crying shame.
Okay, folks, I must be away again tomorrow, but we have from the frozen bunker in the secret confines of an ice age in New Hampshire, Mark Stein, who will be here tomorrow.
And I will be back raring and ready to go Thursday and Friday.
Have a wonderful day tomorrow.
I'm sure you'll enjoy it.
See you back here on Thursday.
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