Aren't you afraid of having Nancy Brinker get mad at you?
Well, she's already mad at me.
Says I'm a conservative.
She said, nothing to see here, folks.
It's always been mad at me.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
Yip, yip, yip.
Yahoo!
Time to move on.
Our number two of the fastest three hours of media, Rush Limbaugh.
Thank God it's Open Line Friday, Super Bowl Friday.
The New England Patriots and Jersey A. Greg Easterbrook writes a column once a week for page two at ESPN called Tuesday Morning Quarterback.
He calls the Giants and Jets Jersey A and Jersey B. Great to have you at the telephone number if you want to be on the program 800-282-2882.
The email address, LRushbo at EIBNet.com.
48% of all Americans are either considered to be low-income or living in poverty.
But the economy getting better out there.
And we had dueling endorsements yesterday.
Battle of endorsements.
Trump endorsed Romney.
Jesus Christ endorsed Obama's tax plans.
Well, he did.
That's what Obama said.
There are fewer non-farm payroll jobs in America today than there were back in 2000, even though we've added 30 million to the population.
That is a staggering number.
The American population has grown by 30 million since 2000, and there are fewer payroll jobs.
Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in America were low-income jobs.
Today, more than 40% are low-income.
BLS numbers here, folks.
Let's go to the audio sound, budget, shall we?
And we're going to start.
This is Mitt Romney.
Last night, he was on Hannity on Fox, and they were talking about the remark he made that he's not concerned about the very poor.
Hannity said, obviously, taking out of context, but this is what you're going to deal with in the campaign.
Is this frustrating to you?
Well, it's the reality, and I misspoke.
I wish I wouldn't have said it that way.
I've made the same thought part of my speeches over the last year or two, which is that I'm really concerned about middle-income Americans.
I want to help middle-income Americans.
I want to get people out of poverty into the middle-income category.
But of course, I'm concerned and worried about all Americans, and I want to make sure our safety net is appropriately able to care for our poor.
I'm concerned about all citizens.
But now and then, you misspeak.
You have to acknowledge it.
It was something I did not intend to say in the way it was said, but I recognize that's part of the political process.
All right.
So that's going to be out there throughout the campaign.
Obama, even in the debates, will more than likely bring this up.
Last night on MSNBC, hardball Chris Matthews talked with Steve Kornacki, who was the, I guess, news editor at salon.com.
Matthews said 6% of whoever these full mooners are said that they would be more likely to vote for a candidate after a Trump endorsement.
And Matthews couldn't believe it, couldn't get over it.
6% of people said that Trump endorsement would make a difference to him.
That's why he called them full mooners.
So he's asking Cornaki, who are these full mooners?
Who are these idiots?
Who are these one in 16 people that say they would more likely switch to Romney after Trump said he's my guy?
I don't read this as a general election move at all.
The entire story of the 2012 Republican races, Mitt Romney struggled to relate to and win over the Tea Party base of the Republican Party.
They watched Gingrich come back from the dead once before.
They think they have him right now.
They probably have him right now.
But, you know, Donald Trump has credibility with that Sarah Palin, Herman Cain, Rush Limbaugh wing of the Republican Party.
So you see, this is not about the general.
This is about winning the nomination.
And the Trump endorsement's all about getting me and Palin and Herman Cain sign on to Romney.
Because we're big on Trump.
That's the theory.
We love Trump.
If whatever Trump does, that's what we're going to do.
MSNBC again, yesterday afternoon, Martin Bashir spoke with Lehigh, University Professor of African Studies, James Peterson, about this.
Martin Bashir, look, it does seem remarkable.
A man said he wasn't concerned about the very poor should today align himself with another multi-millionaire.
Now, what kind of a disc, what's he supposed to do?
Go out and find a hobo and get an endorsement?
Rachel's in there laughing at the use of the word hobo.
Yeah, let's get a group.
Hobos for Romney.
What's he supposed to do?
I mean, this is a huge disconnect, but that's what Martin Bashir is known for.
Yeah, whatever.
So it goes out, it's remarkable.
Wasn't concerned about the very poor.
Now he aligns himself with another multi-millionaire.
What's going on here, Professor Peterson?
When you get folk like Rush Limbaugh critiquing you, you get those folk on the far right coming at you, Mitt Romney understands that in order for him to close this deal, he's going to have to pander to them and continue to do so.
I think he makes too many political faux pas.
People are now critiquing you about whether or not you have any compassion for the poor whatsoever or the fact that the middle class is becoming the poor.
And then the next day, you're standing side by side with Donald Trump.
It doesn't matter.
It's an entire disconnect.
That's the least we see.
It's the last thing anybody sees about.
You want to talk about wealthy people endorsing candidates?
Go look at the money talking for Obama.
Look, this is silly, stupid double standards that have always existed.
Last night on Hannity, Gingrich was on.
I don't know if it was before Romney, but he was on there.
Hannity said, look, this has happened to you twice.
You've had to withstand pretty strong attacks in Iowa, negative advertising.
Now it's happened in Florida.
And I would anticipate that Obama will do the same thing if you're the nominee, Newt.
The other thing that became obvious in Florida, historically interesting, is that the entire Republican establishment became unhinged.
I mean, when you have a guy as smart as Elliot Abens write an article that's so false that Rush spends two hours taking it apart, you get some flavor of how frightened the establishment is that I could win.
Yeah.
So look, we're playing the sound bites here just to show you how influential, important, and necessary to the news cycle that your host is.
Where would the news cycle be without your host?
Where would the media be without your host?
What would they be talking about?
That's why there's a show prep for the media.
Rachel's in there.
Rachel's in for Dawn today.
Dawn dealing with something.
And so Rachel is our substitute court reporter who transcribes people on the phone.
You may not have anything to do today, Rachel, depending on how things go.
But Rachel, she's, wow, you're so, I am so impressed.
Everybody's talking about it.
It happens every day, Rachel.
Happens every day.
Here we go to Fox News channel Brett Baer.
Special report with Brett Baer.
He had John Roberts on, the former CNN reporter now over at Fox.
And this was a report about the Santorum campaign.
Santorum, who's also campaigning heavily in Colorado, Missouri, and Minnesota, got a boost of his own when Rush Limbaugh recently said he is the only candidate not guilty of a transgression against conservatism.
Since that time, and that was just a couple of days ago, Santorum has seen his fundraising nearly triple.
Wow.
Santorum's fundraising has tripled ever since I said that about him.
And that was just a couple of days ago.
Might have been Tuesday, but I think it probably was Tuesday.
Then last night on the House floor, the debate on the federal budget, Louis Gormert, Congressman Texas, has proposed a bill that would wipe out baseline budgeting, eliminate it.
Baseline budgeting essentially is every year, every line item in the federal budget automatically increases by 5 to 10, 8%.
Just it's built in.
It has no relationship to any reality.
No relationship to what was spent in prior years.
No relationship to whether or not the money is being wasted, none whatsoever.
It's called the current services baseline, and it always goes up.
This is how an increase in spending can end up being called a cut.
If a line item is scheduled to increase by 8%, according to the baseline, and the actual spending proposed on that line item calls for a 4% increase instead of 8%, the Democrats and the media harp on it and say the 4% cut.
That's a 4% cut in spending.
When nothing's been cut, it's increasing by 4%.
Louis Gomert authored a piece of legislation to get rid of the current services baseline as a budget technique to wipe out baseline budgeting.
And it passed.
It passed 235 to something.
It won't go anywhere in the Senate, probably, but it did pass in the House.
And this is Louis Gomert on the House floor last night.
Back during my days when I was judge, I heard a guy named Rush Limbaugh bring up why do we have this automatic increase?
Because then when conservatives try to slightly decrease the amount of increase, they're said to be making draconian cuts.
Well, I made a mental note.
When I got to Congress in January of 2005, I couldn't believe to find out that we still had those automatic increases every year.
And I think baseline budgeting, the Budget Reform Act 19, something tells me 1979, it might have been post-Watergate.
That's why every spending cut deal under a balanced budget proposal is meaningless.
1974, it was post-Watergate.
It was a 1974 Congressional Act that started all this in the first place.
We will never, ever get to a balanced budget as long as this exists because every spending cut, everything that's called a cut is an increase.
Except what Obama's doing in the military.
Those are genuine cuts.
Everything else in the budget every year that is said to be a cut is not.
It is an increase of something.
Okay, to the phones we go now.
About time.
Open line Friday, and we're starting in Austin, Texas.
And great to have you.
Welcome.
This is Diane.
Thank you for taking my call.
I really appreciate it.
You bet.
Listen, I'm a three-year breast cancer survivor, and I work.
I've got four kids.
I have a small business in the breast cancer space.
So I follow all this really very closely.
So when the Coleman announcement came out on Wednesday that they were going to not fund the Planned Parenthood for, you know, because they were under investigation, I knew there was going to be just a huge backlash.
And I'm on Twitter and I'm on Facebook.
So I was happy following it.
And I just think it's ironic that some of the greatest outrage is from the people that are, I call them the Coleman haters.
So I'll probably get in trouble saying that, but they've been very critical of Coleman over the last several years anyway, due to their fundraising and the money and the commercial things they do.
And they're the ones that have been putting the most pressure, I think, on Coleman the last couple of days.
So I'm really surprised that Coleman would be surprised, given they've had all this, they call it pink lash the last couple of years against what they've been doing in their organization.
Yeah, I've remained, but they're shocked.
I mean, they really could not believe that the Planned Parenthood babes were out to wipe them out.
And I don't know how in the world they couldn't figure out that that was going to happen.
The Planned Parenthood babes figured that another female charity that their sisters in arms or whatever.
So this was a double sellout.
It was the sisters selling out the sisters and they thought it was an ideological sellout.
Or maybe if I were a suspicious person, which I may be, this has been a great fundraiser for Planned Parenthood.
Maybe Coleman got together with Planned Parent and said, okay, well, we have to do this because we've got a lot of people that don't want to support Coleman.
Well, I don't know.
It's look, what she's saying is that there was a conspiracy out there and that the Coleman people got hold of the Planned Parenthood people and said, here, we're going to sell you out.
And that's going to cause so much outrage that the pro-abortion people's country are going to flood Planned Parenthood with money to make up for what will not be coming in from Coleman.
The only problem, the published guidelines from Coleman clearly say they will no longer fund organizations that are under investigation.
Planned Parenthood is under investigation.
According to guidelines, the bylaws, the Constitution of the Coleman, they had to pull their money.
They never said they were going to permanently pull out.
They just said they couldn't do it at this time.
But regardless, Planned Parenthood did get a lot of donations after this happened.
And Coleman did too.
I mean, Coleman got all kinds.
In fact, I will wager you this.
I will wager you that some of the Coleman people were shocked that they got big donations coming in when they announced they were pulling out of Planned Parenthood.
I will wager, and you know who was giving Coleman money at that point?
The dreaded, embarrassing hayseed pro-lifers.
And that's not my view, as you know.
This is the sophisticated American view of the pro-life community.
And so I'm sure the Coleman people sitting there said, whoa, what's going on here?
Because I don't think they had, it's just a wild guess, but it looks like it.
I don't think they had the slightest ideological understanding of where they're dealing with in Planned Parenthood.
And this is not, the Coleman group is not a bunch of dumb people.
They are, I mean, if you, folks, that's the Republican establishment in large part there.
Isn't whose daughter?
Is who Ma Richards' daughter?
I don't know who.
I don't know who's running Planned Parenthood.
Is it Ma Richards' daughter?
I didn't know Ma Richards had any kids.
Okay, so Ma Richards' daughter is running Planned Parenthood, which, by the way, you're wondering who's investigating them.
Congress is.
Congress is investigating Planned Parenthood.
So the Coleman people, now, Susan Coleman is the sister of Nancy Brinker.
She died of breast cancer at age 36.
Nancy Brinker is a breast cancer survivor.
She's 65.
She's a former ambassador to Hungary.
She was the chief of protocol for Bush.
She and her deceased husband were huge donors to W. Huge donors, major donors and fundraisers.
She goes back to Neiman Marcus, or she met her husband at Neiman Marcus.
It's Republican establishment there at the top.
And you had any clue.
Obviously, I don't think they had a clue that Planned Parenthood just didn't get mad.
Planned Parenthood tried to wipe this bunch out.
Who's next?
Where are we going?
Robert in Phoenix.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Russ.
Truly an honor to speak to you again.
Thank you very much, sir.
I have two comments.
My first one is, since Obamacare is considered unconstitutional due to the mandate that you have to buy it, why isn't Social Security and Medicare unconstitutional?
Well, they are not required.
You don't have to buy anything with Social Security.
And by the way, Obamacare has not been declared unconstitutional yet.
That's before the court.
Supreme Court's going to decide that.
That's the commerce clause, which, of course, Obamacare requires that you buy health insurance.
And if you don't, they are going to fine you.
The Obama regime's way out of this.
No, no, no, no, this is, we're not mandating any of this.
It's a tax.
But Social Security and Medicare are a tax that you have to pay, which you don't receive the benefit of as you're paying it.
Why is it that you're required to do it?
They're two totally different things.
Social Security is not a tax, actually, and it's not a fee, and it's not a penalty.
There's nothing in common.
Okay.
Literally nothing in common between those two things.
I mean, to go along your reasoning, the entire income tax would be illegal.
You know, argue the benefits you get from it and so forth.
No, this is strictly a commerce clause.
Federal government mandating somebody buy something can't do it.
But look, the Constitution is one of these living, breathing documents.
If this Supreme Court, and they follow elections, they do follow public opinion now.
By the way, do you know I saw something yesterday?
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, current Supreme Court Justiceette.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was she speaking to an audience in Egypt, and she was advising them what to do if they were going to write a constitution.
And she said, don't use the United States Constitution as a model.
A sitting Supreme Court justice told Egyptians, don't use the U.S. Constitution.
That's too old.
It's out of date.
Use the Constitution of Canada or South Africa.
The South African Constitution, that's pretty good, because those constitutions focus on human rights.
And the U.S. Constitution is very weak on human rights.
Folks, we're going to put An article, a little page from the Limbaugh letter from an issue from last year up at rushlimbaugh.com.
Pretty soon, I just set it up to Coco, and it is a thorough treatise on baseline budgeting.
It takes the complex and makes it understandable.
We ran it last year in an issue of the Limbaugh letter, and I'm going to put it up at rushlimbaugh.com.
I also need to tell us something else, and I didn't print it out yet, so I got to wait for another break.
In the meantime, David in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Great to have you, sir, in the Open Line Friday.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
Yesterday, I had to make the tough decision to close a small business, which I've been the owner-operator of for the past eight years.
And I heard the sound bites earlier, the president speaking of the improving economy.
I guess I didn't get the memo till today.
So, you know, we've been hit pretty tough down here.
And I don't know.
I don't know what they're, if they just are so separated from reality or what, but I don't feel an improving economy for sure.
Oh, they're not just separated from reality, they are living a different reality.
They are projecting a different reality, and they're attempting to tell everybody else, like you, that your reality isn't real.
So, what kind of business did you have that you have to shut down?
Wholesale lighting.
We dealt with residential build, deal with residential builders, and we've watched it go down over the past few years.
Okay, well, let me ask you a quick question.
Because one thing Obama said yesterday when he's talking about the economy roaring back, and we got to keep it going.
And one of the things he said, David, that he had to do to keep this recovery going was to eliminate the tax subsidies that the oil companies are getting.
Would that help you if Obama raised taxes on big oil?
No, you know, well, you know, fuel has been one thing that's been killing us, but I look at the taxes on the pumps here when we fill up the trucks, and that's been killing us.
So I don't see that happening.
The regulation, the hoops that we have to jump through in small business are so just want to be clear.
The president said yesterday that in order to help guys like you and your business, we've got to raise taxes on the oil companies.
And you just said that wouldn't help you.
No.
No.
No, I don't see where that would help me now.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, I didn't think it would.
In fact, raising taxes on the oil companies would probably raise your fuel prices.
That's kind of the way business works.
Well, then you could be number 608 this year to go buy a vault.
Yeah, well, I don't think we have too much luck delivering stuff to.
Well, I'm sorry to hear this, but I know this has to be.
He said it this morning.
I'm sorry.
He said the oil company tax this morning.
People like you all over the country.
They're shutting their doors.
They're shutting down.
Some are not.
And I don't mean to say that there aren't individual examples, pockets of examples.
Nothing is static.
In every economy, somebody is doing well when somebody's hurting.
Not because it's not a causal relationship always.
But my favorite example of this is the 70s.
The price of oil plummeted so low that domestic producers in Louisiana and Texas had to cap their wells.
They could not bring the oil out of the ground without losing a lot of money.
Now, the consumer was benefiting like crazy with cheap gasoline prices.
The domestic oil business was shut down in many states.
And shell oil.
Shell Oil has announced losses in the billions because of Obama's moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
And yet, we're told all this wonderful news is happening on all this wonderful economic news is happening.
Great economic growth is taking place.
And the evidence is not there to support that.
Well, poor guy David, I could, would cutting the payroll tax have helped save his business?
No, it wouldn't have.
He doesn't have customers.
He's in the housing market.
South Carolina, what's the, what I see, the unemployment rate there's 10.8% in South Carolina above Obama's federal national average.
I could ask this guy who shut his business.
I could say, everything Obama has done, if he did it more, would it help you?
And every eight-answer no to every question.
This employment number, and if you're just joining us, I want to give you the raw numbers again.
In December, there were 130 million people working.
In January, there were 2.5 million fewer people working.
Raw numbers, not seasonally adjusted.
And I will admit, I don't understand the seasonal adjustment and how it's done.
I don't understand the formula.
I am not commenting on it.
I'm not saying that it's ridiculous, that it's wrong or it's anything.
I just don't know it.
I'm sorry, I got the numbers wrong.
132.9 million jobs in December, 130.4 million jobs in January.
2.5 million fewer jobs in January from December.
The unemployment rate goes down from 8.5 to 8.3.
The seasonal adjustment.
This is what I don't understand.
Maybe somebody from the BLS is out there can call it.
Maybe the Hutch will know when he calls this a talk Super Bowl.
I don't know how you go from 132.9 million people working in December to 130.4 million people working in January.
That's a loss of 2.5 million jobs.
I don't know how you get from that to an increase of 233,000 jobs after the seasonal adjustment.
I just don't know.
I will also, this is the first time that I have been directed to and seen table B1 in the release that comes out every month from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that mentions these raw numbers.
I've, well, we've talked raw numbers, but I've actually seen the numbers, but not in this context.
We have mentioned the number of jobs lost in terms of the universe, the labor force participation rate, but this is the first time in the discussion of the monthly unemployment numbers that I have seen anything like this.
I have never seen, it probably happens all the time, and I just don't understand seasonal adjusting.
But I'm, I, no, I don't.
I really don't, because this, this, apparently, this, the seasonal adjustment is a time-honored, proven, and established, accepted way of reporting and measuring unemployment.
I just don't understand it.
I don't, I don't get, I need to see a definition of what seasonal adjustment actually means.
You've got to know that before you can understand the math behind it.
But just plain, simple math.
I don't understand how you lose 2.5 million jobs in a month.
And in the same month, the government says there was, after seasonal adjustment, a 233,000 increase in jobs.
Now, what we do know about the 233,000 jobs, we do know that most of them are low paying.
And what we also know from these two sets of numbers is that the unemployment rate from 8.5 to 8.3 does not mean businesses are hiring.
It means that fewer people are in the workforce.
That's what it means.
In fact, these two numbers are not the only numbers.
I know numbers can run together on the radio.
Let me go through this again.
In January, the number of people working, a number of jobs was 132.9 million in January, December, rather.
January, it was 130.4.
So that's a difference of 2.5 million jobs lost.
Now, the BLS also admits that the labor force participation rate dropped by 1.2 million jobs from December to January.
So you've got 2.5 million, fewer jobs, and out of that 2.5 million, 1.2 million of them are said to be gone forever.
The labor force participation rate, just the number, they're out of the market.
So there's three numbers here.
132.9, 130.4 equals 2.5 million, and then 1.2 million, both negative.
And yet you end up with 233,000 jobs added according to the regime.
Got to take a break.
Sit tight.
We're back before you know it.
Okay.
So I'm trying to get to the bottom of this.
This seasonal adjustment business.
Stick with me on this, folks.
From the Bureau of Labor Statistics, what is seasonal adjustment?
Seasonal adjustment is a statistical technique from their website here that attempts to measure and remove the influences of predictable seasonal patterns to reveal how employment and unemployment change from month to month.
Over the course of a year, the size of the labor force, the levels of employment and unemployment and other measures of labor market activity undergo fluctuations due to seasonal events, including changes in weather, harvests, major holidays, and screw schedules.
Because these seasonal events follow a more or less regular pattern every year, their influence on statistical trends can be eliminated by seasonally adjusting the statistics from month to month.
So seasonal adjustment includes adjustment for the size of the labor force.
I didn't know that.
Seasonal adjustment is not just what the guess is about the number of jobs from month to month.
It also includes adjustment for the size of the labor force.
And that's how they're able to play games with the labor force participation rate.
So that might account for a big chunk of the difference here.
1.2 million, and this is their number, from December to January, 1.2 million people left the workforce.
Just left it.
That's the labor force participation rate.
And they left 1.2 million.
Well, that's half of the number or half the difference right there.
If you take The number, 132.9 jobs in December, 130.4 million in January.
That's 2.5 million fewer jobs.
1.2 million, about half of that, that they just threw out in a seasonal adjustment of people that left the workforce.
I don't know how they get the 1.2 million.
They say it's statistical, but they've just, what they did is reduce the overall number of jobs possible by 1.2 million.
So fewer jobs is going to bring down the unemployment rate because as there are fewer, if the labor force were what it is, or what it was when Obama was inaugurated in 2009, the unemployment rate would be close to 10%.
It's only 8.3 because they have used seasonal adjustment to just say that last month, 1.2 million people gone from the workforce.
No jobs anymore.
So the Bureau of Labor Statistics looks at the loss of 2.5 million jobs and they say, well, we think 1.2 million have just decided to give up looking for work.
So we're not, we won't count half of them just to make things more accurate.
And even with that major cheat, that still leaves more than a million and a half lost jobs unaccounted for.
Fewer people looking for jobs brings down the jobless rate.
Not, in this case, not more people finding jobs brings down the jobless rate.
Fewer people looking for jobs is what's bringing the unemployment rate down.
There isn't job creation going on.
Not to the tune the regime wants you to believe it.
It just isn't happening.
I ordered something online earlier this week.
There's a company out there.
I'm not even sure how you pronounce it.
It's S-P-I-G-E-N.
They're in LA.
And they make a tempered glass shield for the iPhone that will not shatter.
Well, it remains intact if it does shatter, but you can get a box cutter, won't scratch it, keys won't scratch it.
I've seen a demo where they got a portable drill, wouldn't drill through it.
And people drop their iPhones.
Sometimes the glass breaks.
So I thought, I'm going to try this.
And I ordered five of them.
And it came the other day.
One came.
There was only one in there.
The shipping, the whatever, they said that the quantity was five.
So I wrote them a letter, an email.
And I said, I only got one of the five I ordered.
They wrote back, we need a picture of the packing.
They wanted evidence.
And I had thrown all that away.
So I wrote them back.
I said, I'm sorry, I threw all that stuff away.
So I guess it's never mind.
And I'll see you later.
So I just wrote back, said, never mind.
We'll send you four replacements soon.
And it reminded me, that's how good the customer service is at 2FIT.
That's what that's that this, this guy, obviously they've got a policy there.
They wanted to make sure, I mean, anybody could write them an email, say, I ordered five, I only got one.
They wanted proof.
I didn't have it, even though I took a picture of the one that I got.
And I sent them that.
And so I wanted to give them a shout out.
S-P-I-G-E-N.
That's the fact that, well, the website for the store is SGPstore.com.
SGP Store Dirk.
I gotta go.
Quick break.
Back after this.
Don't go away.
Name of that company is Spejin.
S-P-I-G-I-N.
Spejin.
S-P-G.com.
And it's Glass Tea is the name of the product.
Anyway, we put a link at rushlimbo.com if you're interested.