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April 12, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
32:25
April 12, 2012, Thursday, Hour #3
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I'm not making it up.
I'm telling you, George Zimmerman's mugshot, he looks much less white Hispanic than any of the pictures of him that the drive-bys were running.
Didn't the drive-bys didn't was it Snurdy, was it Time Magazine, so they doctored OJ?
What did they do?
That's right.
Time magazine photoshopped a picture of OJ, O.J. Simpson, and making him look darker and more sinister, right?
And when you see Zimmerman, I just saw a picture of Zimmerman standing next to his lawyer, who is white.
I mean, white, white.
We're talking milk white here.
And then Zimmerman and a black police officer.
And Zimmerman, I'd never seen Zimmerman look like this.
And this is video.
Anyway, greetings, folks.
Great to have you back.
Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Great to have you here.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program 800-282-2882 and the email address, lrushbo at eibnet.com.
Reuters, new claims for unemployment benefits arose last week to their highest level since January, a development that could raise fears.
The labor market recovery was stalling after job creation slowed in March.
How is that possible?
Folks, we've been told every week that the job market was improving in every way.
How can this be?
All the good news that we've been bombarded with, government media has told us every week for months the job market is improving in every way.
But I guess it does help to explain why the economists are wrong week after week.
They read the weekly reports from the government media, and that's why they're surprised.
That's why everything's unexpected to them.
So this week, both Reuters and the AP report that last week's numbers of claims was revised up.
So the good news last week wasn't as good.
It never is.
It's always revised upward.
But neither of them, this is the first time they've told us that.
But neither of them mention how this revision probably makes a lie of the headlines from last week.
AP's headline last week was U.S. unemployment claim.
It's four-year low.
No, it didn't.
Not with the revision.
Just as the past three weekly revisions have put the lie to the past three nearly identical headlines from Reuters and the AP.
But the AP refuses to give up.
The AP story on this, they're not giving up.
U.S. applications for jobless aid up to two-month high.
But then they say that the claim that the economists note that applications for unemployment are at a much lower level than they were last year.
It doesn't matter that they're going up.
The year-to-year comparison, it looks good.
It's all smoke and mirrors.
The job market's not improving.
The economy's not recovering.
There isn't any sustained economic growth, not substantive.
I wish there were.
I really wish there were.
I cringe.
The circumstances this country finds itself in.
Now, one of the stories going around, and it's been a while.
It's been going around a while.
Of the disparity in income, the gap between the rich and the poor.
And depending on what story you read, the middle class is about to be wiped out.
There isn't going to be one much longer because the middle class people are not moving north and upward out of the middle class.
They are moving south, and they're getting closer to poverty and near poverty.
And while that's happening, the rich are getting richer.
And it's just not fair.
James Pethakoukis, American Enterprise Institute, writing at the American blog, headline, Obama's inequality argument just utterly collapsed.
And here's the pull quote from his piece.
All income levels got richer.
Yeah, the very rich did exceptionally well, mostly due to technology and globalization.
Incomes rose 63% for the top 5%.
Income went up 56% for the top 10%.
Income went up 52% for the top 20%.
But everybody else made out pretty well, too.
Incomes rose 40% for households between the 60th and 80th percentiles.
Incomes rose 37% for the next quintile, 25%, and so on.
The shared prosperity Obama says he wants is happening in America right in front of his eyes.
President Obama has a theory of the case.
Yes, he does.
Past 30 years, the living standards of middle-class Americans have gone nowhere, even as the overall U.S. economy has grown markedly.
The Obama explanation, wealthier Americans grabbed all the money.
Time to raise their taxes, for the sake of fairness.
That's what Obama's saying.
And incumbent in this, by the way, is the liberal belief that there just isn't enough to go around.
That is something fundamental for people to understand.
If you want to understand liberalism, Democrats, and the economy, you have to believe they look at the economy as a finite piece of pie of a certain size that never gets bigger.
And what's in there is distributed unfairly because we have a, you're on your own economy, as Obama describes it.
So that pie is the same size always.
It never gets bigger.
And what happens is that the elite rich people inside that pie, they're taking all the money.
And because they do that, there simply isn't enough left to go around for everybody else.
So what we have to do is take, in the form of tax increases, the money away from those evil rich people and then somehow give it back to the people who really would have it if the rich hadn't stolen it from them.
Well, and they believe in a zero-sum game.
And that's best defined as saying liberals believe that if somebody gets a $10,000 raise, then somebody got fired or had their salary cut $10,000.
If somebody gets a job, somebody gets fired.
Zero-sum game.
There's no growth.
They don't believe in overall GDP growth.
And they don't believe that there's enough to go around.
And that is what informs and animates their policies.
Here's Obama, January of 2009.
Middle-class Americans have been working harder, yet not enjoying their fair share of the fruits of a growing economy.
Here's Obama in Osawatomi, Kansas last December.
Over the last few decades, the rungs on the ladder of opportunity have grown farther and farther apart, and the middle class has shrunk.
Obama, this week, what drags our entire economy down is when the benefits of economic growth and productivity go only to the few, which is what's been happening for over a decade now.
And the gap between those at the very, very top and everybody else keeps growing wider and wider and wider.
Now, underlying Obama's entire thesis is the work of two economists, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Sayez.
And according to these two guys, median American incomes rose just 3% from 1979 to 2007.
Yet over that same period, GDP per person rose 67%.
So what happened to the rest of the money?
Well, according to Obama, the top 10%, the top 1%, and the top 110 of 1% grabbed all the money, or pretty much most of it.
They just took it because you're on your own economy, and they're better on their own than other people are.
They know how to take it when others don't know how to keep it.
So, because of that, it's time to crank up taxes on the rich and spend more on the middle class.
Now, it's not overstating things to say that the findings of these two economists, Piqueti and Sayez, form the very heart of Obamaomics.
It gives a powerful economic rationale for Obama policies such as ending the upper end Bush tax cuts to Obamacare to the Buffett rule.
And speaking of the Bush tax cuts, Ezra Klein in the Washington Post yesterday, on taxes, George W. Bush has won.
Democrats have, for the most part, admitted that George W. Bush was right.
The Clinton-era tax rates were too high on most Americans.
For all that Democrat talk about returning to the Clinton-era tax rates, they only ever really mean for the top 2% of taxpayers.
The people are now in the 35% bracket.
They want them at the 39.6% bracket, but they don't want anybody else's taxes to go up.
The Democrats have conceded Clinton tax rates are too high.
The Bush tax rates are just right.
It's in the Washington Post.
Did you know that?
Did you know Democrats had agreed with that?
It's the first I've heard of it.
I did not know that.
I mean, I know Obama didn't want to repeal the Bush tax cuts because he needed the economy to keep growing.
Well, see, this is my point.
They know that tax cuts grow an economy.
They know it.
But they don't want it.
It's too much money in your pocket means less need by you of them.
It means too much economic freedom for you.
Anyway, back to Pethakukas.
But all of this that I just described to you is not true, according to a new study in National Tax Journal from researchers at Cornell University.
Cornell, not a conservative university.
The academics, led by economist Richard Burkhauser, don't say that the findings of Piketty and Sayas are wrong.
They just say they're massively incomplete.
According to the Cornell study, median household income, properly measured, rose 36%, not 3.2%, like Piketty and Says argue.
That's a big miss.
Now, you might, well, wait a minute.
How can that be such a big 3.2% versus 36% median income growth?
How can that be so?
There are anecdotal ways that you can illustrate this.
New car purchases.
Look at all of the television stuff people buy, the gadgets, smartphones, and this kind of thing.
The money for this is coming from somewhere, credit card debt or somewhere, but still the debts have to be paid.
The monthly payments have to be made.
So this bleak picture, the point is this, the bleak picture of this widening income gap that Obama is painting simply exists as an excuse to punish the achievers when it is not the reality of life on the ground.
We'll link to this story at rushlimbaugh.com when the site is updated.
I've got to take a break now.
Sit tight.
Much more straight ahead when we get back.
Hey, we're back.
Half my brain tied behind my back.
Just to make it fair, Rush Limbaugh, the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Here is Christina in Atlanta.
I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the program.
Hi, Rush.
How are you?
Very, very well.
Thank you.
I just wanted to comment a small thing on the Ann Romney situation.
I am a wife and a mother and a small business owner and an active member of my church and my community.
And I am so frustrated with women in general buying into the liberal line that it has to be an either-or mentality.
I feel like the women's rights movement was to create choices for women.
And when you are successful by using the options available to you, people like Sarah Palin or Ann Romney or any other successful conservative woman are just torn apart by the media and the press, but also the people like me that are around people in our communities on a day-to-day basis are just rigorous.
Exactly right.
The hypocrisy is amazing.
They say, go have it also.
Here's Palin, who has kids, has a Down syndrome baby, goes to work, and she gets crucified for it.
And then last night, Hillary Clinton rips on Ann Romney for not working when she has five kids.
So like Michelle Malkin says today in her column, conservative women are not allowed in the sorority.
And no matter what you do, it's wrong.
Exactly.
And, you know, and just your day-to-day interaction, you can't have an opinion if you are at home with your children because you just don't understand how hard their lives are if they go to work.
Yeah, I've done both, and I've sacrificed nothing.
I did not sacrifice my family for a career or my career for a family.
And I feel like people that are out there doing the same things that I am every day deserve praise and support and should be a shining example to women about what you are capable of doing.
You know what bothered me about feminism, Christina?
Two or three things.
First thing, it treated women as all monolithic, all the same.
Every man could tell you there's no such thing.
They're all different.
Just like every person's different.
The second thing they did was define feminism's success in terms of a man's world.
They had to join male clubs.
They had to go get men's kinds of jobs.
It was almost copycat.
And then there was the pressure that they brought to bear on women that did not choose to go that route.
The attacks for letting down the sisterhood by staying at home and raising a family instead of going to work.
The whole thing.
And plus, the last thing feminism did was really, I wouldn't say destroy, but feminism changed forever the normal human nature relationships between men and women.
They forever have been altered now because men don't know what they're supposed to be and women are as confused as well.
And so people are afraid.
Men and women both afraid to be themselves.
Well, and it's as if you suddenly lost all of your intelligence because you chose to become a mother.
Right.
You know, there have been things posted on blogs that I've read, and I go online and I watch the news, and I'm very informed as a person.
And women like me are routinely called stupid or ignorant.
They accuse us of being repressed by our husbands.
They make a caricature out of us.
And I find it very offensive.
And I cannot believe people that really believe in women stand by and let this happen.
Let me tell you something.
What was really going on was that women were being weaponized for the Democrat Party.
Women were being massaged and formed or whatever.
The whole feminist movement was about creating a giant female voting bloc for the Democrat Party.
That's really what it was.
Looky here, folks, right here, my formerly nicotine-stained fingers.
It's a story from ABC Good Morning America on May the 19th of 2008.
Almost four years ago, for those of you in Rio Linda, Senator Barack Obama ripped into a Republican ad today that targets comments made by his wife Muchel and called the Republican tactic low-class and detestable.
The Illinois senator told Good Morning America he expects hardball tactics from the Republicans if he becomes a nominee.
But I also think these folks should lay off my wife, he told Good Morning America as his wife chuckled beside him.
So the one told the Republicans to lay off his wife.
Let's go back.
This is last Friday morning in the White House.
Well, the executive Eisenhower executive office building Cross Street from the West Wing, White House Forum on Women and the Economy.
This is Obama setting the stage, perhaps even sending out the instructions to Hillary Rosen.
I was in the state legislature.
I was teaching.
I was practicing law.
I'd be traveling.
And we didn't have the luxury for her not to work.
And I know when she was with the girls, she'd feel guilty that she wasn't giving enough time to her work.
And when she was at work, she was feeling guilty she wasn't giving enough time to the girls.
And like many of you, we both wished that there were a machine that could let us be in two places at once.
And so she had to constantly juggle it and carried an extraordinary burden for a long period of time.
She didn't have the, by the way, the use of the word luxury here, I think, is key at targeting in Romney.
She didn't have the luxury for Muchel not to work.
Now, Obama at the time, with his state legislature salary, he was also a lawyer.
He was doing over $100,000 a year at the time.
But they didn't have the luxury for Muchel not to work.
What are you laughing at?
What did I say that's so uproariously funny in there?
Okay, they're making snide jokes amongst them.
That's why they don't have microphones, why you don't hear them, folks.
It's why, because I always get, how come you don't let us hear this?
One-way conversations are very frustrating.
They're safe, is what they are.
Hillary Rosen on CNN, Anderson Cooper29, last night, they were talking about Romney talking about Romney mentioned 93% of all jobs lost under Obama are lost by women, which is true.
The real war on women in this country is Obama's economy.
Anderson Cooper said to Hillary Rose, is there anything really wrong with reaching out to women on an issue that they care about, like the economy?
Could we just get rid of this word war on women?
The Obama campaign does not use it.
President Obama does not use it.
This is something that the Republicans are accusing people of using, but they're actually the ones spreading it.
Okay, let's see.
March 6th, 2012, White House.
This is a press conference.
QA.
Jessica Yellen, CNN, says to Obama, top Democrats have said the Republicans on a smaller issue are engaged in a war on women.
Would you prefer that language be changed?
You know, Jessica, as you know, if I start being in the business of arbitrating, right, and what I do is I practice it.
And so I'm going to try to lead by example in this situation as opposed to commenting on every single comment that's made by either politicians or pundits.
I would be very busy.
I would not have time to do my job.
That's your job to comment on what's said by politicians and pundits.
Right, right.
So he'll condemn.
That was the press conference where he condemned me and my language.
But he would not condemn the language war on women.
Now, the Democrats are sending out fundraising emails.
Pelosi is sending out fundraising emails with the term war on women.
Blabbermouth Schultz is sending out emails with the term war on women.
For Hillary Rosen to say the Democrats are not using the term is a lie.
The Democrats invented it.
You watch.
They're going to try to lay that off on me.
I'm going to tell you they invented the term.
It's in their playbook.
Republican war on women.
That's what they want to think is being waged.
Now, this whole thing can be kept by saying, in Hillary Rosen's apology today, she actually says, can we – let me get it up here.
I'm going to find exact.
Here it is.
Let's declare peace in this phony war and go back to focus on the substance.
That's in her apology to Anne Roy.
Can we just get peace in this phony war?
Acknowledge.
Let's see.
Early March this year, on their YouTube channel, Democrat Senate Campaign Committee released an ad entitled The GOP's War on Women.
Hillary Rose, it's a Republican invention.
We're not doing that.
Right here, GOP's War on Women, a tidally ad, and here's a portion of the ad.
It's an assault on women's health and freedom, and Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate all across the country are pushing extreme legislation that threatens health care for women.
It's time to end the culture wars and get to work for the middle class.
Time to elect more women to the U.S. Senate.
There you go.
So they've got an ad entitled The GOP's War on Women, and it's right there on their YouTube page.
You want to hear a little Ann Romney?
She responded to Hillary Rosen this morning.
She was on Fox with Martha McCallum, who said, I'm curious on a personal level, because I know how you can feel when these kinds of things are said.
What was your personal gut reaction when you heard Hillary Rosen say those words?
She should have come to my house when those five boys were causing so much trouble.
It wasn't so easy.
My career choice was to be a mother.
And I think all of us need to know that we need to respect choices that women make.
Other women make other choices to have a career and raise family, which I think Hillary Rosen has actually done herself.
I respect that.
That's wonderful.
There are other people that have a choice.
We have to respect women in all those choices that they make.
I will tell you that Mitt said to me more times than you would imagine, Ann, your job is more important than mine.
Mitt respects women that make those different choices.
He had a lot of women in his life that have been his advisors that he listens to a lot of different women.
You know, I want to do something.
Grab somebody, one.
That's...
Shit.
Now what, Snurdly?
What are you doing?
it's distracting.
Look, this is what the Democrats are trying to make the election about, and that's why it has to be headed off at the pass.
A grab soundbite, grab number four, because here's Ann Romney.
She gets to Snerdley's major point, which is it's about the economy.
Hillary needs to know this because I've been on the campaign trail for one year, and guess what women are talking about?
And I don't care if they're stay-at-home moms or they're working mothers or their grandmothers.
Guess what they're all talking about?
They're talking about jobs and they're talking about the legacy of debt that we're leaving our children.
That's what I'm hearing.
And that's what we're talking about here.
Exactly right.
This is what has them upset about her.
This is what they don't want her saying in public.
They don't want her advising Romney to talk about this.
That's why they're trying to kill her politically.
That's why they tried to wipe her out.
That's why Hillary Rosen said she doesn't know what she's talking about.
She's never worked a day in her life.
She's too effective.
She's on the campaign trail.
She's talking to women.
She hears them.
And women are like anybody else.
They want jobs too.
They have families.
They need income.
They're not worried about birth control pills.
It's not a problem.
It's called Walmart.
You get them for nine bucks.
I don't know from personal experience, but I've been told.
Oh, guess I'm not allowed to talk about that, am I?
Folks, we're back.
Great to have you here.
And I'm telling you, far as I'm concerned, there is no denying Hillary Rosen is in the pay of the Democrat National Committee.
They've admitted that.
In fact, the White House says, hey, she's over there to DNC.
She's not with us.
So there is no chance that this was not part of their campaign strategy to go after Ann Romney.
No way, no how.
She didn't, Hillary Rosen didn't strap on that suicide vest out of a sudden jihad syndrome.
You know, this whole business of weaponizing women to turn them into voting machines for the Democrat Party is what feminism is all about.
The Democrat machine wanted this to be said about Ann Romney.
The Democrat campaign wanted this to be said.
We're going to go reverse order.
Here is Ann Romney again this morning on Fox with Martha McCallum.
Hillary needs to know this because I've been on the campaign trail for one year.
And guess what women are talking about?
And I don't care if they're stay-at-home moms or they're working mothers or they're grandmothers.
Guess what they're all talking about?
They're talking about jobs and they're talking about the legacy of debt that we're leaving our children.
That's what I'm hearing.
And that's what we're talking about here.
Now, let's go to Hillary Rosen.
Last night on CNN, ticked off that Ann Romney is talking this way.
What you have is Mitt Romney running around the country saying, well, you know, my wife tells me that what women really care about are economic issues.
And when I listen to my wife, that's what I'm hearing.
Guess what?
His wife has actually never worked a day in her life.
She's never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school, and why do we worry about their future?
There's something much more fundamental about Mitt Romney.
He just, he seems so old-fashioned when it comes to women.
And I think that comes across, and I think that that's going to hurt him over the long term.
He just doesn't really see us as equal.
That is preposterous.
It's absolutely preposterous.
That's a cliché, and she's plugging him into a cliche that the feminists have constructed and built and used since the 1960s, the late 60s.
And for her to sit here and talk about the pressures that women face, how do we feed our kids?
How do we send them to school?
Why do we worry about their future?
Everybody's worried about that because of Obama, Ms. Rosen.
And you ought to be worried about it too because of Mr. Obama.
Because he's the one wreaking havoc in all these precious schools and with this precious economy.
So anyway, but Hillary Rosen, Ann Romney, I didn't write say that.
She had the right to tell other people what women are telling her.
Ann Romney's in the campaign trail.
She's talking to women.
They're telling her what their problems are.
She tells her husband, she tells Martha McAllamon on Fox, Hillary Rosen, she'd have the right to do that.
She never worked a day in her life.
Who the hell?
The hostility here, the censorship.
Hillary Rosen and the Democrat National Committee want Ann Romney censored.
Obama wants his opponents swept off the playing field.
He doesn't want a level playing field.
He doesn't want any opponents.
That's who these people are.
Here's Kathy in Central Florida.
Hi, Kathy.
I'm glad you waited.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
I just want to preface my remarks by saying I have a master's in chemistry and physics.
I'm not stupid, but I've been on both sides.
I've worked, and I gave up working to raise my three children for those first five years before they were in all-day school.
So I know Hillary Rosen from both sides.
I've been a working mom, and I've been a stay-at-home mom.
Stay-at-home takes a whole lot more brains than working mothers, but that's not my opinion.
But what I want to know is why the GOP is not asking, why is Hillary Rosen and the liberal left declaring war on welfare mothers?
Because they stay at home.
They don't go out and work.
Why are they declaring war on welfare mothers?
Like they're declaring war on Ann Romney.
Ooh.
Why is the left declaring war on welfare moms?
That's your question.
Why are they doing it?
Yeah, she said, you know, they, you know, they never worked for a living.
A lot of welfare mothers have never worked for a living.
They've lived home and taken care of their children.
You know the answer to this.
I mean, they're a protected class.
They are victims.
Welfare moms are victims of the top 1% who have stolen all their money.
And so they're to be pitied and cared for and so forth.
But you're right, they are stay-at-home moms.
I mean, the epitome.
I shouldn't laugh, but that's right.
I never...
Hey, don't forget, folks, our cure-a-thon is tomorrow as we once again engage in efforts to cure the blood cancers...
And we will be using Twitter for tomorrow.
We've developed a hashtag to help alert people of what's going on.
And we'll do Open Line Friday as well.
All of that combined in one precious broadcast.
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