Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Oh, geez, I just heard something.
You know, I really like Dana Perino.
And maybe I ought to stop there.
Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, welcome.
It's Rush Limbaugh from High Atop, the EIB building at the EIB Southern Command in a hidden location, heavily fortified here in South Florida.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program 800-282-2882, the email address, lrushbaugh at EIBNet.com.
Well, she just said, she's listening to Huntsman.
She thinks she was singing Huntsman's praises.
She's listening to Huntsman yesterday.
She had heard Huntsman say that the country is screwed.
She said, that's not presidential.
That's not the way we want to talk.
They say the country is screwed.
It's live TV.
You can screw up and you can say the wrong thing, but it really is not the kind of discourse.
And then she said, I was watching TV today and I saw John Huntsman ad, and he says right in the ad that the country's screwed with Obama.
That's just not the way we want to talk.
It's just not the folks.
We are screwed.
This recess appointment stuff, it's extra constitutional.
It is lawless.
The Senate is not in recess.
Who's going to stop the guy?
That's the question.
Nobody's got, if we're going to sit around and say, you can't say, screwed, you got McCain out there.
McCain ripping Newt for saying that Romney's a liar.
John McCain slammed Newt Gingrich yesterday.
Sorry, today.
I can't believe it's already Thursday.
John McCain slammed Newt Gingrich Thursday for calling Mitt Romney a liar, accusing him of crossing the line of something we don't do in politics.
McCain was on the early show on CBS, and he said, I just, I don't think it's appropriate to call your opponent a liar.
That's just something that we don't do in politics unless you have overwhelming proof.
Really?
Now they tell us.
Who knew that something we don't do in politics is call our opponents liars unless we have overwhelming proof, Which we do, if we're talking about Obama.
Anyway, so this also, McCain, here's the guys.
Yes, we're not going to pronounce Obama's middle name.
That's just not how we do things in politics.
It's not going to happen.
If you see it, you're out of here.
You understand?
As I say, I like Dana Perino, but I just...
Folks, you haven't heard anything.
You just, you, I've been waiting.
I have been waiting to see if this gets reported.
It has not been reported.
It's not gone beyond where I first saw it.
Well, I take it back.
It has appeared in one other place.
Our old buddy James Pethakoukas, who writes at Reuters and some other places, has discovered that one of the objectives Obama has with all these recess appointments is to brace yourself here.
Essentially, when you strip it all away, if this happens, what Obama is planning on doing is essentially forgiving all mortgages.
There are some requirements.
You have to be paying on your mortgage.
You have to be three months current, but Obama is going to just wave a magic wand and allow people to refinance their mortgages, essentially cutting hundreds of dollars off of the monthly payment.
This will cost $1.2 trillion.
And as always, it is those of you who don't have a mortgage or who will not qualify for this plan who will be paying for it.
This is buying an election in one fell swoop.
This is what?
What quote from yesterday?
Oh, well, everybody's saying, even Rove, even Rove is out there saying it's not a smart move to spend 20 minutes on stage with McCain if you are Romney, having McCain endorse you.
It's really not a smart move.
20 minutes on Hannity last night.
I don't know who they think.
I don't know.
I just don't know.
I don't know how they think they're helping themselves.
But that's, don't get me sidetracked here.
This, folks, it may not matter who the nominee is.
It may not matter about the primaries.
It may not matter about any polling data.
We have a president who is cutting the defense budget now.
His priorities are winning the future, paying off his wackoed donors and weakening national security in the process, proudly saying that it's about time we pared down to the point where we can only fight one ground war at a time.
The idea that we should be able to fight two ground wars at a time is excessive and unnecessary.
So we're cutting the defense budget.
Major, all of this predictable, by the way.
There is a plan afoot by virtue of these recess appointments.
Now it's a little bit more complicated, but the bottom line is in terms of perception, the perception is going to be on the part of people that Obama is forgiving their mortgages.
The perception and the way it's going to be reported, this is not really what's going to happen, but the way it's going to be reported and the way people are going to be made to feel is that Obama is fixing their mortgage.
He's fixing the fact that their house is underwater.
He is going to lower their monthly payment.
The banks, the rich guys are going to take the hit on it, millionaires and so forth.
Your house is going to have value again in one fell swoop with an executive order.
We're going to fix the housing problem.
We're going to bring value back to everybody's number one asset.
Now, if that happens, and if it's reported that way, then all the rest of this is irrelevant.
You go out and basically, as president, make it possible for people's mortgages to be paid much cheaper, the value of their home restored just with a wave of your magic wand.
Who's going to vote against that?
Who is going to vote against the guy that makes that happen for them?
That's the plan.
Now, it's not guaranteed that it's going to happen.
If it does, the monthly mortgage payment of people affected would fall by an average of $355 a month for Obama's constituents.
That is not insignificant.
For a lot of people, that's close to the payment we're talking about here.
For a lot of people, it's half the payment.
It's not insignificant.
You reduce people's monthly payment by 400 bucks just by waving the magic wand.
And there's one guy who did it, Obama.
Now, I want to take you back to some of the early town halls after the guy was elected over in Tampa.
There's this woman saying, all right, well, where's my new kitchen?
You know, where's my new car?
Well, here it comes, election year 2012.
But instead of a new kitchen, new car, hey, guess what?
You know what?
Here's your mortgage, refinanced, totally affordable, as it should have been in the first place.
The banks were ripping you off.
The banks were overcharging you, but I am making your mortgage affordable and your value of the home is now worth something.
And who's going to stop it?
Who's going to nobody?
No.
Of course they're going to have to.
What do you mean the bank's going to grab the ankles on this?
The banks have been grabbing the ankles ever since the Community Redevelopment Act.
The military is grabbing the ankles on cutting themselves.
McCain's grabbing the ankle.
We don't call anybody liars.
Politics.
It's not how we do it.
Unless you have incontrovertible.
And we don't really want to say the country's screwed.
That's just not presidential.
So while we're sitting here worried about semantics sounding presidential, we've got a guy who is living and behaving outside the Constitution.
We have a lawless regime here.
We have a banana republic taking place.
We have a dictatorship unfolding here.
This mortgage thing, and I'll give you the details here as the program unfolds.
But remember, folks, it's not the details here that are going to matter.
It's the perception and how this is reported.
And when it's all over, the beneficiaries of this program are going to be told that Obama is basically forgiving their mortgage, forgiving a loan.
Obama is basically giving them a house, giving them their house.
And they deserve that because the rich banks have screwed them all these years by overcharging them and so forth.
And Obama finally cut these people down.
This is how it's going to be reported.
It's the same thing with the jobless numbers.
I warned you.
I warned you back in December.
Get ready.
And lo and behold, all it's taken is one month for it to come through.
The new jobless numbers is look, oh, gee, are we in fat city?
Why?
Everybody's going back to work.
The economy's rebuilding everybody.
So it's a lot to deal with here.
Let me take a brief time out.
We'll come back and I'll put all of this in a semblance of order and give you the details of this.
The mortgage thing's not guaranteed to happen.
And I don't want to say it's a fait accompli.
I just want to tell you it's what's planned.
This would be the mother of all stimulus bills.
They're calling this the Home Assistance Refinancing Program 2.0.
The Home Assistance Refinancing Pro HARP, HARP 1.0 failed.
It didn't work.
The mortgage adjustment didn't.
They're going back and they're going to do it again.
They're calling it HARP 2.0.
So we have a president who has gone rogue.
Even yesterday in Ohio, to set this up, Obama at his town hall meeting repeated his lie that the banks tricked people into getting bad mortgages.
The banks tricked people, lured them in.
And that's not at all what happened.
The government is responsible for the subprime mortgage crisis, as you well know, because you're a devoted and regular listener to the program.
But this is all set up yesterday with Obama in Ohio.
Obviously, I got to take a brief time out.
You'll sit tight.
I know you will.
I know you're not going anywhere.
We'll be back in mere moments right after this.
Welcome back, Rush Limbaugh here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network at the cutting edge of societal evolution.
After receiving a bailout, ladies and gentlemen, General Motors may move their coal-powered automobile manufacturing to the Chikoms.
What do you mean, Mr. Limbaugh?
There's no such thing as a coal-fowered-powered car.
Yeah, there is.
It's called a Chevy Volt.
And it's powered by coal.
No, Mr. Limbaugh, it's powered by a battery.
Everybody knows that the Chevy Volt is an electric car just like the Fifth Group and just like the Trifker and just like the other.
No, Mr. Newcastradi, yeah.
Where's the electricity come from, you dingbat?
Coal-powered fire plant.
So the coal-powered Chevy Volt.
After receiving a bailout, General Motors may move Vault production to China.
They don't have to deal with the unions in China.
And in the process, we get to share whatever technology is in the vault with the ChiComs.
Well, that's one bit.
The Democrats can't decide if Mitt Romney is a flip-flopper or a hard-right extremist.
This is from Toby Harndon at the U.
It's a Daily Mail, UK Daily Mail.
It's been interesting to listen to the spin from Democrats about the Hawkeye Caucasi.
Clearly, they think that Mitt Romney will be the GOP nominee for weeks.
They've been attacking him general election style, which has probably helped the former Massachusetts governor in the eyes of Republican voters.
So how are the attacks going?
Well, judging by the CNN appearance in Debbie Blabbermouth Schultz, Florida, not so well.
In a comically confused broadside, she accused Romney of being a Tea Party lunatic, but also she said he's somebody who doesn't believe anything.
The Democrats don't know how to go after Romney.
They don't know whether to call him a flip-flopper or a hard-right extremist.
They'll do both.
What's the big mystery here?
By the way, they're taking Santorum.
Seriously, did you see that Axelrod sent a couple of Occupy Wall Street types out to a Santorum appearance?
The Pentagon chief, Leon Panetta, says the U.S. will have to make some trade-offs, take some extra risks under the new military strategy laid out to absorb federal budget cuts.
Leon Panetta unveiled a strategery today in a news conference with President Obama and Chairman of Joint Chiefs, General Martin Dempsey.
Panetta said that future budgets will mean smaller U.S. armed forces and greater risk.
But he said the country doesn't have to choose between national security and fiscal responsibility.
He said at this point in history, in a changing world, the Pentagon would have been forced to make a strategy shift anyway.
The money crisis merely forced the government to face the shift that's taking place now.
So that's going to happen.
We're going to cut the military.
We're going to increase our risk in a dangerous world.
It's going to happen anyway.
May as well do it now when the budget numbers are what they are.
I want to go back to me on this program, December 20th.
On this program, remember this.
I have warned you this kind of thing is going to happen.
The unemployment number is going to precipitously drop, and it's going to get close to 8% by next November.
Just mark my words.
That's in the can.
It's in the cards.
I'm just telling you that the unemployment number is going to get down to close to 8%, however, they have to do it.
If they have to reduce the overall universe of jobs, which they have been doing.
For example, if the same number of people were looking for work today as were looking for work when Obama was imaginated, the unemployment rate would be 11%.
And now, what is it, 8.9?
And that's because they have simply wiped out 2 million plus jobs.
And they have wiped out, accordingly, 2 million plus people who are no longer looking.
The job market has just shrunk.
Therefore, the number of people out of work as a percentage of available jobs, obviously that number is going to come down.
So that's going to happen.
That was all part of a warning I gave you to get ready, get into this year now, 2012, and the economic news is all going to be reported as great and good that Obama's policies are finally taking root now.
The economy was so much worse than anybody knew.
Bush Cheney had lied to the Obama transition team.
This is the story.
Had not been honest when forthcoming with just how rotten the economy was.
So Obama didn't deal appropriately.
His policies were not powerful enough.
But now they've been in place long enough, finally starting to take hold.
And this is going to lead into the argument that we shouldn't change horses in the middle of the stream.
And so, right off the bat, as predictable as the sun coming up, here is this from the AP, Christopher Rue Gaber.
The number of people seeking unemployment benefits fell further last week, ending the year on a three-month run of declines that point to stronger hiring.
In 2012, weekly applications dropped by 15,000.
CNBC has a story out there just over the top how wonderful this.
We are back, folks.
We're back.
Now, the question we all need to ask ourselves is this: what did Obama do to create these jobs?
What Obama policy?
We know what Reagan did.
We know what the Reagan policies of the 80s.
What has Obama done?
What Reagan policy or what Obama policies have been put into place recently to create all these jobs?
The answer is nothing.
And the answer is that we are still in horrible shape in the job market because we have reduced the universe of available jobs.
And in typical AP fashion, they neglect to mention that last week's new unemployment claims number was actually up by a whopping 21,000.
Last week, holiday week, nobody pays much.
Do you know that application for unemployment went up by 21,000?
It's not a three-week run.
It's not a three-month run.
That terrible news got practically no attention last week since it was reported over the Christmas holidays.
So it's all smoke and mirrors, exactly as predicted.
Dishonesty on parade from the state-controlled media.
We'll be right back.
Standby is now by 24.
All right, welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network.
This is what's this, AD.
It's investorsplace.com, but it's news of ADP and automatic data processing and payroll people.
And they're out there with a totally different story than the unemployment news today from AP and elsewhere.
And so is, by the way, Gallup.
Gallup is still saying the real unemployment number is up around 17, 18%.
By the time you factor in people who've given up looking, there isn't any improvement.
And you ask, what has Obama done to improve the economy?
But the only thing I can think of is extending the Bush tax cuts over a year ago.
It's about the only thing Obama has done that might be indicative of any job creation.
None of his policies have created jobs.
His policies have destroyed jobs.
Yeah, and nobody in the media ever credits the Bush tax cuts for lowering unemployment, if it's been lowered.
But look, Wall Street seemed upbeat today thanks to positive jobs numbers in a private sector payroll report from ADP specifically.
Jobs increased 225,000 in December, led by the service sector and the small business.
Additionally, November's employment numbers were revised slightly higher.
But lest you think everything's coming up roses, keep in mind that many big corporations in America are still reluctant to hire.
In fact, they're continuing to cut back based on recent headlines.
There's PepsiCo, Boeing.
The list goes at Lockheed Martin, Kodak filing Chapter 11.
The idea here that jobs are being created is absurd.
Anyway, as you drive around your town, you see boarded up, closed up elements, economic storefronts, whatever.
But I just, I wanted to remind you, this is an election year and there is no news.
The news, the fact that the media does news is a misnomer.
The media is an arm of the Democrat Party of the Obama administration.
They have an agenda, and the whole point here is to spread propaganda now.
And I was talking to a friend about this last night.
I said, Rush ain't going to work.
I said, don't tell me they're going to work.
Can I take you back to 2006, 2007, when unemployment was 5%, and they had people convinced that we were in a recession?
You heard people call this program.
And I asked them, how are you doing?
Oh, I'm doing great, but my neighbor's not doing well.
How do you know?
Well, I hear it on the news.
We had people in 2005, 2006 feeling guilty about how they were doing economically because they heard on the news that there was a recession and people were losing their jobs.
They didn't see it.
They heard about it.
So unemployment, 5%.
Media tells us we're heading toward a recession.
And this was bombarded with part of the Iraq war news with all the casualties and the deaths and the criminal aspects of the war, all this.
It was a constant, never-ending drumbeat against the Bush administration, against the country.
And so, yeah, if the regime comes along and if all the news media reports all these jobs being created, whether you see it or not, you're going to believe it, just like you believed your neighbor was hurting when you didn't know it.
So they can have an effect.
Now, it's going to be tougher because people are living this downturn.
They are living their unemployment.
But even the unemployed, if they hear a never-ending drumbeat that jobs are being created and people are being hired, they're going to say, oh, well, my turn's right around the corner.
I'm just warning you, be prepared for it.
It's going to come.
And I don't want to get any calls in June.
Rush, what are we going to do about all this crap in the media?
Because I'm going to say to you, I warned you six months ago.
And you're going to go, well, why don't the Republicans do something?
I don't know.
They've been asking me this for 23 years.
Why don't the Republicans do something here about, I mean, we've got a guy, recess appointments when there's no recess.
The Senate is not in recess.
We've actually got Republicans saying, it's not that big a deal.
We don't want to make a big deal.
It's not that really big a deal.
Oh, it isn't.
Behaving outside the Constitution is not that big a deal.
When's it going to become a big enough deal to do something about?
When's it going to become a big enough deal to try to stop?
That's the question that we all have.
January surprise, here it is, folks.
James Petakoukas at a blog, theamerican.com.
This could be just the beginning.
If Obama's legally dodgy appointment of Richard Cordray to head the consumer finance agency should stick, it may open the door to more such actions.
Here's Jarrett Cyberg of the Washington Research Group.
To us, it's a think tank bunch.
To us, the most important takeaway of recess appointment of Cordray is that the president could use this same maneuver to put a housing advocate in charge of the FHFA, Federal Housing Finance Agency.
Why is that important?
Well, the Federal Housing Finance Agency is the regulator and conservator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
And the Federal Housing Finance Agency currently has an acting director, Edward DeMarco.
If Obama replaces DeMarco with a quote-unquote housing advocate via the same recess appointment process, here is what might happen next, according to Cyberg.
That could lead to a mass refinancing program for agency-backed mortgages that would go well beyond the existing HARP program.
That could hurt agency MBS pricing and result in higher financing costs, mortgage-backed security pricing, and result in higher financing costs going forward.
Yet it also could be a big boost for the economy and housing going into the election.
Well, hell yes, it could.
You let people refinance their mortgages, effectively cut them in half, lop almost $400 off the monthly payment, have one guy said to be responsible for it, Barack Obama, getting even with the banks or overcharging everybody, restoring value to people's homes.
Mr. Petakucas writes, indeed, my sources tell me that the Obama regime has been eager to implement just such a plan, but it needs to have its own man heading the Federal Housing Finance Agency to make this happen.
The plan would be modeled after one originally devised by Columbia University economist Glenn Hubbard, who's a campaign advisor to Romney.
By the way.
Yes, let me read this to you again.
The plan that Obama wants to implement would be modeled after one originally devised by Columbia University economist Glenn Hubbard, a campaign advisor to Romney and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and Christopher Mayer.
These are the two guys that have come up with this refinancing program is another, I mean, you think they don't want to run against Romney?
So you've got Romney advisors that were hijacked to help put together Obamacare.
And now you've got Obama who's about to institute a mortgage refinance plan that is the idea of a Romney advisor.
And yet we're being told they're scared of running against Romney.
They really don't want to run against him.
I don't see it that way.
In recent congressional testimony, Mayer, one half of the team that came up with the idea, described how the mass refinancing plan would work.
He said, under our plan, every homeowner with a GSE mortgage can refinance his or her mortgage with a new mortgage at a current fixed rate of 4.20% or less.
To qualify, the homeowner must be current on his or her mortgage or become so for at least three months.
Other than being current, we would impose no other qualification or application except for the intention to accept the new rate.
That is no appraisal, no income verification, no tax returns, no nothing.
You heard right.
You heard right.
All you have to do to qualify is have a GSE mortgage and be current for three months on your payment.
GSE mortgage is a Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac mortgage, government-sponsored enterprise.
You're just, you got to show up and say redo.
You got to show up.
You've got to be three months current.
You have to have a mortgage that's approved by, that's been governed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac.
GSE is a government-sponsored enterprise.
That's Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac.
And other than being current, the two guys that came up with the plan, one of whom is a Romney advisor, said we would impose no other qualification or application except the intention to accept the new rate of 4.2%.
There would be no appraisal of your house.
There would be no verification of your income.
There would be no tax returns looked at.
They'd simply say if you're current for three months, basically, Dawn, GSE means everybody because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pretty much have purview over practically every mortgage that's out there.
And if yours isn't yet under Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, it will eventually be packaged and sold to them.
So it eventually will be a GSE.
Or if you have an FHA loan, Mayer estimates that some $3.7 trillion of mortgages would be refinanced.
That's right.
You heard right.
That would be the mother of all stimulus plans.
The mother of all mortgage refinancing plans.
$3.7 trillion would be refinanced.
It would help 30 million borrowers save $75 to $80 billion a year on payments aggregated.
As Mayer puts it, this plan would function like a long-lasting tax cut for these 25 or 30 million American families, which is essentially what Obama making it.
Obama cutting your taxes by $500 a month on your mortgage, $400 a month on your mortgage.
Snerdley keeps yelling at me that banks are going to just roll over for that.
The banks have nothing to do with it.
No, it's Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac.
These are GSE mortgages.
They're already in debt.
There's a taxpayer's paying this, not the banks.
It's the tax.
The banks are not in on this.
Everybody else who renters are paying for this.
People that don't have mortgages are paying for this.
People have owned their properties outright will be paying for this, not the banks.
On his website, Hubbard, who was the Romney advisor, says the plan would have an immediate fixed cost to the government of $121 billion.
And he calculates the impact, the economic impact as follows.
There's four points here that a lot of numbers, and that just gets confusing on the radio.
But point number one is that we estimate 72% of owner-occupant homeowners would be eligible to refinance at no cost to them.
Their monthly mortgage payments would fall by an average of $355 a month for a total national fiscal injection of $7.1 billion every month paid for by the taxpayers, not the banks.
Now, if this happens, it'll be one man doing Obama as a result of getting his guy in at the Federal Housing Services Administration, and one guy will get the credit.
And as I told you earlier, those people that went to the town hall meeting shortly after Obama was elected and inaugurated and said, where's my car?
Where's my new kitchen?
Obama's going to say, here is your house.
I have made it possible for you to stay in and afford your house.
So it won't matter who the Republican nominee is.
It won't matter whether our nominee says the government's screwed or not or we're screwed.
None of that stuff will matter.
The polling data won't matter.
This will be the single largest election purchase in our lifetimes.
And it coincides with Defense Department cuts and so forth.
So the bottom line is it's a political and economic game changer.
In a presidential election year, Obama could offer a trillion-dollar stimulus as measured over a decade that would directly and immediately impact millions of Americans suffering from the housing depression and just wipe it out.
We'll be back.
Don't go away.
Now, let me sum it up for you.
In real language, not journalism language.
The plan that I just described, formulated by an advisor to Mitt Romney in part, would turn the conventional banking standards that we have upside down.
The government would force banks to give lower rates to risky borrowers with bad mortgages because this is after, folks, the plan.
Once you institute the program, you have to carry it forward with new lenders as well.
Otherwise, the whole thing goes out the window.
So at that point, it does impact the banks.
So the government would force the banks to give lower rates to risky borrowers with bad mortgages.
Now, how do the banks make that up?
They go to people like Snerdley, who are responsible borrowers, who pay their mortgages, and you will have a higher rate than what, because these people will be the poor.
The people who are having their mortgages refinanced are the poor, the disadvantaged, the victims of the predators who charge them more than they could ever afford.
So responsible mortgage holders will have to pay higher rates in order to make up the difference for this reduction that the poor are getting.
This is a massive redistribution scheme.
It may be the single largest income redistribution scheme that we've seen if it happens.
And I hate to tell you this.
This is the second mortgage adjustment program that's being talked about.
The first one is HARP 1.
HARP 1 didn't work.
A whole lot of people didn't apply for it because there is a lot of red tape.
There is still going to be a lot of bureaucracy and hoops that people are going to have to jump through.
It's not guaranteed to work, but even if it doesn't, you may never know.
It's an election year, and all that's going to be reported is the intention, the compassionate intention of Obama to help people who've been screwed by predatory lenders make their mortgages affordable.
Whether it ever happens or not will be irrelevant in terms of the impact on the campaign.
The way it'll be reported is Obama cares, his intentions, his big-heartedness.
He wants to help.
And if it doesn't happen, you go to the overreliable.
You blame the Republicans for standing in the way of it.
Okay, folks, I just saw it on the news.
General Motors has announced a recall of every Chevrolet vault ever made.
It's a fire risk.
They need to do something to strengthen a compartment around the battery.