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Oct. 26, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:34
October 26, 2011, Wednesday, Hour #2
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We are back.
Great to have you with us, Rush Limbaugh, the big voice on the right, serving humanity as America's real anchorman and truth detector and doctor of democracy all combined.
The one harmless, lovable little fuzzball.
It's a delight to have you with us.
Our telephone number is 800-282-2882.
And the email address, lrushbaugh at eibnet.com.
All right, I have that ad.
I have the Herman Cain smoking ad.
If you are a child 26 years of age or younger, turn off your radio.
John King of CNN, you too, if you're listening, turn off your radio.
This is despicable.
This is unacceptable.
This is Mark Block, Chief of Staff for Herman Cain.
Mark Block here.
Since January, I've had the privilege of being the chief of staff to Herman Cain and the Chief Operating Officer of the Friends of Herman Kane.
Tomorrow is one day closer to the White House.
I really believe that Herman Kane will put United back in the United States of America.
And if I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be here.
We've run a campaign like nobody's ever seen.
But then, America's never seen a candidate like Herman Cain.
We need you to get involved because together we can do this.
We can take this country back.
And he is smoking in that ad.
And I just wanted to courageously air that ad complete with Mark Block Smoking.
Just to be the renegade that I am.
If you're a child 26 years of age or under, and you had to hear this, I'm sorry.
But sometimes life can be tough.
Mark Block risking his life for Herman Cain's election.
Anyway, personal financial details of as many as 5,000 college students were temporarily laid bare for other students to view on the Education Department's direct loan website earlier this month.
According to an education official who testified today, the students' information was available during a 67-minute window as officials were making a reconfiguration involving 11.5 million borrowers.
This, according to James Runcie, the Education Department's federal student aid chief operating officer, change was designed to improve the website's performance times.
So when you apply for a government loan, odds are everybody's going to know it, or at least have the chance to know it.
Runc said students who logged on during the trouble period saw the personal details of other students.
Those whose information was exposed have been notified and offered credit monitoring services.
What about counseling?
The department shut down the website while the problem was resolved.
Oh, yeah.
Re-responded as quickly as I could.
Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy has declared, this is Wednesday, right?
He's declared tomorrow diaper need awareness day in Connecticut, part of a campaign by the nutmeg state to pressure Washington into providing free diapers to low-income families.
That would be low-income families with babies in daycare.
At least that's Rosa DeLoro's law.
Do you believe this?
Day three of this diaper business.
Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy declared Diaper Need Awareness Day tomorrow.
Supporters of Diaper Need Awareness Day will host a fundraiser and a panel discussion in New Haven on the public health risks for babies whose diapers are not changed frequently enough.
How long is it going to be before a bunch of geezers in nursing homes are going to be demanding free diapers?
The move follows legislation introduced earlier this month by Representative Rosa DeLauro that would amend the Child Care Development Block Grant Act of 1990.
She estimates that families pay about $100 a month to cover babies' bottoms with diapers and it ought to be free.
State of Connecticut, folks, has declared tomorrow Diaper Need Awareness Day and there is a fundraiser and a panel discussion in New Haven on the public health risks for babies.
Can you imagine this panel discussion?
Will this be on C-SPAN?
Who will the experts be?
Can you imagine watching a panel discussion on the health risks for babies whose diapers are not changed frequently enough?
By the way, somebody help me out.
Is $100 a month for diapers a lot or not?
Ryan, you should know this or do you even care?
$100 a month is cheap for diapers.
I, of course, wouldn't know.
Meanwhile, the makers of Huggies diapers on Monday cut its sales outlook in the U.S. and other developed markets, citing a low birth rate due to the economic downturn.
So the diaper business is in the toilet.
Nothing's good.
Nothing is good out there.
So here's Obama.
$100 a month for diapers is about right.
Okay, but how often do you change the diapers?
Do you need this seminar?
Five diapers a day.
Five diapers a day times 30 days.
So a diaper costs $5 a day, five diapers a day times 30, $100 a month.
75 cents is what the diapers are.
That's what you do.
75 cents.
I wouldn't know.
I mean, we had to go out and get some diapers for one of the puppies.
We failed to get one of the dogs spayed, went in the heat.
Bad news.
So I had to go out and put the dog in diapers for about, you talk about funny, for about three weeks.
I, of course, didn't buy them.
I paid for them, but I didn't buy them.
Yeah, I did.
I put the diaper on the dog a couple times.
I did.
I put the diaper on the dog a couple times.
I do.
I do, but sometimes I was the only one there.
And it had to be done.
And you had to take the diaper off and let the dog out.
And the dog comes back in.
You got to put the diaper back on.
I was lucky I had a cooperative dog.
If the dog hadn't been cooperative, I don't know.
Anyway, Grab Audio Summit 5 again.
This is Obama late yesterday in San Francisco talking about America.
We've lost our ambition, our imagination, and our willingness to do the things that built the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam and unleashed all the potential in this country.
Obamaville.
Everywhere in America is Obamaville.
But this reminded me, we went back to the archives July 15th, 1979.
Jimmy Carter at the White House.
It is a crisis of confidence.
It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national world.
We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.
Isn't it amazing what happens when Democrats are on the show?
So here's Obama.
I said this is going to be Jimmy Carter's second term and it's just playing out exactly like that.
Can you imagine?
1979, this was pretty close to the same period of time in the campaign schedule as we are now.
That is an amazing crisis.
The president saying this.
It was a self-indictment, crisis of confidence, crisis that strikes a very heart and soul.
We see this crisis in a growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives.
What an indictment.
The meaning of our own lives and then the loss of a unity of purpose of our nation.
Wonder why that happened.
And I think that there's a certain element of that sentiment that exists in a lot of people now.
It really is.
I can't tell you the number of people I run into who have very fortunately escaped some of the ravages of this downturn economy, but they're still not happy.
And I've talked about it with them.
And they're not happy because the state of the country at large would be perfectly able to say, well, you know, the rest of the country is over there doing this, unemployment.
I'm okay.
They'd be running around, yucking it up and having fun, and they're not.
It's just, it's amazing.
There is a malaise that is out there, and it's permeated all groups, all socioeconomic groups.
Because at the heart of it, there is, every American understands this is just not how it happens in this country.
This is not what this country is all about.
This is not how we go about fixing our problems.
There is a general unease and a lack of confidence about where we're headed, and it's directly traceable to the White House.
Everybody looks to the White House for answers, for inspiration, for leadership.
We're not getting any of that.
There's no optimism.
And whenever Obama tries to, like I've been talking to the kids in Denver today, saying, no, when I wake up, I look out and I look at people like you.
And I'm comfortable.
I think America's best days are hit.
Nobody believes him.
When Ronald Reagan said it, everybody believed it.
But what Obama says, nobody believes it because there's no commensurate policy.
There's no action that accompanies the sentiment.
It's getting worse each and every day.
Anyway, quick break here, folks.
We'll be back and continue your phone calls next on the EIB network right after this.
Okay, try this on for size.
See what you think of this.
From Fox News.
The former New York office for Acorn, the disbanded community activist group, is playing a key role in the self-proclaimed leaderless Occupy Wall Street movement, organizing guerrilla protest events and hiring door-to-door canvassers to collect money under the banner of various causes while spending it on protest-related activities.
Sources tell Fox News.
The former director of New York Acorn, John Kest, and his top aides are now busy working at protest events for New York Communities for Change, NYCC.
That organization was created in late 2009 when some Acorn offices disbanded and reorganized under the new name after undercover video exposés prompted Congress to cut off federal funds.
Now, how many of you people thought that we defunded Acorn and they just went away?
Yep, we defunded them and they went away.
And how many of you are shocked to learn that Occupy Wall Street's actually hiring people to not just show up, but hiring people to organize and plan the civil unrest and the protests?
How many of you are surprised that this judgment didn't just effervesce right out of the ground, none of its own?
Acorn's back.
Acorn never went anywhere.
The Fox News story gets it right.
They just changed their names and reorganized.
And that's who this is.
And that means it's directly traceable back to the White House.
Matthew in Boy Creek, North Carolina, great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, thank you, Russ.
I just wanted to say I'm a recent college grad and I don't smell like urine.
So I wanted to put that out there first.
Well, congratulations.
Well, thank you.
But I just wanted to say that Herman Cain is a genius.
The guy doesn't have to lift a finger hardly.
And he's got everybody on every newscast talking about him last night.
And for a guy that had sort of a rough weekend, or, you know, you could debate that, you know, that's kind of gone.
And now people can talk about is this ad.
It reminds me of, I don't know if you remember in 2008, Mike Huckabee had an ad where there was this big debate about whether this window pane or something like that in the background was actually a floating cross.
Right, I remember that.
Yeah.
It's just sort of reminiscent of that.
So the guy, you know, I don't know if he intentionally does this stuff or what, but he doesn't have to do hardly anything.
And he just becomes the talk of the town.
Even if you just scratch your head and say, what sort of ad was that, you're still talking about it.
And name recognition is going to be a big thing in the coming months for him.
Well, he is.
You know, I was talking just a moment ago about optimism and good cheer.
The one thing, when you look at Herman Kane, you smile.
I smile when I look at Rick Perry.
I do.
When Rick Perry talks, I smile.
Don't read anything into it.
I'm just telling you.
When he went after Romney the other night in the debate, I started laughing.
I can't tell you why.
I just did.
I laugh.
I smile at both of those guys.
Now, James Carville.
James Carville, not happy.
He did a radio interview recently.
He said, everything worries me in this environment.
Nobody's gotten elected with these kinds of numbers talking about Obama.
I'm worried the general election.
I profoundly admit that.
Again, Romney's just making a technocratic kind of confidence argument.
He's really kind of a wind sock of a guy.
If you don't like his position on something, give it a day and he'll change it, which is the conventional wisdom of a lot of people.
Carville then went out, trashed Rick Perry, said that Herman Kane is not going to be the president of anything.
He said, Herman Kane goes out and he got a 999.
It's a 909.
It's like he's changing area codes.
The guy can't even figure out what his position on abortion is yet, which is kind of a basic issue.
And he run around, he gleefully professes ignorance on foreign policy.
Again, I'm not.
But if I were a person, if I had a conservative worldview and I was looking for our next election to have somebody to articulate that view, I would be unbelievably disappointed.
Herman Kane's a salesman.
I mean, he's not even trying in one sense.
He's just trying to get some attention.
He's not going to get the nomination.
That's Carville.
He's not even trying.
He just wants some attention.
He said, if I'm a conservative, I would be depressed.
None of these guys can articulate it.
Now, somebody who was a Wall Street Journal, I've got it here in a sec.
There's an editorial from the Wall Street Journal about Perry's plan.
And the Wall Street Journal loves Perry's tax plan.
They absolutely love it.
But they don't think he's got the ability to sell it.
They worry that he's not articulate enough to make persuade people.
It's a good play.
Actually, openly say this.
It's a good plan.
Too bad it's his because he can't, because he, they worry that he's not going to be able to sell it.
And uh, who is it?
Uh, Republican strategist Alex Costellanos said that Rick Perry is going to go so negative on Romney, your tv set's going to bleed.
Who says we're not colorful out there?
Who says there isn't conservative lingo going on?
Rick Perry's going to go, so negative on Romney, your television set's going to bleed.
So that we do.
We have several articles here that work well together.
Uh, we have an Investors Business Daily story weighing in on Perry's plan and contrasting it with Romney's.
Uh, and then they conclude that they like it.
This is conservatism on parade.
They love the Romney plan.
They like the Herman Kaine plan.
They like and, like I pointed out yesterday, we have the inside the Beltway intelligentsia taking nitpick shots at these guys.
The disaster that we all face is in the White House.
Every one of these Republican nominees would be such a vast improvement and yet we still have people on our side that want to nitpick them out.
Kain and, knowing about foreign policy, Romney's got this problem with him.
Kaine can't do that, Perry can't say that.
Uh, Bachman's off the reservation.
It's just it's it's, it's nonsensical, because these people are putting forward some compelling, substantive ideas to seriously deal with the problems that we've got.
And when you get down to the end of this process, the odds are that whoever emerges as a nominee from our side is going to be overwhelmingly supported.
There might be one exception to that two uh, possible exceptions, but everybody knows that the problem is Obama.
Everybody knows that we four more years of this and we have a different country and we have a deeper well to dig out of.
And it may be a well that we can't get out of anytime soon.
Romne Care, Obamacare ball game.
That's got to be repealed.
But right here it is WALL Street Journal.
They like Perry's plan.
Their sole reservation is his ability to sell it investors.
Business Daily uses Reagan's words to uh, promote Perry's plan and to slight Romney's.
By the way, i'll give you details of all this stuff because they uh they, they dovetail together quite nicely.
We'll get to that when we get back.
Sit tight, half my brain tied behind my back, Rushlinbaugh having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Look at that snowstorm in Denver.
That, that is just that.
That's amazing.
And Obama is right there in the middle of it.
He's turning into Al Gore Jr.
At any rate, Wall Street Journal likes the Perry plan.
Sole reservation is his ability to sell it.
Investors Business Daily uses Reagan's words to promote Perry's plan and to slight Romney's.
See, what is happening, folks, much as it may be hard to tell, don't doubt me on this.
Conservatism is ascendant.
The Tea Party is the manifestation of middle America's belief in conservative principles.
The government's gotten too big.
It's too intrusive, too expensive, too expensive.
It's too damn liberal.
People know it.
That scares the ruling class right down to their monogrammed socks.
The country wants to take on and solve big problems that have undermined American exceptionalism, undermined the American dream, undermined the once almighty dollar.
Now, the Republican Party has fielded several conservative candidates who have been minimized.
They have been disparaged.
They have been impugned because they represent the people.
They represent a real threat to the status quo of Washington.
They represent a real threat to the way things are done in Washington.
This is the real reason they're making fun of Herman Cain.
It is the real reason they're making fun of Rick Perry and Santorum and Newt and Bachman at all.
It is the reason they are not ripping into Romney.
Romney does not represent a change in the status quo in their minds.
But so many of the nominees on our side do.
And that's all you have to do to earn the derision.
The mainstream media and the ruling class is to pose a threat to represent a threat to the status quo.
The way things are and have always been and they want always to be in Washington.
We're told that Herman Kane not elected.
What do you heard James Carville say it?
Herman Kane, he doesn't even want it.
He doesn't even want it out there.
He's trying to get famous.
He don't want to get elected to nothing.
He couldn't get elected to it.
Unelectable.
Rick Perry, unelectable.
Michelle Bachman, unelectable.
What is this unelectable business?
Who the hell knows that now?
Snirdly, what is the Limbaugh rule?
There's one Limbaugh rule.
What is the Limbaugh rule?
You vote for the most conservative candidate.
Now, somebody's trying to bastardize the most conservative candidate who can win.
Well, how the hell do we know that?
This whole notion of who can win is what the ruling class is using to disqualify a bunch of people because they say somebody's unelectable.
The ruling class says Herman Cain's unelectable.
Rick Perry, unelectable.
And it works.
You've heard people call the program, Rush.
You got to support Romney.
He's the only one that can win.
And the objective is to get rid of Obama.
That is the objective.
What I know is that were the election today, any of these people would beat Obama.
I wish a number of people were as confident of that as I am, because that is the truth.
Now, when these people start talking about changing the tax code, that's the red flag to the bull.
It's not enough that these people want to upset the status quo.
When they start talking about seriously changing the tax code, they are talking about the bread and butter of the elites.
And that's when the long knives come out.
And that's when the criticism rises up and mounts.
And that's when we start hearing, what a kook.
What are they saying about Perry?
Why, that plan's silly.
Why, it's two different plans.
Why, it's just more and more complicated.
Why, that's silly.
You can't do that.
Let's go to the audio sound bites.
We got, I know we're at number 10.
Let me see what number nine is.
It might fit with this as well.
Yep, starting at number nine.
Here we go.
Gloria Borger.
Yesterday on CNN's newsroom, the Info Babe said, could this tax plan of Rick Perry's actually be a big boost?
He hopes so, but it's going to be attacked immediately as being a plan that allows the wealthy to pay less taxes.
By the way, it's really not that simple because since you're given the option of paying the 20% or sticking with the regular code, you have to do your taxes twice to figure out which you ought to be paying.
So, you know, the devil is in the details.
Hey, Gloria, we've already got two systems.
One's called the AMT, and the other one is, we'll screw you the other way.
We've already got two systems.
What do you want to know?
Here comes the rubbing class defending the status quo, ripping an idea that reforms the tax code.
You can't do that.
It's not that simple.
And by the way, this is a plan that allows the wealthy to pay less taxes.
You know what Perry said that?
Yes, I don't care.
I don't care.
And frankly, I love that.
I don't care if the wealthy pay.
What I'm after is more people working.
What I'm after is getting more money back out of Washington and into the private sector.
And that's the purpose of my tax plan.
The only way this country is going to be reignited, the only way we're going to have private sector jobs is if there is capital in the private sector.
And this administration has raped the private sector and has taken capital out of it and continues to do so.
It's supply and demand.
Right now, there are too many people chasing too few jobs.
And the reason there are too few jobs is because there's not enough capital flowing in the private sector.
So here comes Perry with a reform plan, serious reform plan.
And you start messing with the tax code, and the ruling class is going to jump down your chili.
Next up was Jared Bernstein.
Jared Bernstein is a former guess the former chief economist for Vice President Bite Me.
And he was on Kudlow last night on CNBC.
And Kudlow asked Biden's former economic advisor, does Perry leave in too many deductions?
If you're a middle-class family, you now have to do your taxes twice.
By the way, three times if you want to worry about the alternative minimum tax, you simply can't figure out whether you're better off under the 20% flat tax of the current system.
Yeah.
So it's predictable.
And they're going after Herman Kane's 999 plan on the same basis.
And they're trying to say, well, Herman, it complicates things.
It's not even really revenue neutral and so forth.
Both of these plans are plans that upset the status quo and make a sincere effort at reforming a bloated tax code.
The long knives are out.
But there is support for it.
Like I said, the Wall Street Journal, the flat tax sweepstakes.
Perry's 20% optional rate joins the Republican debate over pro-growth tax reform.
Mr. Perry joins Newt Gingrich, who has proposed a 15% optional flat tax.
John Huntsman, whose reform proposal would cut the top individual rates 23%.
Herman Kaine and his 999 plan.
House Republicans included a reform with a 25% top rate in their budget earlier this year.
All of this ferment shows that whatever one thinks of the candidates as potential presidents, most of them are trying to meet the political moment with reforms to address our major economic challenges.
And that's right.
And the journal is properly duly noting this in a positive way.
Quick timeout.
Your phone calls resume when we get back.
Here is the end of the Wall Street Journal piece on Perry's plan.
All of this is bold enough that it will require an informed and articulate promoter.
And the question about Mr. Perry is whether he can make that case better than he has so far been able to defend his Texas record.
He'll be helped by Steve Forbes, the original flat tax proponent who's now advising Mr. Perry and knows the attacks to come.
The good news is that Mr. Perry and most of his competitors are thinking big with proposals that'll reverse the U.S. slide to high debt, slow growth stagnation.
Obama wants to portray the economic debate as pro-growth government spenders versus austerity of budget cutting.
But the real debate is over whether government or the private economy is the main engine of prosperity.
That's exactly right.
That is the debate.
What drives us?
Government or ourselves?
That's what this is all about.
And if you believe that Barack Obama, if you believe that the best way for this country to move forward is for it to be directed by Barack Obama or any other president in Washington using government, then you are forever acknowledging that you are irrelevant.
And you are giving up any claim to prosperity.
There won't be any.
If the government suffices as the engine of growth, there won't be any growth either.
Not where you live.
Michael in Memphis, welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello.
Thank you, sir.
I'm a brand new listener to your show, but I will be faithful.
I hope my cell phone better doesn't die.
How did you find a program, Michael?
I got a new job, and the guy that I was replacing to train me, he was a faithful listener, and he said, you know, after lunch every day, he said, I got to have my rush, man, and he got me hooked.
Wait a gee, wait a bee.
I love hearing that kind of story.
Welcome to the light.
Welcome home.
Well, thank you, sir.
Thank you.
I'll get right to the point.
I'm 22 years old.
After high school, my parents couldn't pay for my college.
So I got a job, and I paid for my own college, and now I'm working, and my girlfriend is working two jobs to try to pay off her student loans because we believe that God said, pay off your debts.
And now we've got all these people that are trying to get it for free that don't want to work.
They're just going to rallies and trying to get all this stuff for free.
And that makes all these collection agencies and stuff crank down harder on the people who are trying to be honest, who are trying to pay their stuff.
And it's very frustrating.
I mean, we want to get married, but we're having to push that off because we don't have as much money because we've got to pay for these student loans.
I mean, it would be totally easy for us to just say, oh, we'll just wait for the government to pay it off.
We'll go ahead and just get more and more in debt and let the government pay all of it like the normal people do.
Well, you don't sound like the kind that's going to do that.
And you also don't sound like somebody, the kind of guy that wants to be in a position of owing the government the rest of your life if they do that for you.
Oh, definitely not.
Well, how much do you owe?
Close to $15,000.
Both of you together owe $15,000.
No, it doesn't just her.
I worked and I went to a cheaper college and mine's already paid off, but she's got two student loans and hers combined will be about $15,000.
Wow.
And did you say she's working two jobs?
Yeah.
Yeah, she's working six days a week.
Well, I have to tell you, I applaud you.
This is called accepting responsibility.
And it's very rare.
It's not very rare, but it's way too rare.
You have assumed some obligations and you're assuming the responsibility for dealing with it.
And that's, believe me, you're going to be much better off the rest of your life dealing with it this way, having this attitude about it.
You're always going to be, there are always going to be freeloaders, and there are always going to be people who feel entitled to it.
You're always going to be surrounded by people who may have more than you do, by the way, at various stages of your life, who still feel entitled to it.
I was just thinking that.
Folks, look at it.
Here we have a young man from Memphis who is calling and he's telling us that he's retiring.
He's delaying things in life that he wants in order to meet his financial obligations, pay off his student lows.
And how many of you out there go, way to go, way to go?
It's that rare that we feel like we have to stop and applaud it.
Whereas it ought to be as normal as getting up every morning.
But our culture has become, I don't know, degraded and corrupted that the action that you take stands out because it doesn't appear to be the norm anymore.
You're to be applauded for it, nevertheless.
Don't misunderstand.
Yeah.
It's so sad.
You know, I look at these people that just get so angry.
They want to.
No, don't.
Let me tell you something.
That can drive you crazy.
And if you let it, it'll drive you crazy.
That's going to happen your whole life.
Even there's always going to be somebody who has more than you do.
There's always going to be somebody that appears to be not working nearly as hard as you are.
There is always going to be the appearance of unfairness or injustice in an arena and in an atmosphere where you expect fairness to exist.
And it can make you bitter if you allow it to take over.
Those are things that you can't control.
And if you allow them to bother you, they're going to eat you alive.
You have to focus like you're doing now on your responsibilities, doing the best you can.
And believe me, in the long run, you're going to be fine and you're going to be much better off.
But if you allow yourself to be embittered by this stuff, and by the way, it's very hard not to.
And a lot of people, the Democrat Party has made big gains by going to people just like you and telling you that you ought to vote for the Democrats because these people you see, except their enemy are the rich, not the freeloaders.
You're upset the freeloaders.
The Democrat Party's enemies are the rich.
And they come to people like you and say, vote for us.
We're going to stick it to them.
That will not make your life any better.
It will not change your circumstances at all if these people all of a sudden had to start paying for what they're now getting for nothing or if they get for nothing what they're asking for.
It isn't going to change anything about your life.
That's totally within your purview and your control.
And that's what you need to focus on.
There's always going to be somebody who has more.
There's always going to be somebody who seemingly has it easier.
There's always going to be somebody that has a better advantage than you do.
There's always going to be injustice apparent.
There's always going to be the sense of unfairness.
Now, it's life.
And you've got such a great head start, keeping your head on straight, dealing with it.
Don't become embittered by this.
It's perfectly fine to be angry and to note it and to say, I don't want those kind of values in my life.
I don't want to be a freeloader.
I don't want to be marching down the street asking for somebody else to give me something.
I want to make my own way.
Perfectly fine to have disrespect for those people.
But don't let it eat you up to the point that changes who you are.
Get this.
Muslim students at Catholic University are claiming that Catholic University is too Catholic.
Muslim students at Catholic University claim it's too Catholic and they are demanding changes.
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