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July 17, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:28
July 17, 2012, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Hi folks, how are you?
Great to have you back.
Rush Limbaugh.
Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, serving humanity.
That's right, my friends, in service to all who live each and every day simply by showing up.
Here at the distinguished and prestigious Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Here's the phone number if you want to be on the program 800 282-2882 and the email address L Rushbo at EIBNet.com.
Brian, we're about to get creamed out there with a major thunder boomer.
I just went outside and looked.
We're starting to lose satellite signals, so we may be on generator power here in mere moments.
And I'm just advised because that we've we've been all over the place with uh audio broadcast levels, and the slightest confluence of irregularities sometimes causes a bastardization of the norm.
So I just wanted to have them in there prepared for anything that might happen here.
Now I got a note, uh, ladies and gentlemen from uh well a friend after the phone call we had from Patty, and he was very frustrated after the phone call we had from Patty.
He says, I hate the term trickle down.
I despise the term trickle down as she used it twice.
And here's why my friend is upset with the term trickle down in terms of trickle down economics, trickle down economy.
He says trickle implies that most of the wealth stays with the wealthy, and it doesn't.
Now I know this is going to be radical.
This is a radical point to make, but he's exactly right.
And the simple proof of the statement is you could confiscate all of the wealth, confiscate all of it, not tax it, but just take it all of the top one percent that Obama has pointed out as the great enemy of the people.
You could confiscate all they've got, you could run the United States government at current budget levels for less than a month.
I mean, you might even you not even might not even get two weeks out of it.
It is a myth that the top one percent have all of the wealth in this country.
It's exact opposite.
Most of the wealth, now the wealth is defined as the GDP.
Most of the wealth is held by society.
It derives from the income you earn at work and the affordable goods and services which result from mass production and efficiency.
The idea that the top one percent have all the wealth is another lie, and it derives from this ongoing argument about the gap between the rich and the poor, and how much of the newly created wealth ends up with the one percent versus the rest.
But the idea that that wealth trickles down, and also trickle is very slow, almost imperceptible, and that's not at all how the U.S. economy happens.
Then the second part of trickle down, down implies that business owners get their money first.
This I think is an excellent point.
When Obama's out there saying, You got a business, you didn't build it.
Somebody else made that happen.
You know, it still frosts me when I see that when I when I read it when I when I hear him say it, it just I can't tell you how angry it makes me.
That the president of the United States is out getting standing ovations, attacking hard work, success, and achievement.
But it's happening.
Look, I can understand if Barney Frank was doing it.
Some senator or congressman, the president of the United States running for re-election, getting standing ovations, criticizing success with contempt.
Whoever called here and said that he sounds snarky and contemptuous when he says it is exactly right.
Down, Trickle down implies that business owners get their money first.
You know, a business owners get their money last.
Everybody else gets paid first.
The employees get paid, then the bills that keep the business up and running, and then the materials necessary to build the product or to sell the product or the service or what have you.
The business owner gets paid last if the business is successful.
If you haven't owned a business, you don't know this.
Well, maybe you might.
In this audience, this is what frustrates.
In this audience, I think everybody knows exactly what I'm talking about all the time.
I often say, man, I'd love just a week.
Just a week with some of these people giving money, for example, to Elizabeth Warren.
Some of these Hollywood people giving money.
I would love just a if they were forced to listen to the show for a week.
Business owners get so the wealth in this country is not concentrated among the 1%.
Now the 1% may be expert at building on their wealth, but the vast majority of the wealth in this country is spread around over 230 million people.
Gosh, you know, it's amazing.
The common sense economics that is not understood, not taught.
And how easy it is to democratic.
It's always been that way.
There's nothing new about that.
It's just at the same time is a little frustrated.
You remember Obama's bridal registry?
This is another thing.
How in the world does this not get derided and mocked and made fun of the president of the United States actually put up a website called the Obama event registry and asked people getting married to instead of accepting gifts from their guests to have their guests donate in kind to Obama's re-election effort.
And they did this with a straight face and with total seriousness and sincerity.
Well, the New York Post reported yesterday that it's not working.
President Obama's bizarre marriage theme fundraising scheme has been a total flop instead, it says the desperate initiative dubbed the event registry, being made fun of by event planners and couples, and shows how desperate the Obama regime is to keep up with Mitt Romney's fundraising.
Campaign officials launched the initiative in late June, the same month that Obama raised just 71 million dollars compared to uh Romney's 100 million.
So far, the event registry has been all but ignored.
Even though Facebook, Twitter, and other networks have been a strong suit for the campaign, they've done their best.
Twitter, Facebook, they've done their best out there.
But it just hasn't worked.
Oh, speaking of Twitter and Facebook, let me find this.
Where does I've I've got I've got uh I've got to find Zuckerberg, I gotta find this story.
Where did I put this story?
Did I put it near the end?
The uh the Facebook billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg, number 40 on the on the Forbes list.
Zuckerberg refinanced the mortgage on his house.
And he's got a house in California, $5.9 million house, and he's got an adjustable rate mortgage.
He refinanced it.
It's a 30-year adjustable rate, so he's taking a little risk, but since he's willing to do it, he got an interest rate of just over 1%.
And he has reduced his payment over the course of the 30 years of nothing changes to he's reduced his payments by 750,000.
Now, I want to find the story because it's there's uh I actually have two of them.
One of the stories kind of mocks him.
Why in the world is Zuckerberg have a mortgage and why is Zuckerberg out hunting for a deal?
Well, darn it.
I just now remembered that I've got it, but I don't remember where I put it, which is the problem, folks, when the show takes place with literally 300 pieces of paper every day.
And it's not possible to do it on a computer.
Anyway, the story is complaining about how a rich guy can get this kind of interest rate when you, an average American, can't.
You don't have the collateral necessary to get a 30-year adjustable rate mortgage.
His interest rate is basically the way it's termed in the story, free money.
They are lending Zuckerberg money for less than it costs them to get the money.
It's free money.
The interest rate they're charging him is less than what the bank is charged to get the money from the Fed.
Hmm.
Well, it's it's it that's why I wish I could find the story.
It's a it's a function of him willing to do a 30-year adjustable rate.
Who knows in 10 years the rate could go to 10%?
You never know.
And it's also because he's got all kinds of assets as collateral to be able to withstand a huge uptick in the ARM.
Now the real question, the real question, is here's a guy, I know a lot of its paper, but still it's he's he's uh number 40 on the Forbes list.
What 12 or 14 billion dollars?
Yeah, why not just buy it outright?
Why mortgage the thing?
Well, the answer is, well, no, because for him, the tax counts when you're it at his level, you only get to deduct.
In fact, you may not get to deduct anything anymore on a mortgage.
It used to be the most recent rule, unless it's been wiped out, was that somebody in Zuckerberg's income level could only take the mortgage interest deduction on the first million of the mortgage.
And that may have been totally wiped out.
If it hasn't been, it will be at some point.
So he's either one of two things, establishing a credit rating, making a payment every month just to establish the credit rating.
Everybody wants and needs a credit rating, and then he's got credit cards.
Uh trust me on this.
The second thing, and probably as likely, if not more.
Why use your own when you can use somebody else's, particularly when they're going to give it to you?
The bank is essentially giving him the money.
Why use your own money when somebody else will give it to you?
So he's basically having a six million dollar house bought for him by the bank.
And that's well, look, I don't, I can't explain Snerdley's asking me, you mean you tell me this guy with 14 billion dollars cares about the expense of a five million dollar house.
I don't, he might.
He's not that far removed from being a penniless college student.
He's still in the formative years.
You know, you go from having nothing to having all kinds of money.
It takes a while to accept that you've got it and that they're not going to take it away from you.
Now, what if Facebook goes belly up next year?
Uh it could be hit.
Look at how fast it came out of nowhere, and then look how fast Yahoo took the plunge.
Uh these things can come and go.
Uh so he might value base might be somewhat decent.
I don't know.
But the the real thing here is the interest rate is so low, it's 1.05%, that he's basically got a house that somebody else is buying.
Now he's paying it back.
I think his monthly payments like $21,000.
Something uh something like that.
And here's the headline business insider.
That's not the story I had, but here's Mark Zuckerberg is so rich he lives in his six million dollar house for free.
Zuckerberg taking the mortgage because the interest rate's so low that he can invest the cash that he would have spent on the house risk-free and get a higher rate of return than the rate at which he's borrowing.
So he buys a house for six million, and rather than take his six million and sink into it, he's going to take the six million, this is theoretical, that he would have sunk into the house and put it in some other investment that's going to have a growth rate far greater than what if he if he'd bought the house.
Meanwhile, it's not his money he's buying the house with.
He just refinanced with a 30-year adjustable rate loan starting at 1.05% because 1.05% is below the current rate of inflation, which is somewhere between uh two and three percent.
Zuckerberg essentially is borrowing for free, according to Greg McBride, who is a financial analyst with bank rate, inc.
Bank rate better up in North Palm Beach.
One of my close friends, one of my golfing buddies owns bank rate.
It doesn't stop bank rate from ripping me in their editorials, but still they do.
And still he's a good friend of mine.
They monitor, among other things, bank rate monitors uh interest rates to the nth degree and offers advice to clients that pay for it.
So Zuckerberg is still paying the bank something every month, the principal on his loan, but that's not really a cost because he's getting equity in his house.
He's putting money into a piggy bank.
If he ever sold the house, he'd get all that money back, and the amount of money he spent on living in the house would be close to zero.
So he'd probably if any, he would turn a profit.
But this deal, that 1.07 interest rate's not available to you.
It's a 30-year ARM, and he's only able to get it because he's got all those assets out there that will handle if that ARM, if that interest rate skyrockets to five or 10% down the road.
You know, as as happened to many people in the subprime mortgage area.
They had ARMs, they invested them, and all of a sudden the rate went up, and they couldn't pay the monthly payment.
And they got foreclosed on, and they came in.
That's not fair, it's not fair.
Wait a minute, you signed the ARM deal.
You had to know it's adjustable rate.
You had to know that interest rate may not stay there for the whole 30 years you own.
Well, it's not fair.
Not fair.
I didn't know the interest rate would jump up that.
Remember all those stories?
That's why you don't get 30-year adjustable rate loans, because unless you have the assets to back up the wild fluctuations that uh that takes place.
Okay, I gotta take a brief time out here, my friend sit tight, back with much more on the EIB network.
Don't go away.
And we're back here on the cutting edge of societal evolution.
Snerdley just asked me in the break, do you you uh you have deals like this?
I do not.
Um I probably shouldn't get this personal, but I'll just tell you, folks, how do I do this?
Um experience has been just the opposite of what we have seen in this Zuckerberg story.
I have never.
Well, no, that's not, I can't say never, but mostly when people see me, they see a chance to charge even more.
I don't see these deals.
I I don't I don't see all of this uh funny manipulation, great opportunities.
That's I I hear about it, I hear about all this stuff, but with my my experience is I've I'm overcharged everything.
I'm I'm um nobody is ever offering me opportunities to save money.
Everybody's always trying to find a way to get into my back pocket.
Let's just put it that way.
So all this, all this um uh all this talk about how well that's it that's just I'm all I'm telling you is is that uh many things that you think that you know about it isn't the way you think.
And there's so many myths out there about wealthy people and for for every Zuckerberg out there, I guarantee you there's a sucker paying three point seven percent on his loan.
Not one.
No, I'm not telling you that.
No, no, no, no, I'm not I'm not telling you that.
I'm just telling you that that um I know people.
No, I better not go there.
I've I don't know.
It's it's just yeah, basic economics is to me something that's just common sense.
It seems so hard to understand basic economics.
Like the the the question, okay, you gotta y Zuckerberg, a six million dollar house or seven million dollar house.
There were two rules of thumb.
One is buy it.
Don't owe anybody anything.
Never ever go into debt.
And the other rule of thumb is use somebody else's money, don't tie up your money.
If you can get that house at a one percent interest rate and a 30 year mortgage, take it.
You're living free, and then take whatever you would use to buy the house and invest it in something with a much greater return.
In other words, the Zuckerberg, I guess the moral of that story is the rich people don't want to tie up their money in real estate, which might not go up as fast as some other investment.
And that's that's the thinking behind Zuckerberg's move.
But I don't know how many people get a 1% interest rate.
And we are back, and we return to the phones.
People have been waiting patiently, such as Bruce in Sullivan, Indiana.
Hi, Bruce, thanks for waiting.
Great to have you here.
Rush, it truly is an honor.
I hope you never get tired of people telling you that because it truly is an honor to speak with you today.
I appreciate thank you very much.
Um my comment was uh, you know, about this success uh business model that the uh president he believes that hard work and intelligence doesn't uh support to that.
So, you know, I started applying his la his illogic to a couple different scenarios, and when I thought about how he addressed the nation when uh we killed bin Laden, I wondered why he thanked Sil Team Six, because wasn't by his using his logic, wasn't they just you know, people that were in the right place at the right time?
Wasn't it the people who train them and the people who manufactured the helicopters and the people who made their Kevlar vest and their rifles?
Wasn't they the people who actually were you know, I mean, yeah, but now that you now that you mention this, I mean Obama praised SEAL team six, but he did say I and I and I, and he he clearly wanted to leave the impression that he essentially pulled a trigger.
Right.
That he's the one that made it, he's the one that had the guts, he's the one they just executed the brilliant order that he conceived and so forth.
And he had to thank SEAL team six.
It's a military unit.
Um he's he's go going in, he knows that as a Democrat he's looked at as a dove.
So uh there's a calculated risk uh that he's willing to take in also crediting the SEALs.
But by the same token, you come with these analogies.
How about how if if if government is always the real reason you made it, how can or how come government is never the reason something fails?
Exactly.
And and you know, I heard the other day somebody say that Romney needs uh needs to realize that he's in a UFC fight.
And I agree, not only does he need to realize that he's in the fight for his life, but he's not only fighting the guy across the ring, he's fighting everybody in the room.
So I can't understand why they're so passive and and going with what you've been saying during your show today about how you know it's time to take the gloves off uh and leave everything on the table.
Uh and you know like this issue with releasing records and this.
Why why isn't it something simple, logical that the Romley campaign say, okay, you want to know about me, fine.
Let's meet next Thursday.
You bring all your school records, you bring all the good for five years, then and we'll release It all together.
That's what Trump is advising him to do.
Well, I mean, I know.
You want to see my tax records?
Fine.
Let's see your transcripts from Columbia and Harvard.
Let's see all this stuff.
Exactly.
And just put the right back on them every time.
Every time they come up with something, because I don't believe Romney has anything to hide.
Let's do it.
Well, the people uh the the the wizards of smart on our side say that that's not the way to do this.
That uh that kind of thing will uh will backfire.
Well, I I don't see the logic, and I don't I mean I could see it with backfire if he if if you know Romney went out there by himself and released it because the media would spin it, but if you have him and he invites Block to stand on the stage with him and they release everything together, I think that'd be such a media fire spot.
Let's say the occasion of your call.
Let's listen to the uh the new Obama ad.
Which basically says that Romney is a tax evader.
This is the ad this uh ran on Obama's campaign website, Barack Obama.com, and the YouTube channel.
The ad is entitled Makes You Wonder.
I'm Barack Obama and I approve this message.
Tax havens, offshore accounts, carried interest.
Mitt Romney has used every trick in the book.
Romney admits that over the last two years he's paid less than 15% in taxes on 43 million in income.
Makes you wonder if some years he paid any taxes at all.
We don't know because Romney has released just one full year of his tax returns.
And won't release anything before 2010.
You know what?
I put out as much as we're gonna put out.
What is Mitt Romney hiding?
That's the Obama ad.
And I think I read during the program today, and I don't know if this is accurate.
It was in quotes.
I read something about uh Romney saying, I'm just not gonna give them tens of thousands of pages to pick through.
I'm just not gonna do it.
I'm just not gonna give them 10,000 pages to pick through.
I'll just let them go ahead and speculate all they want, but I'm not gonna give them 10,000 pages to pick through, knowing what they'll do with it.
So he's rolling the dice.
I'll I'll I'll withstand these ads.
So last night on Hannity, he talked to James Carville.
Carville's got a new book out called Some Middle Class Stupid, and Hannity said President Obama's blaming Fox News, talk radio, me, Carl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, everybody but himself, for his own policies.
Do you do you not say in some way, James, the man has failed?
If you're asking me what what what would if would should I have would they have a provision in that appropriate?
Sure, why not?
I mean, somebody's gonna be president for three and a half years, would you go back and say, well, you could do you disagree with this?
Well, sure.
But overall, I think this president's done a done a doggone good job.
Has he made some mistakes?
Of course he has.
What did he say there?
I got he really got tongue-tied stammering and stuttering after hearing my name and the question.
But if you ask me, what but what but uh uh but should it happen?
Whether they put a provision in there, sure, why not?
I mean, somebody gonna be present for three and a half years.
Well, you would you you go back and say, well, but you disagree with this.
Well, sure.
Overall.
See, folks.
I know James Carville, and I can't believe he's got a wife, Mary Madeline, he got kids.
The family left Washington because of what's happening to the schools there.
They relocated to New Orleans.
Now you can't tell me that in quiet moments of solitude in his home in the big easy.
You can't tell me he sits there and listens to Obama say, You got a business, you didn't build it.
Somebody else made it.
You can't tell me Carpel agrees with that.
I can't, I can't imagine Carver would run out and say that himself.
As a surrogate on the campaign trail.
Yeah.
Yeah, they've been you didn't do that.
Everybody knows you had nothing to do with that.
Somebody else made that happen.
Everybody knows that.
You know, what about your campaign business?
Well, yeah, I wouldn't have been nothing without Bill Clinton.
If Bill Clinton had a hard me, I'd have been nothing.
I'd still be in Gumbo.
I don't believe he believes this.
But his job is to get Democrats elected.
That's what he's got to do.
And he'll probably get mad at me for speculating what he really believes in here.
But this is Well, I'm watching it.
I figured I can't hear it, obviously.
What is it on the on the No, but what uh yeah.
Okay.
Now, uh, let's see.
Um Grab Sound by seven.
Last night on Anderson Cooper 119, he interviewed uh David Xerata.
Cooper said are there parallels in your opinion between the Bush campaign, what he did to Kerry, and what your team is is doing to Mitt Romney right now.
Basically try to define him based on what's considered by his campaign strength.
No.
Uh because what was done back then was to take a guy who was a uh certified war hero uh and to suggest uh that somehow he wasn't.
Uh and that was grossly unfair.
People don't really know Governor Romney, even though he's run for president twice, is because he's never told them uh who he is.
He's never told them what motivates him.
He's never put his own experience uh into any kind of framework that people could uh appreciate.
And the the real question is to address that campaign.
Why do they feel that simply running negative ads against the president from the beginning was sufficient?
This is surreal.
These guys are the architects of the of negative ads.
Anyway, what what Axarod's saying here is we're not swift voting Romney.
In a in a sense, this is swift voting is telling a truth about somebody.
The Swift boat vets were telling the truth of their service with John Kerry and how he was unfit and how he was lying about it.
The Obama campaign is lying about Romney.
Which is what they think Swift voting is.
Okay, brief time out, sit tight, my friends, back with much more after this.
Truckee California up next, this is Toby.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Hello.
Hello, Ross.
How are you?
I'm fine.
How are you, Toby?
I'm doing good.
Um sturdley, I understand and I agree with a hundred and ten percent of everything you're saying about him, but I think we're giving him far too much of our time talking about him as much as you do since the week ago when he brought up this crap with with Romney.
That's all we hear about.
And all the talk shows and everything else.
We need to get back to the numbers on, you know, if every if everything he's done has created something, then he's responsible for the unemployment.
Okay.
Wait, so you think I am talking too much about Romney?
He wants no talking too much about what Obama wants you to talk about.
I'm talking too much about what Obama wants me to talk about.
Exactly.
Now, what is Obama want us to talk about?
The fact that Romney is a felon.
Uh okay, so most the last two days I have been incredulous at what Obama is saying.
Right.
I've been playing this sound bite over and over with Obama basically saying, you started but you didn't do it on your own.
I agree with it, Rush.
I'm not I'm not saying that.
It it infuriates me every time I hear it.
My point is I think we're giving him too much airtime.
He gets enough of that from uh the media.
I I think we need to get back on talking about the what he's created, uh the unemployment numbers, people out of work, all of the crap that he's created, not the fact that you know he helped us all start our businesses.
Uh okay.
Well, just so you know, I'm also getting emails and notes from people who tell me I'm spending too much time talking about Romney.
You think I'm spending too much time talking about Obama.
I got somebody else telling me I'm spending too much time talking about Romney.
So basically, you think that Obama has rope-doped me.
No.
No.
I think he's trying to rope a dope everybody.
My point is, I guess maybe it's my opinion.
Is I've just heard enough crap about what he hasn't done and all of the other stuff.
And I'd like to get back to the point of maybe helping to build up the conservative message again instead of You know, it was just a week and a half ago that I raised the very important question of is Romney simply reciting what everybody already knows about the economy going to be enough?
You want me to sit here every day and say, folks, you know what the unemployment rate is.
Look at job creation.
Look at the debt.
Look at the national.
Look at this guy has destroyed the I'm blue in the face talking about it.
So I raised the spectrum.
Maybe it is, folks, that because so many people don't care anymore about a failing economy because they're not harmed by it.
That maybe just saying it's the economy stupid or just pointing out how rotten it is, maybe Romney's campaign has to be about more than that.
And we spent two days talking about that.
My point is we have 15 hours a week here, and I don't think there's anything against bias.
There isn't anything we don't mention.
Unless I judge it to be irrelevant and unimportant.
And I just, like I've always said, if I don't talk about it, it's not worth you knowing about it.
You need to trust me on this stuff.
But I don't know.
I I uh I think you talk about all this stuff in context in totality as it happens.
If anything, I have been concerned that I have maybe been overdoing it on Obama's statement that you got a business, you didn't build it.
Somebody else made it out.
I thought I was gonna get email.
Come on, Rush.
He knows you're gonna focus on that.
So you stop talking about the economy.
He's trying to distract you and your fault.
I thought I would hear that.
But at any rate, uh I I think the totality of what's happening here has to be discussed, so all this stuff can be kept in context.
But I appreciate the call, Toby.
Thanks very much.
Well, folks, another exciting excursion into broadcast excellence is over.
And just in case you don't know it, the unemployment rate is eight point two percent.
The national debt is rising.
Obama continues to spend money like it's never been spent before.
We're borrowing it like it's never been borrowed before.
This economy really sucks.
I don't know if you know that or not, but this economy is in bad shape, and there's a guy that's in charge of it.
His name is Barack Obama.
You may have heard of him.
He's a president of the United States.
Mint who?
It's not about Rums, it's about Obama.
Obama sucks.
He's the guy that's to blame for all this.
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