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April 18, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:49
April 18, 2012, Wednesday, Hour #2
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Time Text
Now Snerdley wants to know if Bob Lutz was at the cigar dinner last night.
Bob Lutz was not there.
Bob Lutz was not there.
He only showed up one year.
And I don't remember what year it was, but it was a year that we did this at the Four Seasons.
And it was a year before Mayor Doomberg started telling everybody they couldn't enjoy life.
Oh, by the way, there were some communists in the crowd last night.
Greetings and welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network, and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
A bunch of us stand up and make remarks for five or ten minutes.
And I happen to, every time I get up and speak of these things, I have to mention the fact of how it used to be.
And all of these silly restrictions on having fun.
And there were some snickers from the crowd.
And that's how I knew there were communists in there.
And I just, I pointed out all this is aimed at people not having a good time.
When some people on the left see people enjoying themselves, that's not fair.
That's not right.
And we're going to see to it that you don't have a good time.
So we're not going to let you smoke all those cigars at your cigar, even though we're not going to be there.
There's not going to be a soul there that would be offended.
There's not going to be a soul there that would complain.
There's not going to be a soul at the cigar dinner would have a problem with cigars.
But there were some Snickers night.
I always knew I hit home runs when I get the Snickers.
Miniature booze and so forth.
But what I did last, I reminisced some of the greatest, most fun nights that I've had have been at these cigar dinners.
I remember one year, Mayor Doomberg would not give us the permit.
The permit was withdrawn two months.
I say us.
Marvin Shankin does this.
Cigar Ficionado magazine does this.
But Marvin and I are buds, so it's us.
And two months or three months before, they just pulled the permit.
And so Marvin decided, well, what do we do?
Because it's an annual thing.
It's a night to remember.
And it's a fundraiser for prostate cancer.
Milken shows up and Mike Milken matches everything that's donated.
It's a big auction.
All kinds of stuff's auctioned off every year.
Millions of dollars is raised at this thing.
So Francis Ford Coppola stepped up and offered his winery in Napa as a substitute.
So we made a weekend out of it.
And we had the actual dinner in a room in Francis Ford Coppola's winery where he had things that had been used in the Godfather movies.
One of those old cars, the desk that Marlon Brando used in the first movie, The Godfather Sitting Behind when the funeral director shows up wanting justice for his daughter.
It was cool.
Wayne Gretzky and his wife are there.
I never forget them because one of the items being auctioned off is a Cadillac, one of those two-seater sports car things.
And she really wanted it, but I didn't know it was her.
And I was bidding because I wanted to give it to somebody.
So I kept bidding and got thing.
And she ended up being disappointed.
I almost felt like giving it to her when it was over.
But that year, Tommy Lasorda, the former manager of Dodgers, what happens, folks, this is cool, too.
A tradition.
There are five bottles of wine in paper bags.
Brown paper looked like Mogan David.
You have no idea what's in there.
And you bid.
And the five bottles, the rule is that whoever bids the highest on each bottle has to open it and serve it to the guests at his table.
So it gets consumed that night.
And it's always top drawer from California and from France.
And one year, Tommy Lasorda, former manager of the Dodgers, was sitting at a table that did not get one of these bottles.
So he was running around stealing wine from everybody's tables.
Hey, Rush, you got wine here, Tommy.
It's just a blast.
We had softball games, played golf this whole weekend.
And I ruined it for Marvin last night because we all stayed at the, there's a place out there in Napa called Auberg de Soleil or something like that.
And I told him, you know, Pelosi's family owns this.
And it was devastating to Marvin when he found that out.
I'm pretty sure.
I'm pretty sure that the Pelosi family owns Auberg.
Anyway, I just, I think, what, you mean, do the cigar dinner in New Jersey?
No, no, no.
Snirdly, we're not, no, no, no.
Nothing against New Jersey.
If we're going to leave Manhattan to do the cigar dinner, we're not going to go.
Nothing against it, Governor Christie.
No, but it was one year that was just Francis Ford Coppolis, you know, I listen to you every day when I'm in Costa Rica.
I've found a way to get you on short wave.
I says, one year after I'd lost a lot of weight, he says, you know, you've got Hollywood good looks.
I'm serious.
Hollywood good looks.
And I said, well, let's do something about it.
I never heard from him.
But it's, folks, it's just been a blast.
And now it's, and it still is.
I mean, we're troopers.
We make the most of it.
But this, these, these silly, so I can understand if they wanted to limit cigar smoking when the restaurants open to the public.
But it wasn't.
Did you see this?
According to an analysis by the Tax Foundation, only 84 million Americans paid any federal income tax at all in 2011 or 2010.
Only 84 million.
We have a country.
Now, this is everybody, over 310 million people.
I don't know how many of those are crumb crunchers versus how many are adults, but I can guarantee you that there are more than 84 million adults.
84 million Americans paid any federal income tax at all in 2010.
There are over 313 million Americans.
That doesn't count the illegal undocumented Democrat voters.
The Tax Foundation, nonpartisan bunch, also found that people making over $50,000 a year paid 93.3% of all the income tax collected in 2010.
That is, I guess, what Obama means by fairness.
That's what he calls social justice.
People who make less than $50,000 a year pay 6% of the total tax burden.
And even this statistic, people making over $50,000 paid 93.3% is a little bit misleading because when you get to the top 1%, the top 5 and top 10, you'd be stunned.
I never can remember off the top of my head that top 1% pay something like 20% or 25%.
The top 10% are paying close to 50%.
But it's also true that if you make over $60,000 a year in this country, you're in the top 10% of wage earners.
And that's why it's always been you start taxing the rich, you're not going to raise enough money to significantly reduce the deficit, as evidenced by the Buffett rule.
Look at the minimum 30% tax on all millionaires would raise $5 billion.
A rounding error in Obama's budget.
By the news is out, it's official.
Obama's deficit spending for his first term, $5 trillion.
The sum total of all, this is why there's a Tea Party.
This is why the 2010 midterms happened.
$5 trillion in deficit spending added to the national debt.
Now, I remember a long time.
When I was 15, 20 years old, I remember the adults that I knew and hung around, my parents' friends, were always worried about the national debt.
This is in the 1960s, the early 70s.
I constantly remember hearing them worried about the national debt.
Of course, I wasn't.
I wasn't old enough to even really understand what it was.
But as I got older and I kept hearing people talk about it, I said, well, for all my whole life, I've been hearing about the national debt and how it's going to crush the country.
It hasn't happened, so it must not be that big a deal.
Well, guess what I become?
I have become one of those people that's now very much concerned about the national debt because it's never, ever been anywhere near as large as it is expressed any way you want.
As a percentage, total dollars or what have you.
We are nearing collapse.
The old adage was the national debt never really mattered because we owed it to ourselves.
Therefore, we never really had to pay it back.
But we don't owe it just to ourselves now.
We owe it to the CHICOMs.
We owe it to the Japanese.
We owe it to a lot of people who expect to be paid back, who expect their interest payments to be made.
So it's not just something that we owe ourselves and can forget about or forgive or what have you.
It's far greater problem because the tax rates required to make a dent in this, coupled with the spending cuts that nobody so far has had the guts to propose or implement are unthinkable to a lot of people.
That's why the total income tax.
Here's a stat I heard the other day that for those of you who have grandkids, their total life tax payments have already been spent at current income tax rates.
If they went out and got jobs out of college, worked until they're 65, somebody ran the numbers, and your grandkids, two generations from now, their lifetime taxes have already been spent.
Now, what are their tax rates going to be if something isn't done about it?
This is why there is a Tea Party.
$5 trillion.
This president has wrung up more debt than all previous presidents combined.
And the horizon we can now see, it's Greece, it's Spain, it is Europe.
And then we learned that only 84 million Americans out of 313 million are paying any income tax.
They're paying other taxes, but not income tax.
Quick timeout.
We'll be back and continue much more on the EIB network right after this.
Look at this headline.
This is from Channel 7 Eyeball News in New York, WABC.
People line up for prepaid debit cards that don't work.
What is drawing huge crowds in the Bronx?
People lining up around the block to get into a storefront that houses a tax preparation office.
What's really going on?
And what's the involvement of a California bank that issues prepaid debit cards?
Eyeball News still trying to get straight answers.
This is Sarah Wallace doing the story.
On a recent day, Eyeball News watched as the head of security barked crowd control orders and collected copies of social security cards and state IDs to take up the backstairs through the 99 cent store.
So what's everybody here for?
Some didn't want to show their faces.
The reporter Sarah Wallace said, what did they say about Obama?
They'd get $1,000 and then you would sign.
What this is, it's a really sketchy article here, but it sounds a lot like these other Obama stash stories that we've heard, like out of Detroit.
Apparently what happened was a Bronx tax preparing service was promising people prepaid debit cards with money on them from the government.
All they had to do was hand over their social security number, their EBT card info, and their state IDs, which everyone was willing to do.
Even some had already filed their taxes were willing to do that.
They thought it was Obama money.
People in line were spoken to, and they thought that Obama was giving money away via this tax preparation service.
Now, in many areas, tax preparation centers mostly deal with getting money to Democrat constituents via the earned income tax credit.
They're also notorious for supplying identification for illegal aliens and ID theft in general.
They're probably running this scam just to collect as much personal ID data as possible.
But it also sounds like a typical Democrat get out of the vote drive.
Here, show up for a prepaid debit card.
Give us your social security number.
And some of the people involved, after the story had spread, hey, you know what?
You're giving away prepaid debit cards.
Yeah, what do I got to do?
I just got to give me a social security number.
I thought it was Obama money.
More from Obama Stash.
And here's another take of the story from Glenn Beck's website, The Blaze.
Obama money rumor has people lining up in New York City again, responding to a local rumor, people standing in line for hours, turning over valuable personal information and expecting to receive a government handout in New York City.
This time, people in New York are lining up because they heard that people were getting a debit card loaded with as much as $1,000 of stimulus money.
However, based on the latest information, there's no money being given away, and yet people continue to line up and turn over their personal information in hopes that they are collecting stimulus money from Obama.
Here's Russ, Bloomington, Indiana.
We go back to the phones.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hi.
Hi, Mega Dittos from the West Coast of Indiana.
Thank you very much, sir.
Very, very clever.
I want to get straight to the point.
I'm wondering if our president isn't learning because his handling of the Secret Service prostitution scandal, he's standing back.
He's not going to jump to judgment on this, but he certainly didn't wait with the Zimmerman case.
Well, don't make me say this.
Why do you think he's learning anything?
What is the relationship between the debauchery of the Secret Service and the Zimmerman case?
Well, his boy mouthpiece last night was saying on the news how his Mr. President Obama was not going to jump to any rash conclusions, and he was going to give time for the investigation and all the facts to come forward.
But perhaps he didn't do that down in Florida.
There's no advantage either way in the Secret Service story.
There's no.
You don't believe that he could jump in and defend those women in trying circumstances in South America?
No, no, look, look, look.
Excuse me.
Whatever else the Secret Service is, they guard his life.
He's not going to stand in and take up for the prostitutes.
And he's not going to ask if their contraceptives were provided.
You like that, huh?
Whatever.
As much as a lot, the Clintons were not particularly fond of the Secret Service and vice versa, particularly Hillary, from everything we've heard from FBI agents that were like Gary Aldrich.
But they still protect the president's life.
He's not going to jump in here.
I mean, Colombian hookers are a small, small voting bloc.
The Secret Service protects his life.
You like that one too, huh?
Yes.
Well, there really is no commonality between this story and the Sanford, Florida George Zimmerman case.
There's really not.
You know, a lesser experienced talk show host could have walked right into this trap, but not I.
Well, if I mention a trap, I walk into it.
So sorry.
I don't mention the trap.
Russ, I appreciate the call.
Here's Dave in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
You're next on the EIB network.
Hi.
Hey, Russ.
How are you doing?
What I'm talking about is these polls that have come out with Romney either trailing or close, and some of them even have him in the lead.
Actually, I'm actually amazed that he's either not close in those polls.
I think there's probably millions of Americans like myself who really are not Romney supporters, but I'm absolutely going to vote for the guy.
And I think when that happens, I even think this thing's going to be close.
I think you've hit on something here.
I think, as hard as it was to understand what you were saying because of the cheap phone that you're using, I think you are exactly right.
There's not, well, we have to admit this.
There's not a whole lot of passionate excitement behind Romney.
But the alternative, people don't want any more of this.
They just don't.
The frustrating thing with Romney and the reason there's this lack of personal passionless connection is what he did the other day, yesterday.
I'll play the sound bites.
He was on with Larry Kudlow.
Cuddlow.
So why single out the rich?
Why not just have deductions for everybody?
A lot of people look at him as pandering and out of a fear that he has to deal with this notion that he's some rich guy and out of touch.
But I think you make a great point.
No, no, no.
Everything's okay.
We've got the annual spring fling weekend this weekend.
A bunch of people show up, camp out at my crib for the weekend, play golf, have cigars wherever and whenever we want.
It's always a great time.
That's why I'm out Thursday and Friday.
It's an annual thing.
You people know this.
By the way, a friend of mine sent me a note today.
This particular friend is a huge media aficionado.
It just is absorbed in the media and said, boy, you must be doing something really right this year.
You did not make Time Magazine's list of the 100 most influential.
And I said, that's only because I don't go to the party.
I've been on that list twice and I've never gone.
And I've even been invited in off years when I have them on and I never go.
And he wrote back, you know, that's exactly right.
They put people on that list that they would like to have at a party and you never show up.
And I said, that's right.
My days of being a circus act for a bunch of liberals are over.
Don't do it anymore.
I'm thinking about this $5 trillion that Obama has run up here.
Unless, well, that'll be the total indebtedness, the total of deficits for Obama's first term.
And I got to tell you, as dumb as they are about economics, I would bet your average stay-at-home mom wouldn't even be dumb enough to run up that much debt in three and a half years.
Hillary Rosa, they don't know what they're talking about.
Stay-at-home moms never worked a day in their life.
$5 trillion.
It's incomprehensible.
$100 billion is, what is it, $10,000 million?
I mean, it's incomprehensible.
Simply, it's just as incomprehensible as the amount of power required to get a Boeing 747 off the ground and fly any distance.
Let's go to the audio sound device because our last caller, even though he was on a cheap phone, he's exactly right about Romney.
The thing is, folks, the frustration that people have with Romney, and I know that many of you in the audience are passionate Romney supporters.
I know you're out there.
A lot of you are.
The frustration is that Republican nominee should be walking away with this.
There is no way an incumbent president with this record should have a chance.
There is no way an incumbent president with this record should even be running for reelection.
Most of them would quit in shame like LBJ did.
In most cases, circumstances like this, the Democrat Party would be doing everything it could to get Obama not to run, promise him leader of the world at the UN or something.
It's somebody else in there, even with the media in their back pocket.
That's the frustration.
This should not be close.
And a lot of people think that if we had a pedal to the metal, unafraid, cheerful conservative who every day could explain conservatism because it is in his heart and believes it, then it wouldn't even be a contest.
There's never been this opportunity to draw such a contrast between us and the Democrats.
It's never, ever been this stark.
We are up against, for all intents and purposes, an admitted socialist.
No, I said for all intents and purposes, he denies it, but there's no doubt in anybody's mind.
Let's go to some Romney soundbites.
Here is Romney being interviewed on Breitbart TV.
And this, by the way, when I saw that he did this, I got a plane last night to fly home and I saw this.
I said, whoa, Romney does surprise me positively.
And he's been doing that more and more lately.
And this is one of those pleasant surprises.
He was interviewed by Larry O'Connor, the editor-in-chief at Breitbart TV, who said, we at Breitbart and other conservative news sites have been tracking this, and we see all these independent organizations like Media Matters for America and Think Progress.
They are coordinating with Obama, getting these talking points out, lying about conservatives, lying about, just literally making stuff up.
They are the meanest, unhappiest people in the world out there.
Now, you really, Governor Romney, you are going to battle with the media as well as the Democrats.
You are going to battle with these nonprofit groups who are all working together.
Are you really ready for this?
This was the question.
Are you really ready for what's coming your way?
Not just from Obama, but from the media and from all of their support groups like ThinkProgress, MoveOn.org, Media Matters for America, and all of that.
There would be an effort by the, quote, vast left-wing conspiracy to work together to put out their message and to attack to me.
They're going to do everything they can to divert from the issue people care most about, which is a growing economy that creates more jobs and rising incomes.
That's what people care about.
The Democrats know that given the president's record over the last three and a half years, they cannot run on that record, and therefore they will try and make this race about anything but the president's record and the economy.
Many in the media are inclined to do the president's bidding, and I know that's a battle.
It's an uphill battle we fight with the media generally.
Now, let me say one thing.
A lot of you might be a little disappointed that he didn't go after the media harder.
There is, I don't know if it's unwritten, but there's a rule.
It is considered beneath a presidential candidate to attack the media.
Whether you like the rule or not, it is considered by many to be a sign of weakness, even though the media is what it is, totally stacked for Obama.
I mean, the media is liberals.
It is a bunch of leftists.
It's not that they're objective people and have chosen sides.
They are Obama.
They are Axelrod.
They're all the same people.
But you know that going in.
So to complain about it is not very manly.
And so Romney's got to be it's good for him to acknowledge this.
We want to hear that he understands it.
But to go after him, it would be, it's the same thing, folks, as a teacher after five years complaining how little they're paid.
Sorry, you knew that going in.
Maybe unfair, but you knew that going in.
It's like there are over, I think, 1,200 former players in the National Football League who are joining up together in a series of class action suits against the NFL because they claim that they suffered physical damage, brain damage while they played the game.
The suit probably doesn't stand a prayer because the league never made anybody play the game.
And everybody, the players today who they're trying to help with rules changes, who are complaining about the rules changes.
Like just the other day, Vince Wilfork, who's a great defensive tackle for the New England Patriots, these quarterbacks are just a bunch of sissies.
They make $30 million, a bunch of sissies.
Hell, we can't hit the quarterback anymore.
This is in the midst of the league trying to protect the quarterback, trying to protect everybody, particularly with focus on concussions.
These players know it going in.
Nobody held anything back.
There wasn't research that the league knew about that didn't give anybody, but the players know it.
So it's the same thing here.
A Republican presidential candidate knows going in that the media is what it is.
So you've got to be very careful.
If you go after him, you cannot do it in such a way that people think you're complaining, which Romney didn't do.
Don't misunderstand.
He didn't do that.
But a lot of supporters want to hear Romney attack the people who are the epitome of unfair, mean-spirited, caustic, and all that.
And it's a very fine line a Republican candidate has to walk.
It's like complaining about high humidity in August.
Well, what did you think it was going to be when you agreed to go out and pick cotton in August?
Well, I don't know if you pick cotton in August or whatever.
You're going to play football in August.
What did you think the weather was going to be?
Got to be very careful about things that you criticize because if it comes off as a complaint when you knew going in that this was going to be the rule, then it doesn't serve you well.
Okay, we'll get two more sound bites in of Romney with his interview with Larry Kudlow, who questioned Romney on his plan to limit tax deductions and not permit them for the rich.
Half my brain tied behind my back, rush limb, meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
That would be yours.
Okay, we'll get to your phone calls here in a Jiffy, but first last night on CNBC, Larry Kudlow show called a Kudlow Report.
Head Mitt Romney said, you told a Florida group about, this was the fundraiser he had here this past Sunday evening.
You told a Florida group of donors about eliminating income tax deductions for upper end earners, eliminating the deductions for upper-end earners to pay for your 20% tax cut.
Now, you said second home mortgages, some state and local taxes.
What can you tell us about that?
Sounds pretty sensible.
Are you staying with it?
Virtually all of the deductions and exemptions, particularly for high-income taxpayers, are going to be on the table because we're going to have to eliminate the, well, limit rather, not eliminate, but limit for high-income individuals some of the deductions and exemptions in order to compensate for the reduction in rates.
Bring the rates down, the tax rates down, the top marginal rates down, so businesses have an incentive to hire again and to grow and to pay for that in part by limiting the deductions and exemptions, particularly in high-income folks, because it is my intent not to reduce the burden paid by the top earners, but instead to maintain it at its current level, but to bring the rates down.
Now, remember, Kudlow has been in, well, I don't want to sound disparaging.
Kudlow's been a supporter of Romney's for a long time.
I was going to say in the tank, but that doesn't convey what I meant.
Kudlow has been really eager.
He'd been really one of Romney's biggest supporters, but he is hoping, in this next bite, he's hoping he didn't hear what he just heard.
But Romney makes it clear again that he's going to accept the liberal premise that there's only a certain amount of tax revenue and that if you reduce rates, you have to make up the revenue someplace.
See, that's the problem with this.
You don't have to pay for tax cuts.
The idea here is to shrink government.
We don't want to run around and say, well, we're going to have to pay for this tax cut, so we'll make sure that the rich don't get their deductions.
What's the point?
They're the ones that hire.
They are the ones who are going to produce these jobs that Romney is talking about.
Not to mention the fact that we're not talking about enough money here to make any difference.
It's no different than the Buffett rule.
$5 billion by making sure every millionaire pays at least 30% or billionaire.
What?
A millionaire?
$5 billion.
By the same token, so you don't let these rich people have their deductions.
A, you're not going to get that activity.
If they can't deduct it, they're not going to do it.
Number one.
Number two, even if you go through with this, you're not raising that much money with this.
And that's what Kudlow is, he understands that.
So he said, so you're going to stick with it.
You're not pulling back from this.
There was a story in the New York Times.
Some of your aides were saying, oh, no, no, no, don't take that seriously.
It sounds like you're staying with it.
Some of these deductions are going to have to go.
We are going to limit deductions and exemptions, particularly for high-income individuals, as to which specifics and how much the limits will be and at what income levels they'll be limited.
That's something which time will tell.
We'll work out that with Congress.
But we're going to have to broaden the tax base and limit some deductions and exemptions if we're going to compensate for the reduction in rates.
I'm not looking to reduce the burden paid by the high-income earners.
I know the Democrats always want to say Republicans are in favor of tax cuts for the rich.
That is simply not true.
I'm in favor of more jobs for everyone, but I want the taxes to be down.
I want the burden to be reduced on middle-income taxpayers.
This, sadly, this is what I meant yesterday when I said that I think Governor Romney has a little embarrassment about his wealth.
And he's also very sensitive to the charge that he's one of these insensitive rich guys.
So in his mind, what better way to compensate for that than to soak the rich?
If not, soak the rich, deny the rich what you're giving everybody else.
That way he thinks they can't say that he is an out-of-touch rich guy.
They're going to say that if he lost everything tomorrow, they're going to say that.
So it's accepting a Democrat premise here.
You can broaden the base, but the problem with these deductions is if you take them away, If you don't give the rates, everybody fears the rates are going to go back up at some point, then the deductions are gone.
And where are we?
We learned that from the 86 code change.
Tim in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Thank you, Rush.
I've been listening to you since 1987 when I visited my parents over in Pismo Beach and I heard you on a Sacramento station.
And all these years, I've been hearing you, you know, in the intro to your program saying I'm a highly trained broadcast special.
Well, my question is: who in the world trained the master?
Where did you get your training, and how come we don't know who that person is?
Because, I mean, who trains the master?
You are very shrewd.
I'm serious.
That's one of those things you're not supposed to ask.
I'm sorry.
That's okay.
Actually, it's a good point.
There was, well, I have to be real careful here.
Do you realize, you know, the old saying, success has many fathers, and failure is an orphan.
Do you know how many people there are, well, you don't know, in the realm of radio consultants who are and have for a long time claimed that they were instrumental in my success?
There was when I had plenty.
No, no, no, no, I don't think the ones that told me I wasn't going to make it are claiming credit for it.
The ones that fired me, I don't know that any of them are taking credit for it.
The reason why it's a good question is that I only became successful at this when I finally got the chance to do it my way.
And it's a performance business.
And a lot of people tried to help me over the years, and a lot of people did in a lot of ways.
I don't, but every expert in the world said you can't do a talk show without guests.
You just can't.
And I said, well, nobody else does.
I want to try it.
Broke the rule.
Most people said you can't do it the way you're going to do it.
They wished me well.
So I basically just followed my instincts, trained myself.
The nuge, Ted Nugent, says that he will meet with the Secret Service and discuss the remarks he made about President Obama.
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