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Jan. 17, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:00
January 17, 2012, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Time Text
It has happened again.
Willard and Kelsey Solar Group, LLC, laid off about 40 people indefinitely at the beginning of January until changes to its production line are completed.
Michael Sikak or Chichak or Sisak or whatever.
How do you pronounce C-I-C-A-K?
Michael C., the company's chief executive officer and chairman of board. would not say when the changes would be completed or when the laid-off employees could return to work.
He said, we have some technical people in here improving the efficiency of the assembly line.
This company has received millions of dollars in government loans and tax breaks, has been toured by high-profile officials such as Vice President Joe Bitemey, the U.S. Secretary of Labor, Hilda Salise, and former Governor of Ohio Ted Strickland.
So another Solyndra, smaller, another solar company with federal Obama dollars laying off about 40 people, shutting down.
It's from the Toledo Blade.
Solar Panel Company lays off 40 employees.
Only 15 cars were in the parking lot at 1.30 Monday afternoon, the office devoid of activity, and the rows of desks were empty.
At full employment, they had 80 people, so they're laying off half the workers.
Another solar panel firm down the tubes.
More of Obama's green energy funded by government.
No market for it.
Fini.
Welcome back, folks.
Rush Limbaugh, EIB Network here.
Our telephone number is 800-282-2882.
The email address, LRushmo at EIBNet.com.
I still have the stack let off of the story here.
It was in the UK Daily Mail, why money really can buy you happiness.
Cash is the most important factor in making us feel content, say researchers.
There really shouldn't be any doubt about that.
That's all everybody's pursuing, and particularly those who deny it.
The people who tell you it's not about the money, it is about the money.
Did you see the story from yesterday?
And maybe it was, yeah, you have Carrie Kennedy, the ex-wife of Andrew Kumo, working at a non-profit is going to pocket $40 million for her efforts.
Yeah, if the settlement works out.
$40 million.
The rich get richer, the Kennedys, at a non-profit.
Don't tell me people don't care about the money.
Don't tell me people are doing all that they do for altruism.
Anyway, we'll get to that at some point.
If I'm unable to squeeze it in there today, then we'll get to it, I promise.
I mean, the Beatles broke up over money.
Everybody thinks Yo-Co owner.
They broke up over money.
You know, the Beatles were getting 16, what was it, 16% or 16 cents?
I forget which.
On songs they had written, that's incredibly low.
The Beatles made most of their money from touring.
They had rotten 16%.
They had rotten royalty deals back then.
And two of the Beatles didn't like touring.
Lennon and McCartney got 20%.
The other two got 16%.
And that was a problem.
But there's so much the pursuit of money.
Everybody wants more and everybody wants a better life for themselves and their families.
And this whole notion of, well, don't you have enough?
Apparently not because people don't willingly stop.
This whole notion of the comfort level, yeah, there is a comfort level that people hit at some point in their lives, but they'll never refuse more.
When they reach the comfort level, it may alter their intensity a bit, but the quest for more is always there.
Anyway, I want to go back to debate soundbites.
We've only gotten through six of these, and they've been very powerful.
This, in fact, I'll tell you what, since Mike, grab the montage, which is audio soundbite number two, because that sets it all up.
I asked Cookie to do a montage of Newt's greatest lines with the applause left in from last night's debates and then play the full soundbite for which the sample comes from.
Only the elites despise earning money.
If you're politically correct, you're not supposed to use facts that are uncomfortable.
So here's my point.
I believe every American of every background has been endowed by their creator with the right to pursue happiness.
And if that makes liberals unhappy, I'm going to continue to find ways to help poor people learn how to get a job, learn how to get a better job, and learn someday to own the job.
Standing ovation there, standing O.
The Social Security Actuary estimated if you make it a voluntary program, you actually reduce wealth inequality in America by 50% over the next generation because everybody becomes a saver and investor and you have a universal investing nation.
Andrew Jackson had a pretty clear-cut idea about America's enemies.
Killed them.
Ninety-nine weeks is an associate degree.
Saying to somebody, I'll help you if you're willing to help yourself is good.
And we think unconditional efforts by the best food stamp president in American history to maximize dependency is terrible for the future of this country.
All right.
So now we head back to the individual bites.
And Brett Baer had the question.
Speaker Gingrich, Senator Santorum just mentioned that the surge in unemployment has created these so-called 99ers, people who collect benefits for the maximum 99 weeks offered now.
What is the maximum length anyone should be able to collect unemployment checks?
The fact is, 99 weeks is an associate degree.
I think it tells you everything.
I hope my four colleagues would agree here.
It tells you everything you need to know about the difference between Barack Obama and the five of us, that we actually think work is good.
You see, think, saying to somebody, I'll help you if you're willing to help yourself is good.
And we think unconditional efforts by the best food stamp president in American history to maximize dependency is terrible for the future of this country.
Now.
All right.
Now, prior to that, Newt had had, I don't know where it fell chronologically, but the way we're playing this on much, prior to that, Newt had had the question from Ju Williams, don't you see how you're suggesting that poor black kids become janitors in this school and can be seen as racist?
No, no, I don't see that.
We want the best for everybody.
Newt Gingrich was explaining conservatism in an understandable philosophical way last night that has been sorely missing throughout this process and throughout this campaign.
And I said at the beginning of this campaign, whoever best consistently articulates the principles, the ideological principles of conservatism will win this thing hands down.
Now, I just ask you, if Newt had been this in every debate, if Newt had ignored Romney's super PAC ads and just stuck with this stuff, where would he be now?
I just ask you, I ask you to think about it.
He'd probably be standing a little higher than he is now.
I don't have any doubt about it.
Now, in the answer to Juan Williams, you know, Juan Williams, race-baiting, all kinds, didn't fall for it.
He talked about work as helping everybody because he's a conservative.
And Newt at his best is inspiring.
I've told the story.
Newt Gingrich inspired me before I ever got back into radio.
I'm working for the Kansas City Royals.
Newt's doing special orders on the floor of the House during the Reagan years.
He was never better than he was doing that when he filed the contract with America.
The Republicans took over the House for the first time in 40 years.
He has the ability to inspire.
And he gets sidetracked.
The other half his brain goes nuts and falls into the trap of Nixonian traits come out.
And he somehow seems to think he's got to prove he's not a monster to people like Nancy Pelosi.
And it never works.
He falls into that trap sometimes.
If you just close off that half of the brain, well, it's too late now.
That half of the brain is there.
But in this instance, 99 weeks, what a great announcement.
Here we have people sitting on their duffs, not looking for work under the guise of there isn't any.
99 weeks, what could they be doing in 99?
They could be getting an associate degree.
What a great way of contrasting the left's view of assistance versus ours.
99 weeks is an associate degree, halfway to a BA or BS, depending on what you think of college.
But again, there was no racial tent here because we as conservatives want a great nation.
We want great individuals.
We want everybody to do well.
That's how we have a great nation.
There is enough wealth in this country for prosperity for everybody who wants it if the government stops taking far more than what it deserves.
Newt had another great line last night that unfortunately I forgot to tell Cookie I wanted.
But it's right out of my wheelhouse.
And I'm going to have to paraphrase it.
I don't remember the quote verbatim.
I would paraphrase it by saying, why is it always assumed that government has to get bigger?
Why can't it be automatically assumed that government should get smaller and individuals get bigger?
Because when you take money out of the private sector, you are limiting the opportunity for prosperity for everybody.
There's simply less to be had because the government's gobbling it up.
And they redistribute some of it, but never enough.
If the government can't make people prosperous, look at the people who are their chosen beneficiaries and find for me a 1%er.
You will not find people.
Now, you'll find 1%ers who get government assistance because they're rigging the system, but they didn't become 1%ers because of it.
The government does not make people prosperous.
The government makes people dependent and seeks to make people satisfied on a subsistence rather than an existence.
But prosperity is not even in the picture.
We want prosperity.
Conservatives, we are average, ordinary Americans.
Many of us, through hard work and toil, love for what we do, desire to work hard for it, have been blessed beyond our wildest dreams.
All we want is the same for everybody else.
We are not the ones who want to deny it to people.
We are not the ones who don't think people are capable of it.
We know they are because we're just like them.
Average, ordinary people imbued with a love of the uniqueness of this country, who wish everybody had the same love for this country that we do.
We don't understand people that hate this country.
We know they do, but intellectually we can't relate to it because we don't hate it.
Even now, we don't hate it.
We love it.
We want to rebuild it, save it, protect it so that everybody can do well, so that everybody can have the opportunity to reach the highest they seek to reach.
That's what we as conservatives want.
And we don't care where they come from.
And we don't care what their sexual orientation is.
And we don't care what their gender is.
And we don't care what their skin color is.
And we really don't care what their religion is.
Unless they use all of that to claim victim status, blame us for it, and then say we owe them.
Then it becomes a problem.
Because we're not the problem.
Just like in the world, the United States is the solution to the world's problems.
Conservatives are the solution to America's problems.
There is a cultural divide in this country that has been created and erected by the left.
It's our version, as I said earlier in the program, of our own Berlin Wall.
Because Snerdley asked me after playing the Juan Williams questions and knew it, so we're ever going to bridge this cultural divide.
Not in our lifetimes.
I don't think.
It's getting bigger.
To bridge the cultural divide would mean getting to these people's minds and hearts and changing them.
I don't know that that's possible.
So what we have to do is politically defeat them and make them forever minorities and then maybe try to bring them into the fold.
The Democrat Party only wants to help people who want to make a living through the Democrat Party.
If you want to help the Democrat Party, they might do something for you.
It won't be very much.
Particularly if just an average citizen.
Union member, they'll take a little bit better care of you.
We don't see people as voting blocks.
We really don't.
Maybe one of our electoral problems.
We don't see, now, our establishment does, and that's why they're not conservatives.
They see voting blocks.
Hey, we got to do this to get that group.
We got to do that to this group.
We can't tick off the independents.
We can't say that.
That's not us.
We think we know, properly articulated with passion and energy and inspiration, our message will reverberate in every heart in this country, every mind in this country, if it reaches them.
And what block they're in and what victim status they want doesn't matter.
Not going to get everybody.
People have been born into this entitlement society, and if that's all they've got, they're never going to take the risk of giving it up.
So they have to be defeated.
Then we bring them in.
It's all done for them, though.
I'm not trying to cast them out.
They've cast themselves out.
But we still want them to be prosperous.
Ultimately, that's the best persuasion.
But at some point, they've got to help themselves, too.
And if they refuse to do that, then there's not a whole lot that can be done for them.
And that's where the Democrat Party comes in.
And those people become the heroes.
Victims become the heroes.
Victims of conservatism become the heroes.
The greater mess your life is, the bigger opportunity you are for the Democrat Party.
But you better remain a mess.
You don't serve the Democrat Party by improving yourself.
That's what ticks them off.
You don't help them by helping yourself.
You help them by helping them.
And to help them, you have to stay mired in squalor and poverty and subsistence while they run around pretending to be the only ones who care about you.
Quick timeout.
Don't go away.
Half my brain tied behind my back with talent on loan from God.
Back to the phones.
Joan in Kingman, Arizona.
It's great to have you on the program.
Hello.
Oh, she's not there.
Joan's gone.
All right.
Well, that was it.
Back to the audio soundbites.
Well, look, I had time for one phone call in there, and I've got to get some of these audio soundbites in.
Here's Newt.
Co-moderator Brett Baer.
Speaker Gingrich, if you received actionable intelligence about a location of a Taliban leader psychmullah Omar inside Pakistan, would you authorize a unilateral operation much like the one that killed bin Laden with or without the Pakistani government knowing even if the consequence was an end to all U.S.-Pakistani cooperation?
Bin Laden plotted deliberately, bombing American embassies, bombing the USS Cole, and killing 3,100 Americans, and his only regret was he didn't kill more.
When you give a country $20 billion and you learn that they have been hiding, I mean, nobody believes that Bin Laden was sitting in a compound in a military city one mile from the National Defense University, And the Pakistanis didn't know it.
We're in South Carolina.
South Carolina in the Revolutionary War had a young 13-year-old named Andrew Jackson.
He was sabored by a British officer and wore a scar his whole life.
Andrew Jackson had a pretty clear-cut idea about America's enemies.
Killed them.
Killed them.
Andrew Jack, another near-standing ovation.
What do we get after 9-11?
We had the State Department putting together seminars.
Why do they hate us?
What did we do to call Ron Paul?
We don't need any more wars.
Well, we do.
I mean, we have to understand it.
We start bombing them.
Whoa.
Obama.
Right.
Andrew Jackson, kill him.
And even today.
Even today, ladies and gentlemen, there are lots of headlines tut-tutting over the violent rhetoric in last night's debate.
The violent rhetoric and headlines about how the Republicans promote child labor laws.
Home runs were hit last night.
We'll be back.
All right, now, this may only be a curiosity to me.
I'm watching Fox here.
Megan Kelly.
They're doing a little Q ⁇ A. Did the debate help Newt?
And I'm asking myself, wait a minute, why do the debates if they're not potentially helpful?
Why even do them?
Of course it's got to help somehow.
You know, the interesting thing is, how large a determining factor are they?
But debates are not about maintaining status quo except for the leader.
Who is Romney?
All right, to the phones.
Who's Greenville, Michigan?
Doug High.
I'm glad you waited, sir.
You're next to the Rush Lindbaugh program.
Hello.
Thanks, Rush.
It's good to talk to you.
Thank you, sir.
88.
And this is the first time I've called, but I've been screaming at my radio all morning, was screaming at the debate radio last night saying, guys, you're missing the point.
This is Martin Luther King Day.
The contrast has been laid out clearly by Speaker Gingrich and the other candidates, but yet we're not pointing out the fact that it's occurring on an historical day.
And they're articulating, for all practical purposes, the dream speech of Martin Luther King that calls for our people, black or white or any other color, to be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
And Newt's exchange with Juan Williams was a perfect example of that.
Clearly illustrates the contrast.
It couldn't be more clear, you know, between President Obama, Harid, and the Congressional Brat Caucus, their ideas of affirmative action as opposed to equality, equal opportunity as opposed to equal outcome.
And I just thought that needed to be pointed out and a great pleasure to talk to you.
So you think they blew it by not reminding people who are making these points on Martin Luther King's birthday?
Absolutely.
I mean, we're trying to appeal to black voters out there as well.
And not only that, Dr. King is an historical figure.
And, you know, our ideas are much closer than the liberals' ideas to the articulation of Martin Luther King Jr.
I must tell you, I appreciate the call.
Thanks very much.
This is what frustrated me about television.
Well, Newt hits a grand slam and we blew it.
Newt hits a grand slam and we blew it.
Newt did the best debate he has done all debate season, all the campaign.
And we blew it because we didn't say Martin Luther King Day enough or because we didn't contrast it with Martin Luther King.
It never occurred to me that it was Martin Luther King Day.
But see, this is instructive because you find out what people think and how they would have improved it.
It could have even been any better.
There's just so little satisfaction, even when something is done very well.
There's no question that Martin Luther King, the American Dream speech that he gave in Washington in August of that Democrats don't see it that way.
They have it's like his nephew was on the Today Show or something this week and said that he would be a pro-life social conservative today.
You see, that comment didn't go anywhere.
It had no legs.
As they say, John and Crofton, Maryland, welcome to the EIB network.
Hi.
Happy birthday, Rush.
I tried to get in last week to wish you that, but I'm a little bit late.
Thank you very much, sir.
As far as Newt, everybody was saying that this is all over, especially when Huntsman dropped out even before the debate there, and he threw his support to Romney.
Everybody's saying it's Romney.
And I guess a week ago, you were even giving Newt some stuff about coming from the left and attacking Romney's work at Bain Capitol.
And I think he more than made up for any ground that he may have lost in those, I guess, ill thought-out attacks he did about a week ago.
And you mentioned something about your speech at CPAC and the standing O's that you got there.
And I thought the same thing.
I don't know how many standing O's he got, but that volume in the crowd down here yesterday, last night, was very welcome, very deserved.
And I think that it was unlike anything so far.
Oh, my God.
For anybody.
I don't care.
It's a football game again, I think.
But what I wanted to say is I looked at the Mayflower Compact.
You know what Obama always says that when times get rough, you know, certain Americans, middle Americans, cling to their Bibles.
Well, that's what Governor Bradford did in 1620 when he found out that putting everything in a common store based on the Mayflower Compact didn't work because people didn't work.
And so he read the Bible and he came to the second epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians and it said in there, if any man would not work, neither should he eat.
Now, all these freeloaders that we had then, we have them today.
They're up on Capitol Hill right as we speak asking for free stuff.
And it never works.
Communism never works.
It's in the Bible.
The Bible was followed, and that's why we had a successful Thanksgiving in Plymouth Colony.
Well, that happened.
It was 400 years ago, and it's as true today as it was 400 years ago.
I want to make a point about that because as it relates to the standing ovation that Newt got, I think this is an important point to make because you referred to the freeloaders back then and the freeloaders today, and we still have them, and they're up on Capitol Hill, but they're also throughout the country.
But what Newt did not get a standing O last night because he attacked freeloaders.
Now, this is an important distinction.
Newt got a standing O because his comments were positive and uplifting and inspiring and telling people how to get out of freeloader status.
He was not ripping freeloaders.
He was ripping the Democrat Party for sponsoring and keeping them.
He was not ripping them.
He was not scolding.
This was an inspiring set of comments that he made, rooted in conservative principle.
And they were oriented toward uplifting people, not bashing them.
And this is why the left is befuddled today.
That's why all they can say is, well, Newt, Noah's obviously standing up for child labor laws.
What bunk.
Nobody in the world thinks we support child labor laws or forced child labor.
Let me put it that way.
I mean, that's how weak their intellectual response to this is.
But I think it's worth pointing out that what Newt was doing was not bashing freeloaders.
Anything, you feel sorry for them.
You feel sorry because they've gotten the wrong message.
They've been educated to be freeloaders.
They have been raised to be freeloaders.
They have been raised to believe that being an American is something that it isn't, that it's an entitlement.
They've been raised to believe that they are victims.
They've been raised in the throes in the midst of class envy.
They have been raised and brought up to believe that the only reason they don't have anything in life is because others have stolen it from them and are keeping it away from them and they don't have a chance to get it on their own.
So it doesn't make any difference if they go to work because that game is rigged too.
This is what they're taught.
This is what we have to overcome.
The freeloaders are trapped on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall in this country.
They're trapped on the wrong side of the cultural divide.
And it's going to have to change if America is to avoid this massive transformation that Obama seeks.
Brief pause.
We'll be back before you know it.
Now we're talking about the cultural divide and how things change.
This Costa ship that hit the rock and is listing over in Italy.
The captain made sure he was one of the first people off the ship.
And there are stories going on today contrasting him and the crew, the mail crew, with that of the Titanic, who all, it's women and children first, they went down with the ship.
This guy first off.
And he went back trying to get the black box.
And his crew did a mutiny.
And they all tried to get off.
The men say, every man for himself.
The captain of Titanic, after all the lifeboats were filled and all that was left was the crew and the men, passengers, mail passengers didn't make the boats, at one point declared, all hands for yourselves now.
This guy declared it at the outset.
Chickification.
This guy thought he was a woman.
He's no different.
First off.
I'm out of here, man.
I steered this thing onto a rock and I'm not hanging around to get caught.
I'm gone.
He was showing off.
There were other people on stage.
We haven't had a chance to get to nearly all of them.
Everybody was good last night, including Ron Paul, who was incoherent as hell on foreign policy and the wars and getting Osama and all this stuff.
But here's Rick Perry.
This is Brett Baer again questioning.
Governor Perry, you've gone so far as to call what Romney did at Bain vulture capitalism.
But you've also said regulations in America are killing an American.
In fact, you said we should repeal the most recent financial regulations law, Dodd-Frank.
So what specific regulations would you put in place to curb vulture capitalism?
I visited Georgetown, South Carolina.
It was one of those towns where there was a steel mill that Bain swept in.
They picked that company over, and a lot of people lost jobs there.
And the fact of the matter is, we've got records.
My income tax have been out every year.
Newt, I think you're going to let your income tax come out Thursday.
And Mitt, we need for you to release your income tax so the people of this country can see how you made your money.
By the way, that became an ongoing topic.
And Mitt said, well, maybe in April.
If I get the nomination, I'll do it in April.
Maybe.
Maybe.
He said he thinks his aggregate tax rates have been 15%, what he's been paying.
So after this, Jerry Sai of the Wall Street Journal said America Patent Papers, a company Bain Capital bought with $5 million, took on more debt to expand it, couldn't pay back the loans, went bankrupt, several hundred people lost their jobs.
Bain Capital, though, took $100 million in profits and fees.
Now, does that show a flaw in the Bain Capital model, or is that just the rough and tumble of American capitalism, Governor Romney?
At the time I was at Bain Capital, the business was still going, didn't go bankrupt.
What the company did is they had one paper company, and then they bought another one down the road, and they said, we don't need to have, in an industry that's shrinking, two different plants making the same product, so let's consolidate the two plants together.
And all the people in the plant that was closed were offered jobs in the new plant.
Now, they were union workers.
They didn't all want that non-union plant work rule setting.
But ultimately, do I believe that free enterprise works and that private equity and the various features of our economy work to actually improve our economy, to make America more productive with higher incomes and a brighter future?
Absolutely.
And there is a piece in the New York Times today by Paul Levy.
No, sorry, Andrew Ross Sorkin.
It's called Meet Paul Levy.
And it's a private equity executive who is dismayed that private equity won't defend itself.
He's just, his name is Paul Levy, low-key private equity exec, former lawyer, helped co-found the mid-sized firm JLL Partners in 1988.
Mr. Levy's been dismayed that the industry's heavyweights have not sought to publicly defend their industry in recent days.
There's a tinge of McCarthyism here, he said.
I think it's a pretty honorable industry.
I don't know why people aren't stepping up and defending the careers that define their lives.
It's a sad thing.
What do they fear it'll cost them?
This guy voted for Obama, he says, in 2008.
And it's a good point.
The private equity guys are not defending themselves, and capitalists don't stand up and defend themselves.
They just don't.
That's how they have been intimidated.
They have been stymied.
They think that they're going to get caught in defending how they got rich.
They don't think there's any upside in it.
So they just weather the storm.
Rather than looking at it as a teachable moment, rather than seeing it as an opportunity to go on offense and illustrate for people how this happens and how it's a uniquely American thing.
Oh, we can all come in.
It's just a shortage of guts out there on all these people who are under assault, being attacked.
Okay, that's it, folks.
Another exciting excursion into broadcast excellence is Phine, but it resumes.
And I'll make you a promise, we'll get into this myth about money not being the route to happiness, this research that's been done, because there are fascinating two or three stories that I have found to accompany that.
So we'll do that tomorrow, unless something big comes up to supersede it.
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