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May 11, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:12
May 11, 2012, Friday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Yeah, just looking at the audio soundbar.
I guess 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.
Yeah, yeah, it's by the way, it's Friday.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open live Friday.
It's been a busy broadcast day, folks.
I don't know what a time is.
I mean, zipping, but here we are already at the third hour.
Just another sterling program.
I impress even me with our ability to get the guy calls him Illinois about his unemployment benefits ending.
And inside of 30 minutes, we got the whole story for everybody.
There is no other show on which this would happen.
Plus, you're told the right thing to think about it, too, as a bonus.
Happy to have you with us.
800-282-2882, the email address.
Elrushbaugh at EIBNet.com.
I guess you have audio soundbite number 23 standing by too.
That's Jamie Grumette.
She's the mother on the Time magazine cover.
Folks, if you haven't seen our take on the time cover, you got to make a B line to RushLimbaugh.com.
We had that time cover.
I got it yesterday afternoon.
I showed it to you here on the DittoCam.
We were first with it.
And then on the air, in a spurt of literal creative brilliance, I ordered, asked the art director at rushlimbaugh.com to redo the time cover with the kid sucking the breast of the Statue of Liberty and re-headline it as Obama's Education Program for America were written by me.
And so we did.
And if you haven't seen it, you need to go to rushlimbaugh.com.
We've got them side by side, the time cover and our version of it.
Well, certainly saying I didn't know that the Statue of Liberty had those kind of breasts.
Neither did we until our art director found it underneath the robes.
It's all handled.
You can see it.
It's all there.
So Open Mind Friday, whatever you want to talk about is fine.
800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program.
The email address, lrushbo at eibnet.com.
I got some questions during the top of the hour.
How in the world these illegals get all this tax refund money?
Here's what basically they did.
The scheme, it's not the earned income tax credit.
The scheme involves illegal immigrants filing tax returns, which is okay.
You file a tax return.
What they do is claim credits for multiple dependents under their support in their quote-unquote their U.S. household.
And they get enormous cash refunds because not enough has been withheld from their paychecks.
They've got all these dependents.
But on their W-4, they didn't put enough dependents down.
So, for example, One illegal immigrant's tax return showed income of over $14,000 and the refund was over $10,300 because of all the dependents that were not accounted for in the withholding table during each pay period.
This actually was uncovered by a TV reporter in Indianapolis, the NBC affiliate Bob Seagall.
And it's S-E-G-A-L-L.
I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name right.
But his investigation revealed that claims for additional child tax credits by ITIN filers, the illegal immigrant filers, have skyrocketed during the last 10 years from $161 million in 2001 to a total amount refunded in the form of credits, cash refunds,
that totaled $4.2 billion in tax year 2010.
So the imaginary children of illegal immigrants, because they're claiming dependents that may or may not live, may or may not be in the House, and it totaled $4.2 billion.
The same investigative reporter found that illegal immigrants filed 3 million tax returns in 2010, 72% of those returns claiming the additional child tax credit.
And furthermore, according to the report from the TV reporter, says the IRS cannot change the system unless it gets permission from Congress.
It's a loophole, and closing it requires lawmakers to pass a new law specifically excluding illegal immigrants from claiming additional child tax credits.
Well, I don't think that's going to happen.
Do you?
Particularly this year, do you see anybody in an election year passing a new law excluding illegal immigrants from claiming additional child tax credits?
It'd be un-American to do that.
Why, next thing you know, the Republicans will want to take away their health care.
The next thing you know, the Republicans will want them fired and deported.
Why, the next thing you know, so we just have to live with it out there, folks.
$4.2 billion for tax year 2010 in cash payments to illegals for their child, quote unquote, dependents.
Edward Klein has a book called What's the name of the book?
I've got maybe it's called The Amateur.
Yeah, I think it's called The Amateur.
Here's some quotes from the book by Edward Klein, Bill Clinton.
Obama doesn't know how to be president.
I mean, he doesn't even know how the world works.
He's incompetent.
Page 11.
Caroline Kennedy, who supported Obama over Hillary Clinton, on page 153.
I can't stand to hear his voice anymore.
He's a liar and worse.
Caroline Kennedy talking about Obama.
David Schein, S-C-H-E-I-N-M-D, Barack Obama's former doctor.
By which I mean he's academic, lacks passion and feeling, doesn't have the sense of humanity that I expected.
In fact, I've got that story right here, folks.
Here it is.
President Obama's former doctor claims the president lacks passion, feeling, and humanity.
Quote from the story.
It's in human events.
Obama's not the political machine that people fear.
He's an amateur with a messianic complex who's completely out of his depth.
In an exclusive preview of The Amateur by Human Events, that's the name of the book.
Obama's longtime physician reveals the lack of humanity in Obama's character and carelessness with which he enacted the entirely politicized health insurance reform, often called Obamacare.
The doctor fears that if the healthcare plan is the failure he believes it will be because of runaway costs and other problems, that any health reform will be set back years to come.
This Dr. David Scheiner, MD, blasts Obama's healthcare plan, says that Obama has an academic detachment.
This is exactly the way I've thought of it.
It's exactly what I've said.
He's a theoretician.
He's one of these faculty lounge guys, sits around talking with other theoreticians, happen to be smart in their own mind, socialist utopian kind of guys who think they've got all the answers.
His country is unjust and immoral, unfair from the days of its founding.
In an exclusive preview of The Amateur by Human Events, Obama's longtime doctor reveals the lack of humanity in Obama's character and carelessness with which he enacted the health care plan.
Lack of humanity.
What would that be?
Sometimes even I forget the depth of the recession, said Obama in Seattle.
Here's some other quotes from the book, businessman and early financial supporter Stephen Rogers.
What you have with Barack Obama is a lack of character.
There's a much, much more colorful quote from Rogers that precedes this one.
But that was on page 33.
A famous historian who'd rather not be named after an off-the-record meeting with Obama at the White House, he hasn't been able to bring together the best and brightest talents, not to put a too fine point on it, but he's in over his head.
Oprah Winfrey in this book is quoted as saying, Michelle hates fat people, doesn't want me waddling around the White House.
Page 143.
That's Oprah Winfrey quoted in Ed Klein's new book, The Amateur.
Michelle hates fat people and doesn't want me waddling around the White House.
A major Obama donor speaking about Valerie Jarrett on page 92, I expected her to be smarter.
She ain't no Karl Rove.
Karl Rove would eat her for breakfast.
Here's a, here's a Bill urged Hillary to quit the cabinet and run into primaries this year.
Bill Clinton, because Obama's an amateur, wanted her.
He's a country's going, the economy's, the economy stinks.
I mean, Clinton in this book rips Obama to shreds.
Barack Obama, Bill Clinton said, is an amateur.
According to the book, Bill Clinton unloaded on Obama and pressed Hillary to run against him during a gathering in the ex-president's home office in Chappaqua last August that included longtime friends.
Clinton said Obama's incompetent, but Hillary resisted, according to two of the guests interviewed for the book.
She said to Bill, why risk everything now?
Emphasizing she wanted to leave a legacy as Secretary of State.
But Bill Clinton said to Hillary, because a country needs you, a country needs us.
It's a quote.
Clinton later even joked about the prospect of having two Clinton presidential libraries.
Now, he said here that the Clintons are denying this, the White House is denying all these quotes.
But I mean, this is a lot of people.
It's not just Bill Clinton being quoted as calling Obama an amateur and incompetent and ruining the economy.
He wanted Hillary to run because he thinks it'd be easy to save the economy.
Clinton thinks it'd be easy to revive this economy and get all the credit in the world for it to be one of the greatest presidents ever.
And he's got a point.
There's a way out of this.
It does involve getting rid of everything Obama's done and reinstituting capitalism, getting rid of every reform, every disc, philosophically, practically, reality, get rid of everything Obama's done and simply go back to America the way it was.
Clinton says this is a sitting duck.
This economy is a anybody could revive it, just stop everything Obama's doing, and then you get credit for being one of the greatest presidents ever.
And that's why he wanted Hillary to do it.
And he also wanted to be involved, according to Ed Klein in the book entitled The Amateur.
But I have to tell you, if the quotes are accurate, it's just possible that old Bill doesn't quite understand Obama.
Because if Clinton doesn't believe that this is the way Obama wants it to be, economically, I mean, if Clinton, when you say Obama's an amateur, you're basically saying in over his head doesn't know what he's doing.
My contention is just the opposite.
He knows exactly what he's doing.
He's got a chip on his shoulder about this country.
He's doing exactly what he wants to this country.
He is causing the economic decline that he wants.
And if Clinton's out there thinking that all this is happening because Obama's really trying, really trying to get the economy going, but just an amateur doesn't know what he's doing is incompetent over his head.
I don't think Clinton understands who Obama is.
I don't think Clinton, if, again, this is all based on whether the quotes in the book are accurate, but I'll just proceed on the basis that they are.
In that case, Clinton can't get his arms around the fact how opposed to this country, as it's always been, Obama is.
And I must tell you, folks, as you and I watch these events and this economic destruction happen each and every day, I do ask, is there not one Democrat out there who doesn't like what's going on just for the sake of his party?
Is this really what they want this country to be?
I know that a lot of Democrats do.
Is there just one, I'm asking?
I know that the Democrat Party's totally gone now, the radical, radical statists, Marxists.
But isn't there one somewhere, I mean, in a position of power and authority within the party structure who has an understanding here of what's being done and that there's not going to be much left for anybody, including them.
And if the quotes are true, why is Clinton not campaigning for Obama now, which he is?
Clinton is out campaigning for Obama.
But if these quotes are true, then why do that?
Party loyalty, of course, yes.
But that's not putting the country first.
If you're running around actively advocating the re-election of somebody you think is an amateur and an incompetent, then why?
It's Open Line Friday and back to the phones.
Livington, New Jersey.
Hi, Lucy.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi, Raj.
Thank you for accepting my call.
You are welcome.
It's a great honor to speak with you.
Thank you very much.
You know, I came to United States in the August of last year.
I got married and now I live in New Jersey.
Where did you come from?
I came from Armenia, Yerevan.
Yes.
Yes.
You know what?
I love the United States.
I love a lot of things about United States.
But what I'm impressed and amazed very much, it's like freedom of speech.
You know, it's before when I was living in Yerevan, you know, I have heard about the freedom of speech, about how USA is great.
But right now, I'm starting to understand it more and more.
And, you know, it's really Americans are very lucky just because they have freedom of speech.
Second, because they have Raj Limbo who provide them the truth all about politics and economic situation here.
I think many people take that for granted.
You are wise to understand that.
You know, I understand because I have things to compare with.
Because in country from where I am, the freedom of speech is like some, it's a very dangerous thing.
You're going to pay a high price for that.
I have to tell you, Lucy, there are many people in this country who think, they have a great fear that we are headed in that direction.
By no means there.
But there are people in this country who are afraid right now to be overheard saying certain things, afraid it will be reported to somebody, or afraid that they'll be condemned.
And there are attacks.
I mean, I'm attacked for what I say.
A lot of people are.
And when other people are not.
But that's part of the political process in my case.
But freedom of speech is still alive and well in this country, but censorship is all over the place.
It's called political correctness or in some cases, flat-out censorship.
Their intimidation is constant to try to get people shut up.
You know, but in Armenia, it's just dangerous.
People and journalists can be killed there just because they are speaking true as you do now.
Well, we don't know of any instances of that.
Journalists being killed.
You know what?
I want to say that as long as United States has freedom of speech and as long as here nobody is above the law, even the president, as long as the elections here are free and fair, the future, I can see the future of United States very bright.
You know what I mean?
I'm very sad.
No, I understand totally.
What I find fascinating about this is that you are a recent arrival from a very oppressive place.
So your point of reference, we look the freest anyone can imagine.
And we are.
There's no question we are.
But people in this country have a different frame of reference or point of reference.
And they see the erosion of freedom of speech that you see as something wide open.
Is there a national organization for women chapter in your country?
No.
No, it didn't.
Sadly, that's afraid of that.
Back to the phones.
And it is Canon Kingsport, Tennessee.
Welcome to Open Line Friday.
Hello.
Rush Megadittos from Kingsport, Tennessee.
How are you, sir?
Very well, sir.
Thanks very much for the call.
Thank you very much.
I've called to discuss the tea rush.
I want to know something about the tea.
All right.
I have not tried the tea yet, and I have gone to the 2F5T website, and I cannot make up my mind as to which flavor I want.
So what I want to discuss with you is I want to make a request, a request for you to produce a variety pack where I can sample all the wonderful tea flavors in one case.
We have that.
We have a variety of.
You buy a case of blueberry, you buy a case of raspberry, you buy a case of peach, and you buy a case of regular and a case of unsweetened.
Rush, one man can only hold so much tea.
Yeah, we get this request somewhat frequently.
It's a perfectly reasonable request, except it isn't bottled that way.
And it's packaged right as it comes off the bottling line, the assembly line.
It's shrink-wrapped, and it's all part of the automation process.
So this would require a whole ramping up of assembly and packaging that would not be automated since it's not bottled that way.
And that would elevate the cost.
But we're looking at it.
We always do.
It's like we came out with the plain old tea unsweetened because we're deluded.
Deluged.
Deluded.
I might be there too.
It's been a long week.
I only had an hour of show prep this morning and I feel so inadequate here.
I really feel like I've let everybody down and I feel like I've, because a bunch of stuff this morning took longer than I thought it would take.
Anyway, we are deluged with requests here for the plain old tea.
We're coming up on a year now.
And so we finally did it.
And the same rigorous testing process, taste testing, the same great care and concern went into the label design and it's clever.
So nothing is ever off the table of possibility.
And I appreciate your concern.
The thing I would suggest to you, since you don't know which to buy, you've got to dip your toe in the water somewhere.
And until, of course, now this, you're going to laugh at this.
Until we came out with the peach and blueberry, the raspberry was my favorite.
And I really don't think you could go wrong.
The raspberry, either regular or diet, will knock your socks off, but so will the peach and blueberry.
The blueberry is incomparable, and you won't find that anywhere else.
And blueberry is truly, the blueberry-flavored tea is truly something you can't do yourself.
You could theoretically brew some tea and squeeze a peach in there.
And we don't do lemon, because anybody can add lemon to their tea.
Uh, raspberry and blueberry, that's uh, that requires trained professionals um, and and we have.
We have food scientists that concoct these recipes, that we taste rigorously and then make our decision.
Catherine and I do this and we uh, we've hit gold with with each one.
I would suggest you try the raspberry first, But see, now people like Blueberry are shouting and absurdly shouting, blueberry and so forth.
There's another alternative you could do, using my creative marketing juice here.
Assemble a group of friends, and each one of you buy one case and then swap and have your own tea party.
You kill two or three birds with one stone there.
You get five people, each buying one case of each flavor, sugared or well, regular diet, and then you swap them out.
Our tea.
Here's the thing.
Two if by tea is a science.
And as such, there is no consensus as to which one's the best.
It's totally, totally up to you.
That would be my suggestion until we get around to finding the variety pack or the sample pack.
Pico in Iammy.
Pico, thank you for waiting.
You're next on the EIB network.
Hello.
Okay.
God bless you, Mr. Limbaugh, and thank you for taking my call.
Thank you, sir.
Your call screener, I thought I was kidding, but I promise you I'm not joking at all.
For the last couple of years, I've been giving careful consideration, asking myself why I'm working.
I have five children between my wife and I, and between all the taxes that I pay, whether, you know, FICA and federal and whatnot, and after everything, we've never gotten money from the government in any way, shape, or form, by the way.
I hear you.
No unemployment insurance ever.
Nothing, nothing.
I've never wanted it.
I've never, and God needed it.
I understand.
I totally, I'm with you.
Well, aside from the moral component, my question to you, sir, with your wisdom, and you are most certainly very wise, sir, why should I live a very modest life?
We live in a three-bedroom, two-bath house.
I personally know many, many people down here in South Florida.
I know fraud runs rampant and everything else, but I know people who legitimately make more money than I do, and they don't work.
They collect WIC.
They collect unemployment.
They've got all sorts of things that it just blows your mind.
These people know the system inside and out.
They know how it works.
And I personally know people making more money than I do.
And I'm just sitting here wondering, aside from the moral component, why should I keep working?
Well, I'll tell you.
I'll tell you.
And it has nothing to do with money.
That's a decision you've got to make.
If, because everybody needs money, there's no, it's always the money.
And I know it's top of your list.
It's the basis on which you're making comparisons here.
People gaming the system have more than you do.
Working.
You're talking about the moral component.
Let's talk about something else, though.
Self-respect.
And I don't mean the self-respect or the lack of it from being on the receiving end of government programs, but I've always believed that work is particularly for a man, but it's even becoming this way for a lot of women, too.
It's who you are.
It is where your sense of self-worth resides.
It is how you define yourself.
You sound like the kind of guy to me that even if you joined the people who are not working and somehow getting a hold of more money than you, I don't think that would make you happy.
I think you'd have a residue of, if not guilt, you wouldn't like yourself because you're not accomplishing anything.
You're not achieving anything.
Absolutely.
I agree with you 100%.
And that's why this idea just keeps bouncing around in my mind for so long already because I just can't bring myself to do it.
Now, on a side note, my wife and I did go to the WIC program the other day just out of curiosity because I said, I've got to see how this stuff works.
And it was amazing.
We walked out of there with literally hundreds of dollars.
They didn't even tell us.
They told us we need to find out if you qualify.
But we left with hundreds of dollars of checks to buy formula for the babies and everything.
We haven't used them.
And I thought, you know, this is absolutely astonishing to me.
It just.
Wait a second.
You mean you were able to walk in and walk out in the same visit with benefits?
Yes, sir.
We were there two and a half hours, I believe, with benefits, and they told us, we'll let you know later if you qualify.
But until you qualify, they gave you some money anyway.
Yes, exactly.
All right.
Well.
But I agree with you 100%.
It doesn't sit well with me, Rush.
And that's why, but I still look at that as a moral component.
But I'm looking at it more like a financial thing.
I'm thinking, here I am.
I'm killing myself.
I'm sitting in front of this computer, you know, 12, 14 hours a day to feed my family.
And I know these people that, hey, do they just spend time with their kids?
They do whatever they feel like doing all day long.
Would you advise your children to do this?
No, absolutely not.
My son has called here for the show before.
And just to tell you, I am an official member of the vast right-wing conspiracy.
And proudly so.
My son almost shot me for telling him I was going to go to that WIC program thing.
Well, the thing that we're talking, you're talking about this as a moral component.
I understand what you mean.
But the word I think you're looking for here is dignity.
And you know, because you know you're capable, you have, I'm sure you have confidence in your ability.
You're just in a tight economy like everybody is.
If you went and did this and it became your sole source of support, you would lose all sense of self-dignity.
And you know it, and that's why you're calling and asking me about it.
Oh, absolutely.
I agree with you.
But again, like I told you, to me, what you're saying still has a lot to do with my morality as a man, as an individual.
And I agree with you.
I don't think I could sleep at night.
You're not alone.
Let me tell you that more and more people are asking this question because they see what you see.
There are stories that I've seen in the last couple of weeks.
People whose unemployment benefits run out, they head over to the Social Security Office and end up on Social Security Disability, SSI, when they don't even qualify for it, but they're put on the rolls because it's in the interests of government to have dependence.
It's in the interest of bureaucracies to have dependents.
I think if you did this even for the money, the longer you're out of work, the harder it is to go back to work.
The longer you're out of work and the longer you're not trying to find work, the harder it's going to be to get a good job when you find the economy improving where you live and job opportunity improving as well.
It's a tough thing.
I sympathize with you because the reality of the dollars on the one hand is obvious, but then on the other side is your moral component, which I don't think you can ignore.
The future of the country is not on the benefits side.
And when you do that, there's an immediate sense of relief financially, but you've lost total control over your life at that point.
You are total dependent on people you don't know, people who don't care about you, coming through for you every week or month or however often the benefits are to provide it.
It's a risky place to be when you totally abandon all sense of self-reliance.
I don't think you could do it.
Just talking to you, I don't think you could psychologically do it for very long.
Otherwise, you'd have been doing it already.
You wouldn't have called me.
That's tough.
I know.
My advice is to continue to hang in because it will get better at some point.
We are still talking about the United States of America, and there are enough people like you that are going to cause a turnaround here.
But you have to be involved in that effort if it's going to happen.
It's going to take people like you actively trying to better your life within the system for it to improve.
Beyond that, that's all I can say.
The decision is always going to end up being yours.
I appreciate the call.
I really do a little long here.
I've got to take a brief time out, folks, but we will be back.
National Journal story earlier this week: ebbing enthusiasm among the president's base points to the possibility of a decisive defeat.
More details on this next week when we get back.
The latest Rasmussen, it's Romney 50 Obama 43, my friends.
Have a wonderful weekend.
And as I say, see you next week.
Can't wait.
Adiosa.
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