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Jan. 24, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:55
January 24, 2012, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Mitch Stein will be here tomorrow to tell you how Newt blew it.
Anna Romney was no better, and we're all screwed.
And then I'll be here Wednesday.
We'll clean it all up and have fun and whatever.
So you have Stein's Good.
No, no, I'm just having fun here.
Yes, thanks.
Thanks for that, Rush.
Thanks.
Within 15 minutes of the end of yesterday's show, I'd received like 37,000 emails from Newt supporters saying, you gutless inside-the-beltway cocktail-sipping rhino-squish, you don't have the guts to support the only true conservative in the race, you metrosexual pansy.
So I got so clobbered by Newt's guys by about 12 minutes past 3 Eastern yesterday that I feel like I've already beaten up on Newton.
I don't need to do it.
So maybe we can talk about something else today.
But yes, America's Anchor Bad is away, and this is your undocumented Anchorman sitting in.
Honored to be here.
Rush will, as he said, he'll be back Wednesday to clean up the mess I'm about to make.
He said he was unaware that there was a debate, a Republican debate last night, which I find very interesting because he lives in the state.
The debate was in his own state, and he was entirely unaware there was a Republican debate.
I sat through that show.
I sat through that whole thing last night, and I was unaware there was a Republican debate because whatever that thing was, it certainly wasn't a Republican debate.
So we will, I regret to say, get into that a little later.
1-800-282-2882.
But maybe, as I said, we'll talk about some other stuff today.
It's the State of the Union.
President Obama has invited Warren Buffett's secretary to be there for the big event.
The most famous secretary since Perry Mason's.
What was her name?
Perry.
Yeah, no.
Warren Buffett.
Mr. Snerdley doesn't believe that.
We got the full A team, by the way.
If you're worried after the way Rush set up the show, don't worry.
He set up the show as such a disaster in waiting that we've got both HR and Mr. Snerdley here.
So it's the entire EIB A team to go along with the Z team guest host.
Mr. Serdley wants to know whether that's a joke.
No, Warren Buffett's secretary is going to be the guest of honor at the state.
Well, I assume she's a guest of honor.
I don't know.
Maybe she'll be taking dictation.
I don't know.
But it's, well, I think Warren Buffett, I think Warren.
No, I would imagine U.S. taxpayers paid to fly with Mr. Snerdley.
Don't worry.
It's just a rounding error in the great sucking moor of the U.S. Treasury.
Anyway, she's going to be there.
She'll be taking dictation because, as we know, Barack Obama is a great dictator, so she'll be taking it.
And we'll talk about that a little later.
1-800-282-2882.
We are live in New York City today, the heart of Midtown Manhattan, because as HR said to me, it's great for guys like me to come down from the mountains and see how the 1% lives.
We're going to talk about the debate.
Mr. Snerdley, by the way, he was in a hotel last night, and the hotel TV system, is this right, wasn't working.
So he was unable to see the NBC presidential debate moderated by Brian Williams.
How great is that?
I don't know what hotel that is, but that's the only place in town I want to stay at from now on.
I got confused.
NBC presented the debate as a rock center special.
And I got confused, and I thought it was a 30 rock special.
And so the debate would be moderated by Alec Baldwin, which would have been a riot.
But instead, apparently Rock Center, I don't know, I've never seen this show, but apparently it's some Lame-O news light show full of soft features that nobody's interested in, hosted by Brian Williams.
That's funny, just saying his name, I'm falling into a catatonic state.
Very bizarre.
Brian Williams, by the way, Brian, does Brian Williams make a living in this line of work, guys?
He's like, I know nothing.
I'm just a foreigner.
I'm just off the boat.
Brian Williams is a really nice guy, says HR.
Oh, wait a minute.
You're trying to caution me that he's a friend of Rush's.
I don't care.
I'm going to be reckless.
I don't care if he is a friend of Rush.
Cancel my contract.
I'm going to barricade the door.
You can drag me out here.
I don't care what you say.
I don't care if he and Rush are in some kinky newt style open marriage.
That was a disgraceful performance last night.
That was the way, without doubt, bring back Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos.
That was ridiculous, that show last night.
Why do the Republican Party, why do the Republican Party fall for this thing?
Why do the Republican Party fall for this every time?
Every time, you know, the debate at Alice is, well, George Stephanopoulos and Dyad Sawyer, I think, really damaged themselves.
George Stephanopoulos asking that question on federally funded contraception or whatever the hell it was.
He really damaged his reputation.
And then there we are a week later with the same old guys asking the same old questions all over again.
And let's, while I'm working up ahead of steam about Brian Williams, by the way, don't listen to me say Brian Williams if you're operating heavy machinery or driving on the interstate.
Brian Williams comes on and he says, first of all, the audience, the audience is not allowed to applaud or cheer or hiss or boo or do anything because this is a very serious debate.
And we don't want to detract for a nanosecond from the immense seriousness of this debate.
Where do you, I mean, first of all, where do you get off on this man?
I mean, Newt now says he's never going to accept those terms ever again.
You should have thought about that, Newt, before the debate.
It's un-American, that.
If you're into control-freak crowd management on the Brian Williams NBC scale, push off to Pyongyang and do the announcement of Kim Jong-il's death.
You know, under rules agreed by all participants, we will begin with 25 minutes of weeping and awailing.
You know, come on, cry harder, you losers in the fourth row.
What kind of self-respecting, free-born American citizen agrees to sit on his hands during a presidential debate?
And then, and then, and then, having said, oh no, we can't have any expression of human emotion during this debate, because every second has to be spared for this very serious discussion of topics of vital concern to the electorate.
Having said all that, then to demonstrate his mastery of debate moderation, he talks about this for the next two hours.
These are the topics Brian Williams discussed with his expertise, his mastery of debate moderation.
These were what Brian Williams identified as the key issues in this election in reverse order of importance.
Putting a man on Mars, Sugarcane, Sugar Beet, Fidel Castro, Terry Shivo, Elien Gonzalez, Jimmy Buffett, Anita Bryan.
Wait, I think they ran out of time before the Anita Bryan question.
This is, I haven't checked in with NBC today, but I will bet if you go to the NBC news analysis now, they'll all be saying, oh, the Republicans, they're not talking about the issues Americans care about.
They're talking about, you know, exploring Mars and sugarcane.
Whose fault is this?
It's the Republican Party's fault for putting up with debate moderators from the drive-by media who are not there to do the Republican Party any favors.
So we spent 90 minutes or whatever it was last night, 90 minutes talking about exploring Mars and sugarcane.
Exploring Mars and sugarcane.
By the way, if you buy a Mars bar, I think it's got sugarcane in it.
So for all I know, the entire thrust of the debate could have been inspired by the vending machine that Brian Williams saw outside the hall 10 minutes before he went in to moderate the show.
This, Mars and sugar, Mars and sugar.
These are the critical issues facing the Republic.
So in the second hour, we're going to be talking about sugarcane, sugar beet, which you prefer.
Do you go with beet or cane?
Beet, cane, cane, beet.
We'll talk about that in the second hour.
We'll talk about Mars, putting a man on Mars, putting sugarcane on Mars.
I think we could really kickstart the economy if we sowed sugar, whatever you do with sugarcane.
I don't pretend to be an expert.
I'm just like Newt Riffin off the stuff here.
We'll sow the entire planet of Mars with sugarcane, revitalize the economy, create jobs.
We can send millions of Latin Americans up there to do the jobs that Martians won't do.
At the end of the debate, at the end of the debate, they cut to some analysis and then went back to Brian Williams sitting in front of an entirely empty hall.
And he said, quote, the room has cleared remarkably quickly.
You don't say, man.
I'll bet that was a world record.
I think it was Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes at the Supreme Court who famously said that there is no right falsely to shout fire in a crowded theater because it may cause a stampede.
But whatever Oliver Wendell Holmes had to say about that, do not try shouting Brian Williams in a crowded theater because they will be running, screaming, fleeing for the exits.
Now, the debate wasn't entirely without interest.
Asked a question about illegal immigration, Mitt Romney said he believed in, quote, self-deportation.
Self-deportation.
I don't know where you go to apply for it, but after 20 minutes of Brian Williams, I was ready to try it.
And so in the third hour of the show today, in the third hour of the show, I will attempt self-deportation.
It's a radio first here at the EIB network.
I will attempt self-deportation.
If you want to try to self-deport along with me, you should be wearing loose clothing and sitting in the lotus position.
Okay, so then after that, after that, he turns to Terry Shaiva, the death of Terry Shaiva.
And they had a question about that, which gone back 10 years now.
By the way, I'm very sympathetic to Rick Santorum's position on Terry Shiva.
I think it is extremely worrying that some guy can basically get another human being ordered starved to death in the United States.
But is there a single Floridian?
I mean, maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe 40% of the population of Florida, as they go to the polls in the year 2012, this is uppermost on their mind.
And they didn't even get the question right, by the way.
They confused it with do not resuscitate issues.
Do not resuscitate has got nothing to do with Terry Shaivo.
Do not resuscitate is what the janitor at NBC should have placed on the NBC debate half an hour into Brian Williams' moderation of it.
Do not resuscitate is beyond resuscitation.
It was in a vegetative state.
Sugar subsidies.
Then we moved on from Terry Shaivo to sugar subsidies.
Newt gave a brilliant answer to this.
Sugar beet hides behind sugar cane.
Sugar beet.
And this is what I love about Newt.
I mean, is there any other candidate who would give that answer?
Stood there and said, Sugar beet hides behind sugarcane.
HR has left the room.
And I believe he's the only bad here.
Do you know what he meant, Mr. Snadley, by that?
Sugar beet hides behind sugarcane.
I had no idea what he was on about.
I mean, I know if you go to, like, if you go to Price Chopper and you're walking down the aisle, you'll sometimes find that like granulated sugar hides behind confectioner's sugar.
But I didn't know about sugar beets hiding behind sugarcane.
That was new to me.
It's it.
Yeah.
In the newt book, in Newt's book.
Yeah, you're right.
He's written like 300 books.
He's probably got one out there on sugarcane.
Anyway, cane sugar, beet sugar, cane sugar, beet sugar.
Cane sugar beat Obama?
I don't know, but Cain Obama beat sugar.
Who knows?
Mars, Terry Shivo, Sugar Beet.
These are the questions that NBC and the Republican Party that stupidly agrees to let its debates be moderated by NBC, that agrees to let itself be presented to the nation by NBC.
These are the questions.
And then we go to Fidel Castro, the Fidel Castro question.
And we're asked the question about what's going to happen when Fidel Castro dies.
And Mitt says we should thank the Lord that Fidel has met his maker.
And Newt, Newt, opening up clear blue water between Mitt on this vital issue, says Fidel won't be meeting his maker.
He's beheaded to the other place.
And that was the big policy disagreement of the night.
Romney says Castro's going to heaven, and Gingrich says Castro's going to hell.
I hope he's not.
I hope he's going to an unending debate moderated by Brian Williams for all eternity.
Welcome back to our debate.
Chairman Castro, if you were a sugar, what would you be?
Cane sugar or beet sugar?
In other news, in other news, we will get to other news today.
Rand Paul was detained by the TSA.
The bad news is he missed the March for Life in Washington.
The good news is he missed the NBC presidential debate moderated by Brian Williams.
Why do Republicans, the Republican National Committee, allow their candidates to be presented to the nation by these guys?
1-800-282-2882.
Mark Stein in for rush and lots more straight ahead.
Mark Stein in for rush on the EIB network, 1-800-282-2882.
The Boston Bruins star goaltender, Tim Thomas, said last night that he is declining to visit the White House today to meet with the rest of his Stanley Cup winning team because he believes the federal government is, quote, threatening the rights, liberties, and property of the people, unquote.
Wow, I like the sound of this guy.
Why can't we have him in the Republican debate?
This Politico reported on Thomas's snub of President Obama for political reasons.
The president congratulated the rest of the Boston Bruins on their Stanley Cup victory at the White House reception, but Thomas was notably absent.
He said, quote, I believe the federal government has grown out of control.
He's not wrong on that, by the way.
Threatening the rights, liberties, and property of the people.
I'm not sure he's wrong on that either.
He's not wrong on that.
In fact, this kind of micromanagement, micro-federal regulatory state, when you have phrases in the Obamacare bill that Kathleen Sebelius, that the Secretary of Health shall determine the appropriate level of, quote, tooth-level surveillance, tooth-level surveillance.
I don't think that's something the founders of this country would have gone in for.
Threatening the rights, liberties, and property of the people.
This is being done at the executive, legislative, and judicial level.
This is in direct opposition to the Constitution and the founding fathers' vision for the federal government.
Because I believe this, today I exercised my right as a free citizen and did not visit the White House.
This was not about politics or party, as in my opinion, both parties are responsible for the situation we are in as a country.
This was about a choice I had to make as an individual.
This is the only public statement I will be making on this topic.
So if you're looking for red meat in this election year, Boston Bruins star goaltender Tim Thomas is the go-to guy.
He declined to attend the Stanley Cup reception with President Obama at the White House.
By the way, why is the President of this republic holding receptions for cups and prizes named after Canadian viceroys of the British Crown?
That in itself is a very curious phenomenon.
Mr. Snerdley was asking me about this before the show.
He said, who is Stanley Cup?
He thought he was the same guy who was in the Stanley steamer business.
And when the bottom dropped out of the steamer business, he decided to move into hockey.
No, Stanley is Lord Stanley of Preston, sixth Governor General of Canada and 16th Earl of Derby.
It's very odd to me that they're having a big reception.
Mr. Snirdley now says, how the hell does he get a cup here?
He got a cup.
He got a cup because he was Governor General of Canada where they played hockey.
This is where hockey is played on ice.
Mr. Snerdley, he's in New York today from Palm Beach, glorious sunny Florida.
Is there a lot of hockey being played on the swamps of the Everglades?
No, because there's no ice.
There's ice in Canada.
When they laid out North America, Canada got the part with ice.
And so that's why Canada had hockey and Canada had a Stanley Cup because he gave a prize for hockey.
And then the US guys, they all say to the Canadian teams like the Quebec Nordiques and all these ones, oh, why don't you come down south?
We can get you.
We'll come down to our town.
Instead of playing up in some broken down podunk town up by Hudson's Bay, why don't you come down to our town in wherever it is, sunny San Diego or Fort Lauderdale, and we'll get municipal subsidies to build you a fabulous stadium.
And you don't have to worry about living up there, play it on the ice at Hudson's Bay, two miles south of the Arctic Circle, freezing your butts off.
Now we'll get government subsidies to build a big stadium down in the Sunbelt.
And so that's why the Stanley Cup teams are playing out.
That's like a shortcut version of the history of the National Hockey League.
I'm just wigging it here.
But anyway, Tim Thomas, Tim Thomas has said he is declining to go to the White House today because the federal government is threatening the rights, liberties, and property of the people.
I don't know what he's like on the ice when he's played with the Boston Broods, but I say go, Tim.
We will get into that.
And we will also get it.
Newton used a great phrase on last night's debate.
He said he's not going to be a president merely to, quote, manage the decline, unquote.
That is a great expression from Newt, and we're going to explore that in more detail.
1-800-282-2882.
Yes, Rush returns tomorrow to take you through the end of the week for full strength excellence in broadcasting.
Don't forget you can go to rushlimbore.com.
And if you're a Rush 24-7 subscriber, you will have Rush at your fingertips in print, in audio, in vision, and you need not be discombobulated by sinister foreign guest hosts.
1-800-282-2882, we're talking about the so-called debate last night.
Just to go back to that, just a clarification, by the way, Mike points out on the Stanley Cup event at the White House, Mike points out that Mr. Snerdley does not think the Stanley Cup is what the guy with the Stanley Steamer business went into.
He thinks the Stanley Cup is an athletic support made by the Stanley Tool Company.
I think John Kerry wears one when he's windsurfing off Nantucket.
John Kerry visited the White House yesterday with two black eyes and a broken nose.
You should have seen the other fella.
I don't know what that is.
There's a story there.
None of us know what it is.
Did he ask Teresa if he could have one of these Newt-style open marriages?
I don't know.
We don't know the full story here.
But he shows up at the White House with two black eyes and a broken nose.
So we're going to get the – yeah, I think he asked for an increase in his allowance and Theresa went – Teresa Wedburzer.
We're going to try.
We're going to get our crack investigative unit.
We're going to do to John Kerry what the media did to Sarah Palin.
We're going to send every, like they send everyone to Wozzilla.
We're going to send everyone up to Massachusetts and get to the bottom of that.
Let us go to Bruce in Greenville, South Carolina.
Bruce, you're first up on the Rush Limbaugh show, and it's great to have you with us today.
Well, thank you.
Yeah, I watched the debates last night.
I'm a Newt Gingrich supporter.
I'm out of Gringle, South Carolina, just voted for him.
But for the first time, I wasn't even as impressed with Newt's debate.
Mainly, I feel very strongly about this, and this is it.
If Newt can get the public to focus on his message, his debates, his amazing record as speaker, if that's the focus, he'll win hands down.
That's what he's been doing.
However, if he lets his opponents get the public to focus on negative ads and PAC ads, then you're going to see his number start to slide like they did in Iowa.
He's got to find a way.
I think he should take the high road and turn right to Romney and say, and this is Bruce's advice to Newt if he'd listen, but turn to him and say, hey, we should all stop the negative ads and the negative PAC ads and all that stuff.
And he gives that teeth.
What he should do is just look at him and say, my PAC ad, and he has nothing to do with it.
He has no control of it.
But he can just say, I'm going to request that they stop running those pro-choice ads that like Romney's pro-choice, because he's not.
Everybody knows.
He used to be, but they're running that ad like he still is.
And, you know, I don't like that ad.
Every caller that calls in, every talk show I ever hear, nobody likes negative.
You know, and if he would, if he turned to him and he said, I'm going to stop, I'm going to ask them to stop running that ad because I know you've had a change of heart.
I know that you're a sincere change of heart.
And I know that you're not pro-choice, that you are pro-life now, and it's wrong of them to do that.
So I'm going to take care of my people or request to do that.
See, people would like that.
Everybody wants a positive campaign.
Well, here.
They don't want a negative.
Here's the thing, Bruce.
A lot of the commentary thinks that Mitt did himself a lot of favors by going nuclear on Newt last night, by going on about Freddie Mac, calling him an influence peddler, saying he had to resign the speakership in disgrace.
I dissent from that slightly because the whole point about Mitt, Mitt's entire rationale for his candidacy, is that he's the house train guy.
He wasn't running for the nomination.
He was running as if he'd already got the nomination.
In fact, he was running as a kind of incumbent, you know, lofty, statesmanlike, above it all, barely talked about the other candidates, was always talking about Barack Obama, talked in all these soft-focused generalities.
You know, I believe in an America where millions of Americans love the opportunities of an America that's believed in by millions of Americans.
That's the America I love.
He was just doing all that.
And then suddenly, last night, he's there and he's having to stand there and land blows on Al Newt.
And some of them were effective, but they came at the price of sort of shrinking his stature.
And I don't, and it was fascinating.
It was hilarious in a way to see Newt doing the talk show circuits afterwards and saying, well, you know, I thought Mitt was a desperate character.
And they've swapped roles.
Newt is now being lofty and above it all and all the rest of it, instead of being Mr. Angry.
And so I'm not persuaded that Mitt's thing is going to work for him.
I think it can damage Newt.
Whether Mitt benefits from it is another matter.
But the reality of it is this.
You know, he took, he did.
We know he got 25 grand a month from Freddie Mac, and there's nothing specified in the contract.
Normally, most Americans went not just for $25,000 a month, but for $25,000 a year, they're expected to do certain things.
The Gingrich contract with Freddie Mac doesn't say yes to do anything.
He's just on retainer for $25,000 a month.
And people understand.
They understand that at a certain level, entities like Freddie Mac are just putting guys on the payroll to buy their silence, to be able to have them on the leaderhead.
Well, Mr. Snerdley says most people don't understand that.
No, you're right.
You're right.
There's millions of people who don't understand it.
But look, here's the thing.
Newt cannot defend Freddie Mac.
He can't defend the fact that he was kicked out of the speakership.
Nobody wanted him as speaker in 1998.
It wasn't that he said last night, oh, I took a principal decision.
We'd lost six seats in the midterms or whatever.
And I felt that was a disappointing performance.
So in principle, I resigned and I went into the private sector to start businesses.
We all, nobody, anybody whose memory goes back to 1998 knows the reality.
It's like all the softest people who are least likely to get riled up, like Mary Bono, what's his name?
Sonny Bono's wife, who under the House of Lords system you've got in the United States Congress, inherited her late husband's seat.
Mary Bono says, well, you know, Newt called me up and said, can I count on your support?
And I said to him, well, Newt, you can't really count on my support.
I'm not going to speak out publicly against you, but I'm just going to give a few interviews to Diane Sawyer and Brian Williams to say that I can't possibly support you.
Nobody wanted him.
They were done with him.
Now, he can say, in the end, in the end, his argument should be, well, look, you know, yeah, they'd had enough of me as speaker.
It was a wild ride, and it's going to be a pretty wild ride when I'm president.
But it's going to be a wild ride off the cliff for America if we don't get serious about this stuff.
So he should say, he should say, yeah.
And I took 25 grand for a month for doing nothing from Freddie Mac, because that's the way Washington operates.
And it's a great shame we can't all do that.
But if everybody took 25 grand a month for doing nothing as, say, a community organizer in Chicago or a community, I'd love to, I wouldn't need to be here in New York hosting this show if I could get 25 grand a month to be a community organizer and do nothing in far northern New Hampshire.
Nobody would.
But unfortunately, the system doesn't work like that.
And it's because I'm part of the system that I know how rotten and stinking corrupt it was.
It's like Rush's thing with Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.
So there's so much, well, whatever it is, so there's Al Sharpton.
There's so much corruption.
It's even corrupting me.
Whatever it is.
That's what Newt should say.
There's so much corruption.
It's even corrupted.
But he should basically say, so what?
That's done.
It's over.
It's serious times.
It would be nice to elect a nice, moderate, 1950s department store male mannequin with fabulous hair like my good friend Mitt here.
But unfortunately, these are more serious times.
There's no point pretending.
There's no point Newt pretending he's Mr. Ethical or there's no point in him pretend.
He should shrug these things off.
He should just say, yeah, okay, you're right.
Freddie Mac wasn't a great thing.
What else you got?
Yeah, okay.
1999 is a long time ago.
I was interested in all that stuff Brian Williams spent on that stuff last night.
The number of people who are not interested in essentially relitigating Gingrich's removal from the speakership, whatever it is now, 12, 13, 14 years ago.
They're not interested because we've spent trillions more dollars since then.
So we've got more pressing things.
And the argument for Newt is not that he's a nice guy.
The argument for Newt, I mean, there's whoever knows how many ex-wives who don't think he's a nice guy.
But the argument is that these are serious times and sometimes, and you've got to have a guy who is the measure of the times.
And Mitt, with his soporific caution, is not the guy.
Now, if I was Newt, that's the argument I would make, but I wouldn't pretend to be.
I wouldn't try and defend absurdly the Freddie Mac stuff or the 1998 stuff.
I mean, I think he should say, well, you know, yeah, my own caucus turned their back on me.
That's the kind of guy I am.
I'm not a guy who goes along to get along, like Mitt Romney did with his Democratic legislature in Massachusetts.
I'm a guy who stands up, and sometimes that means even my own party just want to kick me to the floor and be done with me.
But there's no point him standing there.
And I think he should actually just shrug it off.
Nobody's interested in relitigating ancient history on that.
Mark Stein Infra Rush, we will take more of your calls and discuss more of the fallout of the world's most somnolent presidential debate hosted by Brian Williams.
We'll look ahead to the State of the Union and lots more still to come.
1-800-282-2882.
Mark Stein in for Rush.
That is some funky music.
I dig the beat.
I dig the sugar beat.
We're on the sugar beat today.
Mr. Serdley is now doing beat the intro.
What is this?
What is this?
Oh, Outer Space by Billy Preston.
That's good.
Well, I know.
I know.
Billy Preston, great guy.
What was his duet with Cyrita?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
She was fabulous.
I love Billy.
I love Billy Preston.
He did the thing with the Beatles, last Beatles album.
Whatever it was, let it be.
He was on that.
Anyway, we're on the sugar beat.
We're taking the sugar cane to the Republican debate and getting in the sugar beat.
Lots of other news.
The former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, has now released his tax returns.
This is from the Associated Press.
Advisors to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney are acknowledging that he once had a Swiss bank account, but that it was closed in 2010 as he prepared to enter the race for the White House.
Romney's net worth is estimated as much as $250 million.
R. Bradford Malt, the trustee.
Now, actually, that isn't helpful right there.
That the mainstream presidential candidate for the Republican Party has a trustee for his blind trust called R. Bradford Malt.
That's what I like to say at the end of a long day as I settle back into a leather armchair at the Harvard Club and pour myself a scotch.
R. Bradford Malt, the tipple that refreshes.
R. Bradford Malt, Mitt Romney's trustee, said Tuesday that he closed the account in early 2010 because, quote, it just wasn't worth it.
He acknowledged that the account might be inconsistent with Romney's political views.
Now, what kind of world are we living in where a guy closes a Swiss bank account because it's inconsistent with his political views?
And then his spokesman puts out a press release about it.
I mean, this is great.
This is a classic example. of how the Republican Party give the get concede half the turf before they even get out to start playing the game.
Everyone says, oh, you know, Mitt Romney, he's got all kinds of problematic, he only paid tax, 13.9% tax.
He's got all kinds of problematic phrases in there, like, quote, Cayman Islands, unquote.
What do you think the tax?
This country has the highest corporate tax rates in the Western world.
What do you think the corporate tax rates would be if there weren't a Cayman Islands?
God bless the Cayman Islands.
If you couldn't go and get a post office box in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands or the Turks and Caicos or some of these other territories, if you couldn't get a Swiss bank account, what do you think the tax rates would be in the United States, which are already the highest corporate tax rates in the world?
Borders give you choices in every sphere of life.
It doesn't matter if you're living in a crummy town and you don't like the school, you can move 10 miles up the road and put your kid in a better school because there was a border, the border between a dysfunctional school district and a school district that operates reasonably effectively.
And it's the same with tax rates.
The only reason that tax rates are not even more disgustingly high than they are already is because of the existence of alternative jurisdictions.
You can imagine, you remember in the 1960s, they used to talk about one world government.
Do you remember that?
They used to talk about, oh, one world government, as if when we live in a world of peace, then there's one world government, the planet will be in harmony.
What do you think the tax rate will be when there's a one world government, when there are no borders, when you can't move stuff anyway?
I think, to go back to what we were saying about how Newt should respond to his scandals, I think Mitt should be aggressive on this.
I said, of course.
Why would anybody who couldn't avail themselves of a Cayman Islands account want to keep the money in some lousy account in Massachusetts and give half of it to the United States government?
Mitt, this is where the, I was looking at whatever it was, MSNBC or something just now, and they were saying, well, this gets to the issue of fairness that the president is going to talk about tonight.
You know, people like Mitt Romney need to pay their fair share.
Mitt gave over $3 million to the federal treasury last year.
What do you think is fair?
He's given more.
He's giving more than anybody else.
And what I find interesting, too, is that he gave more than, he gave, if you take his tax and his charitable donations combined, he gave about $7 million.
He gave more money to charity than he gave in taxation to the government.
Why doesn't that count for something?
Do you remember whatever year it was, 2000, turned out Al Gore had only given $280 in charitable donations?
Mitt Romney gave $3.5 million away in charity.
What do you mean he's not paying his fair share?
What do you mean?
You think he's getting $3 million worth of services from the United States government?
I don't think so.
Why are we giving half the ground?
Why is a guy closing his Swiss bank account in 2010 because he doesn't think it'll look good?
And then R. Bradford Malt, his trustee, R. Bradford Malt, the genius, says he closes the account because he thinks it's inconsistent with Romney's political views.
Thank God for the Cayman Islands.
God bless the Cayman Islands.
It's 35% corporate tax in the United States right now.
What do you think it would be if there weren't a Cayman Islands?
Mark Stein for Rush, more to come.
Mark Stein in for Rush on the EIB network.
The Washington Post today has a story about how astronomers estimate that the black hole at the center of the galaxy is the equivalent of 4 million suns.
And you can actually see, if you look at this black hole that's the equivalent of 4 million suns, you can actually see just light just barely escaping from the black hole, according to one astronomer quoted in the Washington Post.
Now, I don't know whether that is actually the black hole at the center of the galaxy, or it is in fact the Republican presidential debate moderated by NBC's Brian Williams, or if it is some giant metaphor for the state of the U.S. economy.
You've got, except it would be more like 4 trillion suns in the black hole at the center with a tiny little shaft of light just barely escaping from it.
But this seems to me a telling comment on the state of our times.
Here's, just to go back to what Mitt's problem, Citibank has now sent tax forms for the frequent flyer miles they gave to customers who opened an account with them in return for getting free frequent flyer miles.
In other words, everything has to be taxed, regulated, paperworked by the government.
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