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March 9, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:47
March 9, 2012, Friday, Hour #3
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A precious few busy broadcast moments remaining on Friday, folks.
So let's get started.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
The telephone number is 800-282-2882 with an email address, LRushbo at EIBnet.com.
And again, Open Line Friday differs from Monday through Thursday in it Monday through Thursday.
When you call, you have to talk about something I care about or you don't have a prayer of getting on this show.
But on Friday, it doesn't matter whether I care about it or not.
It's a golden opportunity for those of you.
Talk about whatever you want.
Ask whatever you want.
Telephone number 800-282-2882.
We just had, we just had in, you look at this as Rush 101 today, remedial rush, to bring up to speed those who are new arrivals to the program this week.
And they are here in droves in the millions.
And we just had in the last half hour, although I didn't call attention to it, but we nevertheless had a side-by-side illustration of socialism versus capitalism.
On the one hand, you have the United States government, Barack Obama, via his energy chief who doesn't have a car, Stephen Chu.
You know what this country needs is a good new light bulb, a green light bulb.
That's what we need, a green light bulb, because we're destroying the planet with our regular light bulbs.
And we are using too much coal and we are wasting too much energy.
Never mind how much coal is used in electric cars.
But nevertheless, we are destroying the planet.
We've got to get rid of oil.
We have to become more responsible, Mr. Limbo, in the way we use our energy.
So the government decides to bribe anybody with $10 million and come up with a replacement light bulb.
An LED light bulb that can save America.
That can save our electric consumption.
Can save the climate.
$10 million.
The Obama administration didn't wait for the market to create this because of need and desire and all the other human factors that go into making the market work.
Nope, the regime didn't trust the market.
Obama says the market won't do what's right.
I am what's right.
I know what's right.
And it doesn't do it on its own.
I'm going to have to command and control it.
So here's this $10 million incentive, a prize.
They called it the L prize, stands for ludicrous.
And a company called Phillips, for $10 million, invented a $50 light bulb for average Americans to save the planet and to go green.
Shortly after that, we played soundbites from an incredulous Diane Sawyer and her reporter at on ABC about all the new billionaires on the Forbes list.
Over a thousand new billionaires.
Not one of them, by the way, had invented a light bulb.
Not one of them received a government grant.
Not one of them was paid $10 million.
That was the point of the story.
ABC, Diane Sawyer, stunned that these people bootstrapped, she said, themselves to wealth.
John Donvan, the Nightline reporter, said, yeah, well, what these billionaires mostly do is have money.
So they got their snark in there.
But it was pointed out.
1,000 some-odd new billionaires utilizing the United States free market capitalism.
Obama wasn't involved.
Obama had nothing to do with it.
Democrat Party, as far as we know, had nothing to do with it.
Side-by-side illustrations there, folks, of what is the better of the two.
$10 million government prize, government involvement, command and control, create a light bulb.
Here you go, $50.
Requires a $45 tax credit to buy one.
So I just wanted to point that out.
Here's the story on the electric car.
The $100,000 Fisker automotive luxury sports car called the Karma died during consumer reports speed testing this week for reasons that are still unknown, leaving the struggling electric car startup with another blow to its image.
It's a little disconcerting.
You pay that amount of money for a car that lasts basically a 180 miles before going wrong, said David Champion, the senior director for Consumer Reports Automotive Test Center.
Fisker Karma, the name of the car, good for 180 miles, and then you're on your own.
In a statement, Fisker said it was assessing the source of the problem that caused its Karma plug-in hybrid to fail.
Fisker dispatched two engineers Wednesday night to examine the car.
Fisker has benefited from the publicity generated when actor Leonardo DiCaprio was handed the first karma last summer and pop idol Justin Bieber received, oh, they're giving these things away to actors.
That's the marketing plan.
Give them away.
You will buy yours.
The people who can already afford them will have them given to them.
MS, NBC, in nothing more than an advertisement for Obama's re-election, masquerading as news.
Headline: one in four kids live in families struggling with health care bills.
No.
When we think of the growing burden of paying for healthcare, we often think of older Americans struggling to pay for medicines and procedures that can become more prevalent as we age.
But new data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
We have a center for that?
We have a whole center for health statistics.
Can you imagine what a fun place that place is to work?
The National Center for Health Statistics.
New data from these people finds that children who are 17 and under are the most likely of any age group they studied to be living in a family that has recently had trouble affording their medical bills.
Now, I know this might be news to the Obama regime, but we are in an economic recession here that was close to a depression.
There is joblessness.
There is homelessness.
People are homeless having sex on the green there up in Connecticut.
We don't know if they use contraceptives or not.
Say people are homeless, jobless, soon to be gasless.
And they think that families are just having a hard time affording medical bills.
People are having a hard time affording everything.
And now they learn that they get to go out and buy $50 light bulbs and $100,000 electric cars that last 180 miles in testing.
This data, released Wednesday by the government researchers, found that about 24% of children ages 17 and under are living in a family that's had trouble paying their medical bills in the past year.
By contrast, just about 10% of people who are 65 to 74 years old were living in a family that had problems paying medical bills in the past.
Can you say Medicare?
And of course, elderly people are going to have more money than young people.
They've lived longer.
They've earned longer.
And to the extent their kids aren't a bunch of slackers, they've been able to save more.
Parents whose kids are a bunch of slackers are up creek.
Anyway, this whole story, one in four kids living in a family struggling with healthcare bill, it's a commercial for Obama on the MS NBC website.
Let's go to the audio soundbites.
Jacob Tapper, our old buddy, Jake Tapper, ABC News.
He may be in trouble today, folks, because all the good graces he found himself in the way he reported on me this week, he's now stepped in it.
Last night on ABC's world news tonight, he happened to report the truth.
There was a new Obama re-election campaign documentary out there, The Road We Traveled.
It's a film directed by an inconvenient truth director, Davis Guggenheim.
And this Guggenheim guy, by the way, has said in all of his investigation, Dawn, look at it.
He can't find one thing wrong with Obama.
He's a perfect human being.
I kid you not.
Obama is perfect.
The only thing that he could find, he told this to Piers Morgan on CNN.
The only thing he could find that Obama had failed at was persuading more people to abandon their own political point of view and agree with him.
Couldn't find anything wrong.
A perfect individual.
So Tapper is reporting on this on this documentary.
And this is reporting here.
Tom Hanks in here and I guess Jacob Tapper basically reviewing it.
The inconvenient truth for President Obama is that with a current approval rating at below 50%, his odds of reelection are likelier if he makes the election not about him.
Do we look at the day's headlines or do we remember what we as a country have been through?
The unemployment rate when President Obama took office was 7.8%.
It went up to 10% and is now 8.3%.
Gas prices when the president took office averaged $1.84 a gallon.
It's now $3.79 a gallon.
And home values have gone down since the president took office.
There have been more than 2.8 million foreclosures under his watch.
President Obama has his work cut out for him with the Democratic base compared to four years ago.
Diane, Democrats are deflated and Republicans are much more enthusiastic about voting this November.
I don't know how Jake Tapper has a job today.
You don't hear this kind of stuff from the drive-by media.
Some people you do now and then, you know, just to create the illusion here that they are somewhat objective sometime, but this is right on the money.
True.
All of these economic statistics, true.
All the report on voter enthusiasm.
Republicans far more enthusiastic than Democrats.
True.
And to say here, this documentary about this Guggenheim guy, Goebbels would not allow this one out.
Goebbels would have not allowed this one out.
None of these guys, Putin wouldn't let this one out.
This is so one-sided that everybody rolls their eyes at it.
And Jake Tapper says, the inconvenient truth for Obama is that with a current approval rating below 50%, his odds of re-election are likelier if he makes the election not about him.
And that's what he's not going to be able to do.
The election will be about him.
And that's where the enthusiasm on our side will come from, the election being about him.
Don't doubt me on this.
Now, I want to go back to me on this program.
See, you people are very lucky.
You get to listen to this pro.
You get to experience one of the greatest things in America, and that is listening to me on the radio.
I never get to do that because I am me on the radio.
And I mean, sometimes I listen to tapes of myself, but very, very rarely.
But it's not the same as listening when you don't know what's coming.
So it's one of life's pleasures I never get to experience, but you do.
So occasionally I will go back and play tapes of me on this program to remind people of what I said.
I want to go back to January 6th, talking about Mitt Romney and the establishment Republican thoughts, the opinions that they had about Romney as the only electable candidate.
They really think Romney's the only guy that's electable because he's the most handsome and because he sounds the smartest.
I mean, a lot of people on our side have really lowered their requirements this year.
This is what I heard from my friends and people I know that Romney was electable because the only guy that looked handsome and could speak.
It has nothing to do with the way the media is going to treat him.
Now, this was one of many times I made this observation.
And you've heard it too, that we had to support Romney because he was electable.
This is the only guy that can beat Obama.
Again, I warn you, I've not chosen anybody, and this series of sunbites does not mean that I'm anti-Romney or pro anybody else.
That's not what this means.
This stuff is all out there in the public square, so to speak.
And I do love pointing out when I've been right about something.
Now, when I was doubted at the time.
So just reminding you, Republican leadership, establishment, it's got to be Romney because Romney's the only guy that can get elected.
He's the guy that can save the House, maybe help us win the Senate.
He's the only guy that can do that.
Yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama, on the radio, Romney was interviewed.
Question, how important is it for you, Governor Romney, to pick up a southern state?
I realize that it's a bit of an away game, but I also think we're going to pick up some support in the states that remain this month.
We're going to get some delegates.
That's, of course, what this is all about.
He was trying to be funny there, saying that campaigning in Alabama is like an away game for him.
That's like the drive-bys.
You know, we joke about them needing a visa to get into Missouri.
Okay, so Mitt, I admit, I admit, getting votes in the South for me is like it's an away game.
And get pummeled for this.
I think he was trying to be funny.
I think it's just, it's his person.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.
It's his way of trying to be creative with the way he speaks.
But Thursday night in Pascagoula, Mississippi, the campaign event, former Governor Romney accepted the nomination of Governor Phil Bryant.
And this is what he said.
He is now turning me into, I don't know, an unofficial Southerner, and I'm learning to say y'all.
And I like grits, and the things are strange, things are happening to me.
Now, he's trying to be funny, but people are beating him up over this.
It's okay, he's turning me into, I don't know, an official southerner.
I'm learning to say, y'all, and I like Grants and so forth.
He's just, this is his way of relating to people.
He's not lording it over, but he's being pummeled for this.
He being pummeled today, being out of touch and phony.
Let me show you phony.
Romney, this is just his way of connecting.
He's just trying to connect to people here.
He's trying to relate.
There's trying to be funny.
He's trying to laugh at himself, is what he's doing here.
He's being a little self-deprecating.
But this is phoniness.
This next night, this is a blatant, phony, classic illustration of arrogance on parade.
Remember, this is John Kerry, who, by the way, served in Vietnam, the haughty John Kerry, October 2004 in Ohio.
He walked into a sporting goods store and said, Can I get me a hunting license here?
John Kerry, the Boston Brahmin, Mr. L. Perfecto, turnbull and asser shirts.
You know what distinguishes a turnbull and asser shirt?
They have three buttons on the cuff.
Takes you three times as long to get dressed.
You have three buttons on the cuff.
I've had one turnbull and asser shirt.
At any rate, can I get me a hunting license here?
He doesn't speak.
He was not trying to be funny.
He was actually speaking down to those people.
Can I get me a hunting?
That's how he really thinks in Ohio, simply because they were hunters at a sporting district.
Can I get me a hunting license here?
That's what they think.
I'm not going to play you to sound bites, but Mark Halper and some others, oh, this Romney, he's really stepped in it now.
It was bad enough when he said he likes to fire people, and it was bad enough when he said his wife drives two catalogs, but now he's really stepped in it.
Is it a Republican establishment really, really nervous now with all this talk about it being an away game and he likes grits and say y'all?
And I just, again, these double standards.
They're doing a celebration today of the Selma March.
And when they did this in 2008, four years ago, during the Democrat campaign, both candidates were there, Hillary and Obama.
And Obama, who had nothing to do with Selma, probably couldn't find it on a map for the first 25 years of his life, talked about how what happened there made him who he is.
And there was still talk in the LA Times.
There was still talk in the left-wing media.
Obama's not really authentic.
He doesn't have slave blood.
They said, not me.
They said it.
All this talk about authenticity.
And then Hillary got up.
Cookie, you don't need to get the soundbite.
Hillary got up and said, I ain't no way Todd.
Remember that?
And she was quoting James Cleveland, famous for saying in the civil rights movement and all this strife and opposition, no, I don't feel no way is tired.
I ain't no ways Todd.
So once again, they can go out.
They can do anything they want.
They can laugh at, make fun of, they can peer Foolish as they want.
Romney was just trying to relate to these people.
He keeps hearing he can't connect to people.
He was just being convivial with them with that.
He was not making fun of them, and he was not insulting anybody when he said what he said about grits.
It's Open Line Friday.
Back to the phones we go to Oakland, California.
I don't know who this is.
Sean.
Oh, there you go.
Sean, great day.
Hi.
How are you, sir?
I'm doing just fine, sir.
How are you?
Very well.
Thanks.
It's a pleasure to speak with you.
I am 24 years old.
I was born and raised here in the Bay Area in California, where, for sure you know, conservative is a bad word.
And I spent my whole life, you know, here under the shroud of what we were told and where I was raised.
And I left high school at 16 years old, spent a couple years in school misadventures, but now I'm back working full-time, paying my way through college, and I'm getting educated.
And the more that I get educated, the more I see how much that we've been lied to.
So I'm calling you, because now that my local talk station has been reformatted, I get you in the afternoons.
I'm calling you to say thank you and to let you know that I've been invited by the California Patriot, which is the UC conservative newspaper, to submit an article on anything that I please.
And I'm going to focus my article on media bias to the liberal side, which is where it really is.
I see recently that the media has managed to target you to try and discredit the entire Republican Party.
And we're going into this election just like we went into the last one without the media takes everything that Barack Obama says at face value and vets to the deepest degree everything that any Republican candidate says.
Well, Obama just gets away with anything you like.
Obama started lying to people before he even got the election.
Sean, let me ask you a couple.
I'm going to cast an eye at it.
Yes, sir.
Let me ask you a couple questions here.
Okay.
Have you written your piece yet?
No, I have not.
Okay.
Okay.
Good.
Let me ask you, you are starting to see the injustice or the inequity or the unfairness, whatever, however you would describe this bias, media bias, and so forth.
Absolutely.
Now, before I start the question, one thing you have to realize here: an informed electorate, like your awakening, that's the worst nightmare the Democrat Party could have.
They require on people being dumbed down to levels of profound ignorance.
So my question, you mentioned that you have seen me under attack.
Yes.
Why?
And you said it was to discredit the whole Republican Party.
But let me know.
That's conjecture.
That's my opinion.
That's what it seems like.
No, I'm not arguing with you about that.
My question is, you're a consumer.
You're starting to write a paper.
Your college age recently out of college are still there.
You're just now starting to have all this stuff come into focus.
So you're out there watching all this.
You're hearing it all.
What do you think is the reason they're doing this?
Why do they attack me in order to try to discredit the Republican Party?
What is their purpose in that?
Or why do they have to do that, do you think?
Well, I think it's a problem with my generation.
We generally are distrustful of government, but we've been raised in a society that is insanely media saturated.
And in order to reach us, they have figured out that that's their only hope.
If they broadcast on every single news network, I mean, save for Fox, Fox is the only news network that does any alternative investigation into anything, that is their only way to reach us.
And if every single news outlet...
The answer to the question is very simple.
The reason...
The reason they have to try to discredit me one day, Sarah Palin the next day, whoever it is, is because they can't.
They can't persuade you to join them by telling you how wonderful or how right or how good they are.
They have to.
They have to tear the Republicans, the right-wing, the conservatives down.
The conservatives, we are racist, we are intolerant, we're closed-minded, we're stuck in the past, we're all these things.
And they tout.
I mean, I don't know what they tout.
They just try to tear the conservatives to pieces in order to discredit them, to make fear to make fears.
They don't tout anything.
That's my whole point, Sean.
What they tout, you are supposed to infer.
They can't tell you how great their economic policies are.
They can't tell you how great their social programs are because they're an abysmal failure.
The war on poverty, the great society, they are destroying their policies, have destroyed the social fabric and the culture of this country.
They can't sing their own praises.
All they can do is lie to you about people who oppose them and intimidate you into not becoming one of those enemies because this could happen to you.
What they're doing to Palin, you don't want to be on their bad side.
What they're doing to me, whether you don't.
It's fear, Sean.
It's fear.
They have nothing positive to say.
And in the process, this for your paper, in the process, what they're really telling you is what they do fear.
I mean, Sean Hume, I'm a guy on the radio.
What can I do?
I can't raise anybody's taxes.
I can't send anybody off to war.
I can't force anybody to go out and buy a $50 light bulb.
I can't make anybody give up their car and buy an electric car.
I can't make anybody do anything.
And yet, I have to be destroyed.
That there's a reason for it, and that's because I'm an effective critic of who they are.
And that has to be shut down with character assassination or some of the, that's why this is done.
They have to clear the playing field.
You hear them talk about wanting a level playing field.
They don't want a playing field.
They don't want anybody on the playing field but them.
Nothing level about it.
They have to rid the field of opposition.
There is no compromise with them, Sean.
There is no walking across the aisle and getting along with them.
They will never compromise a damn thing they believe in.
There is no, all that's a one-way street.
I hope you have the fortitude to hang in.
You must, because you have been your whole life out there in the Bay Area as a conservative.
Look, Obama's first words with his first two weeks in the White House.
He brings a congressional leadership up, Sean, this is four years ago, three years ago.
He brings a congressional leadership up to the Oval Office, and he says to John Boehner and the guy, don't listen to Rush Limbaugh anymore.
That's not how things get done here.
His first words to the Republican leadership after he became president.
So it's all about silencing and intimidating critics into shutting up.
And when you don't, they keep coming at you, pure and simple.
So, welcome to the club.
Happy to have you on the team and let them have it.
Don't let them take one thing away from you.
Glad you called.
Openline Friday, a brief timeout.
We'll be back and continue with much more right after this.
Larry in South Hackensack, New Jersey.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Great to have you with us, sir.
Thank you very much, Rush.
Thank you for having me.
You bet, sir.
Our company, NewCondescent.com, manufactures incandescents right here in the U.S.
We have apples to zebras, everything that you can't get, we have permission to manufacture right here in the good old USA.
What do you mean?
Everything that we can't get all of the banned incandescent lamps that everybody can do.
Oh, you mean the stuff that's been banned?
The stuff that's been banned you're making?
Well, we're making it legally.
We have permission from the DOE to manufacture the products.
So you got a waiver from somebody to go ahead and manufacture the stuff?
Yes, we do.
From who?
The Department of Energy.
Really?
Why did they?
Well, what they did was when they changed the energy laws, in it, they left one of the categories open, which was called rough service category.
And what they did was they changed all of the old specifications concerning how the lamp was constructed, and they came out with a whole new guideline how to manufacture the lamps, which we took up.
We bought the old equipment that the major manufacturers were getting rid of, GE and Phillips and all those people.
And we started manufacturing with their sanction.
We met all of the guidelines and they gave us permission to manufacture the lamps here.
How many others like you across the fruited plane have been given similar waivers?
Only one other.
Can you manufacture enough to meet the demand of customers who don't want to make the move to compact fluorescent or these $50 things?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And we've been written up in the New York Post, and this is...
I know who you are.
I know who you are now.
I know your last name.
Now, Larry, let me ask you a question.
The American people are under the impression that starting next year, or maybe it's already this year sometime, that the stuff you're talking about having permission to make is illegal.
It's been banned.
Not so.
That's not true.
There is no light bulb.
It's true that they stopped making them, but we can continue to manufacture them.
And we are right now.
No, but most people think that it's going to be illegal to buy them.
That's why they're out hoarding them.
No, it's not illegal to buy them.
Let me say this.
What they banned was general service light bulbs.
That's the type of light bulbs that you would use in your house that you would buy in maybe a convenience store, big box retailer, hardware store.
Those, that's what they banned.
What they left open, the category is called rough service, which is a hardier version of the original general service.
Yeah, but you can still use your stuff in a home, right?
Not just in the middle.
Absolutely.
You can use it either in the home or in industry or wherever, but mostly for the home.
All of the band soap, you know, reflectors, we're manufacturing all of those.
Dimmers, that kind of thing.
You're both.
Yeah, they're all dimmable.
They're all made in the U.S. There's no chemicals in them as far as mercury.
They can be disposed of just like you disposed of the other one.
It's exactly what everybody was used to.
And again, they're made in the U.S., which is a big plus.
So just to understand, rough service is what's been outlawed?
No, no, general service.
General says, rough service is what's still legal.
That's totally legal, but they had to be redesigned.
The product had to be redesigned.
And not only did it have to be redesigned, but you also had to apply to the Department of Energy, which is the DOE, permission to make it, which we did, and we got the permission.
Okay, so how does everybody else get your stuff, Larry?
I mean, everybody's under the impression that we're going to go out and buy these spaghetti light bulbs.
Where are yours going to be on sale?
We're selling them right now in retail stores, or you can go to newcandescent.com and you can buy it online.
New incandescent nutcrackers.
No, no, no.
Here's a new condescent.
New condescent nutcomb.
It's a new sponsor, by the way, here on the EIB.
Newcandescent.com.
That's correct.
Newcondescent.com.
All right.
And 250 watts, 200 watts, 100 watts?
Well, we have them go from 15 watts all the way up to 1,000 watts.
My prayers have been.
And we also have a full line of the reflectors.
Cool.
The BR40s and the colours.
I got to run.
I'm out of time.
But I wasn't going to put that spaghetti stuff in my house.
I was going to do candles if I had.
I wasn't going to.
Well, another exciting excursion into Broadcast Excellence in the Can.
Another exciting week of Broadcast Excellence in the Can.
Hope you have a great weekend.
Folks, again, a reminder, I'm out Monday playing in a charity golf tournament, the annual thing that I do every year here in March.
Mark Stein will be here on Monday.
And we will be back ready to kick it up again on Tuesday.
Same time, same place.
All these stations.
Look forward to seeing you then.
And thanks for being with us all week.
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