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March 20, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:36
March 20, 2012, Tuesday, Hour #2
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We are back.
I'm back.
Rush Limbaugh having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
With the largest talk radio audience ever.
The most popular program and certainly the most disgust.
The most talked about.
And we are here having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
And even after 23 plus years of doing this, people still tell me how to do it right.
That's a good thing I have a spine of steel, like Biden said about Obama.
Great to have you back, folks.
Telephone number 800-282-2882.
The email address L Rushbo at EIBNet.com.
Charles Gasparino with a piece in the New York Post today, back when he agreed to advise the Obama regime on economics, General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, told friends that he thought it'd be good for GE and good for the country.
A lifelong Republican, Immelt said that he believed he could, at the very least, moderate Obama's distinctly anti-business instincts.
That was three years ago.
These days, Imelt is telling friends something quite different.
Sure.
GE has managed to feast on federal subsidies, particularly the green energy giveaways that are Obama nomics hallmark.
Yeah, there's no question that that's one of the reasons Melt did this.
Here's a company doesn't need a federal dime.
And took all those Obama dollars and then turned all of his TV networks green two weeks a year and started doing clean energy programs and so forth, green energy jet engines, which don't exist, green energy dishwashers and all that stuff.
It was crony capitalism.
Pure and simple, crony capitalism.
That's a great definition of it.
But according to Charlie Gasparino today in the New York Post, Immelt now doesn't think he's had anywhere near as much luck moderating Obama's fat cat bashing, left-leaning economic agenda of taxing businesses and entrepreneurs to pay for government bloat.
Read that again.
ML doesn't think he's had anywhere near as much luck as he thought he would have.
Moderating the president's fat cat bashing, left-leaning economic.
What made him think he could?
Well, he's a CEO.
He's got to be a very confident individual.
He's got to be uh of and with a healthy ego.
But he doesn't understand liberals, and he certainly doesn't understand socialists, and he doesn't understand committed liberals or socialists.
No capitalist is going to talk a liberal out of it.
No capitalist is going to talk a socialist out of it.
I don't care how confident in yourself you are, it isn't going to happen.
What ends up getting happening is the capitalist gets corrupted.
And you might say that a variation of that happened.
This big company ends up going green when there's no business there.
In fact, that may be one of the reasons they took the subsidies.
There isn't any b there, there isn't a green business.
It does Cylindra, all the wind, all the solar, there's no business there.
It's just a pipe dream.
And ML managed to get a whole bunch, got hundreds of millions of dollars where there's no business.
That's pretty smart, actually, for his company.
It's probably his objective.
Friends describe MLT as privately dismayed.
That even after three years on the job, Obama has not moved to the center.
But instead has moved further left, MLT's dismayed at that.
The GE CEO, says Gasparino, is appalled by everything from the president's class warfare rhetoric to his continued belief that big government's the key to economic salvation.
As uh one friend recently put it to me, writes Gasparino.
Jeff thought he could make a difference, and now he realizes he couldn't.
Now, yes, ladies and gentlemen, this this kind of stuff frustrates me to no end.
I know that ML Wouldn't talk to me if his life depended on it, but if he would have, I could have predicted everything that has happened here.
I could have told him, and despite his brilliance, his confidence, best efforts, there's no way.
How would you have done it, Mr. Lumbo?
You think you think Immelt couldn't talk Obama?
What makes you think you could you could explain?
Because I would tell M.L. Obama is.
He's not just a Democrat.
He's not just a misguided Democrat.
That's what I would have told.
And I would have proved it.
I would have documented it.
Now they say in this piece that M.L.T's a lifelong Republican.
But he's in Connecticut, which means he's got to give to a lot of Democrats.
And he did.
Chris Shays, Chris Dodd, Tom Dashell, Pat Lahey, Harry Reed, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, James Clyburn of the Congressional Black Caucasians.
But he did give smaller amounts, but he did give to Bush and McCain.
and even Romney.
Immelt might think that Obama's in over his ears.
I He just doesn't get it, which is a mistake.
Immelt's conversion from public Obama supporter to a private detractor is important, rights Gasparino.
It shows how even businessmen who feast off of his subsidies worry about his overall economic agenda and its long-term impact on the economy.
But don't expect Jeffrey Immelt to say anything publicly about the downside of Obama's agenda anytime soon.
He's still serving as what is considered the top outside economic advisor to the White House.
And by the way, there's a parenthesis here, and Casparino writes, a GE spokesman insists that the reports I'm sharing here about ML's private criticism of Obama are ridiculous.
And parenthesis.
So a GE spokesman says, Gasparino, you're wrong.
This is not how Jeff M.L. feels.
GE has too much to lose for ML to publicly fess up to his disdain.
The president now routinely talks up his desire to tax businesses that create jobs overseas.
GE oversees expansion, well documented, nor does the company want to put all of its green subsidies at risk.
And of course, the last thing MLT or his shareholders need is for the president to turn his class warfare fire on them, as he did to his erstwhile pals in the banking business.
Yet friends report that ML's displeasure with the Obama economic policies is real and palpable in private meetings.
I'm told a clue to MLT's disenchantment with the president could be found in GE's annual letter to shareholders in which the CEO laments, quote, we live in a tough era in which the public discourse in general is negative.
American companies, particularly big companies, are vilified when we need to work together to find a better way.
Doesn't sound like an Obama booster to me.
That's how Gasparino closes his piece.
In a companion piece from the business insider headline, the head of Obama's jobs council is voting for Romney.
GE CEO Jeff Immelt, head of President Obama's Joms Board, plans to vote for Romney.
If he gets the nomination, if true, the news would represent a major embarrassment to the regime, which elevated Immelt in their pursuit of private sector employment growth.
So that's chalk that one up, just be very frustrated.
All of this could have been prevented.
If Immelt had simply been told who Obama is.
And even that might not have stopped him, because those green energy subsidies.
That's one of the problems with this all-powerful federal government that could just give money away that it does not have.
Here you've got general electric.
What more could Obama ask for to have a company like that go all in for green?
Clean energy and all that.
And what we know is that ML wouldn't do it on his own.
He needed Obama books.
Obama was more than happy.
Okay, here are my Obama bucks, and now you're on my team, and I'm gonna put you on some jobs committee over here just to keep the wolves at bay.
How many of you have heard about the trials and tribulations of Rosie O'Donnell with Oprah?
Rosie O'Donnell is a classic illustration of a point that I've made frequently about liberals, and that is failure is a resume enhancement.
You fail as a Democrat, politician or whatever, fail as a liberal.
You get promoted.
It's almost like your failure has made you a victim.
Your failure, if it particularly if it's in the private sector, then your failure is because of evil conservatives who haven't signed on to whatever it is you're doing.
Or stupid idiotic Southerners who refuse to watch your show, or what have you.
Now you gave it your best shot.
You tried, you put Rosie on, even though she's yet to have a successful talk show.
Oprah hires her, puts her out there.
It bombs.
It bombs big time.
They put Rosie on at 7 p.m. on Oprah's network, the own network, OWN.
Oprah Winfrey Network.
Nobody does a talk show at 7 o'clock, and nobody's gonna watch a talk show at 7 o'clock on a network nobody knows exists.
But everybody thinks in media that Oprah is gold.
So all you got to do is have a story on entertainment tonight, the New York Post TV section, that Oprah's got a network and the world will know.
And then you announce on entertainment tonight and the New York Post TV section that you've hired Rosie, and then the world will know and they will flock to the network in the show.
That's what they think.
Because they let the media make them.
But it never happened.
And so now they fired Rosie.
Rosie wanted to move her show from Chicago, where Oprah's network is, to New York.
They said no.
But they didn't just fire Rosie.
Oprah Winfrey has cut 30 full-time employees from her own network, a move that represents a loss of nearly one-fifth of its workforce.
After the latest round of job cuts, about 90 people remain on Oprah's payroll on the own network, down from 150 employees at its peak.
Difficult to make tough business decisions that affect people's lives, uh, Winfrey said in a statement yesterday, but the economics of a startup cable network just don't work with the cost structure that was in place.
No, Oprah, they don't work with Rosie O'Donnell.
We're not talking mass appeal here.
Put her on HBO, put her on cable where they don't need an audience.
It'd be fine.
But this is not my point.
Just giving you facts, just giving you data.
My point is, why is Oprah laying off workers?
Why is Oprah ignoring the Obama way?
Why is Oprah ignoring Keynesian inspired deficit spending to spur growth at her network?
Why is it Oprah out saying, you know what?
I'm gonna spend and spend, I'm gonna keep hiring, even though my network's not making a dime and nobody's watching Rosie, I'm gonna go out, I'm gonna hire more people.
I've got camera ready jobs here, I got control board ready jobs here, I got stage manager ready jobs here.
Uh, I'm just gonna keep hiring.
I'm gonna keep spending, I'm gonna do it the Obama way.
I'm gonna spend money I don't have, and that's how I'm gonna grow my network.
Why didn't she do exactly what the president she endorsed has been doing?
This really disappoints me.
I thought all good liberals understood that when times get tough, when growth is stymied, when jobs are needed, the last thing you do is cut costs.
Last thing you do is fire people.
No, when your business is tanking, just like your country, what do you do?
You borrow more money and you spend more money and then you give It to union people.
Why couldn't Oprah do that?
Has she not learned anything from watching Obama?
This is called investing in the future.
You deficit spend camera ready jobs in Oprah's case.
Now there is one difference.
Obama gets to do his spending with everybody else's money.
Oprah would have to spend hers.
And Oprah decided, you know what, Obama's way won't work for me.
If I could spend Obama's money doing this, I would do it.
But I have to spend my own.
So I'm not going to deficit spend for more camera ready jobs.
I'm not going to give Rosie a raise.
I'm not going to go out and hire three more hosts to do three more shows and expand my network like Obama would, because I'm not going to spend my own money irresponsibly.
So in the real world, in the real world of the private sector, Oprah Winfrey would no more do what Barack Obama's doing with this country's economy with her own company than anybody else would.
She's doing what must be done.
Cutting costs, canceling failure shows, getting rid of employees that she can't afford who aren't doing any work.
Because that's the real world.
Oprah knows.
She lives in the real world.
Obama doesn't.
He's in a fantasy make-believe world.
When audience share is down, when you're up against hard times, what would Obama do?
Double down on spending.
Hire more people, triple down on spending.
Go borrow more money.
Hire your way out of this Oprah.
Do it in the Obama way.
It worked wonders for him, didn't it?
Why aren't why why are why aren't you deficit spending?
You afraid of a little bankruptcy, Oprah.
Come on, hire up.
Watch your ratings go through the roof.
You haven't busted enough budgets yet to see results.
Spend, baby, spend.
You're not spending enough money.
That's the problem with your network.
That's what Obama would tell you.
Okay, gonna go to the phones now as we um traditionally get to the phones in the second hour of this program.
Sometimes it happens sooner, but not today.
Joyce in Pittsburgh, thank you.
You're up first today.
Great to have you here with us.
Great to be with you again, Rush.
How are you today?
Very, very well.
Thank you.
I got a lot good fun stuff coming up here today, including giving away the first new third generation engraved iPad.
I can't wait.
How do I get my hands on one of those?
Well, you gotta the the official rules are at rushlimbaugh.com, our website.
You basically just have to become a follower of mine on Twitter, which is easy.
It doesn't cost anything.
Just uh you have a web, you have an email address, that's how you can sign up, get an account.
And uh, we're gonna be randomly selecting from people that follow me on Twitter.
And we're gonna do it like six or seven of them.
Well, that'd be great because I've got a new iPad three, but I can't wait to get one that's got your engraving on it.
Well, I'll tell you what.
Do you like it?
I love it.
Took me a day and a half to appreciate that screen.
Uh I laughed now.
I watch some people are putting the iPad 2 next to the new iPad and asking them if they could tell a difference, and and you some people can't, and that's I doesn't surprise me.
I it took me a day and a half to fully appreciate it, and now there's no going back.
No, it it it streams from Netflix, just really great.
Yeah.
Well, the picture quality is just it's it's over there's there's no display like this even on a 50-inch flat screen TV.
There's nothing like this.
Well, I'm thrilled with it that I oh, before we get into the real gist of the call, my first comment is why don't we get TiVo to come to Pittsburgh as back up to Rothwellsburger?
That might be affordable.
I'll tell you what, I'd love to have the boy here.
He's great.
Anyway, I'll tell you what, as a CPA and tax season and a financial consultant, I am just sick to death of the beating up of our friend Mr. Ryan.
I think we need to do something to get that boy into higher positions of authority and have his running maybe Colonel Alan West.
What do you think of that?
Well, and it is frustrating.
Uh, but we are the targets.
Uh, whoever sticks their neck out on our side, it's gonna get chopped off.
It's it it really is.
It's just the the the I we have to be confident, understand the people doing this are in the minority, terms of the population.
They really, really are.
Does it look like it because of the media, but they really are.
And Paul Ryan keeps coming back.
He's not going away.
He's got guts.
He reminds me of Sarah Kalen.
I mean, I there's no way I was gonna watch that movie.
Um Game change.
I was too busy watching the undefeated at the same time slot as the kickoff of game change.
Uh we watched it Saturday night.
And I I'm I'm telling you it was a cartoon.
It was so we sat there looking at each other in amazement, and what we were saying to each other, do you realize that every liberal in the country thinks this is the Bible?
They think this is gossip.
It it the disconnect.
Yeah.
But in this country is profound.
It was there were two heroes in that movie, Steve Schmidt and Nicole Wallace.
They were everybody else didn't know what they were doing, and uh I the the i it was just over the top, so outrageous that I was asking about how many people actually believe this happened.
It was such a caricature.
There was nothing real about it.
Well, you know, if if we see a good running mate of if if Romney does indeed get the nomination, which, you know, uh my my loyalties lay elsewhere.
But if if Romney does indeed get the nomination, if we had a Marco Rubio, you might see the same enthusiasm behind Romney that you saw behind McCain once he chose Palin.
Could be.
I stood down on a football field in September of 2008, along with 50 to 50,000 other people in Beaver Falls, PA.
You probably knew where that is.
Yeah, I do.
And I stood there for three hours waiting for her to come, and you would not have had that crowd if it had been McCain.
Well, that's the thing.
You know, this this movie misses the whole point about Palin is the only thing that gave that campaign a uh a heartbeat, gave it any life.
Palin was generating the crowds.
It was, I'll tell you what, that movie, that movie, Game Change is part of the Democrat War on Women.
No question.
Thanks, Joyce.
Great to talk to you.
Back in a moment.
Meeting and surpassing all audience expectations on a daily basis.
Rush Limbaugh.
And the excellence in broadcasting network.
All right, there it oops, there it is.
Uh, ladies and gentlemen, that is the new, if you're watching on the Diddle Cam, have zoomed in a little bit there.
That is the third generation iPad.
Unparalleled.
The screen display on this iPad took me a day and a half to appreciate it.
Since then, pardon the sniffles again.
I there's no going back to another iPad, but it's got the EIB logo that says official iPad and the Rush Limbaugh signature is right there.
And I have a huge supply of these babies.
I have them in white and black.
I've got them Verizon ATT.
They're all 64 gigabytes storage, and they're all 4G LTE.
And I'm gonna give away one a day, starting today to people who follow us on Twitter.
We activated our Twitter account last week as a means of tweeting out some counter information to the lies and distortion of this uh Democrat operative campaign of harassment of our advertisers and radio stations.
And believe me, it is not angry consumers, it's not angry listeners that are harassing stations and advertisers, it's Democrat operatives who are being given marching orders from Media Matters for America, and a particular guy that works this.
What we've done is put some information that explains how this operation is working, where it started, some details of it, how it's not working well at Limbaugh on Twitter, at Limbaugh is one of our handles, at Rush Limbaugh's the second handle, the same site, no space between Rush and Limbaugh.
Now, contest rules will not be found at Twitter.
Contest rules will be found at Rush Limbaugh.com.
Basically, it's very simple.
It doesn't cost anybody anything.
You simply become a member of Twitter, which means opening an account with your email address.
Nothing will happen to you after that unless you start following People.
And then you will start seeing what people you want to follow tweet.
At the same time, what we want you to do is follow me at Limbaugh or at Rush Limbaugh and retweet what we put up there.
And it's just clicking one button on your own Twitter page.
Once you follow me and you see all that we've tweeted, just hit your retweet button and it tweets to everybody else that you're following and who follow you.
And this expansion occurs in geometric proportions.
It just balloons.
It gets explosive in its size increase.
And this is how we are combating this with the uh with the truth.
First announcement of a winner will be tomorrow.
Or actually, we'll choose the winner today after the program, and we'll have the uh first winner will be announced tomorrow.
And we're going to do this for a week, at least.
And it's worth trying for one of these folks.
It's just I was a little skeptical, because I thought the iPad 2 screen was often I'd look at it and say, how can they make this any better?
To the human eye, anyway.
They did, and dramatically so.
So that's what we are doing there.
Now back to the news item, stacks of stuff.
Remember the story last week.
Consumer reports was conducting a test of the new Fisker Karma electric car.
The upscale just for the 1% only, and the thing at 180 miles into the test shut down.
Remember that just broke.
They had to stop it.
It was very embarrassing for everybody involved.
No car had ever just shut down or broken down the middle of a consumer reports test.
USA Today with an update.
Consumer reports is having more trouble with its beautiful but troublesome Fisker Karma plug incident.
And by the way, folks, just so you understand, I've got no brief against Fisker.
And I, as anybody ought to know, I am not against progress.
I am not against technological advancement.
I love it.
It's my second passion, in fact.
This show being first in terms outside family and so forth, this is my second passion.
I'm all for technological advancement and progress.
But I just don't think that 40 miles to a charge is progress.
And I also do not think there's anything inherently evil about oil.
There's nothing wrong with it.
Oil is wonderful.
Oil is miraculous.
Oil is organic.
Oil is as much a part of our world as is pond scum.
It's there.
We have nothing to do.
We don't make it.
No evil Republican scientist manufactures it in some secret laboratory.
It's out there.
And it turns out that we have more of it that's available in this country than they have in Saudi Arabia now.
We don't need to be dependent on anybody else for oil.
I also know that there's no replacement for it.
Until they come up with something, get a jet airplane off the ground and go a significant distance with people and cargo, we're whistling Dixie here.
This is all just feel-good liberal democrat, make the government bigger politics.
That's all this green energy is.
Someday, not in my lifetime, by the way, but someday somebody's going to come up with an alternative fuel to oil.
Someday maybe somebody might find a way to power vehicles exactly as they're powered now with water.
Who knows?
We certainly have a lot of that.
Maybe seawater.
If that ever happens, though I guarantee the leftists, though that will be depleting the thorth of supply for the 50th and the Dolphins and flipper, you can't do the seawater to power your evil airplane with our limbs.
Would probably go something like that.
So my problem here is I'm not, I'm not anti-Fisker.
I've got nothing against them or anything else.
I just I hate going backwards.
I want to put my hand up and just say, stop going backwards.
Stop taking this country trying to back to the dark ages.
If a new technology can't survive on its own in the marketplace, it's not time yet.
And if we're going to start subsidizing taxpayer dollars, it isn't real.
If we're going to have to pay people 10,000 or 12,000 to go buy one of these cars, it's not real.
It's fake, it's artificial.
Apple, these new iPads.
Apple does not have to pay anybody a dime to buy one.
They wait in line for them.
But all these electric cars are going to be subsidized.
Tax breaks, tax credits, tax whatever.
Well, that makes it artificial.
That makes it unreal.
And I'm the mayor of Reedlev.
I am the mayor of Littoreville.
And all this is fake.
This industry can't survive in the private sector on its own by virtue of its product or service.
And if it can't, Cyanara.
It's not fair, Mr. Lombaugh.
These people are technological geniuses and they need to be subsidized for their brilliance, and we need to celebrate.
Stop it, Mr. New Castrati.
They'll be celebrated for anything.
Till they make it work.
And they can make it work if they need us to pay for it.
Other than buying it.
So anyway, back to the USA Today story.
In a blog post today, consumer reports says that normally a new car at its test facility would be getting lots of mileage accumulating on the odometer from a steady workout during the testing.
But even after getting the Fisker Karma back from the dealer after it died recently, enough new problems are cropping up that consumer reports will not stray far from its base with it.
What it boils down to is here, the testers for Consumer Reports will not drive this car outside a cell phone range because they're afraid it's going to break down and they won't be able to get hold of anybody and tell themselves.
So they're staying within cell phone range when they're testing it.
Now that's imagine an ad for a new electric car with that aspect to it.
Don't drive outside cell phone range after you drive it off the showroom floor.
And most people say, well, I doubt that I could.
What's the range?
40 miles.
This is not a cheap car.
This $107,000 car.
They fisker karma.
So again, folks, I got if these people can make it work down the line, happy I will be.
Humpky dory, fine and dandy.
But when they need subsidies from the taxpayers or the president of the United States, or from wherever, outside of private sector investment.
And if it's a technology being forced on us that nobody wants you, sorry, count me out.
It's not because I've got anything against these people.
It's because I believe in progress.
I believe in the free market.
Where this stuff will all happen.
What's the what's the saying?
Invention is the mother of necessity.
Something like that.
And I it's the other way around.
Something is the necessity of motherhood.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
That's right.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
When do we need it?
And this is for we just don't need it now.
That's a we don't need this.
There are alternatives that are still much better.
Question everybody ought to be asking.
Why do they want to take away the stuff that works so well, so good, promotes so much freedom, is so economically efficient compared to these alternatives.
Why do they want to take that away from us?
That's what you need to ask yourself.
And believe me, they do want to take it away from you.
They want to control your thermostat.
They want to control your light bulbs.
Want to control a car you drive.
They want to control how much light you can have in your house and when you can turn it on, same thing with your air conditioning and heat.
They're not content to live their lives and leave you alone.
They're only happy when they're living your life for you because you, understand, aren't competent enough to do that on your own.
Time to put some um more numbers into perspective.
This is news from of all places, the Associated Press, a bill, a legislative bill designed to enact Obama's plan for a Buffett rule tax on people earning more than one million dollars a year would rake in just thirty one billion dollars over the next eleven years.
The Buffett rule.
You've heard Obama talk this.
We have to close the deficit.
We have to reduce the deficit in the national debt, and the rich are not paying their fair share.
So Warren Buffett stepped into the slime with an idea.
Or rather, well, he did, and then Obama picked up on it and called it the Buffett rule.
And basically, it's a surcharge, a surtax on people earning more than one million dollars a year.
It's a new tax above and beyond the already existing tax rate for those people.
And it would rake in $31 billion over the next 11 years.
And this estimate comes from the official congressional tax analysis obtained by the Associated Press.
That would be a drop in the bucket.
The over $7 trillion in federal budget deficits projected during the same period.
This is from AP, folks.
AP unknowingly here killing the Buffett rule.
Over the next 11 years, we're going to have $7 trillion in federal budget deficits, and the solution, the Buffett rule, will raise $31 billion.
Not even a thimbleful.
The figure is also minuscule compared to the many hundreds of billions the government earns from the alternative minimum tax, which Obama's budget last month said he would replace with the Buffett rule tax.
So another Obama-lizeman put to bed, replacing the AMT with the Buffett rule, loses money.
That's just amazing.
It's the fastest three hours in media.
And the proof of that is that two of them are already gone.
Jim Garrity at National Review Online, he's got a blog spot, is the name of his blog, id.
Do wavering Obama voters think the man they voted for is naive?
This is fascinating.
It's a survey of people who voted for Obama and their awakening to reality.
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