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Nov. 23, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:12
November 23, 2011, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Look, I understand that, but folks.
They have they've closed LaGuardia Airport in New York because of rain.
I have never heard of that.
Now I've heard of closing LaGuardia for snow and high winds and all that.
And let me tell you something.
I once, let me tell you something.
I know what they're afraid of.
They're afraid of people getting on airplanes and waiting on them for hours and hours, not being able to get out of there, and they don't want that to happen.
So but I rem I was stuck on a shuttle to Washington at LaGuardia for five hours.
I'll tell you this little story.
This is back in the late 80s.
And I was going to Washington with the EIB team.
We were trying to, we had a meeting with WMAL.
We were trying to affiliate.
Might have been early 90.
And we're flying down to Washington on a shuttle.
It's a 45-minute trip.
And I forget it might have been the Delta Shuttle.
Well, it might have been Pan M. I'm not sure which it was back then.
But regardless, we push back, start taxing out, and the pilot says that there's a temporary stop because of a squall line of thunderstorms that is approaching Washington.
It won't be very long.
The storms move out of there, and air traffic control will clear us.
And we sat there for four hours.
Four hours.
and we're watching the clock tick by.
Well, we still have a chance to get down there in time for this meeting.
I'm trying to think.
Did we have cell phones then that we could there were, but miniature were I'm not sure.
I don't remember if we were able to tell people at WMAL that we were running late.
I don't remember.
At any rate, nothing happened for four hours.
We're on the airplane, and the pilot says, after four hours, folks, we're gonna taxi back into the gate and reprovision the aircraft.
Because we've gone through all the crackers and peanuts and uh soft drinks, and there was a passenger revolt.
They wanted to get off the airplane.
We all wanted off the air.
We don't want to reprovision.
What are we gonna do?
Reprovision with crackers and peanuts and head back out to the runway and wait some more.
Nobody wanted that.
And we got off the airplane.
We got off the airplane, we said, hell with it.
We went to Ben Benson's or Patsy's, I forget which it was for dinner, where they had to reschedule the MAL meeting.
So I know what it's like sitting on these airplanes for for it had to be before 1992.
I know that.
But I've never heard of LaGuardia being closed for rain.
Weather-related travel problems on getaway day.
Weather channel says it's not raining.
Well, I just saw it up on PMSNBC.
PMSNBC just said LaGuardia closed because of rain.
And they've got a reporter out there.
Well, anyway, greetings, welcome back, folks.
Great to have you, Rush Limboy, and the day before Thanksgiving.
On the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, 800 282-2882 is our telephone number.
Diana, uh, the editrix of the Limbaugh Letter just sent me something that's hilarious.
And I actually, when I first saw it, I thought, well, maybe they're gonna try to counter what I'm saying about Thanksgiving.
MoveOn.org has put out a five-page reminder to all of their subscribers.
Dear Move On member.
Americans are talking about the economy a lot.
They're talking about Occupy Wall Street and a supercommittee, about an economy that only works for the 1%, and about unemployment.
But thanks to Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, lots of talk about the economy means lots of misinformation about the economy.
So if you're spending this Thanksgiving holiday with friends and family, and you want to be ready with the facts to gently correct any myths that you hear, we put together a short guide with five common myths that you might hear, and easy to remember facts to respond to them.
Remember, you're the most important source of inf source information for your family and friends, so check it out, and then share it on Facebook or Twitter, or just forward this email.
Happy Thanksgiving, and of course, thanks for all you do.
And there are five things here that they claim that I and Fox News lie about.
That they want their readers to understand.
Myth number one, the supercommittee failed because both sides failed at compromise.
Myth number two, nobody knows what Occupy Wall Street's about.
Number three, occupiers should stop protesting and just get a job.
Number four, occupy Wall Street's intent on provoking violence, especially against banks and the police.
Myth five, the biggest crisis facing our country is out of control government spending.
Those are the five myths that they want their readers to be able to refute.
Over the Thanksgiving holiday.
These are the five lies that I and Fox News spread, polluting the minds of innocent Americans.
It's hilarious.
I thought when I first saw it that what they were actually going to do was counter and accuse me of lying about the real story of Thanksgiving.
Which I wouldn't doubt if they did someday.
Limbaugh's real story of Thanksgiving is myth number six.
Anyway, I'm gonna waste time here giving you details of what they say because it's all a bunch of misinformed lies and propaganda and absolute total BS.
I am my own shredder.
One of the great myths, speaking of myths, one of the great myths of Thanksgiving is that we swindled the Indians when we bought Manhattan Island from them.
We swindled them.
How many of you grew up thinking that?
We got Manhattan for 24 bucks.
That we cheated them.
It was bad enough we were wiping them out and stealing the buffalo and making fun of their headdress.
Then we had to swindle them by stealing Manhattan from them.
It turns out, according to a book about Teddy Roosevelt, that that's not true.
It turns out that the Indians are the one that ran the real estate scam when they sold Manhattan to us.
The book is Commissioner Roosevelt, the story of Theodore Roosevelt and the New York City Police, 1895 to 1897.
It's by a guy named Paul Jeffers.
Here are the relevant paragraphs about this.
A persuasive case can be made that the city of New York began with a swindle.
For generations, scruel children have been taught that a slick trick was played on unsuspecting Indians by the director of the Dutch West India Company, Peter Minuit.
In 1626, he purchased the island of Mannahattan, as it was called then, M-A-N-N-A-Hatton.
H-A-T-I-N, Mannahattan, for sixty gilders worth of trinkets, or about twenty-four dollars.
What Minuit did not know at the time, however, was that his masterful real estate deal had been struck with the Canarsi tribe, residents of Long Island.
They held no title to the land that they sold to the Dutch.
In due course, the intruders from Amsterdam, who thought they had pulled a sharp one on the locals, were forced into negotiating a second and more costly deal with the real landlords of Mannahattan, which is what it was called then, Manhattan.
But it was the Canarsi tribe that pulled one over on us.
The Canarsi tribe has since located to Brooklyn.
At any rate, the original story of Thanksgiving is, well, we'll set that straight later today, too.
And now we find out that the Dutch got swindled.
The poor Indians cannot catch a break.
Turns out that all of these years, your kids and you were probably taught that the evil white settlers really shafted the Indians by buying Manhattan from them for 24 bucks.
But, in fact, I actually love this.
The Canarsie tribe.
The Canarsie tribe.
They sold the land and they didn't have the right to it.
Fake paperwork.
They sold the they sold it and they went back over to Brooklyn.
And then you would have to buy it all over again.
I don't know what the price he paid the second time was.
But it was certainly more than twenty-four bucks.
And we go back to the phones to Indianapolis.
And Jeff.
Jeff, I'm glad you waited.
Great to have you with us on the EIB network.
Hello, sir.
Hi there, Rush.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family.
Same to you, sir.
Thank you very much.
Thanks.
And thanks for almost making me drive my car off the road with that introduction to Muchell Obama with laughing so hard.
Wow.
Hey, I was um I was watching the Republican debate last night, and that by far that was my favorite.
I thought everybody showed up and had very thoughtful answers.
I thought Newt shined again.
But as I was listening to the thought-out answers, especially regarding immigration, I found myself listening to debate now through the prism of what is President Obama's position on this.
And I was I was curious that anyone on the panel probably could have actually answered that question regarding the questions they were receiving.
Uh you mean is there a position Obama has that is known and that they could have come up with?
That is correct.
And then I was I was trying to think back to the the debates with McCain and Obama, and I was like, did he just get a pass on these questions, or am I just not remembering, or does he have a position on these, or was he just voting present?
Well, um it's it's an excellent question.
Uh uh, I mean, I know what Obama's position on immigration is, but I I can't tell you the last time he stated it, but it's obvious what it is if if you watch how he sues states that want to deal with uh open borders.
Uh if you if you watch who his friends are, um is is uh he's he's I know that he wants full and total amnesty.
And I think once once he's re-elected, he is uh he he's gonna with with if he gets a second term, uh all bets are off.
There's no more accountability.
He'd have to worry about being re-elected.
He'd have to worry about a damn thing.
So I think in the second term is where he's holding out a lot of things right now on practically every position Obama takes.
Like he pardoned the Turkey today.
I don't think Obama respects our Thanksgiving tradition.
I I I think he thinks it's all a uh a bunch of bunk.
When he talks about the American dream and working hard and and uh and you'd be rewarded, he doesn't believe that.
He doesn't he he thinks he thinks that's a myth.
I I I think I think Obama has to uh disguise his left wing extremism.
But when he's re-elected, if he's re-elected, there's not going to be any need for it.
He doesn't care about the Democrat Party.
We know that.
So in a second term, I think you know, Chris Matthews is asking me today why what we don't know what he's gonna do in his second term.
What's he gonna do?
What he he can't tell us, which I said to Matthews, he cannot afford to tell anybody what he's gonna do in his second term, or he would not get re-elected.
But for example, when it comes to immigration, if he is re-elected, he is going to punish his enemies and La Raza's enemies with full and total amnesty.
He is already taking steps that equate to backdoor amnesty.
All you have to do is ask Obama's aunt and uncle what they think about the illegal aliens.
He has members of his family in the country who are illegal.
I I I really this is what concerns me about the second term, and Chris Matthews bringing this up, by the way, in a in a frustrated manner.
What is his second term?
He should be informing the troops.
He should be marshaling his forces.
He should be getting everybody ready and on board.
And he can't, he doesn't dare, in my mind.
This is my great fear, folks.
He doesn't dare tell anybody what his second term intends.
When he doesn't have to worry about getting re-elected, there's no longer any reason to camouflage or mask any of it.
There's no longer any reason to pretend that he has ties to the great traditions of this country.
There's no longer any reason to make people think that he's something that he's not.
And I think he gets re-elected, he's going to look at okay, I got four years here to complete the total transformation of this country for whatever his motivations are, which we've discussed time and time again.
But I think the reason why Obama does not announce these positions is because he can't.
But we know he's for full total amnesty, and he'll make it happen as quickly as he can.
He is of the belief that every minority in this country is a victim.
Every minority, every individual person who is a minority is a victim, has been screwed, has been shafted by the very structure of this country, by the very constitution.
And his objective is to fix that, to take care of that.
He has embraced Occupy Wall Street twice.
Most recently this week.
He's embraced it.
It is the chaos that he wants.
He told a bunch of hecklers in Manchester, New Hampshire, you're the reason I ran for office.
They are the people in his mind who've been shafted by the inherent fundamental foundational unfairness of this country.
By virtue of its unfair, discriminatory, bigoted constitution.
I don't think anybody on the Republican side's got any guts to say it the way I'm saying it.
I don't think a Republican presidential candidate would say it the way I'm saying it, because most people don't want to believe that they've elected somebody who has those designs.
But folks, uh the what was the budget deficit in George W. Bush's last year in office.
Do you know what it was?
It was 170 billion dollars.
Obama, he wants to he wants you to think that two wars, Iraq and Afghanistan and a bunch of entitlements have done this.
But they haven't.
In fact, the entitlements have not created this debt.
That was already on the books.
This is brand new deficit spending, such as the stimulus, such as Obamacare.
Oh my God, folks, if that gets fully implemented in the second term, shudder to think.
Who's next?
Dawn in uh in Huntington, Michigan.
You're next.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hello, Rush Limbaugh.
Oh my gosh, you have made my Thanksgiving, my year.
God bless you.
I love you so much.
Thank you very much.
I really appreciate that.
Well, I have to say really quickly, I think I'm a rush baby because my dad introduced me to you back in like 88, 89.
Sunbathing outside, listening to, I think, is it the philanderer?
The philanderer, yes.
Sunbathing outside, listening to the philanderer.
That's great.
That's my memory of you.
And I love you.
Well, I'm happy to be a memory.
Thanks, thanks.
Listen, I was dying.
I I was actually gonna drive back past the school, but I had to pull over because I'm shaking so much that I'm actually talking to you.
So I'm driving, working, and the sales are out, and I drive by the a school, I think it's high school, and you know the science, the electronic science with the words and the words actually said.
Free breakfast for students on school days.
Free breakfast for students on school days.
Yes.
Why does that bother you?
I mean, that's that's they started serving school breakfast when I was in junior high.
That's you're you upset that they're advertising it on the uh on the sign?
Yeah, and I I mean I instantly went, oh my gosh, Rush.
They're like now they're offering breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Well, dinner just in Memphis.
Uh or is it more than in Memphis?
Are they screen they're doing school dinners in more than just Memphis?
Oh, really?
I thought it was I thought Memphis was the trial program.
Well, it clearly is uh is is out of hand, but it also pays to advertise.
I guess so.
I guess so.
It does.
I'm a big believer in advertising, as you know, and it pays.
You know what you ought to I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you something.
Don, you ever get to Washington?
I don't.
Can I drive it?
Yes, I can drive today Well, you know, we uh if you're ever in Washington and you stay in a hotel, grab a bottle of scotch, one of those mini bar bottles of scotch, and go to Ted Kennedy's grave and pour it on the grave.
Uh since your first memory here is of the uh philanderous Well that Harry Reed said that's what he did.
The politico had the story, he and Dodd seeking guidance on how to deal with a supercrony went out to Ted Kennedy's grave and and and read cited a uh prayer and and poem and and Dodd poured whiskey on Ted Kennedy's grave.
Rush, I'll do it for you.
That'll be our next family trip.
My seven five-year-old, my husband, and uh, uh well asked why we're going there.
Well, thank you very much.
I I I hope you have a great Thanksgiving too.
I uh I really do.
You may all all of you people, you make my day.
We could get into this time of the year, the holiday season, all the sentiment uh wells up in me, and the uh great sense of gratitude I have over the good fortune I've had with this radio program uh overwhelms me.
But at the same time, I'm thinking of you actually, you'll do it.
I know you'll go to Washington, and I can just see you now.
You're caught pouring a mini bottle mini bar bottle of scotch on Kennedy's grave in a copy.
What are you doing?
Rush Limbaugh told me.
Tell them that if you do it.
By the way, I want to thank we are getting uh tremendous feedback from from uh those of you who have access the uh the new gift set that we have at two if by tea dot com.
This is at two mugs, holding one of the mugs up now.
You can see the Rush Revere logo.
Uh on one side the mug says, Oh, say can you tea.
The other mug says uh liberals are coming.
It two mugs and some red, white, and blue jelly bellied jelly beans.
Uh jelly bellied jelly beans were Ronald Reagan's favorite jelly beans.
They happen to be my favorite too.
And uh it's a great price, and it's great quality, and unlike the tea, when you drink it, the tea's gone.
The mugs last forever.
And they're made in America, and that's hard to do.
It it's it's fine, it's it's difficult to find mugs made in America at a competitive price.
But we did it.
Catherine actually did it, and they're high quality and they're large.
And people have um already sent us great feedback about that.
And I just wanted to thank those of you who have, because uh it's it's great to have the high quality of this stuff acknowledged.
Look, the caller yesterday who went out of his way to talk about how well the tea itself is packaged.
So forth.
We spare no expense in doing it right.
And uh as I say, I get all sentimental this time of year, and th through n now throughout the end of the year.
And I just appreciate all the kind things that each of you say, be it via email or here on the phones.
And now time for a tradition, an annual tradition.
And that is the real story of Thanksgiving from my book.
That I wrote back in the early nineties, two of them actually.
In one of the books, The Real Story of Thanksgiving.
And reading from it has become something we do every year on the program because uh it's still not taught.
The myth of Thanksgiving still is what is taught.
And that myth is basically that a bunch of thieves from Europe arrived quite by accident at Plymouth Rock, and if it weren't for the Indians showing them how to grow corn and slaughter turkeys and stuff and how to swallow, that they would have died of starvation and so forth.
The Indians are great.
And then, in a total show of appreciation, we totally wiped out the Indians, we took their country from them.
We started racism, sexism, bigotry, homophobia, spread syphilis, uh, and basically destroyed the environment.
That is the multicultural version of Thanksgiving.
And it simply isn't true.
The real version of Thanksgiving is in my second best seller.
Two and a half million copies in hardbacks.
See, I told you so.
Chapter six, dead white guys, or what the history books never told you, the true story of Thanksgiving.
The story of the pilgrims begins in the early part of the 17th century.
Church of England, under King James I was persecuting anybody and everybody who didn't recognize its absolute civil and spiritual authority.
Those who challenged ecclesiastical authority and those who believed strongly in freedom of worship were hunted down, they were imprisoned and sometimes executed for their beliefs in England.
So a group of separatists first fled to Holland and established a community.
After eleven years, about forty of them agreed to make a perilous journey to the new world where they would certainly face hardships, but they could live and worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences.
On August 1st, 1620, the Mayflower set sail.
It carried a total of 102 passengers, including 40 pilgrims led by William Bradford.
On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract that established just and equal laws for all members of the community, irrespective of their religious beliefs.
Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower Compact come from?
They came from the Bible.
The pilgrims were a people completely steeped in the lessons of the old and new testaments, and they looked at the ancient Israelites for their example.
And because of the biblical precedents set forth in Scripture, they never doubted that their experiment would work, but it wasn't a pleasure cruise.
The journey to the New World was long and arduous, and when the pilgrims landed in New England in November, they found, according to Bradford's journal, a cold, barren, desolate wilderness.
The New York Jets had just lost to the Patriots.
There were no friends there to greet them.
There were no houses.
I just threw that in about the Jets and Patriots.
There were no houses to shelter them, no friends.
It was just a cold and barren shoreline.
There were no hotels where they could refresh themselves, and the sacrifice that they had made for freedom was just beginning.
During the first winter, half the pilgrims, including Bradford's own wife, died of either starvation, sickness, or exposure.
When spring finally came, Indians taught the settlers how to plant corn, fish for cod, and skin beavers for coats.
Life improved for the pilgrims, but they did not yet prosper.
This is important to understand because this is where modern American history lessons often end.
That you just heard, Indians taught them everything and they prospered.
That's it.
That's it.
But Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives rather than what it was.
A devout expression of gratitude grounded in the traditions of the Bible, the old and new testaments.
And here's the part that's been omitted.
The original contract that pilgrims had entered into with their merchant sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store.
Every member of the community was entitled to one common share.
All of the land that they cleared, all the houses they built, belonged to the community as well.
Everything belonged to everybody.
They were going to distribute everything equally, all the land they cleared, and the houses they built belonged to the community as well.
Nobody owned anything.
It was a forerunner of Occupy Wall Street.
Seriously.
The only hay, they had a share in it, but nobody owned anything.
It was a commune, folks.
The original pilgrim settlement was a commune.
It was the forerunner to the communes we saw in the 60s and 70s out in California and of Occupy Wall Street.
It was complete with organic vegetables.
There's no question they were organic vegetables.
What else could they be?
No such thing as process then.
Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony recognized that this form of collectivism was costly and destructive to the pilgrims as that first harsh winter which had taken so many lives.
So he decided to take bold action.
William Bradford assigned a plot of land to every family to work and manage as they saw fit.
And this turned loose the power of the marketplace.
Long before Karl Marx was ever born, the pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism, and it didn't work.
They nearly starved.
It never has worked.
What Bradford and his community found was that the most creative, the most industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anybody else, unless they could utilize the power of personal motivation.
While most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years, trying to refine it, perfect it, reinvent it, the pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently.
What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should be in every history lesson.
If it were, we might prevent such needless suffering in the future.
If it were, there would not have been an Occupy Wall Street.
There wouldn't be any romance for it.
The experience that we had in this common course and conditions of Bradford writing, the experience we had in this common course and condition, experience we had.
Tried Sunday sundry years that by taking away property and bringing community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing as if they were wiser than God.
This was his way of saying it didn't work.
We thought we were smarter than everybody.
Everybody was going to share equally.
Nobody was going to have anything more than anybody else.
It was going to be hunky dory kumbaya.
Except it didn't work.
Because half of them didn't work.
Maybe more.
They depended on the others to do all the work.
There was no incentive.
For this community, so far as it was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.
For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense, without being paid for it.
That was thought to be injustice.
They figured it out real quick.
Resentment built.
Why should you work for other people when you can't work for yourself?
That's what he was saying.
So the pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive.
So what did Bradford's community try next?
They unharnished the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property.
Every family was again assigned its own plot of land to work, and they were permitted this time to market their own crops and products and sell them.
What was the result?
Well, Bradford wrote this had very good success, for it made all hands industrious.
So much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.
Is it possible supply-side economics could have existed before the 1980s?
Yes, it did.
This is where it gets really good.
If you're laboring under the misconception that I was you were taught in school, they set up trading posts.
They exchanged goods with the Indians.
This is what happened after everybody had their own plot of land and were allowed to market it and develop it as they saw fit and got to keep what they produced.
Bounty, plenty resulted.
And then they set up trading posts, stores.
They exchanged goods with the Indian, they sold the Indians things.
Good old fashioned commerce, they sold stuff.
And there were prophets.
Because they were screwing the Indians with the price.
I'm just throwing that in.
No, there were prophets And the prophets allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London who had sponsored them.
The Canarsi tribe showed up.
They paid double.
Which is what made the Canarsi tribe screw us in the Manhattan deal years later.
I'm just threw that in.
They paid off the merchant sponsors back in London with their profits.
They were selling goods and services to the Indians.
The success and the prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans.
What was barren was now productive.
And this became known as the Great Puritan Migration.
This story stops when the Indians taught the newly arrived suffering in socialism pilgrims how to plant corn and fish for cod.
That's where the original Thanksgiving story stops.
Story basically doesn't even begin there.
The real story of Thanksgiving is William Bradford giving thanks to God.
The pilgrims giving thanks to God for the guidance and the inspiration to set up a thriving colony for surviving the trip, for surviving the experience and prospering in it.
The bounty was shared with the Indians.
That's the story.
They did sit down.
They did have free range turkey and organic vegetables, but there were no trans fats.
But it wasn't the Indians who saved the day.
It was capitalism and scripture which saved the day, as acknowledged by George Washington in his first Thanksgiving proclamation in 1789.
Which I also have here.
But I must take a brief time out.
We'll do that.
And by the way, the life expectancy back then was not much.
Not compared to today.
And just remember, they were not eating trans fats.
And they didn't live as long as we do today.
I want to quickly tell you about one passenger on the Mayflower, a guy named Francis Eaton.
He was not one of the pilgrims.
Another passenger.
He was a carpenter.
He died in 1633, 13 years after they landed at Plymouth.
And here's what he left in his will.
One cow, one calf, two hogs, fifty bushels of corn, a black suit, a white hat, a black hat, boots, saws, hammers, square augers, a chisel, fishing, fishing lead, and some kitchen items and his season tickets to the Redskins cowboys.
No, no, seriously.
This is the estate of one of the men who probably built many of the houses for the first settlers.
Very modest.
But it shows what he saw as wealth back then.
Okay, we have uh well, best of show tomorrow, right?
And Friday as well, two best of shows.
Yep.
And I'll be back on Monday.
Uh ladies and gentlemen, by the way, City of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Federal judge has told them they cannot seek bankruptcy protection.
That is illegal.
A lot of cities are going to try this.
A federal judge, Harrisburg can't do it.
They have been done in by EPA rules.
It's why they're trying to file for bankruptcy, but they can't do it.
Okay, folks, happy Thanksgiving to everybody, and we'll be back Monday.
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