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Feb. 22, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
32:56
February 22, 2012, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Now I know I had that story here.
I know I had it.
The DSK story.
Dominique Strauss Creta.
You heard the latest on this guy.
Well, I don't remember.
I had it here.
I did there's another story that just came across the wire on the UK Daily Mail.
And I was going to tie in with a DSK story.
Anyway, it's funny in and of itself and explains why the guy was so confused.
Here we go.
From the UK Daily Mail.
France has just banned the word Mademoiselle from official documents.
The French will no longer permit the use of the word Mademoiselle from official documents.
Know why?
Because it suggests a woman is available.
So they have to say Madame or Madame.
But you can't say Mademoiselle.
Now, here's the DSK story.
Also from the UK Daily Mail.
I mean, it's no wonder this guy was so confused, didn't know whether he was sleeping with prostitutes or not.
Dominique Strauss Kahn was today arrested by French cops, faces criminal charges relating to an illegal prostitution racket.
A former IMF chief was told by detectives that there is evidence linking him to complicity in pimping and misuse of corporate assets.
Now he has he's 62.
He has admitted to attending sex parties in cities all over the world, but he denies knowing that the women he slept with were prostitutes.
He has claimed he didn't know that he was sleeping with prostitutes because the women were all naked at the time.
Honest to God, that gosh, that's what he said.
DSK said that he didn't know he was sleeping with prostitutes because the women were all naked at the time.
They didn't have on the uniform.
Which is what?
What's the uniform?
You would know this, snerdly.
You wouldn't know the official prostate.
Well, uh you know, but I don't buy this.
But anyway, now that you can't call women Mademoiselle, is any wonder why the guy was confused?
Because it it it it it uh implies that a woman is available.
Uh here's from the article.
From now on, Mademoiselle should be replaced with Madame, the female equivalent of Monsieur, because it does not indicate marital status.
Now I thought I thought madam meant something.
Like Mayflower, Madam.
What was her name?
Mayflower Madam.
What was it?
That's right, Sidney Biddleberrows.
Uh she had revelatives that came across on them on the Mayflower.
At any rate, greetings, folks, and welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh here, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Great to have you.
Our telephone number is 800-282-2882, the email address, L Rushbaugh at EIBNet.com.
What?
Sex parties all over the world.
That incident with the maid at the Sofatel Hotel in New York was just one of many.
Now this guy has a rich wife who has stood by him during all this.
He ran the IMF.
He's uh clearly a pervert.
Clearly a pervert and ran the IMF for a while.
He's just he's this guy's just a year older than I am.
He looks 25 years older than I do.
He's 62 years old.
It must be all the sex parties.
Well, I don't how do you get on that invite list?
Is a good question.
You you uh you have to be somewhat known and oriented toward those proclivities.
Well, yeah, apparently um a lot of people knew about this guy and every detail all along, but they circled the wagons around each other.
This apparently just gotten so far out of hand now that they're not enough wagons to circle anymore.
And they're not enough.
Not enough people want to circle the wagons.
That's what socialists do.
This they set up rules for themselves that don't apply to anybody else.
They exempt themselves from all the other rules.
They run around and use other people's money to do this.
Which is what uh old DSK was doing.
I want to get this this story.
We referenced this earlier in the program.
This is from the UK telegraph.
The amount of income tax paid fell sharply in Britain last month in the first formal indication that the new 50% tax rate is not raising the expected amount of revenue.
Well, duh.
Everybody knew this was going to happen.
This is why average Americans look at people who run governments and say, are you stupid?
Every time you if you want less of an activity, tax it.
And after you tax it, if you want less again, you raise taxes on it.
If you want more of an activity, you lower taxes on it.
But look what government does.
If there's a shortage of riders on the New York subway, what do they do?
They raise fares.
And this is what bureaucrats do is shortage of revenue in Great Britain, so raise taxes.
Plus they wanted to go out there and punish the rich.
Remember, Obama a couple of years ago talking about the capital gains rate, and people told him, no, no, Mr. President, if we lower the capital gains rate, we'll have more revenue.
No, no, no, I don't care about that.
I don't care about the revenue.
I want fairness.
And fairness to him meant raising the rate on capital gains taxes.
And it's our capital gains.
It is the same thing here in the great in Great Britain.
They wanted to punish their achievers.
And they wanted to score points with the middle class and the lower class by making them think the rich are going to be punished.
But look what happens.
The rich always find a way around it.
The Treasury, we're gonna this is this is uh uh we're do the conversion into dollars, because they use pounds in the story.
The Treasury received $16.2 billion in income tax payments from those paying by self-assessment last month.
That's a drop of $798 million compared with January of 2011.
The amount of income tax paid fell sharply last month by almost almost a billion dollars by raising the tax rate.
And they're shocked.
The story is all about how leaders are shocked, they can't believe that this happened.
And they talk about how these uh these evil rich guys, they've found ways around this.
Well, of course they'll find ways around it.
Because there is no such thing as a static economy.
Everything is dynamic.
Obama, by the way, has announced what he's claiming to be is a corporate tax cut.
His corporate tax cut will actually raise taxes on businesses by 250 billion dollars.
He's cutting the rate to 28%, but he's making other changes that will actually result in businesses paying more money.
Here's the Wall Street Journal version.
President Obama's 2013 budget is the gift that keeps on giving to government.
One buried surprise is his proposal to triple the tax rate on corporate dividends, which believe it or not, is higher than in his previous budgets.
Obama is proposing to raise the dividend tax rate to the higher personal income tax rate of 39.6% that'll kick in next year.
Add in the planned phase out of deductions and exemptions, and the new rate on dividends will hit 41%.
Then you add 3.8% the investment tax surcharge in Obamacare.
And the new dividend tax rate in 2013 is going to be 44.8%.
You know what it is today?
15.
The current dividend tax rate is 15% next year.
If Obama's budget were in the uh adopted and coupled with what happens with Obamacare, the dividend tax rate will jump to 40% almost 45%.
But he's out there saying, well, I'm cutting corporate tax.
I'm gonna cut corporate tax, I'm gonna cut that rate down at 28%.
But this more than makes up for it.
At a time where the economy is puttering along, Gallup says that uh unemployment is slated to rise according to their data.
Jim Pethacukis at AEI posted a story about this, and his original headline was Geitner should resign over Obama's corporate tax increase plan.
And he changed.
There's a there was a shortly after that post went up, the headline changed to um why Obama's corporate tax plan's a total bust.
But if this is an absolute disaster.
This is this is absolutely purposeful.
And I'll make you a prediction.
The media will describe this tax corporate corporate tax proposal as a massive tax cut and a friendly reach across the aisle to achieve fairness.
You watch.
In fact, well, I know they already are.
All day long, they've been talking about Obama's massive corporate tax cut when it is exactly the opposite.
In fact, here's the New York Times story.
Obama offers to cut corporate tax rate to 28%.
Now what a coincidence.
The White House proposes this right after Romney's tax plan announcement in Detroit, where he says he's and which he made in in uh in Arizona today.
Uh he's gonna have a 20% across the board income tax rate cut.
The top rate under Romney would go to 28%.
The bottom rate would be 10%, there'd be six rates, 28% would be the high.
But for the top 1%, Romney will not permit deductions or other write-offs.
So they will effectively see their tax rate remain at 35% under Romney.
There will not be a significant reduction.
I think that's a bit of a mistake.
Uh because it it accepts this 1% 99% premise that Obama has put forth in his class envy scheme.
But apparently Romney's advisors think that there is uh ground to be gained with the 99% by portraying himself as being on their side and against the 1%.
With Occupy out there, and by the way, Romney, one of the things that he does, yeah, I mean he's right about this, he's very sensitive to it.
He does want to avoid at all costs the um allegation sticking that he's a rich guy favoring the rich.
And that's why his 1% are exempted from his across the board tax cut.
Well, I don't know if he'll tell us it's a severely uh conservative tax plan or not, but uh just he's very sensitive being called a rich guy.
But yet, at the same time, at the debates, he's out there proudly describing himself as a great achiever in life, and he's not going to apologize for his success.
But clearly, his advisors have decided that it makes sense politically in terms of winning the White House and the nomination to let it be known that the 1% are not gonna get away with anything even under our Romney regime back after this.
Look, I I know some of you are gonna get mad at me for this, but I just can't gloss over this, because to others in the audience I would be accused of failing to uh and not do my duty, but to say what everybody knows here.
If if if Nitt Romney has a great proposal in his tax plan, an across the board 20% cut, which takes the top rates 28%, but he's gonna exempt the top 1%.
Uh we just Mike, we just had that soundbite, right?
Let's play the buttons.
If I can find it, I don't even did we play the Romney soundbite?
Or am I imagining it?
Well, grab that bite again and let us listen to him explain this, and then be remiss if I didn't have some analysis of it.
I'm in a lower rates across the board for all Americans by 20 percent.
All right.
And in order to limit any impact on the deficit, because I don't want to add to the deficit.
And also in order to make sure that we continue to have progress.
Hello, stop the tape.
Back it up to that point if you can't.
I'm sorry.
There how do I say this?
My gosh.
I um there's just not why why do I have to be the one to do this?
Why can't somebody else do this?
You don't add to the deficit by cutting taxes.
You don't add to the deficit by cutting tax rates.
What what's happening here is that it Governor Romney is announcing an across-the-board tax cut, which is good.
And his top rate ends up being 28 percent, but then falls into a trap.
I'm sure it's a consultant that's come up with this, says, look, but you've got to make sure.
I I know what they're doing.
What they're doing is assuming that most members of their audience, i.e., voters, the American people, however you want to describe them, do think that a tax cut equals less money to Washington.
And so rather than teach and explain how that isn't the case, you go ahead and accept what they think and uh well.
I don't want to use the word pander.
But why not take the occasion to teach?
You're in the middle here of a primary fight.
You're trying to secure the nomination with a conservative base, and here's a great opportunity to do it.
How would you do it, Mr. Lumbo?
You say you know everything.
Well, fine.
Okay, in this context, I'm gonna cut taxes across the board.
And the top rate's gonna get cut too, and it's gonna be cut to 28 percent.
I would rather this be a flat tax.
Well, we're gonna get there someday, but it's the we're this is the best we can do right now.
And to any of you who think that the rich are getting a tax cut here, they're gonna end up paying more revenue, more revenue is gonna be collected by the Wash by the government.
And I go back and I cite the statistics from the 80s when Reagan lowered the top rate in 70 to 28 and revenue doubled.
Take the opportunity to teach it.
But I'm sure the advice was don't get caught in defending the rich because that there's no way to win that.
That's what a consultant would believe.
No way to defend it, no way to win that.
So just go out and make sure that the voters know that the rich are not getting a cutter to pay their fair share.
The top one percent aren't getting a break here.
Well, what does that result in?
Well, beside, yeah, I know, but I'm with the result of this, is what I'm talking about.
Sure, it's it's it's accepting the premise.
That's what bugs it.
It's accepting the 99 versus 1% premise that Obama's setting up to run a class warfare.
But there are hundreds of thousands of small businesses who are not going to get tax relief because of this, because a lot of these subchapter S small businesses file a personal tax return, Form 1040.
And some of them, because of the overall size of the business in terms of gross receipts, are gonna be lumped into the 1%.
So they're not going to get the benefit of the tax cut here because the did they're gonna get the rate reduction out of 28%, but their their ability to write off and deduct which everybody else is going to maintain will not exist.
So you're gonna have some small businesses that won't get tax relief uh and who, compared to others, will will suffer.
Now, yesterday Cudlow told us that Romney was gonna announce uh pro-growth supply side proposal.
But he didn't say that there was gonna it was going to contain his 99 versus 1% stuff.
Folks, this is really you have to understand.
I like Mitt Romney.
He's come by here over the course of uh many years.
I've sat with him and chatted many times since the 2008 campaign.
And I just it's not.
Well, the the no, the tax, the tax plan, Snurdley is yelling at me that it's aimed at the moderates.
The tax plan really isn't aimed at moderates.
The way he's describing it is aimed at moderates.
And I guess that's a good way of describing why I think it could be so much more.
Let's just put it that way.
This this tax plan that he announced today has the potential to be really, really great.
Something that his campaign needs.
And it may work for what he wants to accomplish here in terms of, you know, this 99-1% exists for a reason.
Class warfare works for certain voters.
But we don't do it.
Uh at any rate, I've got to take a brief time out here at the bottom of the hour.
We'll do that, we'll come back and continue with much more right after this.
Welcome back.
Great to have you, Rushlin Boy, and the fastest three hours in media.
I'm being inundated with Romney supporters saying, hey, wait a minute, this is nothing different than what Reagan did.
Reagan did exactly the same thing.
No, Reagan didn't do exactly the same thing.
In the first place, when Reagan took office, the top rate was 70%.
The first stage got him down to 50%.
Then in 1986 came the famous tax rate reduction down to 28%.
There was a bubble in there that left some people at 31%.
But what what happened when the rate got down to 28%, the trade off was that everybody lost their deductions.
Remember, Snurdley, all the calls we had from people who were livid, middle class people, 99%ers in today's lingo, upset that they had lost the ability to deduct their credit card interest.
Romney's plan reduces rates for everybody.
No question about that, but he limits deductions for the top 1%.
But my problem, as I just told Snerdley, is the um is the way it was announced and the acceptance of the 99 and 1% premise, which is a uh Obama premise.
It's uh it's a liberal Democrat premise.
Uh many of the deductions that were eliminated in uh in 1986 have not come back.
There aren't that many deductions to limit anymore anyway.
Uh the 1% already have much greater limits on what they could deduct than um uh existed even back in uh in 1986.
They've continued, and everybody knew this is gonna happen.
The great fear was with reducing the rate to top rate 28% and get rid of the deductions.
You get a Democrat back in the office, and lo and behold, what's gonna happen, the rates are gonna come back up, and what happened?
Bill Clinton gets elected 92, and rates went back up, and with retroactivity and the deductions were gone.
Uh and so we're faced with having to get the rates back down again.
And George W. Bush did, the famous Bush tax cuts.
And they got the 39.6 down to 35 or 36, whatever it is, where we are now.
They're gonna sunset, rates are gonna go back to 39.6, then the Obamacare tax increase is gonna kick in, and whatever other tax increases on the 1% Obamacan engineer.
So Romney's plan is good in that sense.
He cuts rates across the board for everybody.
I'm just a stickler.
I'm just a stickler for language, words, and how the whole thing ends up being being sold.
It's uh it's accepting a premise that somehow certain Americans have to be punished.
And if we don't say that certain Americans are going to be punished, then somehow we're not going to be able to win elections.
Just it's an opportunity to teach, that's all.
That's very.
I don't know, folks.
It's just um difficult to say.
I don't dislike any of these people at all.
I like them.
They're all fine people.
I just see so much potential.
I'm almost, you know, I feel like a parent.
I see so much potential in my kids.
And I've done my best to teach them.
Now I know how my dad felt when I told him college.
Anyway, I want to grab, we got a lot of audio sound bites here, folks.
I've I'm again overwhelmed trying to get everything in.
I'm swamped with great stuff here today.
Uh and see.
Yeah, these are all good.
Let's just let's let's start here with uh Mary Madeline, audio soundbite 14.
Last night on the situation room at Wolfblitzed, a blitzer.
Um Mary Madeline's the guest, and blitzer said, Mary, how's this gonna play?
The Centaurum and the devil stuff.
How's it gonna play out there?
Republican voters in Arizona in Michigan a week later on Super Tuesday.
You know, Wolf, he was at a he's a devout Catholic using the language of a well-versed Catholic at a Catholic university.
That was not a campaign event.
There's also nothing particularly over the top to use that language right now, or for Catholics to hear that, because they are 30% of the electorate.
They're in the swing states, and Obama has lost the support that he enjoyed among that Catholic demographic in the last go-around.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing for Rick Santorum.
That's an excellent point.
And she knows her stuff, and she knows what she's talking about, and it's obvious that Obama's written off the Catholic vote.
He has written off white working class voters.
They announced that, don't forget, in a column in the New York Times.
Guy named Thomas Edsall, who's now at the uh Huffing and Puffington Post.
They're writing these people off.
Obama is campaigning to the people in the cart who are being pushed or pulled by the five or six percent that pull the cart.
Obama's campaigning for the people he thinks outnumber the producers.
Takers versus producers.
Obama's aiming at the takers.
He's counting on the fact there are more of them who will vote than there are producers who will vote.
And with his attacks on religious liberty.
Like I said earlier, you got two two candidates here, if it ends up this way, Santorum and Obama.
Which one of those two is a greater threat to religious liberty?
There's no question, it's Obama.
He's already assaulted religious liberty.
And for those of you look, I'm I I know before even checking the email, I know I'm gonna probably trying to get it on the phones now, mad at me for ripping Romney's plan.
You you have to understand something.
I just want these guys to be the best they can be.
It's nothing more than that.
I want all of them to be the best they can be.
I cringe when any one of them does something that I think is mistaken or could be done better.
Whether it was Perry or Michelle Bachman or Palin or whoever it is, Newt, when you know they can be better, that's that's what I want.
We're talking about one of these people is gonna be our nominee.
One of these people is going to be out campaigning for votes.
You want them to be.
I want them to be the best they can be at this.
So it's the the criticism is entirely constructive.
I'm not trying to kill anybody's candidacy here.
And I don't want any of you Romney people or Santorum people or Newt people to uh to think that.
Here's Sarah Palin last night.
She was on Hannity, who asked her.
He said, I believe there's good and evil.
I believe in the Lord's Prayer.
You look at the killing fields 9-11.
I would argue that that's evil.
Is it not?
Evil in our time in this century as well.
Sean, that's foreign to so many in that leftist media.
They will attack any conservative who boldly proclaims their faith and talks about there is good in the world and there is evil in the world.
And that's what Rick Santorum was talking about.
And this was a speech that he gave back in 2008, uh, where he named evil as Satan.
And for these lame stream media characters to get all weeweed up about that.
First you have to ask yourself have they ever attended a Sunday school class even?
Have they never heard this terminology before?
And that's why they just got so uh, you know, just whacked out about this speech.
That is a fascinating question to me.
I know that Chris Matthews is a Catholic.
But I have to wonder, does he go to Mass?
And when he goes, what does he hear?
When he hears Santorum speak, is that the first time he's ever heard this stuff?
It's like Juilliams when he heard Lord Moncton give the counter-arguments to global warming.
He at least admitted I never heard this before.
I never heard this.
But Santorum is not out of the Catholic mainstream at all.
So she's uh she's exactly right about that.
Now the Reagan tax cuts, because I think the Romney people are still hitting me on this, and I understand that.
But when Reagan initiated the great tax cuts that his um administration was famous for, he indexed uh rates to offset the impact of inflation.
He increased the tax exemption on estates and gifts.
That's why the exemption on gifts is as high as it is.
He established a 10% investment tax credit.
There were a lot of other improvements in taxes for business, uh capital investment, RD.
It was pretty comprehensive, and it was in in its context, I mean, given the tax code in in 1981 when he assumed office.
I mean, this was practically rewriting it, what he did.
I gotta take a brief time out here, folks, as time stops or no one back after this.
Now the New York Times on the Romney tax plan says this.
For now at least, Mr. Romney will dodge any potential backlash by avoiding any specifics.
Mr. Romney will pledge to work with Congress on limiting them, meaning the deductions, according to his uh advisor, Mr. Hubbard, but it's not his intention to take on any specific deduction or exclusion and eliminate it.
So they've clarified somewhat from Romney's statement that we played in our now famous audio soundbite number 31.
Jack in uh in Salem, Oregon, as we head back to the phones, thanks for your patience, sir.
I believe the Republicans have a great choice of different types of candidates.
We shouldn't be hating each other over this.
Hate is what the Democrats do.
We have Matt, who's a successful businessman, turn around King.
Out of the box.
We have Santorum as a conservative.
They all have pros and cons.
But when liberals uh have on their ticket.
Oh, you have a choice of liberals versus liberals.
Well, what Jack here is saying, correct me if I'm wrong, Jack.
What Jack here is saying is we have bigger fish to fry than each other, right?
Correct.
That's exactly what Jack is saying.
We have a we have a choice.
Republicans are gonna make it, and we shouldn't be uh so much as fighting between ourselves.
Well, but you know, Jack, this happens.
This is a feature of primaries, and it's rooted in exactly what I just said, if I if I may be so bold and assume that uh everybody is looking at this the same way I am.
When we see ask you this.
Don't you wish that these candidates could talk about all this stuff the way you do?
To your friends and family.
Don't you wish they could?
What does that really mean?
It just means we just want them to be the best they can be.
When they announce a tax cut plan, we want them to do it right.
We want them to do it the best it can be, because we know it works, and we know it attracts voters.
It really isn't any more complicated than that.
What I think what a lot of people are interpreting as criticism, and I can understand how people would see it as criticism, is really a desire for these people all to do it better.
But we haven't had a real primary in a long time.
We aren't used to how rough they can get.
The 2008 was over before it began, really.
It was over by this time in 2008 with the Florida primary.
This is uh unusual.
Well, I didn't get it all in.
I didn't even get most of it in, but I got a lot in.
And there's always tomorrow to get in.
Well, we didn't get in today.
I held some stuff over.
We'll see.
And man, it's just it's overwhelming each and every day.
So thanks for being with us.
We'll be back in 21 hours.
Same pace.
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