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Feb. 15, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:50
February 15, 2012, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Greetings, my good friends, music lovers, thrill seekers all across the fruited plane conversationalists too.
Great to have you here.
Another exciting excursion into broadcast excellence straight ahead.
And I am your host, Rush Limbaugh, America's real anchor man, the truth detector, the doctor of democracy.
What do we do here?
We do everything.
In addition to everything, we make the complex understandable.
We read the stitches on the fastball.
We read between the lines.
As always, great to have you with us.
Telephone numbers 800-282-2882, the email address L Rushbo at EIBNet.com.
There are some things happening today that are downright scary.
The uh the regime led by Barack Hussein Obama is weighing options for reducing our U.S. nuclear force, including a reduction of up to 80% in the number of deployed warheads.
80%.
Folks.
This is staggering.
Meanwhile, the Iranians are nuking up.
Iran announced today that they're going to cut off oil to six countries that have opposed its nuclear program.
And more importantly, Iran also announced that they have installed domestically made nuclear fuel rods in their Tehran reactor.
Now, if that's true, this is significant because the sanctions that are currently imposed on them are supposed to prevent them from getting the material that you need to make nuclear rods.
And also, if this is true, it puts Iran that much closer to being able to make a nuclear weapon.
We are unilaterally disarming.
We are not requiring the Russians to go along.
And even if the Russians said they would match these reductions, they lie.
That is the lesson of the Russians and nukes.
I think our top, I don't know, what was our top moment?
We what we had our number of warheads peaked at 12,000 in the late 80s.
And let me tell you something.
That number of nuclear warheads is what helped us win the Cold War.
That number of nuclear warheads sent a message to every other nation, particularly at that point in time, the Soviet Union.
You hit us, it doesn't matter.
We've got enough left to wipe you out in retaliation.
That many nuclear warheads was a deterrent.
So much is flashing back in me.
You go back to the 80s and the 70s, the nuclear freeze movement, the peacenicks wanting to get rid of nukes, and there was an arms race going on, and we were increasing our stockpile, as were the Russians.
The numbers mattered only in terms of deterrent.
We had to keep up and we had to stay ahead.
It was the deterrent.
You build, for example, the B-2 bomber, hoping never to have to use it.
The left has never understood this about military matters and defense.
They never understood this about nukes.
You build them so that you don't have to use them.
That's the point.
You don't build them because you want to.
You don't build them because you can't wait to use them.
You don't build them because you're warmongers.
You build them so that you don't have to.
It's what's behind practically every major weapon invention and manufacture.
The B-2 stealth bomber.
You hope you never have to use it.
Now we have had to.
Obviously.
But the hope is that the brute force and the ability to project power is enough to deter anybody from taking us on.
It's a great strategy.
It is how this stuff works.
And now Barack Obama is reducing our stockpile unilaterally by 80% back to 300 warheads.
Now you might say, well, that's good.
Russia, it's making the world safe.
It is not making the world safer.
If the Russians still have 1,500 or 2,025, Whatever the number is, folks, there's a balance of power here that has shifted away from us.
And this I am here to tell you is by design.
The Associated Press is reporting that Obama could cut our nuclear weapons arsenal by 80%.
That is just staggering.
This would amount to unilateral disarmament.
300 nuclear weapons would take us back to levels not seen since 1950.
If we cut our nuclear weapons down to 300, Russia will have five times 1,500 nuclear warheads.
If we reduce to 300, we will have fewer nuclear warheads than the Chai Combs.
The only thing you can say in response to this is, well, Rush, we don't have anything to fear from the Russians or the Chinese.
Or anybody in the Middle East.
No, of course we don't.
The last time we had 300 warheads was in the 50s, and that's when we were making them as fast as our technology and materials would permit us to make them.
We weren't stopping at 300.
kept going.
In addition to that going on, and I'm going to get into this in greater detail as the program unfolds, Obama making me look as prescient as I have ever...
How many times?
I we even found an example before Obama was inaugurated, in which I predicted that what he would say eventually, as president was he had no idea how bad this economy was.
It was so much worse than anybody ever told him.
The Bush administration, the transition team, outgoing, never told us how bad this economy really was.
And that's why it's taken my policy so long.
Or that's why it's going to require such drastic measures.
Obama, we've got the audio coming up on this at some point, is out there saying, I didn't understand how bad things were.
After going through how many trillions of dollars of debt, after going through how many stimulus bills, after lying to the American people about shovel ready jobs, creating make work jobs, building roads and bridges and schools.
Barack Obama now says I didn't understand how bad things were.
And that's not even true.
Barack Obama, September 2008, during a presidential debate in Oxford, Mississippi.
We are going through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
That was Candidate Obama in September 2008.
In October of 2008, Barack Obama, we meet here at a time of great uncertainty.
Our economy is in crisis.
November of 2008, announcing members of his economic team in Chicago.
We are facing an economic crisis of historic proportions.
He is lying today when he says he didn't understand how bad things were.
He's the guy who's been telling us how bad things were.
He is the guy who's been saying that our economy was the worst since the Great Depression.
He said it before he was inaugurated, while he was a candidate.
He said it in his inaugural address.
And he has said it repeatedly, as he's told us for the past three years a number of times that we've turned the corner and that we're on the way back.
How many times have we turned the corner on this bad economy and been on the way back in the past three years?
How many times has he told us how bad it was?
How many times has he told us he didn't know how bad it was?
It was even worse than he knew.
All of this is a giant lie, and it was predicted by your host, Ill Rushbow.
And what we're going to do, we're going to go back and we're going to find audio soundbite examples of Obama telling us how bad it was.
And we are going to play that sound bite of him saying recently, I didn't understand how bad things were.
He said it in an interview with the local Fox affiliate in Atlanta, WAGA TV.
This on real clear politics.
He was lobbed a question by a sympathetic reporter who said he's getting pelted in the media for making a campaign promise he didn't keep.
It's about reviving the economy, about employment being under 8%, all those promises.
Obama said, Well, we're not there yet, because this recession turned out to be a lot deeper than any of us realized.
That was his excuse for his inability to cut the deficit in half.
I didn't understand how bad things were.
He is the one who has been telling us how bad things are as an excuse for his stupid failed policies not working.
I think we even did a montage of this back on December 14th.
I think we did a montage of Obama's I had no idea.
Back on December 14th, we've we've we've gone through this.
Every time he's tried to make this statement, I didn't understand how bad things were.
We have refuted it.
We've had the audio to refute it.
We have gone back and played sound bites of Obama saying he had no idea how bad it was, and then sound bites of Obama telling us it was the worst economy since the Great Depression.
Now reducing nuclear weapons to 300 warheads.
We dug up.
Uh, ladies and gentlemen, let me see where it is here.
Yes.
Obama's 1983 nuclear freeze article.
The New York Times had a story on July 4th, 2009.
Obama's youth shaped his nuclear-free vision.
If you read this, it becomes painfully clear.
Obama's thinking has not advanced one inch in the last 26 years.
He is now implementing the pacifist anti-nuke ideas that the anti-nuke pro-peace movement had way back in the 1980s.
Back during the days of Ronaldus Magnus.
Obama's youth shaped his nuclear free vision.
In the depths of the Cold War, 1983, a senior at Columbia University wrote in a campus news magazine about the vision of a nuclear-free world.
He railed against discussions of first versus second strike capabilities that suit the military industrial interests with their billion dollar erector sets and agitated for the elimination of global arsenals, holding tens of thousands of deadly warheads.
Don't tell me we've got a nice guy, Mr. Romney, who's in over his head.
Don't tell me, Mr. Romney, as Mr. Romney's been saying he's a good man.
He's just out of his league.
By far and away, he's not out of his league.
The people out of their league are in the Republican Party trying to deal with this.
Getting skunked at every turn.
The latest is on this stupid extension of the payroll tax.
I gotta take a break.
Oh, also, Obama's budget director.
What's this guy's name?
Um what?
No, no, no.
That's the chief of staff.
Uh this guy's name is uh uh Zaitz.
Z-I-E-N-T-S.
He was being questioned by a Republican congressman from New Jersey today, Scott Garretts on C P C SPAN 3.
And he's being asked questions about Obama's budget.
And for example, Scott Garrett says, uh, will there be a tax increase on those making under 200,000 dollars in Obama's budget?
The budget director says no.
And Scott Garrett says, well, if if it's a tax when a family doesn't buy a health insurance policy, as mandated by Obamacare, and they have to pay the government for making that decision.
And Zeitz asked, is it a tax?
And Zainz says no, it's not a tax.
But yet the regime is arguing before the Supreme Court that it is a tax, and that's what makes it constitutional.
The regime is arguing before the Supreme Court on this mandate business that the fine that you pay for not buying insurance mandated by Obamacare is a tax.
In questioning today, on the budget, on Capitol Hill, Obama's budget directly says, No, it's not a tax.
Because if it's a tax, then Obama's lying about the fact that nobody under 200 grand will see a tax increase.
Then Garrett asks if the president's budget passes tomorrow.
When will the budget come into balance?
There are no answers.
Because the problem is that this poor budget director sent up there to defend a campaign document.
Not a budget.
White House budget director, Jeff Zeinz, and I hope I pronouncing that right, Z I E N T S. I gotta take a break here.
But I mean that's that's hit the top of the um uh page here, so to speak.
I want to delve into and and uh explain in uh in greater detail.
And we'll have the sound bites that will nail Obama on this.
I didn't understand how bad things were.
I didn't know.
They didn't tell me.
That's why my policies haven't worked.
And then on the other side of that, why this is the worst economy since the Great Depression.
He said it in those three examples I just gave you prior to A being elected and prior to being.
Telling everybody how rotten it was.
He was a senator telling us how bad the economy remember how bad these guys were telling us the economy was when it was Bush's?
And then to come along and say, I don't know how bad it was.
I didn't understand how bad things really were.
So I had to make them worse, huh?
Is that what you needed to do?
You had to make it worse.
And now 300 warheads.
He wants to take our nuclear arsenal down to 300 warheads.
Gotta take a break, my good friends.
We'll do that.
We'll be back and continue right after this.
Views expressed by the host on this program documented to be almost always right, 99.7% of the time.
Let's go to the audio sound bites.
January 16th, 2009, right here on this program.
January 16th is roughly a week before Obama was emaculated.
After the one accepts the oath of office that we will start hearing it's worse than we knew.
We didn't know how bad it really was.
January 16, 2000, over three years ago, I predicted this.
Now let's go back and review just some of the many, many times I predicted that this is exactly what he would do.
After the one accepts the oath of office that we will start hearing it's worse than we knew.
We didn't know how bad it really was.
If there's a bumper sticker that could sum up the campaign, it's taking a lot longer than we thought.
Well, this is much worse than we told Bush didn't tell us how bad it was.
We had no idea it was gonna be this bad.
Frankly, it took longer than we thought for our policies to start to have any impact.
Because it was so much worse than we even knew.
You've got to understand how the media is going to portray this.
It was much worse than we knew because of Bush.
What their campaign is going to be, and I told you this when they got into Washington, they discovered it was far worse than they even knew.
We've got this recession that frankly uh was worse than we thought that was given to us.
I'm gonna tell you what it's gonna be.
See, it was worse than uh we knew when Obama was inaugurated.
It's exactly what I told you they were gonna do.
You can't change horses midstream.
Yep.
So that just a document.
All the times and more that I have predicted what they would do.
Last night in Atlanta, Fox Five News, the info babes said you're getting pelted in the media.
They're showing this video over and over again of you in February of 09 saying by the end of your first term you're gonna reduce the deficit by half.
We're not there.
We're not there.
Well, we're not there because this recession uh turned out to be a lot deeper than any of us realized.
Everybody who was out there back in 2009, uh, if you look back at what their estimates were in terms of how many jobs had been lost, how bad the economy had contracted when I took office, everybody underestimated it.
We lost uh eight million jobs just in the year span, about half uh a year before I took office and half a year after I took office.
So the die had been cast, but a lot of us didn't understand at that point how bad it was going to get.
Right.
Well, okay, let's go back to October 7, 2008 in Nashville presidential debate.
Senator Barack Obama.
I think everybody knows now we are in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
And a lot of you, I think, are worried about your jobs, your pensions, your retirement accounts, your ability to send your child or your grandchild to college.
So which is it, Mr. President?
You didn't know how bad it was, or do we accept what you said October 7, 2008?
Everybody knows we're in the worst financial crisis of the Great Depression.
That's pretty bad.
How can you now tell us that you didn't know how bad it was?
I know these people, folks.
I know these people better than they know themselves.
I know what they're going to say and know what they're going to do before they even do it.
Now we're going to go back and we're going to delve into all of these items in greater detail.
The nukes, Obama lying about how bad he thought the economy was, but I got to get on to the next big deal.
This is big.
It has or could have, let me put it that way, could have major consequences for Obama's lawsuit at the Supreme Court, where they are defending the individual mandate as constitutional at the U.S. Supreme Court.
The administration, the regime is defending Obamacare in court on the ground that the fines, the money Americans have to pay under the mandate if they don't buy insurance is a tax.
They are saying it is a tax, therefore, and they have the power to levy taxes.
It's not a fine, it's not a mandate, it's a tax, and therefore they have the ability to do this, and therefore Obamacare is constitutional.
The only problem is that the Obama budget director is up on Capitol Hill today.
And he's being peppered with questions about Obama's latest campaign document, the budget.
Let's go to the audio sound bites.
Mentioned this a moment ago, Representative Scott Garrett, Republican New Jersey, you did just say that there are no tax increases for those folks making under $250,000.
Now, if I am part of a family who does not buy health insurance in violation of the president's health care program, and I've got to pay a fine because of that.
That is not a tax on me.
The Affordable Care Act saves money.
I understand that, but is that a tax on me then if I do not pay with that?
Or is that not a tax?
I'm not sure I've been following the question.
You said there's no tax increases that people make under $250,000.
If I make under $250,000 and I do not buy health insurance as I'm required to, is that a tax on me or is that not a tax on me?
Well, uh moment ago you said there's no tax increase.
But that's not a tax.
No.
That's not a tax.
Okay, that's just one to be clear clear on that because that's not the argument that the administration is making before the Supreme Court.
This guy has stepped in it.
This guy, Zainz, Jeff Zainz, clearly out of his doesn't know what's going on up there.
They've sent him up there to defend the budget.
And he's gone up there with his template, his narrative.
Obamacare saves money.
This budget will reduce the deficit.
This budget will raise revenue.
This budget will bring us into balance by all the lies, all the cockamami crap that this administration is telling everybody this guy is armed with.
He gets a question.
He's not even.
It sounds like he's not even prepped for it.
Now, wait a minute now, this fine that people have to pay, if they make under 250,000, because the president has said that there'll be no tax increase on people that make 250,000 or less.
So if I have to pay money, whatever you call it, fine, whatever.
If I don't buy health insurance, is that a tax?
No.
No, not a tax.
He has to say that in order to perpetuate the lie that there are no tax increases on people that earn less than 250 grand.
And in saying that there's no tax, he just undermined the entire Obama case at the Supreme Court.
And I will guarantee you that even as we speak, a transcript and probably the audio as well is being sent lickety split to the lawyers arguing that Obamacare is unconstitutional before the Supreme Court.
They got the I'm sure they've got this in their possession even now.
Now the soundbite, it wasn't over.
After Zaintz admitted that it is not a tax.
And remember, folks, the regime, Obama is saying that it is a tax.
The fine, the money you pay for not buying health insurance is a tax.
That's what gives them the power to levy it and collect it and have it all be constitutional.
But their budget director is not a tax.
So then Garrett and Zainz continue to discuss this.
If we pass this budget tomorrow, when does the budget balance in this country under your proposal?
We achieve significant progress.
I'm just looking for a year.
Just a year.
We bring uh just a year.
When does this budget balance in this country under your proposal?
This budget makes a serious Just a year.
No, just a year.
Can you tell me when that's not a year question?
He's not answering the question.
It's a simple question.
I'm looking for a year.
What year would Zier budget ever balance?
This budget makes significant progress across this decade.
The President is willing.
Is it your answer that this budget is willing to do more work to drive the debt?
So your answer never balance.
Time for the general has expired.
Right.
The answer is never.
And that's what this doofus can't say.
That might be mindset from LA.
It can't balance ever because it doesn't balance ever.
Did that not sound pathetic?
I mean, that's hilarious.
That sounds like a Saturday night live script.
That sounds like Bob Torricelli defending the watches and the cash that he got when he was a senator.
Snurdley, I don't think you he didn't hear this, did he?
He's in their screening calls.
Snurdly, stop screening.
Tap him on the shoulder.
Okay, I want you to hear this.
People are going to react to this.
This is after Zainz admits that the fine is not a tax.
And remember, the administration is arguing before the Supreme Court that it is a tax.
So the budget directors undermined the Supreme Court case of Obamacare.
Scott Garrett, Republican New Jersey, continues to pepper the guy about the budget.
If we pass this budget tomorrow, when does the budget balance in this country under your proposal?
We achieve significant progress.
I'm just a year.
Just a year.
When does this budget balance in this country under your proposal?
This budget makes a serious Just a year.
No, just a year.
Can you tell me when you're not a that's not a year question?
He's not answering the question.
It's a simple question.
I'm looking for a year.
What year would the Zure budget ever balance?
Budget makes significant progress across this decade.
The president is willing.
Is it your answer that this budget is?
So your answer this budget never balances.
Time for the general is expired.
This is uh I mean it's this is hilarious.
It doesn't balance.
That's why it never comes into but this guy is up there with just a bunch of meaningless BS.
A meaningless bunch of phrases.
We achieved significant progress, achieved significant progress.
The president uh is uh is looking to achieve significant progress, uh progress, budget makes significant progress across.
That's all he's gonna say, because it doesn't balance, it's not even a budget, it's a campaign document.
Now, this poor guy Zainz is reading from an old script on ABC's This Week, back uh September 20th, 2009.
Obama talking to Stephanopoulos.
Obama said for us to say that you have to take responsibility to get health insurance, absolutely not a tax increase.
Stephanopoulos at the point whipped out a dictionary, read the definition of a tax, and despite hearing what the definition of a tax or tax increase was, Obama stood his grounds.
Nobody considers this a tax increase.
Obama, nobody considers this fine to be a tax.
Thank you.
And yet that's what they are now arguing.
Let's continue with the audio soundbite, September 20th, 2009.
This week with George Stepanopoulos.
Stephanopoulos is under this mandate, the government is forcing people to spend money and fining them if they don't.
How is that not a tax increase?
No, that's not true, George.
The for us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase.
What it's saying is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you.
Any more than the fact that right now everybody in America just about has to get auto insurance.
Nobody considers that a tax increase.
People say to themselves, that is a fair way to make sure that if you hit my car that I'm not covering all the costs.
So not only is Obama's budget director undermining Obama's case before the Supreme Court, so did Obama himself undermine his own case.
September 2009.
It's not a tax increase, George.
Nobody thinks it's a tax increase.
It can't possibly be a tax increase.
But they're arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court that the fine is not a tax.
It is a tax.
They're arguing at the court that it is a tax tax.
And that they have the power to levy taxes, and therefore all of this is constitutional.
And don't forget, during the 08 campaign, Obama tried to nail Hillary to the wall on the mandate itself.
He was opposed to a mandate in 2008 during the presidential campaign.
He was opposed to that which he's now put in his bill.
September 20th, 2009, this week with Stephanopoulos, Stephanopoulos says, well, look.
It may be fair and it may be good public policy.
But for you to say that this isn't a tax, this is the same.
No, but George, you you can't just make up that language and decide that that's called a tax increase.
I don't think I'm making it up.
Mary Mebster's dictionary.
Tax.
A charge usually of money imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes.
George, the fact that you looked up Merriam's dictionary, the definition of tax increase indicates to me that you're stretching a little bit right now.
Otherwise you wouldn't have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition.
Well, no.
I mean, what if what you're saying is I wanted to check for myself, but your critics say it is a tax increase.
My critics say everything's a tax increase.
My critics say that I'm taking over uh every sector of the economy.
You know that.
Uh look, we can have a legitimate debate about whether or not we're gonna have an individual mandate or not.
But you reject that it's a tax increase.
I can absolutely reject that notion.
My friends, I don't know if you understand quite yet the import of all this.
Today, Jeff Zeinz, the budget director, ain't no way that this fine can be called a tax increase.
Obama, September 20, 2009.
George, you go get the dictionary to look up the definition of a tax.
The fact that you do that means that this can't possibly be.
There is no tax increase here.
And yet this is the same bunch arguing that the fine, the collection of money paid by people in lieu of buying health insurance is a tax.
They're undermining themselves left, and the reason is Obama has promised that there will be no tax increase on people making under $250,000 a year.
So they're caught here.
What premise do they need to be consistent on?
And they have decided that they're gonna be consistent on the premise that nobody earning less than 250K will get a tax increase.
And in the process, they are undermining themselves at the Supreme Court.
Be right back, don't go away.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I want to go back to another subject that we discussed earlier in the program, and that is Obama saying I didn't understand how bad things were.
Last night in Atlanta, I didn't know how bad things were.
Now you heard the sound bites from me from prior to his immaculation predicting that he would say that.
You also heard sound bites from Obama admitting that He knew how bad it was.
Even before he was inaugurated, he was saying this economy worst since the Great Depression.
That's bad.
That's as bad as you can get.
And he's made no secret of the fact in these past three years that this economy's bad.
Now he's saying he didn't understand how bad things were.
My question is this: are we ever going to hear that anything is Obama's fault?
Ever.
After three years, this isn't Bush's budget.
This isn't Bush's plan.
This is not Bush's philosophy.
We've got three years of Obama-ism.
We have a three-year record.
We have over five trillion dollars in new debt added by one man, him.
Bush, nothing to do with it.
Republican Congress, nothing to do with it.
Barack Obama, Pinky Reed, Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat Party, they did this.
It is all on them.
It's three years in.
And the media is still letting Obama get away with the when he says I didn't understand how bad things were, that translates it's not my fault.
This is all Bush's fault.
This is my predecessor's fault.
This is what I inherited.
It is not what he inherited.
He has doubled down and he has worsened by a factor of five what he inherited.
If that weren't bad enough, where are the Republicans reacting to this in the right way?
Why does everybody seem on our side?
Why does everybody seem like they are conceding the point that he inherited a mess from Bush?
Why is everybody seemingly on our side conceding that?
This mess is directly traceable to Obama.
He is accountable.
His policies, the enactment of his policies, all the spending, all the debt, Obamacare, all the new regulations, all the taxes, all the shackles on business, all the drilling moratoriums, the Keystone Pipeline.
Every policy designed to stop and prevent economic growth is his and his alone.
Every problem we are having in housing is directly traceable to Barack Obama.
He owns it.
As a senator, as a community organizer, the only thing Obama didn't like about Bush's big spending policies is that the spending was never enough.
He never got mad at Bush because he spent a lot.
It was because it wasn't enough.
They got mad at FDR, not because he spent too much, but because he didn't spend enough.
They're trying to make up for that now.
They're making up Obama is making up for the look at gasoline.
Obama takes office.
Gasoline is a dollar sixty-one.
We are heading to four or five dollar a gallon gasoline.
And he wants us to believe that's George W. Bush's fault.
He wants us, and the media want us to believe that that is what he inherited.
Where are the Republicans?
Standing up and saying, no, sir, you don't get to do this.
You don't get to blame the Republican Party, essentially, for this mess.
Barack Obama is attempting to occupy a position that essentially is, I haven't been president for three years.
I'm running for office for the first time here.
And we got these problems out there, and I need to address them.
It's worse than anybody ever told us.
When does he get blamed?
When is anything, just one thing his fault?
Name for me any other president three years after a disaster like this who would not be blamed, at least for some of it.
You can't.
This is unprecedented.
There never has been a well, maybe JFK, but that's arguable.
But the fact remains that this is all tied to Barack Obama.
Every aspect of this nation's present circumstance and disaster is owned fully and solely by Barack Obama and the Democrat Party.
United States had a triple-A credit rating when Obama was immaculated, a dollar sixty one a gallon gasoline price, 7.2% unemployment rate.
A deficit four times smaller than it is today.
And Obama, as a senator, voted for every spending increase put before him.
Every one, everything he inherited, he voted for.
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