All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 2, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:45
January 2, 2012, Monday, Hour #2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hi, and welcome back, Rush Limboy here at the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
This the most listened to radio talk show in the country.
And I am America's real anchor man, America's truth detector, and the Doctor of Democracy, all combined in one harmless, lovable little fuzzball bundle.
Great to have you with us.
Our telephone number if you want to be on the program is 800 28282.
The email address, L Rushball at EIB net.com.
There are two million more kids qualifying for free school meals this year than there were in 2010.
14 million up from 12 million in 2010.
All told, the number of students receiving subsidized lunches rose to 21 million last year, from 18 million in 2006-2007, a 17% increase.
And in Tennessee, the number of students receiving subsidized meals has grown 37% since 2007.
And speaking of expanding government, Fox News, other channels are running a PSA about how Medicare is now holding open enrollment.
So you need to sign up now so you don't miss any of your free benefits.
Yep, all you have to do, call 1-800 Medicare.
There's the story on all of these uh bureaucrats, these uh these security people.
At Heathrow walked off the job because they're gonna have to pay a little bit more for their own pensions, and things are running more smooth than they have in anybody's memory.
These people have walked off the jobs and operations in Heathrow are smooth as silk.
I think it's an interesting backfire.
So what I was gonna say here before the break at the top of the hour, I a lot of this that is happening in this country is happening because there are people who hate this country.
And if that's too strong a word for you, that there are people that don't like this country.
Now, I I mentioned this to the uh electric crowd in New York last night at the town hall.
By the way, Snerdley, did you know Town Hall?
Almost 90 years ago to the day that I was there last night, Margaret Sanger was arrested on stage.
Margaret Sanger was arrested on stage for discussing contraception to a mixed sex audience.
That's amazing how times have changed.
Margaret Sanger today would be arrested for wanting to wipe out black people, which was part of uh what she really planned parenthood.
That's what it was rigidal purposes.
People don't want to admit this.
Margaret Sanger is a hero to the abortion crowd, but what she really had in mind was something far more devious.
At any rate, I know I know I'm naive.
I'm 60 years old and I remain naive.
There's some things that I'm just never going to understand.
I mean in my heart, intellectually, after I've looked into it and studied it, I it's even tough to say I understand.
I literally I have the hardest time coming to grips with the fact that people born in this country hate it.
I just can't get my arms around that.
Of all the other places in the world you could be.
Of all the other places in the world that need to be changed, all the other places in the world that need to be improved.
This is the last place.
It's not perfect again, nothing ever is.
Uh Naive by choice.
Am I naive by choice?
Maybe.
But I st I still I have to stop and analyze it when I see here read people that don't like this country.
I've heard all the reasons.
Slavery for one.
But throw that out, because we've lost half a million of our citizens fixing that.
We're one of the first nations to abolish it, make it illegal.
In the modern era.
Slavery still is practiced around the world.
In fact, in Africa.
But aside from that, I, you know, I can I've had African American people tell me that Thanksgiving doesn't mean anything to them.
And July 4th doesn't mean anything to them.
I even have trouble with that.
Because this is not 1776.
It's 2011.
I just have a tough time understanding people who hate and don't like this country.
The reasons that they come up with don't move me.
I see a country that's been in existence less than two hundred fifty years, with less than three hundred million people, and has done miraculous things.
And I say this a lot, but I think it's worth repeating.
We're our DNA is not different than any other human being.
We're not different in any way.
We're human like everybody else on the earth has always been human.
We're special in a lot of ways, but we're not different.
There's nothing that sets us apart in terms of our humanity.
So how is it possible that a nation of less than 300 million people in fewer than 250 years when there have been societies and countries and populations around thousands of years that still can't do 20% of what we have accomplished.
And of course the answers are obvious.
First one that comes to mind is freedom.
True.
But there have been places around the world that had decent amounts of freedom.
British Empire was built by people who were free.
It doesn't exist anymore, by the way.
British Empire, but there's magic.
There was a spiritual blessing in the founding of this country.
It was a miraculous thing.
The history of humanity has been poverty and bondage, slavery, tyranny, slavery.
Certainly hasn't been freedom.
You talk about American exceptionalism.
In one sense, the term doesn't mean we're exceptional better.
That's what people of Obama look at.
They don't, well, I'm sure the British think they're exceptional too.
Look, small mind, that's not what American exceptionalism means.
American exceptionalism is not a braggadocious term.
American exceptionalism is not a superiorist term.
American exceptionalism is an acknowledgement that this country was an exception to the way people lived, to the way people were forced to live.
This country is an exception to the standard operating procedure of human beings.
This was the first serious country to govern itself, and Outside of central planning, a powerful government dictating and ordering everything.
That's where we're headed now, but that's not how we were founded.
I really don't mind admitting my naivete.
I do not understand how you can hate this country.
you And look, life hasn't been a bowl of cherries for me.
Fired seven or eight times, whatever it was, never made any money until I was in my late forties.
Didn't matter.
The possibility was always there.
The opportunity was always was up to me.
Yeah, there were people that held me back.
Had to find a way around them, but it mostly had to just find out what I love to do and remain dedicated to it.
And then work hard.
And now all of that.
That's even laughed at and made fun of.
Oh, yeah, well, easy for you to say.
Yeah, easy for you to work hard and get a job.
Well, you were just lucky.
No.
No.
I've had lucky elements, lucky things happen.
Everybody does.
But it has never occurred to me to hate the country.
It has just never occurred to me.
But you take a guy like Obama and half of his administration, if not all of it.
And they run around and they look at America as exceptionally evil.
They think that America became what it became by virtue of crime.
We stole all the stuff that we have.
First from the Indians.
And then the people in the Caribbean.
And then we stole it from the Indians again.
Then we made the Indians alcoholics.
Then we turn them into this, and we've stolen all the oil in the world, and we've stolen all the grass, and we've stolen all the broccoli, and we've stolen all the corn and we've stolen all the natural gas.
And because of that, we're destroying the world.
can't intellectually follow this.
I'd I just try to find out what you know.
If I wanted to change somebody's mind who has this view of America, how would I do it?
You have to be able to, as a starting point, understand the grievance that they've got.
But if the grievance they have is totally irrational, what do you do with them?
As far as I'm concerned, you defeat them.
You don't try to bring them along.
I it's it's it's those days are over.
They're not the only thing we have to do is make sure people like that don't win elections anymore.
There's still always going to be a problem.
Simplest way to do this, the simplest way would simply be to take over the education system.
If every university was Hillsdale College, for example.
Think of that.
I say that not just because they're a sponsor, even though they are.
What do they do?
I don't care what your degree is at Hillsdale.
You study the Constitution for four years, you understand when you get out of that place why this country is what it is.
You understand how it happened.
You understand the imperfections, you understand the greatness, and you understand the flaws.
You know it.
It used to be that that was rote.
Used to be that go to school, that's what you were taught.
Now the multicultural curriculum is taken over, and that's the last thing you're you are taught as a young student.
How flawed your country is, how criminal it is, how unjust and immoral it has been.
How your country's destroying the planet, and only you can save the planet by agreeing to let the government run your life, pay higher taxes, have a bunch of windmills that you don't want, a bunch of solar panels that you can't afford, it don't work.
Drive a bunch of cars that are going to catch fire on you after you run through the 30-mile charge.
Yeah, progress.
I must take a brief timeout.
You know, I haven't gotten to one story in my show prep stack here.
Not once that I got a great show prep stack here.
I got two great show prep stacks.
So we'll get started, and your phone calls are coming up.
Okay, let's go to the phones as.
uh let's see.
You know what?
My implant just fell off here, and I'm gonna have to get it put back on me, turning a ditto cam off, so can't hear anything.
What we have a cute little parody bit that we put together about the New York Times story on Monday regarding Obama, his campaign not being interested at all in the votes of white working families.
So let's listen to that.
Well, you listen to it while I get re-hooked up here.
Now a message to all white working class voters from President Barack Obama.
Recently, you may have read in the New York Times that well, no, you you probably didn't.
But they said that I intend to abandon white working class voters in the coming election.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
I want white folks to abandon the working class, move down and enjoy a new kind of freedom.
Free housing, free food, free time, and free cash.
Well, we've strengthened the safety net and made it so comfortable.
You'll wonder why you ever went to work at the plant in the first place.
Or move up from the working class.
I'll give you a loan to go back to school, and with the help of some really smart people, you'll drop all that founding fathers nonsense as you learn to care deeply about what your professors care deeply about and kiss your way up to a government job.
Who knows?
Someday you might stick it to your boss and shut that plant down with a stroke of a pen.
White folks, if you're gonna be with me, you gotta move up or down.
If you're stuck in the white working class, become a useful productive citizen in President Obama's United States of Tomorrow.
And we are back, El Rush Bowl.
You're guiding light, and now to the phones, Riverdale in New York.
Adam, I'm glad you called.
It's great to have you on the program, sir.
Hi, Rush.
Uh, I need your help today.
Um I was thinking about 1980.
I remember Jimmy Carter very well, and I remember that the whole country could hardly wait till he was voted out.
And I knew he was going to lose by a landslide, and he did.
Now, I was hoping that the same thing applies to Obama.
I'm hoping that the whole country wants him out, that it's a Jimmy Carter-like situation.
Lately I've been feeling a little more hesitant about that because even conservatives that I know in New York, they're saying, well, Obama has all the money for the commercials, and um uh Gingrich is he's not very exciting, and Romney, he's like a nervous car salesman.
I think they're good statesmen, and I think they can make their points very well.
But I'm somehow I just have the feeling that there's a slight chance that Obama could slide by and win.
Now, of course there is.
I mean, uh anything can happen.
I mean, anybody can win the election coming up.
Yeah.
Uh I it would be foolish to sit here and tell you that Obama is finished.
However, you make an interesting point, and you you're actually expanding on something that I was talking about in the uh in the first hour.
Let's go back to 1980.
You say that you remember back then that you f you've you knew you had a sense that the Carter was gonna lose by a landslide.
Yes, I was forced to be a little bit more than a big one.
You were among a precious few who thought so.
Back in nineteen eighty, the biggest shock I can ever remember the media experiencing up until nineteen ninety-two was the size of Jimmy Carter's defeat.
The polling data did not reflect a Reagan landslide.
It was so massive that Carter conceded before California had closed its polls.
Really?
That's how bad it was.
No poll indicated it.
And even going into the nineteen eighty election, I'm glad you brought this up.
Ronald Reagan, we look back now, and we see as close to perfection as we uh can ever imagine.
And we imagine we remember uh all of this enthusiasm, but it wasn't there.
There was there was n Reagan was not assured, but the Republican establishment was not enamored of Reagan.
They didn't like Reagan winning.
They wanted George Bush back in 1980.
76.
They uh you know, Reagan owned that convention at the Kemper Arena in Kansas City.
I was there.
I was working in Kansas City at the time, Reagan owned it, but the Republican establishment won that nomination process.
And Gerald Ford got, but Reagan owned it.
Reagan was the sentimental favorite.
He came back in nineteen eighty, but even going into nineteen eighty, uh I hear people talk about I'm not excited about any of these candidates.
There wasn't a commensurate amount of excitement about Reagan.
Not that matches how we look back at him.
If you go back to that election, when we get into 1980 election, that election day was fraught with as much anticipation and fear as any election is.
And yet it ended up being this massive landslide.
Now my point to you is the same thing's happening here.
We're told that with the wrong candidate, Obama can sweep to victory that there's 47% of people who don't pay taxes, and all these people on school lunchburg and Obama can't be beat.
He's got a billion dollars.
And this is my point about every day you get up, I don't care where you go, you see the imperfections of our candidates highlighted.
You got Newt's problem here, you got Romney problem over there, you got a Bachman problem.
Could we focus on Obama?
Could the people ostensibly on our side of things start focusing on Obama rather than trying to find the perfect Republican conservative?
Because that person doesn't exist.
I'm telling you, with his numbers eight points below Carter's, With half the country afraid to spend money on Christmas presents, with people out of their homes, no jobs, and no outlook.
Would somebody please explain to me where it is automatic that the incumbent wins.
This is why you have to constantly fight the images and the news presented in the mainstream media each and every day, because they are designed to dispirit you.
Now, this is a great caller.
This is a this is very instructive.
Back in 1980, running up to the election, just uh a couple of weeks prior to the election, throughout that campaign, by the way, Ronald Reagan in 1980 up in Jimmy Carter.
And the country, in comparative terms, was exactly where it is now.
It's worse today than it was then, but back then people didn't know that today was gonna be.
It was it was horrible for the misery index had been created to quantify how horrible it was.
And yet Jimmy Carter giving speeches like Obama does the Malay is in the country, and Obama's out telling the rest of the world that American workers are lazy and so forth, and Jimmy Carter was basically saying that we had um long national nightmare of malaise and so forth.
It was it was utter despair.
It was disaster.
Reagan's negatives, he was a bumbling buffoon, he was dangerous, he was a cowboy, he was a bad actor, he was unproven, he was unstable.
It was everything that they're saying about every one of our candidates except Romney.
They're saying whatever they said about Reagan, they're saying about Rick Perry.
They're saying about Bachman, they're saying about Newt.
Reagan was outspent by Jimmy Carter.
Carter had the media on his side just like Obama does.
And up until the last couple of days in the 1980 campaign, the polcers had it close, a toss-up with Carter perhaps leading in a couple of them.
And then, miraculously, the pollsters stopped reporting.
Couple three days before the election, they started dwindling the reports of the polling numbers because the pollsters realized that they were gonna have to adjust here to avoid being mocked and made fun of.
Now, back then you didn't have 47% of households not paying income tax, and back then you didn't have 44.2 million people on food stamps.
And back then you didn't have the foreclosures that you have today.
It was bad for the times.
It's worse now Than it was then in any comparative way that you want to look at.
Much worse.
And yet the cycle is repeating.
Even though we get numbers here, like Obama's approval numbers are below Carter's.
You tell me if I'm wrong.
The assumption, wherever you go, ABC, CBS, NBC, New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, USA Democrats, wherever you go, the assumption is Obama's going to be re-elected.
And the assumption is that the Republican nominee, whoever it is, is an idiot, is a flawed character.
Something terribly wrong about every one of them.
They're intellectually deficient or they're flip-floppers, or they are liars, or sexual harassment, or you name it.
In a Gallup poll on October 26th in 1980, October 20th, two weeks before the election, Gallup had it Jimmy Carter 47, Ronald Reagan 39.
That election two weeks later ended up in a landslide that was so big that Carter conceded before California closed.
Now the same thing's happening now.
However, if you look, and if you are open, you will see the truth.
Doug Schoen and Pat Cadell, I'm going to remind you again, have written a column begging Obama to get out for the sake of the country and for the sake of the Democrat Party.
Now, part of it is that they both want Hillary.
But these two guys are polsters, and Cadell was a pollster for Carter.
Schoen was a polster for Clinton.
They did the same thing going into the 2010 midterm elections.
They wrote, column after column, you Democrats don't know what's going to happen to you in these elections.
You are lying to yourselves if you do not understand the problems that you've got, and they got they got shellacked all the way down the ballot to dog catcher in 2010.
And today, they're trying to tell us that that doesn't mean anything because the Tea Party no longer exists at Occupy Wall Street is real America now.
That it's the 99% versus the 1%.
Now these two guys, and they're not through.
They go on television and they say this over and over again.
And they're not Republicans.
They're not Republicans in disguise.
Now my point, folks, is not to tell you that it's over.
My point, and I tried to hammer this last night.
My point is that it is harder for all of us every day to remain positive because we are inundated with negative story after negative attitude after negative this negative that we are, it is flooding us.
And even if you try to avoid it by avoiding ABC, CBS, NBC, New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, if you avoid all that, you're still gonna find it if you go to certain so-called conservative websites and publications, because they too are getting in on the act of, well, this candidate can't win.
This candidate's flawed.
This candidate is a flip.
This candidate's got big, big problems.
Why, the only reason Herman Cain's staying in the race is matching funds.
He's cooked.
He's done.
He's over with.
He's gonna get out in January because it's matching funds.
And then Newt, Newt out there saying he didn't lobby for Fannie May Freedom, he lobbied Newt.
These are our so-called team members saying this stuff.
Why are they saying this stuff?
Because they have a different audience.
They're trying to gain respect and approval of their peers on the left who are in media.
You, on the other hand, are going to these sites because you think they're conservative.
You think they're on the conservative team, so to speak.
Now, my only point in all of this, I say it again, is that it takes us a considerable effort to not succumb to defeatism.
Now that's precisely what it is hoped happens to all of us.
They hope as many of you as possible get so fed up with this whole Republican field, you just throw your hands up in front of you, hell with it, I don't want any part of it.
None of these guys can win.
None of these guys, I don't get it, I'm not excited about any of them to hell with it.
That's what they want you to do.
They've got no choice.
They are trying to get the biggest loser in the history of presidents re-elected.
And this loser has a record so bad they can't even mention it.
So all they can do is scorched earth, destroy the country.
This is Schoen's point and Cadell's point.
That even if Obama wins, this country is going to pay a price like it's never paid because the campaign is going to be so negative, so destructive.
It's going to be so divisive that even after he wins, he's not going to have any support.
But that doesn't matter because he doesn't care.
He doesn't care.
He's the guy who sent his own campaign guy out to tell everybody on Monday, the New York Times, nope, we don't care about the votes of working white families.
The great unifier, the great Barack Obama is going to bring everybody together in a unified sense like we've never seen before.
Love everywhere.
Yeah, right.
So all they can do on the Obama side is scorch the earth.
All they can do, you talk about politics of personal destruction.
You haven't seen anything until these people get going once we do have a nominee.
Because the last thing they can afford to happen is for this nation to be told point blank that Barack Obama is why they don't have a job.
That Barack Obama is why their kids might not have a job, that Barack Obama is why their kids are not moving out of the house.
That Barack Obama is why.
They're afraid to have a good Christmas.
They can't afford for that to be told, so they're not going to tell it.
They're going to leave it to people like me and others.
And of course, what are we going to be called?
Extremists, fanatics, what have you.
Who are we?
All we are, you and I, are people who love this country.
We understand what makes it special.
And we want it special for everybody.
We want everybody to do well, and we want everybody to be happy.
We want everybody to be content, as many as possible.
We don't care about anything else.
We don't look at people and subdivide them into groups.
We don't feel sorry for groups of people.
We don't get caught up in all of that.
All we want is people trying to be the best they can be.
Knowing full well that nobody's perfect.
Knowing full well that not everybody is going to be as good as they can be.
But what we don't want is a leader telling people that they live in a country that has betrayed them, that offers them no opportunity whatsoever because 1% of their fellow citizens have stolen everything from them and refused to give any of it back.
We've always had divisive leftists.
We've never had a president do it.
We have never had a president who actively, purposely sought division, class warfare resentment.
We have never had a president who wanted groups of Americans hating each other, blaming each other.
We've got a guy in the White House and his whole team now who are promoting that, fostering that, nurturing that.
And whether some of us are able to actually put it in that terminology or understand it that way, we know something's not right, and it's infuriating and it's frightening.
Because we know that the way this country is being managed right now is not the way this is supposed to be done.
It's not the way things happen.
We have never been led by somebody opposed to progress.
We've always had crony capitalists.
We've always had corruption in government, we've always had people taking care of their big donors and so forth.
But we've never had a series of appointees and czars, unaccountable, whose sole objective is to transform this country into a socialist state.
that has as its number one enemy the people who work and produce and achieve.
We have that now.
Thank you.
Whether you realize it in that direct graphic away or whether you just sense it, you know it.
Sometimes hard to admit.
We actually elected somebody like this.
We don't want to think this kind of stuff about presidents.
Chris Christie the other day, it was yesterday.
I'm flying up to New York.
I'm watching the television.
Chris Christie's going on a rant here about Obama not showing up at the deficit super committee hearings.
What are we paying him for?
Well, that's a good question.
You talk about naive.
I gotta take a break here.
I'll finish the thought in just a second and get back to your phone calls.
Chris Christie, what are we paying him for?
What is he doing?
Where's his leadership?
Now I know that Christie has endorsed Romney and and and Governor Christie.
That that's a that's a campaign thing.
It's actually furthering the Romney campaign, which is fine.
That's not my point here.
I'm not I'm not ripping Governor Christie for who he's supporting.
My only point is here is that the real answer to the question, what are we paying him for?
What do you expect?
There was no way that that supercommittee was ever going to come up with anything.
This campaign's invested a billion dollars in a do nothing Congress.
The last thing in the world I told the crowd last night, if the Super Committee had agreed to shelve the Bush tax cuts and raise tax rates on the rich, the Democrats would not have gone for it.
They wouldn't have.
Nope, nope, nope.
They're gonna do that after the election.
Right now they need a do nothing Congress.
Hell, Republicans gave them 300 billion dollars in tax increases, turned it down.
What are we paying him for?
Anyway, uh John in Argyll, Texas.
I'm glad you called, sir.
Welcome to the program.
Russia got to take issue with you before you think it's a serial caller.
To my left here where I'm sitting is on my I Love Me Wall, a certificate signed by you in December of 1992, confirming I'm a ditto head.
Carried my three daughters, which were all raised as rush babies up to a bake sale in Colorado.
Okay, I know you're not a seminar caller because you didn't even get the term right.
You said serial because you're not a seminar caller, I'll grant that.
Okay, Rush.
What you said earlier about unions.
I am uh a union member at AMR American Airlines.
Right.
And this certificate you signed in 1992, I'm a 767 international captain.
I love you.
I love it.
Right.
My pay rate today is identical as when I was flying the Super 80 in 1992.
In 2003, AMR, American Airlines came to the 90,000 plus employees and said, help us stay out of bankruptcy.
The employees stood up with billions of dollars of concessions, no more so than the pilot union.
Two to one, if not more.
Shortly after that, which caused Don Cardi's resignation, upper management started taking millions, tens of millions of dollars in bonuses, and have so every year since.
The shared sacrifice never became the shared gain.
Before you give me a pay raise, give one to the co-pilots I fly with.
Before they get one, give one to the flight attendants.
Before they get one, give it to the ground crew.
Before they get one, give it to the secretary.
Not at AMR.
They fill their pockets first.
When you rush, no, this is my argument with you now, Rush.
When you and Sean and Mark Levin all paint, And said to the to ABC, NBC, uh CBS, and the rest said, Don't paint the Tea Party with a big swath.
They're not all that way.
Just because you've got one, all unions aren't run by Trumpka.
Oh, okay.
How much how much how much do non union pilots make?
I'm sorry?
How much do non union pilots make?
I have no idea.
I'm not a non union pilot, Rush.
If you need one of those, have one of them call in.
You make the call, you'll get to the point.
You're missing my point.
And you are being contented a little more contentious here than is justified.
Well, I'm sorry.
Uh I'm upset because um uh we've been in negotiations for several.
Okay, hang on.
I got you hang on.
I want a question for you, but I don't have time to answer it right now.
You tell me what's necessary to fix this.
Be back in just a second.
All right, we will get back to our contentious American Airlines uh pilot from Argyle, Texas, in our next busy broadcast segment.
Because we haven't time in this current busy broadcast segment, but we are in the middle of the fastest three hours in media, folks, two of them down and in a can, and just one big one to go.
And I still got the greatest stack of show prep I haven't touched yet.
▲
Export Selection