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Nov. 17, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:32
November 17, 2011, Thursday, Hour #2
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Hi folks, how are you?
El Rushbaugh and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Happy to have you back as we head on down the tracks, the fastest three hours in media.
And I promise you, we will get to your phone calls in this hour.
Telephone number, 800-282-2882.
And the email address, lrushbaugh at EIBNet.com.
This is how you decide.
Last night in San Diego, at the Occupy San Diego protest, they had a protester stand up and ask for a moment of silence for the White House shooter.
I think we should have a moment in silence and solidarity for the person that they said was from the Washington, D.C. Occupy.
That maybe why did he feel he need to shoot the White House window today?
So I think we should hold a moment in solidarity for the White House and for the guy that shot at the White House today.
Occupy the police department!
Now, we get this audio video from our buddies at Newsbusters.
We don't get this from the drive-bys.
So this Looney Tunes out there in San Diego stands up for a moment of silence.
Here, listen to this again.
And I want you, as you listen to this, I want you to imagine the outrage if some Tea Party gathering had expressed their solidarity with Gerald Lochner, who shot Gabby Geffers, with a moment of silence.
I want you to imagine.
You'd still be hearing about it.
I want you to imagine if a Tea Party gathering expressed their solidarity with this guy for shooting up the White House.
The media would be all over it.
The media doesn't want this kind of news out about who these people at the Occupy movement are.
Listen to this again.
I think we should have a moment in silence and solidarity for the person that they said was from the Washington, D.C. Occupy.
That maybe why did he feel he need to shoot the White House window today?
So I think we should have hold a moment in solidarity for the White House and for the guy that shot at the White House today.
Occupy the police department.
Moment of silence for the White House shooter and for the White House.
You just, this has not been in the mainstream media, and it won't be.
Newsbusters drugged this out.
No, no, that's real.
It was last night in San Diego.
That's not Saturday Night Live.
No, no, it's not Comedy Central.
It's not the Onion.
It's not Scott.
No, it's real.
It's real.
I want you to, remember when the Tea Party had a meeting somewhere and there was some guy running around with a gun plainly visible and the media went nuts.
My God, look at that.
The guy's got a gun.
He's got to go to my Chris Matthews about Busted a Blood Vessel.
I'm just telling you that the Occupy Wall Street movement, inspired by Obama, they are being bought and paid for.
They're being winterized by the SEIU.
They're being winterized in various places by unions.
The unions are paying to be able to keep them organized in the winter months.
They are an arm of the Democrat Party.
They are part of the Obama re-election campaign.
Whether these Doomcops in the movement know it or not, they are pawns like Mongo in blazing saddles, a mere pawn in the game of life.
That's what these people are.
Some of them, the organizers, know the others, the stragglers, you know, pretty soon because they're cold weather, they're going to have to go home.
And I'll tell you when they're going to go home.
They will go home next week in time to go to the blue light specials at Kmart and Walmart.
That's when they'll head home.
By the way, speaking of heading home, oh yeah, listen to this.
New York Times.
A very sad New York Times.
As new graduates return to Nest, economy also feels the pain.
Like most of her friends, Hollis Romanelli graduated from college last May and promptly moved back in with mom and dad.
As a result, Hollis Romanelli did not pay rent, nor a broker's fee or renter's insurance for that matter.
She also didn't buy a bed, a desk, a couch, a doormat, a mop, a new crockery set.
How insulting to think that's what a woman would go buy?
You've got a female graduate here in the era feminazism and they're worried about the fact she didn't go buy a doormat, a mop, or a crockery set?
And a woman wrote this, Catherine Rampell.
How insulting.
This is a story about how these new graduates are really not just harming themselves and how they're being harmed, but the whole economy is being harmed because they're not buying all this stuff for themselves because they're not earning any money.
But I just find it hilarious that of all the things a female college graduate could be lamented for not being able to buy a mop?
Why not throw an ironing board in there?
A crockery set?
How about a fondue machine?
I don't know what a crockery set is.
I really don't know.
It sounds like something you get at William Sonoma.
A crock is a pot.
It's pottery.
Well, but it looks like pottery, right?
Pottery could make a crockery set.
Okay, Mr. Expert, then what.
This is going nowhere.
Slow cooker?
A crockery set's a slow cooker?
Okay, fine.
I don't care.
All I know is the New York Times is unhappy that this female graduate can't go buy one.
What do I care what a crockery set is?
Nor did she pay the cable company to send a cable guy to set up her TV and internet.
Nor did she pay a handyman to hang a newly framed diploma.
She'd even buy adult beverages and snacks for a housewarming party.
In other words, Ms. Romanelli, 22, saved a lot of money, but she deprived the economy of a lot of potential activity, too.
Every year, young adults leave the nest, couples divorce, foreigners immigrate, roommates separate, all helping drive economic growth.
So cultural tumult.
The New York Times is lamenting.
There's not enough cultural rot.
Look at what they say drives the economy.
Adults leave the nest.
Couples divorce.
Foreigners immigrate.
Roommates separate.
All helping drive economic growth when they furnish and refurbish their new homes.
Yes, growing up does help, but I don't know where they think adult divorce comes into this.
Under normal circumstances, every time a household is formed, it adds about $145,000 to output that year as the spending ripples through the economy, estimates Mark Zandi, the chief.
They just define trickle down here.
They've just defined trickle down here in the New York Times, which they excoriate.
They hate trickle down.
They say it doesn't exist.
They just defined it here.
But with the poor job market and the uncertain recovery, whoa, whoa, whoa, thought we were in an expansion.
This chick at the New York Times is in for big trouble here.
This story is a wreck because it's not following any of the templates of the drive-by media.
My God, lamenting that a woman can't go out and buy a crockery set or a mop.
Lamenting the fact that there isn't divorce.
Lamenting the fact that foreigners aren't immigrating, that roommates aren't separating.
Wow.
With the poor job market and uncertain recovery.
That's another thing.
We're supposed to be in an expansion here.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans like Hollis Rominelli and her boyfriend, by the way, who also lives with his parents, have tabled their moves.
Even before the recession began, young people were leaving home later.
Now the bad economy has tethered them there indefinitely.
Last year, only 950,000 new households were created.
By comparison, about 1.3 million new households were formed in 2007, the year the recession began, according to Mr. Zint.
It did not begin in 2007.
I mentioned this earlier.
The recession began in 2008.
But at any rate, Ms. Romanelli, who lives in the room where she grew up in Branford, Connecticut, said, I don't really have much of a choice.
I don't have the means to move out.
Ms. Romanelli, who works as an assistant editor at Cottages and Gardens magazine, is one of the luckier boomerang children who found jobs and at least can start saving for their own place someday.
As of last month, just 74% of Americans between 25 and 34 were working.
It's perhaps no wonder that 14.2% of young adults are living with their parents.
Among young men, 19% are living with their parents.
But even some young people who can't afford to move out have decided to wait until getting on more solid footing.
Prudence, not necessity, has kept them at home.
Jay Bouvier, 26, has a full-time teaching, physical education, health, and coaching football, baseball job at a Haskruel in Hartford near his parents' house in Bristol.
He could rent his own apartment.
After taxes, he makes about $45,000 a year, but he has decided not to.
He says he will stay with his parents until he's saved enough to buy his own house.
I have it pretty good at home.
So close to my work, financially, I just feel like it's smarter for the long run to buy.
It's like I pay rent, but to myself.
What a deal it is.
Yes, but by not paying rent, of course, he has deprived a local landlord and a host of other local companies of some income, as well as whatever businesses those purveyors might have patronized further down the line.
It's a phenomenon that John Maidard Keynes referred to as the paradox of thrift.
Saving is good for the individual, but en masse can hurt the economy by reducing demand.
These people continue to define trickle-down and don't know it.
Well, now they're lamenting that there's no trickling taking place in the economy because these selfish brats are staying at home and they're not buying their own mops and they're not buying their own crockery sets And they're not buying their own doormats.
And they're not renting their own places.
Increased housing demand definitely has multiplier effects throughout the economy, but there isn't increased housing demand.
So, due to the lack of jobs, high debt, and the pull of the occupied, college graduates who can't find jobs head back home to live with their parents.
This has an impact all through the economy.
So, we're not creating new households.
But yet, the economy is expanding.
Did you see that the other day?
We told you the economy is in Bloomberg's, the economy is expanding.
And yet, here's this story in the New York Times by Catherine Rampell about how bad it is out there.
She concludes: the actions of the young are self-perpetuating.
Young people are reluctant to set off on their own until they have greater financial stability.
But the economic conditions necessary to make them financially secure are difficult to achieve, while consumers like them are still too nervous to start making big purchases on housing or anything else.
They have just written a story in the New York Times that could be subtitled, or Why We've Got to Defeat Obama.
Why We've Got to Get Rid of the Democrat Party is what the story really says.
But it also, I mean, I left home on a wing and a prayer.
Nothing was guaranteed when I left home.
I left home at age 20 for $175 a week.
There wasn't any thought of staying with mom and dad when you could get out.
There wasn't any thought of it.
Yes, you wanted to get out, spread your wings, freedom and all that.
You didn't want to be dependent.
You didn't want to be sponging off your parents.
And you did.
You absolutely lived in abject poverty to get on your own.
Well, yeah, I did go back home.
Yeah, in fact, they loved me coming back home because I'd been through this.
I worked all through high school.
I really didn't have the typical lazy, hazy days of summer life because I was working since I was 15.
But nevertheless, wanted to get out and did for $175 a week.
There was no guarantee.
No any financial security.
It was a radio job.
I could have got canned in two weeks.
Took a year, but I eventually found another one.
Hi, we're back here.
Rush Limbaugh, your guiding light, America's real anchorman and truth detector.
We're going to start on the phone.
It's in Salt Lake City.
This is Jeff, and it's great to have you on the program.
Hello.
Hey, Rush, good day.
Howie.
Hey, I just want to comment on something I saw on CNN.
Probably I don't know about why I was getting ready for work.
I was watching it for about 15 minutes.
I had Van Jones on there talking about the protesters.
He was talking about how they talked about how we bailed the banks out and maybe some of the student loans should be forgiven by the banks.
I was kind of wondering what the percentage of the 99% is that actually paid taxes.
How many of those people actually bailed the banks out?
What do you think?
How many who did we bail out?
I'm having trouble hearing you.
Well, Van Jones was talking about, you know, they were talking about, well, what do these protesters want?
You know, and basically Van Jones comes on and said, Well, you know, we bailed the banks out, and maybe they could forgive some of the student school loans for some of these kids, the protesters that have these student loans.
And I'm thinking you look at the protesters, and you're like, I doubt any of those people really pay taxes, so they probably didn't bail the banks out.
I don't really think that they paid taxes to bail the banks out, you know, with the stimulus.
Oh, these particular protesters, you don't think works and pay taxes, so whatever was bailed out, they didn't participate in it.
I'm pretty sure that's not the case.
It doesn't matter.
You're looking at this way, way, way too logically.
That's not the whole point of this is to forgive debt.
That's what the original proposal from one of the Occupy groups was.
If you go way back when, they did have a miniature position statement, and it was all debt should be forgiven, not just student loans, but everything.
But the bank bailouts have been repaid.
The government made a profit bailing out the banks.
The banks, not all of them, wanted to be bailed out.
The banks were required to be bailed out.
It's the government that runs the student loan program anyway.
So this bunch of Van Jones and these, this is just targeting Wall Street for whatever reason.
Remember, these kids are pawns in the game of life.
They're being lied to on purpose.
They're being revved up with hatred and resentment at the wrong people on purpose.
Shutting down Wall Street.
Why isn't that a terrorist act, by the way?
They claim they're going to do it.
They're trying to do it.
Molotov cocktails too.
Why isn't that terrorism?
Now they arrested the guy.
I know, but why not 50 others?
Why arrest just that one guy?
Who's next?
This is Gene in Sierra Vista, California.
Hi, great to have you on the program.
Thanks, Al Rush Bell.
I'm getting back to this shooter at the White House.
You've got these sharpshooters all over the roof.
You see them all the time dressed in black.
How in the world does this guy get a pot shot off, and these guys don't even fire back?
I could have gotten them.
I got a bad eye and an archer at a trigger finger.
I just thank the Lord these guys weren't set off to get bin Laden and Uday.
Just a second.
What are you actually saying?
Are you saying that the rooftop snipers are incompetent, or are you saying that they just chose not to react when they saw what the guy did?
Maybe they didn't see them.
I don't know.
But isn't it unbelievable how you see them up there?
There are 24 hours in the middle of the day.
Supposedly, though, it was a drive-by shooting at night.
I don't know.
You're telling me that.
I'm not telling you anything.
I'm just telling you a drive-by shooting at night.
I don't run these guys.
Then they need to be replaced, don't they?
Well, I don't know.
I'll volunteer.
My sister and I will volunteer.
Yeah, you got me thinking things I don't want to think.
No one in the press has ever asked what happened.
You know, why weren't they doing their jobs?
I mean, well, does it help Obama, sympathy-wise, for there to be news out there that some nincum poop shot up the White House?
It could be.
The residents of the White House, does it?
And how does the sniper know what window is the family's living quarters?
They say that they got one of the bulletproof windows.
What's he got, a blueprint?
No, it's the second floor.
That's not unknown.
Okay.
Truman Balcony is the residence.
You're righty.
Well, these guys need to be replaced.
Okay.
Well, you've raised some interesting questions here.
Back to the phones, Cadillac, Michigan, and this is Greg.
Greg, welcome to the EIB Network.
Great to have you here.
Hello.
Thanks, Rush.
It's good to talk to you.
I called because I wanted to agree with your assessment of the Brezhnev-Honeker kiss.
Yeah.
I really agree with you that it sent, it was meant to send a message to the German people, and it was a sinister message, and they received it.
And that picture has really become a symbol that's hung on with the German people.
The reason I say that is we went to Germany in September, my family, and if you go to any souvenir shop near the Berlin Wall, that is one of the most common t-shirts that that picture is on the t-shirts.
And a lot of them have the words, my God, help me survive this deadly love.
So it's become a symbolic, a lasting symbol to the German people of that time when they were oppressed by the East German government, the Statsi, the Russians, and it's very enduring.
And this is not ancient history.
This is 1979.
What he's talking about, we let off the program today with commentary on this Benetton advertising campaign with all the pictures of world leaders kissing each other.
There's a big Washington Post story about it.
This post story says that the whole campaign was inspired by a kiss photo of Brezhnev, an Irish Honeker who ran East Germany.
The point that I made was that was not a picture.
Their campaign is unhate at Benetton.
That picture sent chills up the spines.
That picture showed solidarity between two leaders who were tyrants, dictators, oppressing the people who lived in those two countries.
And that picture showed solidarity between them.
There was no unhate.
There was no love or togetherness or anything of the sort.
That picture was meant to dispirit people in East Germany and the Soviet Union.
And what little Greg here is saying is he's been there and it was that way.
That picture is a reminder of the tyranny that people used to live under in East Germany in 1979, which not that long ago, it's inexcusable that the Washington Post ought to fall for this notion that this campaign was inspired by that picture.
If they knew their history and were honest about it, they would point out that that picture has nothing in common with the theme of the Benetton advertising campaign.
Not that Benetton cares.
I'm just talking about the Washington Post being thorough and clear in their reporting of all this.
I appreciate the call, Greg.
Thanks much.
Carl in Ireton, Ohio.
It's great to have you with us.
Hello, sir.
It's a real treat and honor to talk with you, Rush.
Thank you, sir.
Second time caller here.
Hey, I want to get your take on something.
In the late 1970s, under Jimmy Carter, we had a horrible economy with sky-high interest rates.
Today, under Obama, we've got an economy that's far, far worse, but the interest rates are extremely low.
Can you explain, Rush, how this administration is holding down the interest rates?
And if you can, when do you think the interest rates are going to skyrocket?
I don't know that they will.
The Federal Reserve is holding down interest rates.
You're not, I know you're talking about interest rates, but concurrent with this is interest in inflation.
And inflation is starting now.
It has been for a while.
They're telling us the cost of living is flat, but if you buy gasoline or food, you know that they're lying to you about that.
Inflation is going up.
The Fed is keeping interest rates low as one of their so-called weapons in trying to force an economic recovery.
The belief is, and this defies logic to me, but the professed belief is that businesses are not borrowing money because of interest rates and that banks are not lending money because of interest rates.
So the Fed says if we keep interest rates low, it will inspire small business to go out and borrow.
What small businesses have been saying for two years is it has nothing to do with it.
We don't have any customers.
We have no reason to expand.
We've got no reason to borrow no matter what your interest rate is.
The banks are saying, we love this interest rate being low.
We don't have to loan the money to make any money on it.
We can put it somewhere with no interest rate.
We can get it for nothing from the Fed, invest it in something else and grow it that way.
We don't have to lend money to make money on it.
Normally, banks earn an income by loaning money to people.
They pay it back with interest, and that's the bank's income.
Well, with no interest, the banks can get that money from the Fed that they would otherwise loan and invest it in other places rather than individuals who want to borrow money.
No, it wouldn't stimulate the economy to raise interest rates right now, but there's a dual-edged sword.
They're not trying to stimulate.
They're trying to make sure the economy doesn't go off the cliff.
But it's misguided.
It's all based on a false belief that if interest rates were just lower, that people would borrow money, particularly small business.
You can hear Obama still talking about why do you think Obama's still out there promising tax credits.
If you go hire somebody, we'll give you a $3,000 tax credit for every new hire.
Because businesses aren't growing, and they're not growing because there aren't any customers, and there are not any customers because there's unemployment so sky high.
So there's no reason to expand.
They figured that they could get people to borrow money with low interest rates.
And it hasn't worked out.
The banks, again, this is very, I don't want to gloss over this.
The banks, all banks get their money from the Fed, and they're charged interest for that money.
When that interest rate is hardly anything, the banks can get money for practically nothing.
And instead of having to make money by lending it, they simply go out and buy stock in Apple or whatever they do with it.
And that's how they grow.
They don't have to lend it.
So nobody is lending money.
The people that want to borrow are not considered good credit risks because of the state of the economy.
So it's just mismanagement of the money supply and so forth by the Fed as far as I'm concerned.
And interest rates are, I mean, totally at the purview right now of the Fed.
If the Fed wants to raise them, they will.
It's good for people who can borrow.
The mortgage interest rate's pretty low.
But on the other hand, people who live on fixed incomes off of their interest rates going high, they're sitting at flat line at zero.
No.
Inflation doesn't have anything to do the interest rate right now because they're two separate things.
The interest rate is artificial.
The interest rate's being kept artificially low by the Fed as a weapon, as a piece of ammunition, really.
Interest rates right now have really no relationship to inflation.
If the Fed would de-link Interest rates to their control and let lending institutions set the rate based on what they thought they could get for it.
If the market were allowed to rule, you might have some stabilizing in this, but none of that's going to change really until there is some legitimate economic growth.
And the policies that are in place here are stymying economic growth.
This is the point that everybody's paying any attention to understands this administration is just a giant roadblock to growth.
Everything they've done, they're taking money out of the private sector and giving it to the public sector, even to unions, more bureaucracy, EPI.
I don't care what agency you want to talk about.
They're getting more money.
And then the money that does end up back in the private sector ends up there in the form of food stamps or school dinners or more government services or what have you, healthcare benefits.
But none of it is the result of any economic activity that's creating growth and new revenue.
The pie is not expanding right now.
GDP, they say, is at 2.5%, but that's not even.
We can look out and see that we don't have 2.5% growth in the economy in the last quarter.
There's no sign of it, other than in very small, unique sectors.
But overall, it just isn't happening.
Misery index with Carter did calculate how you get interest rates.
In some places, it got up as high as 15% back in the Jimmy Carter days.
And it was just Fed policy back then not to monkey with it.
These people, as far back as I can remember the past 10 years, the Fed has been paranoid about inflation.
So they've kept interest rates low.
Inflation, at the time, or in the process, I should say, what really is set in is deflation in some sectors, which is not good.
You might think it's good for the consumer, but deflation for manufacturing is not good.
If you can't recoup the cost of producing a product, then you can't stay in business, much less make a profit on it.
And deflation makes it almost impossible to make back your costs on a product.
So there's been deflation in certain parts of the economy, inflation in others.
All the while, they're trying to tell us that the cost of living index CPI is pretty much level, but it's not.
As I say, if you buy gasoline or food, you know the cost of living is getting more expensive.
And now oil spiked up over $100 a barrel.
What is $102 at the end of the day yesterday?
So it's only going to get worse.
This is why this bunch, Obama and the Democrats have to go.
Because all of this is by design.
All of this is based on a mistaken economic belief that central planning and a giant central authority can create new products, dictate economic growth, target economic growth.
And certainly it cannot.
This bunch has proven it time and time again with every stimulus, every policy.
Just the other day, the CBO guy admitted to Jeff Sessions, yeah, over 10 years, the stimulus plan of 2009 will be a drag on economic growth.
It will shrink the economy.
Why is that?
Why would a 700 or almost $850 billion stimulus shrink the economy over 10?
Because it can do nothing else.
It takes that money out of the private sector.
Before you can spend $850 billion of the government, you've got to take it out.
It's a net wash.
You take the money out of a collective number of pockets to equal $850 billion, and then you spend it again.
You put it somewhere else in the economy.
So we took it away from producers and who ended up getting it?
Unions, teachers, states, private sector.
There was no infrastructure activity.
There were no new schools built.
There weren't any shovel-ready jobs.
All of that was a lie.
All of it was smoke and mirrors.
The stimulus was a slush fund designed to keep union workers employed during the recession so that their dues were collected so that Democrat campaign coffers were continually replenished.
That's all it was.
And the state of Wisconsin is proof of it.
And we are back.
Who's next?
David Salt Lake City.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Great to have you with us, sir.
Hello.
Hello, El Rushbo.
Mega Dittos from somewhere on the road in Salt Lake City.
Thank you very much, sir.
I keep reading about it.
I keep hearing about it.
Rush, I am fed up with this Occupy movement.
I am just a normal guy, conservative, like hopefully everybody should be.
You wouldn't know it by looking at me.
My question to you is: what can I do?
I mean, I don't have the Mac growth on the iPads.
I don't have the FDIU backing me.
What can a normal guy do?
What can we do to fight back against these people?
Don't do anything.
That's what they want.
Ignore them.
Just go out and be successful and ignore them.
And if you happen to encounter them, keep moving and smile.
You might even point at them and just ignore them.
They're not that many.
They are trying to disrupt you.
They're trying to get in your head.
They're trying to make you think something's wrong with your country and that they are pointing out what's wrong and they want you to agree with them and so forth.
Go to work.
They hate that.
Show them up.
Yeah, I mean, I go to work every day.
It's just frustrating.
I mean, locally in Salt Lake, we've got a police chief in our city of Salt Lake that just doesn't do anything about it.
Lets them get away with murder.
You know, it's getting old.
It gets frustrating.
So it's hard to just turn the cheek and walk away.
Let it happen.
The more that stuff happens, the worse it is for the Democrats next November.
Let it happen.
All right.
Don't let these people get to you whatsoever.
Ignore them.
They've always said success is the best revenge.
They're getting away with murder everywhere.
They are getting away with filth, with squalor.
They're being shut down everywhere.
And they're reorganizing today in New York.
They're trying to make a big deal.
Yesterday, they're going to burn down the city.
They're going to stop the subway.
They're going to Brooklyn Bridge.
You just keep in mind and you tell it, you can't set up a vendor cart or a lemonade stand in New York City without a permit, but these people can go wreck the city and everybody acts scared to death of them.
And the reason is that they are an arm of the big, powerful SEIU and the White House.
And that's why your mayor is afraid to touch them because they've got connections to the White House.
And everybody involved knows this.
Everybody involved knows it.
Just gets frustrating, El Rushbo, but we appreciate you out here.
We appreciate you everywhere.
Well, I know.
And I appreciate you being out there, too.
And I understand how frustrating this is.
It just, it's, if you let it, it can really get to you.
But this is not the country.
It's not anywhere near what this country is.
It's not anywhere near it.
They want it to be, but it's not.
The less attention they get, the better.
They're going to get wackier and crazier, and that's for the better.
We'll be back.
Don't go away.
Okay.
Another exciting hour of broadcast excellence in the can soon to be on the way over to the Limbaugh Broadcast Museum warehouse.
Limbaugh Broadcast Museum is at rushlimbaugh.com.
It's a virtual museum and it's awesome.
If you haven't checked it out, go to rushlimbaugh.com and find the museum.
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