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Aug. 23, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:42
August 23, 2012, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Hi, folks.
How are you?
Great to have you here as the fastest week in media continues to roll on.
Here we are already at Thursday.
And a week even goes faster when you don't work on Monday.
Well, I worked on Monday.
I just didn't show up here, but still, lickety split.
Folks, it, you know, I shouldn't even say this, but I'm going to say it because I have so much respect for you.
I'm in the process of doing an email interview.
I don't do it on the phone because of hearing.
I'm doing an email interview with a radio trade publication, and I just had a question that I just answered late last night to the guy about my profound respect for you in the audience and how you are the primary objective here every day in terms of meeting and surpassing your expectations.
So in the process, I feel like I'm obligated to mention to you that I don't know what today is going to end up being because I am distracted like I can't believe.
I've got 15,000 things pulling at me here.
And I haven't finished show prep.
I didn't have a chance to finish show prep because all the stuff pulled it.
So we're winging it today.
Now, you know, I got sleep.
It wasn't that.
It's just that ever since I got here, everything but the radio show has been tugging at me.
And so I'm just, it's going to be fine because just, this all comes naturally to me.
I'm doing what I was born to do.
So anyway, let's just, I shouldn't not even mention it to you.
You probably wouldn't even know the difference, but in my obligation to be truthful and honest with you, because my respect for you was so profound, I wanted to be honest with you up front.
I don't know what's going to happen here.
It's like I feel like I'm not fully prepped.
And even in that stage, I probably know 3,000% more than everybody else knows.
But I still think maybe there's some stuff I haven't seen yet.
So hang with me and be tough.
Telephone number 800-282-2882, the email address, lrushbo at EIBNet.com.
We have the first polling data out from Missouri.
And it's a Rasmussen poll, and it isn't good.
Claire McCaskill is up by 10 points over Todd Aiken in Missouri, 48 to 38%.
This is how Rasmussen writes it up.
What a difference one TV interview can make.
Embattled Democrat incumbent Claire McCaskill has now jumped to a 10-point lead over Todd Aiken in the Senate race.
Most Missouri Republicans want Aiken to quit, while most Missouri Democrats want him to stay.
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey, likely voters, McCaskill 48, Aiken 38.
9% like somebody else in the race, and 5% are undecided.
So let's go to the audio sound bites on this.
The Democrats have made a Todd Aiken.
Oh, by the way, there were 14 polls released yesterday regarding the presidential race and a couple other things.
And it's, you know, the media is concerned.
The media is concerned.
The swing states, it's tightening up out there, noticeably so.
And that means it's tightening up even more than the polling data indicates.
And then there's an hilarious story from the AP that unemployment applications went up.
And AP said that this is a sign that the job market is improving, that it is steadying out.
An increase in unemployment compensation requests.
And this is good news for the employment market.
And then there's this.
There's a Pew Research Center poll out.
50% of adults defined as middle class have suffered its worst decade in modern history.
And I saw that last night.
And that's the first thing I saw.
And I went, well, what are people going to make of this?
Worst decade in modern history.
This we know.
People in the middle class know it.
People not in the middle class looking at know it.
Everybody knows that this economy is pathetic.
So the Pew Center says that roughly 50% of adults defined as middle class have suffered the worst decade in modern history.
In fact, the American middle class has fallen backward in income for the first time since the end of World War II.
According to Pew, 85% of middle-class Americans say it is more difficult now than a decade ago to maintain their standard of living.
85%.
85% say it is more difficult now than it was 10 years ago to maintain their standard of living.
62% say a lot of the blame lies with Congress.
A slight majority says a lot lies with banks and financial institutions.
8% blame the middle class.
Other words, 8% blame themselves.
Apparently, Pew didn't ask anybody if they blamed Obama.
Maybe they didn't want to know.
But then I went over and I was reading the AP's report of the Pew study.
And in fact, Pew did ask about Obama.
They just didn't report it.
AP did ask what people think Obama's relationship is to the worst decade they've had since World War II.
34% of the respondents did blame the regime.
Now that's up.
It used to be that the vast, vast majority, and it still is a majority, would blame Bush.
But 34% of the respondents blame the Obama administration.
For some reason, the AP buried that way down in the bottom of the piece.
Pew didn't report it at all in their own study.
You had to go out and find it.
Now, probably the most disturbing part of the Pew study is this.
63% of the general public, including 67% of the middle class, think that people who want to get ahead can make it if they're willing to work hard.
Only 63%.
In the United States of America, only 63% think that people who want to get ahead can make it if they're willing to work hard.
Well, it's more than you thought it would be.
In 1999, it was 74%.
We're down 14% in 12 years.
1999, 74% thought so.
Now we're down to 60, now we're down to 67% from 74%, 17%, or 7%, rather.
So it even gets worse here.
Only 43% in the middle class, only 43% say that their children's standard of living will be better than their own.
47% think it's going to be worse.
This is not the way Americans used to think, and it's not the way they used to feel, in addition to think.
And it's not the way that they used to fashion their own futures.
It's not the way they looked at the future for themselves and for their kids.
And I'm here to tell you this is what four years of Obama's hope and change have gotten us.
This has nothing to do with Bush.
And I'm going to tell you, this is one of these statistics that doesn't show up on a whole lot of polling data, and this gets buried in AP's own story.
The fact that people have this attitude is going to translate into changing something now.
This is not the kind of thing that, well, you know what?
Let's give this guy four more years.
It's already, the downslope has been long enough, even if they do want to say that it included some of Bush.
I said the downslope's been 10 years.
They don't want four more years for it to bottom out and then pick up.
They're going to want this to change immediately.
And the Romney-Ryan campaign is appropriate, I think.
They're saying and doing the right things in relationship to this.
Now, get this, though.
I might have been.
It's a tough thing.
It's a tough thing to believe that I might have been wrong, but I might have been wrong about what is the most demoralizing part of the study.
Get this.
52% of middle-class adults say that Obama's policies in a second term would help the middle class.
39% say they wouldn't.
That's demoralizing.
52% in this, this is the Pew study.
52% of middle-class adults say Obama's policies in a second term would help the middle class.
Only 42% say electing Romney would help the middle class.
About as many, 40% say that it would not.
That's not good, folks.
If it's accurate, it just shows what a good job the news media and the education system have done in dumbing down the country.
But I'm going to choose to not fall prey to what I think are attempts to demoralize and dispirit everybody.
Here's what it boils down to.
I think that the country could survive four more years of Obama.
But I don't believe the country can survive in a country full of people who would re-elect him.
That's the great fear that I'm getting.
You know, we can handle Obama, but I don't know what we can do about a majority of people that would re-elect the guy.
Bob Tyrrell, American spectator, has a column out today.
He says, bluntly, Obama's going for the moron vote.
These people hang around with their mouths open all the time because they don't know what else to do.
Idiots.
And he makes it plain, Obama is going for the moron vote.
And there's no question Obama's going for the moron vote.
And the Democrats have calculated that there are a majority of morons that are going to vote, and they can win them.
And that they're content to let Romney and Ryan get serious and talk about these things that really matter because the Obama team, people don't give a rat's rear end about this.
They don't want to think about this stuff seriously.
All they want to know is is there going to be an interruption of what they're getting.
And if there might be an interruption of what they're getting, they're not going to vote for the people they think are going to cause the interruption.
That's what Obama's calculation is.
And it's always boiled down to that for us.
I know it has for you too.
Four years, we can handle Obama, but can we handle a country with a majority of people that would re-elect a guy?
I mean, Biden.
Biden is the poster boy for the moron vote.
The more I think about it, the more I think they're sending Biden out to act and be stupid purposely to relate to the people who are trying to get to vote for him.
Hey, we're just like you.
We got a guy here just as moronic as you are, just as stupid as you are.
And look at him.
He's the vice president.
Look what could happen to you, too.
All you got to do is vote, Democrat, be as dumb as a skunk, and you too might even end up being vice president.
No, I did not lose my place in the Aiken situation.
I just reminded myself all these.
This is what I mean by being distracted today.
I remember myself all the reminded myself all the other polling data.
The Democrats have made a Todd Aiken ad.
And it was yesterday in Massachusetts, the Elizabeth Warren campaign website, she released a new radio ad.
And here's a portion of it.
Have you heard this?
A Republican running for U.S. Senate in Missouri actually said a woman who is raped won't get pregnant.
Listen.
If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.
This can't be happening in 2012, right?
That's just the first of many that are going to be run.
Aiken down 10 to McCaskill now.
That's a radio ad as part of the Elizabeth Warren campaign.
I shudder to think that something done on our side could resuscitate her campaign.
Okay, so let's keep going.
Mary Madeline last night, Anderson Cooper 360.
They were talking about this legitimate rape business, and Cooper said, Mary, you really believe that this is not going to influence some people's vote?
I mean, I know clearly the economy is issue number one, but when someone gets into that voting booth, particularly a woman, you think that Aiken and his legitimate rape comment is not going to impact them?
I think it could if it wasn't soundly and roundly and universally condemned by every Republican from Mitt Romney to Rush Limbaugh.
Look, women, believe it or not, are used to men saying stupid things.
And woe be to the male population if women attributed ignorance to all men based on the ignorance of one man.
And she knows what she's talking about.
She lives with Carville.
You have to give her that, folks.
She sounds like some of the women callers we had yesterday.
She's an expert on this.
She lives with James Carville.
And woe be to the male population if women attributed ignorance to all men based on the ignorance of one man.
I got to take a brief time out.
We'll do that.
Sit tight, folks.
Coming back loaded for bear, as you can tell.
Don't go away.
Dick Morris weighed in on all this Aiken stuff last night on the O'Reilly factor, Laura Ingram filling in.
Here's the question: Now you see Missouri Democrats coming forward saying, Well, up until a few days ago, Paul Ryan and Aiken agreed on these issues.
They worked together on that human life amendment to stop funding abortion.
Blah, blah, blah.
They said if he was with him then, how can we trust him now?
They're taking that nugget and exploding it to try to divide the voters, Dick.
What's going on here?
All of this makes it clear that Romney's not there.
All of this makes it clear that the Republican Party did, in fact, nominate Romney, not Gingrich or Santorum.
And Obama would much rather run against Gingrich or Santorum because he can use them unfairly to scare women.
But he can't use Romney that way.
And I think that this is a very effective move by Romney.
Sometimes on defense, he can score points he couldn't possibly score on offense.
What in the world?
I mean, what is he saying?
Is he saying here that this gives Romney a chance to look moderate?
What is this rather run-against Santorum or Gingrich business?
They wanted to run against Romney from Nagetgo.
Anyway, people are stretching here, folks.
They're contorting themselves into all kinds of positions to try to find something positive in this.
And old buddy Jerry Springer has weighed in on the Jerry Springer on CNN's Piers Morgan show last night.
Question Aiken.
It's an extraordinary case.
He says something unbelievably outrageous, and he hadn't stood down despite every senior member of his party demanding that he go.
What are you making at, Jerry?
He's not going to step down because he's going to be a sympathetic figure for the far right in Missouri.
So I'm not sure he's out of it.
In other words, I still think he has a chance of winning, as crazy as it was.
You go talk to Jerry Springer about this.
Then, you mean you're doing everything you can to reach the moron vote.
You're doing everything you can to reach that subculture out there.
This is just incredible.
And then there's this from the Washington Examiner, Paul Bedard, and I hope he pronounces it that way.
I don't know.
Bettered, maybe, B-E-D-A-R-D.
Democrat convention becomes anti-Aiken affair.
The Democrats are actually going to turn their convention into a celebration of abortion.
They think that they're onto something so powerful and so big here.
They think the social issues are death for the Republicans.
And they think that this is a godsend.
And it's going to be woman after woman after woman.
And it's going to be abortion, abortion, abortion, contraception, contraception.
It is going to be the Democrat Party 30-year-old playbook every night at their convention.
So this, as far as I'm concerned, if they do this, if they follow through with this, the Democrats do, they will officially make them the party of death and taxes.
I mean, they're trotting every woman they can find out.
And then Barbara Boxer saying that Todd Aiken is just a symptom of the disease that is the Republican Party, that his comments are typical of a mindset that pervades and perverts the entire Republican Party.
We'll see.
But if you wanted proof that they are the party of death and taxes, this is it.
They're turning their whole convention over to this.
Should be interesting, and we will be back.
Now, as you know, yesterday we had a little fun with it, and we had a lot of fun with it at RushLimbaugh.com.
My suggestion that the Republicans actually do a theme night at their convention, War on Witness.
By the way, speaking of that, the latest hurricane track, they moved it further to the west at 11 o'clock.
The staff on the other side of the glass is wondering what we're going to do.
Are we going to decamp?
Are we going to go to a secure location or do the program?
And of course, this is all up to me.
And two days ago, I would have said, yeah, we're going to decamp.
But they keep moving this thing further west.
And I don't want to decamp if I don't want to have to.
Don't want to have to leave.
And now they've got, ladies say, 80 mile-an-hour winds, Naples, category one.
There's only one model.
Folks, I got to be very careful because I'm not the National Hurricane Center, and I'm not a meteorologist.
I'm not a hurricane specialist, and I'm not the final authority.
But I've looked at the major models that they use, and only one of them turns this thing into a hurricane after it finishes with Cuba.
It's forecast to be a hurricane for a while, and it hits the Dominican Republic.
One of the biggest enemies of a hurricane is high elevation.
Changes air pressure.
It can destroy the eye, the eye wall structure.
And if it goes north enough over the Dominican, get into the high mountains there, could wreak havoc on the thing, not dissipate it, but take it away from a hurricane down to tropical storm strength.
It's forecast to be over the Dominican Republic enough, Hispaniola, Dominican, and Haiti, that it should weaken.
Then it becomes a hurricane just briefly, once again, from the Dominican to Cuba.
And then over Cuba, it's over Cuba quite a while, according to this latest track.
It'll weaken again.
So it comes off of Cuba, heading to the Keys now, Key West, as they say it's going to turn into hurricane.
Only what I was going to tell you is only one model turns this thing into a hurricane.
Only one model of the major models turns this thing into a hurricane coming off Cuba.
So they're reporting it'll be a Cat 1, 80 mile-an-hour winds off of Naples, and then it just keeps tracking northwest and doesn't direct hit Tampa.
It is going to be offshore a bit.
But the primary wind field is on the east side of this thing.
So the strongest winds could be in the Tampa area.
So I got the mayor out there of Tampa talking about, oh, yeah, we'll shut down.
We'll evacuate.
We got no problem.
We'll condense this thing.
We got no problem shutting down this.
What happens if they do?
And we all know that Obama is out there steering this thing.
It's like they said Bush was steering Katrina into New Orleans.
People actually believe that.
So as far as it affecting us at the EIB Southern Command, see, there it is.
Fox has got up there now.
You can see the track.
And it's a Hurricane 1 at Key West and a category 1 way off of Tampa.
But the windfield there, as I say, is on the eastern side of it, the primary winds.
So it could, it's going to be a tough call.
It's going to be a tough call because it could still veer in a direction that is not directly along that track that they have forecast.
But at least as far as you guys on the other side of the glass, I don't think we're decamping.
And we're going to hang in here.
Heck with it.
If you can't handle 80 mile-an-hour winds, you don't deserve to live here.
It's the way I look at it.
And if we lose power, we lose power.
We have generators.
We have backups.
So we're covered.
That's the way I'm looking at it now.
Major decision.
Do we put the storm shutters up?
Got to figure that out.
Certainly got to move the furniture in from the pool.
You don't want to leave that stuff lying around.
It could be projectiles and missiles.
Anyway, so the Republican Convention, who knows if it's even going to happen or if it's going to happen over one night or two nights.
Can you imagine if they condense this thing and it's a two-night convention?
You get Christie and then Ryan and then Romney all in the space of 24 hours.
Oh, and have you seen the networks are not going to cover Ann Romney's speech on Monday night?
They did cover Michelle Maybell's speech in 2008, but they're not going to cover Ann Romney's.
In fact, CBS is going to do a rerun of Hawaii 5-0 instead of carrying Ann Romney's speech on Monday at the Republican convention.
And did you see that Michelle Obama's urging Obama supporters to get out and vote on November 2nd?
The only problem is that's not Election Day.
Michelle Obama did say, and don't let us down, be there.
Now, when the Republicans put ads out in Democrat neighborhoods saying vote on the wrong day, you know what kind of hell that unleashes.
What do you think our voters are stupid?
Yes.
That's why we try to trick them.
It doesn't take much.
But here, Michelle Obama is doing it all for us.
Election Day, November 2nd.
Anyway, Bill Clinton, war on women.
What our idea was, is to have all of the Clinton women on stage at a Republican War on Women theme night.
We have Jennifer Flowers, Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broderick.
They ought to get Juanita Broderick up there anyway.
They ought to bring her to the convention, let her speak as she was the one who accused, credibly accused Clinton of rape.
Since that seems to be such a cause celebra right now, bring her up there.
I know it'll never happen, but still.
So these guys, while trying to make a big deal out of Todd Aiken and rape and abortion and war on women, are going to bring Bill Clinton in as their big keynoter.
And so the Obama campaign on their website has released a new ad by Clinton.
It's entitled Clear Choice.
This election, to me, is about which candidate is more likely to return us to full employment.
This is a clear choice.
Their Republican plan is to cut more taxes on upper-income people and go back to deregulation.
That's what got us in trouble in the first place.
President Obama has a plan to rebuild America from the ground up, investing in innovation, education, and job training.
It only works if there is a strong middle class.
That's what happened when I was president.
We need to keep going with his plan.
I cannot sit here and listen to this without practically exploding.
Anyway, before I explode, we have put together our own ad.
We put together our own version of Clinton and this ad interspersed with what Clinton really thinks.
Because Clinton doesn't believe anything he just said in that ad.
Here's what we have put together.
This election, to me, is about which candidate is more likely to return us to full employment.
This is a clear choice.
A man who's been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold.
Their Republican plan is to cut more taxes on upper-income people and go back to deregulation.
That's what got us in trouble in the first place.
That's probably the best thing to do right now.
I don't have any problem with extending all of it now.
President Obama has a plan to rebuild America from the ground up.
We need to keep going with his plan.
Give me a break.
This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen.
Bill Clinton talking about Obama in 2008.
The second Clinton reality clip was when he was talking about Romney's qualifications.
And he said that the guy's been governor, had a sterling business career, crosses the qualification threshold.
And then he was talking about the Bush tax cuts when we inserted, that's probably the best thing to do right now.
I don't have any problem extending all of it now.
That's what he really thinks.
But this election to me is about which candidate's more likely to return us to full employment.
By the time this election comes around, we're going to have nearly four years of utter disaster.
Four years of somebody who has demonstrated he hasn't the slightest idea, or I don't believe interest in really putting people back to work.
Republican plan, cut more taxes on upper-income people, go back to deregulation.
That's cliché.
But they know that their moron voters are going to believe it.
That's what got us into trouble in the first place.
Tax cuts and the rich is what got us into trouble in the first place.
Obama has a plan to rebuild America from the ground up.
That's because he's going to destroy it.
Ain't going to be anything left.
And if he's got a plan to rebuild America from the ground up, how come he waited four years to put it into play?
If Obama's got this great plan, where is it?
Because whatever he's doing now is doing the exact opposite of what Clinton claims Obama's able to do.
Obama can't rebuild anything.
He hadn't rebuilt Jack.
Obama's defided.
He's destroyed.
He's spending us into an oblivion.
He's spending us into a fiscal collapse.
Where we are is not sustainable.
Four consecutive years of trillion-dollar deficits.
That's never happened.
What are the last two years of the Bush administration?
Year six, year seven, I forget which, the deficit was $167 billion.
Barack Obama with four annual deficits in excess of $1 trillion.
It's never been done before.
Obama's going to invest in innovation.
Innovation doesn't get invested in by the government.
How do you invest in innovation?
How do you identify it?
It's maddening.
Education, job training.
Why do we need job training?
There aren't any jobs.
What do we need job training for?
What are schools for?
Why do people go to school?
Why do you have schools and then job training centers?
It's because the schools are in such bad shape.
And it only works if there's a strong middle class.
Well, we just learned from the Pew Center for the people and the press that the middle class is in the worst shape that it's been in since the end of World War II.
And who's been running things for four years?
Even if you want to accept the lie that eight years of Bush destroyed the economy, even if you want to believe that, would somebody tell me what the last four years have shown?
Obama's not qualified.
He hasn't the slightest idea how to rebuild a middle class.
I frankly don't think he's that much interested in that anyway, but if he were, he doesn't know how.
He hasn't the slightest idea how genuine and real economic growth occurs in the private sector.
It's amazing.
So even if you accept that eight years, which is not true, but if eight years of Bush destroyed the economy, we know it's not true.
Somebody show me where in the last three and a half or four years we got anybody who knows what to do to fix it.
We don't.
And I see this number 52%.
It's scrolled out of my view.
Now, 52% of the American people or middle class think Obama is best suited to rebuild the middle class, 52%.
I don't believe it.
I think that's the wilder effect in polling data.
I think it's the result of a number of things.
It can't, yeah, 52% of self-described middle-class adults say Obama's policies in the second term would help the middle class.
The only way that can be true is if the middle class becomes nothing but a bunch of takers.
Obama's policies are not oriented toward job creation.
Obama's policies are not oriented toward expanding work.
Obama's policies are oriented toward expanding government and handouts and expanding a number of takers.
So if 52% of the self-described middle class say that Obama's policies would help the middle class, the only way that can be true is if you define helping the middle class by increasing government payouts, but certainly not creating jobs.
Hi, welcome back, El Rushbo and the EIB Network into the phones we start in Bayside in New York.
And this is Rachel in Queens.
Great to have you on the program, huh?
Hi, Rush.
Listen, you just said four more years of Obama we can handle.
What are you crazy?
There'll be no USA left, and you just go by one poll.
I believe that poll is the Bradley effect to some extent.
Wilder, wilder effect, Bradley effect, yeah.
Now, let me explain to you what I meant.
In my own, I think, inimitable way, I don't frankly know how you could disagree with me on this.
Well, the American people, as you and I have known them to be anyway, are resilient and we can overcome whatever obstacles are put in our way.
What we can't overcome is a country made up of losers, morons, and takers that would elect a guy like Obama.
My point is that the problem really isn't Obama, it's the people that vote for him.
That's what we have to change.
Those are the people we have to get to somehow.
If this nation's going to rebuild itself, it's going to take more than 40% of the people working.
Well, that's true.
All right.
That's all I was saying.
I was not trying to say Obama's a harmless nothing.
I'm saying the American, look, this is the nation that beat back the Nazis.
That's right.
This is the nation to put a man in a moment.
We can do anything.
We can survive anything.
But not if over half of us would elect a guy like this.
Well, listen, and also that Todd Aiken thing you said the other day about Todd Aiken, you should have really mentioned for him to leave because he's ruining the Romney-Ryan momentum we have and into our RNC convention in Tampa.
I mean, why did you just, you know, yesterday you said, well, if I really told, if I told Todd Aiken to leave the race, he would leave.
I mean, why?
Because I think this is a responsible adult use of my power.
Very badly, I think.
Well, I'm not sure that all of this is having a deleterious effect on Obama, or on Romney.
It is on Aiken, obviously, according to the Rasmussen poll out of Missouri.
I'm not sure yet that this is a heavy drag on Romney, but it might be.
It might become that.
It certainly isn't necessary.
It's just a, I don't know.
We shoot ourselves in the foot.
I can't tell you how many times.
But it was simply a mature use of my power here in restraint, trying to influence Mr. Aiken.
Frankly, I have to tell you something, Rachel, there's some people on our side saying some things that embarrass me.
I mean, the guy's not a pig.
He's not, he may be stupid.
He may be uninformed, but he's not a bad guy.
He just, I don't know.
I don't know.
Hell what.
If you are on hold, I want you to stay there.
I know we ask a lot of our callers.
They're on hold for a long time on this program.
But if you're there, it means that I want to talk to you.
And I really appreciate your patience.
First hour in the can, but we're coming right back, folks.
Loaded for bear.
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