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Aug. 3, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:13
August 3, 2012, Friday, Hour #3
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Get this, folks, the Media Research Center, Brent Mosell's group, has found that 86, 86% of the coverage, ABC, NBC, CBS, Romney's foreign trip, 86% of the coverage of Romney's trip centered on his gaffes.
86% of all coverage of Romney's trip.
The three networks centered on his gaffs.
The Media Research Center also compared the media's coverage of Romney's trip to a similar trip made by Obama in 2008.
The networks gave 53 minutes of negative coverage to Romney, 92 minutes of gushing coverage to Obama's trip.
And the crazy thing is there were no gaffes in Romney's trip.
There were none.
Not one.
It was an overall success, Romney's trip was, and yet 86% of the coverage was on his gaffs.
Friday, folks, let's roll on.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open live Friday.
One big exciting hour left, and the number's 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, the email address L Rushball at EIBNet.com.
I just I just got an email from a friend in the subject line of the email.
Am I being paranoid?
Here's the question.
Could the increasing number of unemployed actually help Obama?
No, I know your first reaction.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
How does that compute Rush on the increasing number of unemployed help Obama?
Well, if you're out of work, you might start thinking, you know what, I'm gonna need government handouts.
If there aren't any jobs, I'm gonna need government handouts.
Who's the guy passing them out now?
Obama.
So I throw that out there as a think piece.
Cause doesn't that boil it down to the question we're all asking?
How many people have been converted to permanent takers?
And how many people aren't?
The 18-year-old guy called Rush, don't whatever it's always going to be hardworking people.
Yeah, but how many?
How many?
Yeah, the those are the people sleeping all day at election.
That's a I don't know.
The question is born of paranoia, but in this case is the paranoia.
Is it worth thinking about?
Okay, look, because the the average person, well, we don't know, forget average.
Take your typical out-of-work guy, knows there's not going to be anything done on jobs immediately.
And even if Romney wins, although I have to tell you, I've got to make a promney wins this thing, you are going to see an uptick in economic activity, small business activity, stock market, people's attitudes.
I think it will be profound and immediate.
Just the attitudinal shift.
That'll take place if Romney wins.
I really do.
Anyway, folks, great to have you back as uh we now get into our last hour, open line Friday today.
Let's go back to Gail.
She held on.
She's in Chicago, and uh start at the very beginning, Gail.
Well, I told you I love your show.
Oh, no, just say that.
I mean, with the beginning of your question.
Okay, the beginning of my question was whether or not you are a hard working American.
And I'll tell you why I'm asking this.
Yesterday, I was home listening to replays of Obama trying to convince people that his tax plan was the right tax plan to go with.
And one of the things that I had to that really caught my attention was when he was talking about how Romney wants to give tax cuts to the rich, the rich people that are making which are 250,000 plus earners.
Right.
And how he wants to uh Obama doesn't want to do that.
He wants to give tax cuts to the hardworking Americans or to the working Americans.
Right.
I'm like, what?
So I had to go back later on and listen to it again, and I'm like, By inference, and I'm a teacher, I don't know if I told you that.
A republican or independent teacher.
And I gotta go back and I'm thinking by inference then, if the people who are gonna get the tax cuts are hardworking Americans or working Americans, does that mean people like you, and people I know actually, because my husband's in business that make over 250,000, are they not hardworking Americans?
Exactly.
Exactly.
I was insulted.
I'm like, wait a minute.
I know teachers, you if you have two administrators working at a school, you got two people that are making two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year.
No.
No.
So they're not.
But I'm telling you, you've just with your question.
You've you've just nailed it.
You're giving the opportunity to make this point again.
Barack Obama is a revolutionary.
He believes that we're in the middle of a revolution.
And there's gonna be pain and suffering.
And the purpose of this revolution is to make sure the people who've who are rich, who've had it easy, who got lucky, and who've who've taken all the money from everybody else.
Time they give it back.
It's time they gave it up.
It's time to transform society.
This is this is a man who who, you know we don't have a class system.
We don't have a cast system.
He believes that people are born into classes and the rich class steals from the other classes and mistreats them, takes them for granted, takes advantage of them.
His job is to go and and by the way, they don't work hard.
They won life's lottery.
They're lucky.
They just they just happen to get the lucky sperm club, or they inherited it, or uh whatever, or they stole it from other people and they and they cheated people.
This is uh honest to God how he looks at it.
And it's also part of the class envy routine to tell these people you're the hardworking ones.
You're the ones that are breaking your backs, you're the ones working your fingers to the bone, and what do you got to show for it?
Nothing because it's being stolen from you by these lily white rich people.
That's what he's after.
That's the impression he wants to create.
Well, I I totally believe you, and then trust me, I am doing everything in my power to the first time.
Don't don't don't doubt me on this.
I don't, I don't, and I have not given up hope.
I listened to your show because you give me hope.
This is economic justice as far economic justice to him is the government taking from the achievers.
He doesn't look at them as achievers.
He looked at 'em looks at them as thieves.
Or l uh uh people who've been nothing more than lucky, and it's just not right, those people are gonna have to give it up.
Uh and they won't give it up, so he's going to have to take it from them.
Has anybody asked the question how this is going to affect charities?
Because I'm telling you, doesn't care about that.
I am not going to be giving to charities I did if Obama is going to take my money and decide who gets it.
That's fine.
That's right.
He'll become the number one donor to charity and make all the charities depend on him.
He's totally cool with that.
Absolutely fine.
If he can take away the charitable deduction and other uh uh financial incentives to make charitable donations, fine with him.
He'll be happy to make he's already taken over a car company, he's taken over the student loans.
They're pressing the banks now to make loans again to people can't afford it.
He wants to run everything.
He wants to be the go-to guy if you need something.
He wants a Democrat Party to be the go-to party if you need something.
He doesn't want you relying on yourself.
He doesn't want you depending on hard work.
That's a fool's game.
The only people that work hard are the people that get the shaft.
The only people that work hard are people get screwed.
The rich people you don't see them ever doing any work.
They couldn't dig a ditch if they had to, they couldn't run the cables, they couldn't do this, they couldn't build the roads in front of their businesses.
They couldn't even build their own factories.
These people luckiest people on earth.
That's that's and he's have to get even with them here.
He believes in trickle down government, not trickle down economics.
I'm telling you the guy's an economic bigot.
So in my case, as as to your question, um I am the hardest working person in the no business, but it doesn't ever look like I am.
I know you're hard working.
I know that.
Yeah, but if you saw me doing it, you wouldn't think it's hard.
You realize what a burden this is for me, Gail.
I mean, uh even even my friends don't think I really work.
Because they never see it.
I mean, who can see brain neurons firing?
Nobody can see that.
Nobody can see mental maneuvering or thoughts or ideas spring to life.
Particularly when their primary expression comes later in the form of words.
Spoken words.
Where's the work there?
I don't even write down what I say.
So where's the work?
So most of the time people see me sitting and think I'm just the laziest SOB that they've ever run into.
Members of my own family.
At times are you ever going to do anything?
I'm doing it now.
What?
I'm working.
You're you're you're playing with the computer.
I love the computer and I um but I'm working.
Oh gee.
Come on.
At least it take out the trash and make it look like you're working.
Oh, how about I go feed the cat?
Okay, fine.
Uh I'm joking.
I'm no no, I I I cut the grass.
Anyway anyway, my I'm I'm um I'm really uh uh lucky.
You know, my um uh life is my work.
I mean I I don't know how to put it better than that, I w living my life.
I'm working.
That's that's as lucky as you can get.
Uh well when you when you look at a cray supercomputer, do you think it's working?
Well you you you have your your desktop, your laptop, you're looking at it, and it's doing its thing.
Do you think it's working?
No, it's just sitting there, a bunch of nuts and bolts.
Yeah, folks, it's tough sometimes being me.
It's uh I wouldn't normally complain, but she asked.
And welcome back to open line Friday, Rush Limbaugh, half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Always do that.
Here's Elisa in Houston on uh on the program.
You're next.
Great to have you here.
Hi.
Hi, thanks, Rush.
Um I just wanted to say that I am just as frustrated and angry as you are when I watch um how arrogant Obama is.
It just makes me not even want to look at him.
Um it just makes me so mad.
I don't understand why Romney and the rest of the Republicans don't throw that fair fair share thing back in their faces.
You know, they say that the rich don't pay their fair share.
And I think sadly, most Americans buy into that, you know?
They think, oh yeah, that's right, they're not paying their fair share.
When really, what is it?
Um the top ten percent pay fifty percent of all taxes on right?
Let me tell you something about that.
Um we've had that number on our website going on five years.
For twenty four years.
Let's just say twenty.
Twenty years.
Been making the point on this program that the top one percent pay, uh 40%, top five percent pay, eighty percent, whatever the we've been for for twenty-five, and yet uh I don't think if we had never mentioned it, it would matter.
I this is one of those arguments where the real numbers don't matter.
That's that's why they don't ever oh well what is the fair share?
Because it's never enough.
The left is never happy.
If you said if you could get them to agree that a tax rate of 50% was fair, the next year they'd want 60.
There's there's that it's not that they're very wise not to demand a number.
There's this it's it's it's not about numbers.
It's about attitudes leading to votes against Republicans.
That's the only reason they spout this stuff.
I've I'm blue in the face telling people that the top one percent, the top ten percent, top fifty percent.
I'm I'm blue in the face telling people they pay their fair share and more.
It doesn't register.
It doesn't.
That doesn't cut through the noise.
That argument, I don't think has ever mattered.
It's never blunted it.
I think if Romney were to say that in a debate, you know, if you were to ask Obama, what how much percentage, what percentage should should someone who makes $300,000 a year, what should they pay?
Um what percentage should they pay of their salary?
What do you think?
Um, fair share.
He he wouldn't answer it.
He would he would he would take the question and go off to another talking point making the same point.
He would not answer it, I guarantee you.
Well, and then it just makes me it just irritates me that you have these Hollywood liberals who um, you know, give about millions of dollars to Democrats, but then you know they live in these mansions and they say that ri rich people aren't paying enough.
I guess I just have always thought why don't those people be the first to give up, give all of their money away, except for you know, can keep like three or four million dollars.
Because give the rest of their money to the government because then they can tell other people.
You you're you're making the mistake of interpreting them literally when they join the chorus that the rich aren't paying their fair share, that people the rich need to pay.
That's not what they're saying.
All they're doing is trying to tell people who may have trouble coming up with fifteen bucks or ten bucks to go to the movie that they're no different than the audit.
They're all they're doing is trying to relate.
They're I mean, some of them are ideologues, some of them are liberals and so forth, but all they're really trying to do is to uh form a linkage or a bond with their audience that they too are average people, that they too think the rich ought to pay fair share.
That that they don't they don't want the audience to think of them as the rich who aren't paying their fair share, so they go out and call for it.
It's it's how the Kennedys and the Warren Buffett's and the Bill Gateses of the world inoculate themselves from this very criticism, Elisa.
They go out and claim the rich aren't paying enough.
They never offer to pay any more themselves, but they join that chorus, and thereby they never get criticized for being rich.
I know, and I guess I just wish that instead of giving these vague campaign speeches, you know, that you hear, it's just very vague stuff.
And it's almost like they don't want to say, you know what, they don't want to just tell it like it is.
And why these um why Romney, you're you're you're you're asking something impossible.
You're asking for liberals to engage in the debate, literally.
That's they're never going to do that.
They're never going to get specific and attached numbers to whatever argument they're because it's not about what they're saying.
It's all misdirection.
It's all code.
So when you hear them say the rich aren't paying their fair share, you're saying, well, what is they're not thinking of a number.
They're thinking of a way to relate to most people who aren't rich and trying to get them to support them or to let them know that they're on their side or what have you.
Don't the the biggest mistake people make is listening to liberals and wanting to engage them literally.
That's not at all what they're talking about when they say these things.
When uh let me try again, when when Ted Kennedy comes out and rails against, or when he came out, railed against the rich that they weren't paying their fair share.
Well, everybody said, Well, you're you're richer than anybody in the world.
What are you talking about?
That's exactly right.
Ted Kennedy knows.
The Democrat Party knows that the class envy stuff sometimes works, that they can gin up real hatred for the rich.
Well, they don't want to be hated, yet they're rich.
So they run out and they criticize the rich.
As though they're not.
And in the process, they inoculate themselves from their own criticism.
See, everybody believes that big businessmen are Republicans.
That big corporate CEOs are conservatives, and they believe in individualism and self-reliance, and they don't like big government and so forth.
Nothing could be further from the truth today.
The people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett run around, they both do.
They run around, there isn't enough charitable giving by the rich, uh, they're not paying enough in taxes, the rich ought to be paying more, and in the process, the richest people in the world inoculate themselves from the hatred for the rich that they are helping gin up, and people leave them alone.
And that means nobody's coming for their money.
The biggest mistake in the world is to engage liberals literally on what they're talking about.
When Ted Kennedy said Robert Bork's America is an America where women are getting back out, that's not what he was saying.
He was creating trying to sustain an attitude of bigotry and hatred harbored by conservatives.
Pure and simple.
We'll be back.
Ladies and gentlemen, uh the liberals, the American left Democrat Party cannot ever allow the country to be unified.
They just can't.
They don't, cannot survive without conflict.
They cannot survive without chaos.
They cannot survive without an us versus them.
If, to illustrate the point, if the top marginal tax rate were moved up to 90%, it would not stop them from saying the rich aren't paying their fair share.
They're going to say it if we abolish the rich.
If we make it illegal to be rich, they're still going to run around talk about the days when the rich weren't paying their fair share, and do you want to go back to that?
Look at.
For 24 years on my website every day and on this program, frequently, here are the latest numbers.
The top 5% pay 44% more in taxes than the bottom 95%.
The top 5% pay 4 44% more in taxes than the bottom 95%.
Now, what does that mean?
Nothing.
What are the dollars?
That doesn't mean jack to anybody hearing it.
And it's really frustrating.
You could say the top 5% pay 50% of all tax.
Doesn't matter.
Apparently, it doesn't.
It doesn't cut through the noise and change anybody's mind who believes the rich aren't paying their fair share.
All that number does is validate people who already understand it.
But it's not winning any converts.
At least I don't get the sense that it is.
Otherwise, they wouldn't still use class envy.
Now there are arguments, political scientists routinely argue about the effectiveness of class warfare politics.
Does it work or does it not?
And you get for as many political scientists as there are analyzing it, you get that many theories and that many answers.
But the fact that the Democrat Party keeps doing it is proof positive to me that they think it works.
In this case, that's all they've got.
They can't run on their current record.
They can't run on this economy, even though Obama today was trying to massage these numbers in such a way as to lie to the American people whose lives he's destroying that it isn't so bad out there.
That's a cold calculating guy to do that.
Try to tell people whose jobs you're destroying that things are getting better.
I'd say that's that's heartless.
It's pure heartlessness, but that's who he is.
It's what he's doing.
They live in cliches.
They don't – the biggest mistake in the world is – and I've found this over the years – is to engage them – Literally.
It just as a as a as a persuasion technique, I just don't I don't see how it works.
Remember when Paul Ryan took Obama to school on his own health care plan at that joint session at the White House, or maybe it was at Blair House, but anyway, they had a bunch of congressional leaders in Obama, the Democrats, Republicans got together, and one of these fake pretenses that everybody's working together trying to solve a problem.
And Paul Ryan just read Obama, the riot act on his health care bill, and how he's destroying the economy and rising deficits.
It was very true.
And even among people who saw all it did was validate those of us who already knew what he was talking about, but I don't think it was persuasive.
Not that what he was saying, and he isn't persuasive, it's just the literal aspect of this stuff.
When we're talking to liberals, I mean, who is it we're trying to persuade anyway?
They're trying to talk liberals out of being liberals.
Isn't that what this objective is?
Or we're trying to depress them so much that they don't go vote, whatever, but that's what we're trying to do.
But they're not literal in any way.
They live in image.
They they live in fantasy land.
They live in the world of emotion.
Realville is no, they get nowhere near.
They see the science as real, and they turn around so that it's in a rear view mirror.
And they're out of there.
Don't want any part of it.
They can't survive in realville.
They live in cocoons.
Study this.
It's it's uh the art of persuasion is a very, very tricky thing.
It is really really here.
Let me let's go back to this Harry Reed and income tax avoidance of Mitt Romney is a classic example.
Let's go back.
Here's Harry Reed yesterday morning on the Senate floor.
If a person coming before this body wanted to be a cabinet officer, he couldn't be if he did the same refusal Mitt Romney does about tax returns.
So the word's out that he hasn't paid any taxes for ten years.
Let him prove that he has paid taxes because he hasn't.
The word isn't out that he hasn't paid the taxes.
Harry Reed is the only guy saying so.
And he says somebody called him that used to work at Bain.
He won't identify who it is.
He's making a fool of himself, as it turns out.
This actually ain't going to end up helping Romney.
It's because it's allowing Romney to go on offense about this about not revealing the returns, because Harry Reid's making it obvious what it's all about.
Harry Reed doesn't even care that Obama's not paying that that uh if it's true that Romney weren't paying taxes, Harry Reed doesn't care about that.
That's not what this is about.
What this is about is Romney's a rich guy and he didn't have to live like you do.
Romney's a rich guy and he gets deals.
Romney's a rich guy and he lives in a way that you'll never be allowed to, and he won't let you because he doesn't like you.
Mitt Romney's one of these guys that got rich by taking everything from you.
And that's what he's hiding.
That's what he's saying.
He's talking to his audience of brain-dead, drug brain, whatever, mind-fried little wandering shreds of human debris.
That's who he's talking to.
He can't prove it, but now the allegations out there.
He put it there, now it's up to Romney to disprove it.
What Harry Reed was hoping was that the media would pick this up, start demanding that Romney, because what they really want is for Romney to release his tax returns because they want to then pour through them and find anything they can that they are convinced they could make average people think was Romney skirting the edge of the law or doing something they couldn't do.
Obama's whole history, his whole electoral history, is to find dirt on opponents or make it up and run them out of the race before the election.
That's the Axlrod Obama modus operandi.
That's what they're trying to do.
They're dealing here with Mr. Clean.
In fact, let's go to uh uh let's see, the forehead.
Here, this this is good.
Sound bite number five.
This is exactly this is the forehead giving up the game last night on CNN with Anderson Cooper, who said to the forehead, forehead, can you defend Harry Reed on this?
Can you seriously defend Harry Reed telling us that Romney hasn't paid taxes for 10 years because of some mystery man on the phone?
You watch me.
This guy has a long incredible history of tax avoidance.
Shell Corporation in Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Switzerland bank accounts, a blocker corporation in Bermuda, whatever that is.
Freshman philosophy.
When you're confronted with something, you have limited information.
You choose the simplest, most obvious choice.
What do you think it is, Anderson?
Do you think he secretly like owns the bunny ranch brothel?
I don't.
He's a man of extraordinary personal morality.
So I don't think he's like secretly owning inner city liquor stores that sell to children.
No, I think I'm just trying to show it's the most logical explanation.
Did you hear that?
They admit Romney is a man of extraordinary personal morality.
That makes him a threat, number one.
Impeccable personal moral character, and yet they're going to accuse him of tax avoidance.
Bogala was Pa Paul, are you sure you can you watch me?
I can prove it.
This guy's got a long incredible history of tax avoidance.
Really?
Yeah.
Well, he's got Cayman accounts.
He's got a Switzerland account.
Well, does that automatically mean tax avoidance?
You watch me, I'll prove it.
I'll make people think it.
I don't have to prove it, Wolf.
All I gotta do is make them doubt it.
And I can do it.
My problem is this guy's impeccably moral.
This guy has an impeccable, extraordinary personal morality.
So I can't accuse him of running a brothel.
I can't accuse Romney of being a drunkard.
I can't accuse Romney having girlfriends like Bill Clinton does.
So all I can do, Wolf, is go after the fact he hadn't paid taxes.
They're admitting it.
The forehead's admitting it.
We got impeccably moral character.
Yet he didn't pay his taxes.
You watch me.
I'll create doubt on that.
And Cooper said, but he won't name the source.
Harry Reed won't name the source.
He doubled down on the floor of the Senate, said the same thing there, forehead.
And if he worked for CNN, we'd give him a promotion for that same conduct.
What are you talking about?
What are you talking about?
We go on there all the time and say I have an unnamed source who can't be revealed because it would compromise his.
A single source, you don't actually go on there with a single source, rarely under extreme circumstances.
So that's actually not true.
Bottom line, you don't have any problem with sitting members of Congress or the Senate making allegations without presenting any evidence whatsoever.
Romney has the evidence.
We can't see it.
He's choosing the most sensible explanation for a puzzling political thing.
There's something in there that he does not want us to see.
No, there's something he doesn't want you to get your hands on because he knows how you're gonna distort it.
He knows they're gonna use it.
So the forehead says, wait a minute.
If Harry Reed worked for CNN, we'd give him an award.
We'd give him a promotion.
Anderson Cooper doesn't like that.
Well, wait a minute.
We require more than one source here at CNN while we're digging up dirt.
This really is revealing, don't you think?
This tells us everything we want to know about who these people are.
They got no evidence.
Romney has the evidence he didn't pay taxes.
We want to see it.
He's an impeccable moral character.
And he's got an extraordinary personal morality.
And even with that, we know he didn't pay his taxes.
There's nothing else we can hang on him, uh, Anderson, so we gotta go get this.
So Harry Reed, yeah, he's he's doing he's doing work that on CNN would get a promotion.
I'm surprised Anderson Cooper was offended by that.
I thought, yeah, I see your point.
Okay, Sterling, pop quiz.
Name the fastest going the fastest ocean going mammal.
Fastest ocean going mammal.
You're not allowed to look it up.
No, not a dolphin.
Fastest ocean going mammal.
No, not man.
It wouldn't matter if there were great whites out there if that were the case.
So here we have Mitt Romney paid zero taxes for ten years, and Paul Bagala says that's the most reasonable explanation.
Since he doesn't own a brothel, says he's perfect perfectly moral, see he doesn't have a uh uh drug bust past whatever it's gotta be hadn't paid his taxes, right?
That's the most reasonable explanation.
So uh here you have a man of impeccable morals who says all this is untrue.
You have a congenital liar, Harry Reed, who says it is true.
And every Democrat believes Harry Reed.
You know how frustrating this is.
I mean, it's you don't get to these people in Realville being literal.
You just they're making it up, and then they end up telling themselves it's all true before it's all over.
Folks, Harry Reid, as the guy running the Senate for the Democrats, Harry Reed hasn't allowed the Senate to pass a budget in 1,191 days.
What is he hiding?
What is Harry Reid not want us to know about his plans?
What does Harry Reid not want us to know about his intentions?
He hasn't allowed the Senate to pass a budget in nearly 1,200 days, folks.
That's not even legal.
Strictly have a good weekend.
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