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May 4, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:52
May 4, 2012, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Gonna have a little fun with the NAGs today, folks.
Our friends at the National Association of Gals, popularly known as the National Organization for Women, as you know, they've teamed up with Media Matters to get me off the air.
And they get this big joint push that starts in 14 days, two weeks from today, May 18th.
And in a news story about this, they are advising, suggesting that women who listen to the program take mental health breaks during the program.
Turn it off for a while for mental health.
It's Friday, folks.
Let's hit it.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
So we're going to combine an Elizabeth Warren update today with mental health break for the NAGs.
Here at the Rush Lindbaugh program, Open Line Friday as we wrap up another busy broadcast week from the heavily fortified, secretive, protected, nobody knows where it is, EIB Southern Command.
Open Line Friday is where you get to choose what it is we talk about when we go to the phones.
You don't have to talk about things I care about.
It can be anything.
If I don't care about it, I'll fake it.
In honor of the NAGs.
800-282-2882, if you want to be on the program, and the email address, LRushbo at EIBNet.com.
Well, here we are again, ladies and gentlemen.
The unemployment rate has gone down and I have finally figured it out.
And while you might think I'm saying this to be funny, because I'm a naturally funny person, I know this.
One of the most naturally funny people you've run into.
Not trying to be funny here.
Barack Obama has decided that the only way to lower the unemployment rate is to kill off jobs.
The unemployment rate went down one-tenth of a percent from 8.2 to 8.1%.
But the number of people who left the labor force is at an all-time high.
It's over 88 million Americans not working.
The labor force participation rate, that is the universe of all jobs available, is skyrocketing upward.
And that means fewer people are counted in the whole equation, which means the unemployment rate is plummeting.
And I have to tell you something.
Maybe I'm taking too much credit here, but I've got the Reuters story and they've got it right.
They're not out there highlighting this big jobs increase.
But our poor guys, our poor buddies over at Fox this morning fell for it.
Fell for the unemployment rate going down from 8.2 to 8.1.
Oh, yay!
Hey, we're moving in the right direction.
We're not moving in the right direction.
It is sick, folks.
It's just unacceptable what has happened to this country and what's happening to the jobs and the entire private sector here.
I'll get to the details here in just a second.
It looks like, and I don't want to assume too much here, but it looks like we may have finally shamed some of the drive-by media, like Reuters, into presenting a slightly more accurate report on these jobs numbers.
A few months ago, like the headline here, April hiring slows.
Jobless rate falls to 8.1%.
I maintain to you that a few short months ago, if all the news was that the rate went from 8.2% to 8.1%, the headline would not be April hiring slows.
It would be Obama policies finally taking hold or something like that.
Job creation finally turning around.
Is economy next?
Something like that.
But because of the constant pressure, the constant mockery, the constant humiliation of these people that are drive-by media, I don't think that they can.
Yeah, like I said, I don't want to take too much credit for that.
I'm going to reign this in.
I just know that in recent months past, we would not have had an accurate headline, nor would we have had an accurate story as we mostly do from Reuters today.
Like a couple months ago, this headline would probably have said jobless rate falls to 8.1%, lowest in three years.
Instead, Reuters admits that hiring has decreased for the second straight month.
In fact, only a measly 115,000 jobs were added last month.
Do you realize to begin job creation at a replacement level, we would have to be in the neighborhood of 500,000 jobs a month and getting close to 600,000 to 700,000 a month to gain ground?
This is pathetic.
115,000 jobs.
And when you demographic this, when you get to the younger demographics, it's worse.
It's nowhere near 8.1%.
We're looking 15% to 20% among the young idealists who expected, well, whatever they expected, their utopia back in 2008 when voting for Obama.
Here's the comparison.
In February, 259,000 jobs were added.
In April, 115,000 jobs were added.
154,000 were added in March.
And that number in March was universally hailed as bad news because I think in that month, the unemployment rate didn't move.
But now we're supposed to believe the unemployment rate went down when hiring is slowing down, not speeding up.
And even Reuters is forced to admit, quote, the unemployment rate ticked a tenth of a point lower to a three-year low as people left the workforce.
People are leaving the workforce, and that's why the rate's going down.
Jobs are not being created.
And that's the Obama magic.
All Obama cares about is that 8.1.
He doesn't care about the number of jobs created.
Obama and the Democrats know they can't jumpstart the economy.
Look at what we've tried here.
How many trillions have been spent on stimulus that has not worked?
Even if they still believed in that, they know that there's not enough stimulus.
There's nothing they can do to create private sector job growth.
So all they can do to get that number down, and they're, like AP said yesterday, predicted they're going to have it below 8% by election day.
Only way they can do that is force people out of the job market.
And that is exactly what is happening.
But only in the Orwellian world of government statistics could the fact that more people gave up looking for work make the unemployment rate go down.
That claim would embarrass if an advisor to Lenin or Stalin came in and said, comrade, we want to kick people out of the job market.
No hope of getting a job.
That's how we'll lower the unemployment rate.
That person would have been sent to a gulag somewhere next to Solzhenitsyn.
But instead of 115,000 jobs being added each month, we ought to be seeing job numbers in the 500 to 600,000 level.
If there were a real economic recovery going on, just a little more than two years ago, April 23rd, 2010, the Vice President Joe Biden predicted that the American economy would be adding up to half a million jobs every month.
Now, neither Reuters nor the rest of the media will report that the U6, see this 8.1% is the U3 number.
That does not count the people who've left the job market.
That does not count people who have stopped looking.
The U6 U-6 number from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is not reported, which does count the people who have stopped looking, was unchanged at 14.5%.
The U3, the reported unemployment number, 8.1%, breaks down this way.
Men, 7.5% unemployed.
Women, 7.4% unemployed.
Teenagers, 24.9% unemployed.
Whites, 7.4.
Blacks, 13.0%.
Hispanics, 10.3.
Asians, 5.2.
No category reported for white Hispanics or 132nd Cherokee Indian females.
But the highest rate reported unemployment, 13.0% for African Americans.
Okay, that's the Reuters story.
So I think we can now say, and I, again, this is going to sound to you like I'm trying to be funny and sarcastic.
I'm not.
This is really sad stuff.
I think we can safely say that Obama's election strategy for getting the unemployment rate down is to kill jobs.
As I have said for the longest time now, pushing people out of the workforce drives down the unemployment rate.
When that happens, Obama claims the recovery is slow but steady.
So as you see the unemployment rate fall, what you must understand is do a 180 on your thinking.
You must understand it means the job situation is worsening.
Under Obama, when the unemployment rate falls, the jobs situation is getting worse.
The more people who drop out of the workforce, the more those people rely on government subsidies.
And by the way, there's a relatively new phenomenon going on.
That is people applying for disability under Social Security.
People whose unemployment benefits have expired are now seeking assistance via SSDI, Social Security Disability Insurance.
That number is skyrocketing.
Food stamps are at a record high.
Social Security disability at a record high.
So the transformation from a capitalist market system to authoritarian centralized welfare state continues while Obama claims an improving job market.
But there is no recovery.
And it's clear, again, the election strategy for getting the unemployment rate down is to kill jobs.
Now, normally, when I find useful charts and graphs, I don't use them.
I mean, it's a radio show.
But I have that dittocam there.
And I have a couple of charts here, the labor force participation rate chart, which when you see this, it's a help.
And the persons not in the labor force, which is now over 88 million.
What's the adult population?
311 million total.
The adult population, I don't know what it is, but 88 million people not in the labor force.
That's called the labor force participation rate.
That's another way of describing the overall number of available jobs to be had in the country.
88 million Americans not in the labor force.
They are being subsidized.
They're being paid for.
They're eating.
They're driving their cars.
They are getting around.
They're going to movies.
They're making cell phone calls.
They're watching the e-entertainment network.
Saw a great little poster.
Reaganomics.
Start a business, become a gazillionaire in your garage.
Obamaomics.
Live in your parents' garage.
Okay, some people say the adult population in the country, 190 million.
Let's say it's 200 million, 88, over 88 million of them not working, not in the labor force.
And the reason I can't claim total credit for a shift in the media is AP.
Reuters gets it as close to accurate as they are capable.
But here's AP.
A modest economy seems to be keeping a lid on hiring.
Usually don't keep a lid on good things.
U.S. job growth slumped in April for a second straight month, but a modest economy is to blame.
A modest economy keeping a lid on job hiring.
Some of the other numbers here.
And this is from CNBC.
The headline number indicated job creation, 8.2 to 8.1% to somebody.
And you really can't blame them, folks.
And then people that don't listen to this program or read much outside what they see on television are not going to know any of what you know and what you've just what you were told.
So the headline number, oh, looky, 8.2 to 8.1%.
It's a natural thing to conclude that the job market's improving.
Can't blame anybody for thinking that.
They don't know the truth.
But CNBC reported here that the headline number indicating job creation, but the total employment level for the month actually fell 169,000.
Total employment, meaning more people lost jobs than got them.
And yet the unemployment rate went down.
The only way that can happen is for people to be leaving the job force, the labor force, the job market.
And the CNBC here says the disparity here likely emanates from a drop in the labor force participation rate or the level of Americans actively looking for jobs or otherwise employed.
In the weakest recovery since the Great Depression, more than four-fifths of the reduction in unemployment has been accomplished by a dropping or falling adult labor force participation, said University of Maryland economist Peter Morici.
Now read that to you.
This is profound.
More than four-fifths of the reduction in the unemployment rate has been accomplished by dropping adult labor force participation rate.
Exactly what I said.
Obama is lowering the rate by destroying the job market.
And even this economist, the University of Maryland, has figured it out, essentially persuading adults they don't need a job or the job they could buy is not worth having.
There has been, by the way, a near-viral response to this slideshow I told you about yesterday, Julia, the cradle-to-grave typical Obama voter, a woman from age 3 to age 67.
Everybody has taken their turn at turning that around and making it funny and so forth.
But fact of the matter is, that's the dream citizen as far as the Obama administration is concerned.
Dream citizen, constant care, cradle to grave, taken care of, everything in life provided by the government, everything, except a husband.
This woman had a child, but there was no mention of a man in her life at any point, not even buried in the garden.
There was no mention of a husband, no mention of a boyfriend, no mention of a sperm bank, no mention of a gay fashion designer.
I mean, no mention of a man anywhere in that slideshow.
So this economist has it right, essentially persuading adults they don't need a job.
That is what Obama has done.
Oh, he's out there talking it up real good, and he talks about what theoretically happens in the private sector.
You work, you go to school, you work, and you get paid, you start a business, you take some risks.
He doesn't believe any of that.
What he's actually done is promise to pay the freight for people who don't want to work anymore.
The only way 88 million can be out of the job market is either for there to be a depression or for the government to be somebody to be taking care of them so that they don't have to work.
And that's exactly what is happening.
And I maintain to you, it's by design and on purpose.
It is Open Line Friday, and we try to get the phone calls in the first hour on Open Line Friday, but I do have a little bit more data here on the unemployment information.
And I want to stick with it because it's a passion of mine that you know the truth.
Particularly when everybody's being bombarded with the lies that the administration wants to settle in.
Here is what Obama will not be telling college kids as he runs around and warns them of the pitfalls awaiting them if Mitt Romney is elected.
Unemployment rate among job seekers between the ages of 16 and 19 was 25% in April, up from 23% in February.
Youth unemployment has been above 23% for 34 months.
The Obama administration promised us that with the passage of the stimulus bill in 2009, the unemployment rate would never reach 8%.
It has been above 8% for a period of time that it can accurately and truthfully be said that the unemployment rate has not been this high this long since the Great Depression.
And that's a fact.
Not one promise, not one theory, not one assurance has come close to being true as told us by this administration.
The unemployment rate has not been this high this long since the Great Depression.
This is life in Obama's America.
It's reality.
This is not a cartoon.
This is not a slideshow.
This is not a socialist, utopian slideshow with a woman named Julia.
And they should have named her Ludmilla or Svetlana or Marina.
Julia.
This is why Obama creates fictional stories about fictional people.
Reality is the enemy to the Obama administration.
So Obama's job is to paint a non-existent picture of Neverland in the years ahead.
And that's what that slideshow is.
By now, Obama should be able to proudly report on robust, mind-boggling growth as Reagan did this far into his first term.
But it's going the other way.
The only way Barack Obama can get the unemployment rate down is to kill jobs.
That's the only way, and that's how he's doing it.
There aren't any being created for 113th, 115th.
That's a rounding error.
Well, that's the good question.
I don't know.
You got 88 million Americans not in the job force, but they're eating.
88 million Americans in the job force are using their cell phones.
88 million people not working are driving their cars.
There is no pain to not having a job.
Or let me put it.
Maybe that's not true for every one of them, but it's true for a number of them, and we don't know how many.
There's some people, unemployment, or if you run out of that, turn on your Social Security disability payments, pays more than some of the jobs that are being created in this administration.
Unemployment compensation plus food stamps adds up to more than two-thirds of the jobs and the kind of jobs being created.
See, during the Great Depression, when whatever the numbers were unemployed, they weren't comfortable.
There was a sense of urgency.
They would dig ditches if they had to.
They would pick cotton if they had to.
But now it isn't necessary.
And by the way, we don't have the money to support people not working.
We are $16 trillion in debt.
We don't have the money.
We are borrowing it from the CHICOMs, enabling them to ramp up their military complex.
This is a horrible, horrible situation.
You want some more numbers?
I have numbers.
It was like Bill Burkitt had memos tying George Bush to the National Guard.
I have numbers.
Since President Obama took office, the unemployment rate has increased from 7.8% to 8.1%.
And as we know, it's been in the nines.
There are currently a million unemployed workers that have given up looking for work since the last report.
You realize what that means?
Given up looking for work.
Therefore, they're not in the labor force.
Therefore, they're not counted.
There are currently 7.8 million workers working part-time for economic reasons.
Only 115,000 jobs were added.
Labor force participation rate, 63.6%, a 30-year low.
We are at a 30-year low in the number of Americans working.
With 8.1% unemployment, Obama has extended his record of 8% plus unemployment now to 39 consecutive months.
It has not been this high, this long, since the Great Depression.
If the labor force participation rate had stayed the same as in March, the unemployment rate would have risen to 8.4%.
In other words, if they hadn't just said that a million people left the job market, the unemployment rate would be 8.4.
It would have gone up.
This is precisely why I'm saying to you that to get the rate down, Obama is killing jobs.
Our buddy Jim Pepikukis points out that if the labor force participation rate were today what it was when Obama took office, the unemployment rate would be 11%, not 8.1%.
And if the unemployment rate were 11% today, what do you think the prospects of Obama's re-election would be?
It would be over.
The unemployment rate, I repeat this again, would be 11% today if the labor force was the same size as when Obama took office.
Now you're asking, well, how can they just eliminate the jobs?
Well, for one thing, they have eliminated them.
Have you gone tried to find one lately?
Number two, they run the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Department of Labor.
If they want to say a million people left the job market last month, they can say it.
And they're probably right.
They're probably right.
Because if 88 million people are not working, but they're still eating and driving and using their cell phones and able to watch the e-entertainment network after Entertainment Tonight, then while they're TVOing two and a half men, All to watch Obama later that night slow jam the news with Jimmy Fallon.
What does it matter whether they have a job or not?
The unemployment rate if the U.S. labor force was the same as when Obama took office, 11%, folks, instead of 8.1%.
In April of 1984, coming out of similar Jimmy Carter type economic circumstances, Ronaldos Magnus approaching the end of his first term, April of 1984, the U.S. economy added a population-adjusted 480,000 jobs at the beginning of the Reagan boom.
That was the beginning of the boom.
With Reaganomics, which Obama and the Democrats tell us didn't work, tell us it never worked.
It's as simple as this.
The number of people in the job market is based on something called the Household Survey at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And do you know what they do there?
They call people and ask, have you looked for a job in the last four weeks?
And whatever the answer is, gets tabulated.
That's how scientific it is.
That's where we are.
And finally, U.S. worker productivity fell from January through March by the most in a year.
I thought we had a moderate recovery happening here.
I thought we had turned a corner.
I thought we'd been around to bending back.
I thought we were back from up against the wall.
So not only are fewer people working, their output fell by the most in a year.
While worker output rose, the number of hours worked increased by an even larger amount.
Therefore, the overall output was down.
You see how they're monkeying these numbers?
No offense to monkeys.
I didn't mean any.
Snerdley just asked me an interesting question.
And I want to pose the question to you in my own words.
After 39 weeks of unemployment over 8%, after an unemployment rate that's been higher longer than any since the Great Depression, with only 115,000 jobs added, even if you are Barack Obama, don't you care a little about your legacy?
Don't you want some improvement somewhere in real life?
Not just a rate from 8,200 to 81, but don't you want something that's going to add to your legacy, make you look good to the historians.
Now, what is the flaw in Snerdley's question?
The flaw in Snerdley's question is the premise.
To understand Barack Obama, you have to admit, and it's a very difficult thing to do, not for me, because I know, but it's a very difficult thing for most people to admit that we've elected a president who believes, even though he said so in his own words, almost exactly the words I want to use to you, he doesn't believe his country has ever worked.
It's been a fraud.
All these great presidential legacies from the founding up until him are based on fluff and fraud and unjust foundings, immorality, plundering of the world for our own benefit.
doesn't believe this country's been legitimately great.
It's been illegitimately great.
And he is out to transform it.
Watch the Julia slideshow.
You'll see what the average ideal citizen is to Barack Obama.
It's a citizen dependent, totally ungovernable, who has no independent thought, no independent life.
Whatever is needed, there's something in Washington where you can go to get it.
You don't have to do it yourself.
You don't have to do anything yourself.
The flaw in the question is that Barack Obama is cut from the same mold as previous presidents.
He isn't.
His job is to transform this nation into what it should have always been if it were a just, equitable, fair nation with a focus on human rights and social justice, which this nation has never cared about.
It's never been focused on in his mind and in the mind of everybody in his administration and probably eight out of 10 college professors.
So, well, publicly, he'll go through the most.
He knows he can't come to a microphone and camera and say, enjoy it while it lasts, because if I get reelected, this day is the closest it's ever going to be to the way you remember this country being.
If he said that, he's toast.
He's got to make you think he cares about his legacy.
He's got to, in traditional terms, he's got to make you think he cares about legitimate job creation.
But what's happening is on schedule and according to plan.
This guy, Al Ermandiaz from the EPA who wanted to crucify big oil and gas companies, a lot of people said, how to kook wacko like that get the industry?
He's not.
He's mainstream.
May as well have been handpicked by Obama.
They're all through the EPA, just like that guy, and all through the administration.
I know it's tough to get your arms around.
But 88 million people out of work, still eating, still driving, still using their cell phones.
That's ideal.
Who's taking care of them?
Who are they going to vote for?
To the phone.
Since it's Open Line Friday, we'll start in Kansas City.
Brad, great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello, sir.
Megaditto's Rush.
It tells you how far back I go.
Back in the late 80s, I was working at a liberal bookstore as a receiving clerk because that's where I got my start in the book industry.
And that's basically what I'm calling about.
I'm one of that 11% of unemployed that, frankly, I'm unemployable because I went out and created my own job after deciding that this whole unemployment thing just doesn't work.
Right?
Been in the book industry my entire adult life and know some ins and outs and where things can be bought and then sold for a profit and decided that, you know what, I'm going to take together the thousand bucks that I've got sitting in an envelope.
Okay, here again, you, you are coming at me today from the same place in history that Snirdley is.
And I admire you for it, by the way.
I just don't know how many of you there are out there.
You're sitting there and saying, hey, wait a minute, got a bad economy?
Look, I've always had a theory.
I've espoused this program.
Oh, they're going to have a recession.
Fine.
I'm not participating.
And I don't participate in recessions.
What this guy, what Brad's saying, well, if it's so bad, stop complaining and start your own business, get your own job.
Amen.
And that's what used to happen and still is, but I don't know how often.
Like, Brad, I don't know how many of the 88 million unemployed are even complaining anymore.
Certainly, some of them are.
Not all 88 million want to be in the welfare hammock.
But some of them are happy to be taken care of without work, government taken care of as much as possible, and they'll fend for themselves on the margins.
It's a different country, but that's what this show is all about today and every day.
It's trying to change that, light fires under people, particularly on Election Day.
Get this country back, save the country, or what have you.
End up more people looking at it like you than are right now.
That's what this is about.
Openline Friday, first hour in the can, soon to be on its way over to Limbaugh Broadcast Museum, soon to be reflected by the way at rushlimbaugh.com, one of the greatest media websites out there.
If you haven't been in a while, and we'll be back.
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