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Aug. 24, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:37
August 24, 2012, Friday, Hour #2
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Hi folks, how are you?
Views expressed by the host on this program documented to be almost always 99.7% of the time right.
Broadcast excellent straight ahead.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
That's right.
And we'll get to the phones in earnest in this hour.
Telephone number 800-282-2882 and the email address lrushmo at EIBnet.com.
Open line Friday.
Pretty much no restrictions on the callers.
That's not the case Monday through Thursday.
Interesting story today from, what is this?
USA Today.
Obama has millions of fake Twitter followers.
Wait, do you hear this?
President Obama's Twitter account has 18.8 million followers, but more than half of them really don't exist.
According to reports, a new web tool has determined that 70% of Obama's crowd includes fake followers.
The New York Times even reports this in a story about how Twitter followers can be purchased.
The practice has become so widespread that Status People, a social media management company in London, released a web tool last month called the Fake Follower Check that it says can ascertain how many fake followers you and your friends have.
So they ran it on Obama's site.
And 70% of his 18.8 million Twitter followers don't exist.
Romney and Ryan in Michigan today, ladies and gentlemen, drawing a huge, huge crowd in Michigan.
Oh, by the way, by the way, time for a little cold water.
Rasmussen, Missouri.
Romney now trailing by a point over Obama.
That's Aiken fallout.
Aiken's at he's 10 points down, and now it's becoming a drag on the Romney cam, at least according to the polling data now in Missouri.
Just this, this USA Today story, all these fake Twitter followers, I'll bet you the same thing's true in all these polls that show Obama at 60% likability and all that kind of stuff.
Anyway, let's stay focused.
Romney and Ryan in Michigan.
Big, big crowd.
And here is Romney, I'm convinced, test driving something.
I think this line is a test drive.
I love being home in this place where Ann and I were raised, where both of us were born.
No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate.
know that this is the place that we were born and raised okay now you yeah yeah right on this you You can imagine the media is in a tizzy.
The media is in a tizzy.
There's a tweet here from Jan Crawford at CBS at Romney event.
Two reactions to his birth certificate joke.
Reporters gasped, and a crowd of thousands laughed and cheered.
And there's another tweet.
So this is from a guy named Philip Rucker who offers the context.
This is Romney spoke of his birth certificate just minutes after Ryan reminded the crowd of Obama's 08 cling to guns and religion quote.
So Ryan's out there talking about Obama and his bitter clinger quote.
And Romney gets up to the microphone.
It's his turn to speak and he test drives that line about nobody has ever had to ask to see his birth certificate.
I'm going to tell you what, you know, I'm going to make a prediction for you.
It's going to be fascinating to watch.
The Obama bashing at the Republican convention is going to be delicious.
It's going to be five-star restaurant type stuff.
I mean, you're going to love it.
You are going to eat it up, all the Obama bashing.
And I'll bet you what's happening right now is the networks are trying to figure out how they can avoid airing any of it.
But it's going to be tough because, you know, Christie is going to be out there.
He'll be loaded for bear.
They're going to go ahead and nominate Romney on Monday, by the way, instead of Wednesday, just to get it done because of the hurricane.
Here's one more Romney bite from this afternoon: Commerce Township, Michigan.
We can compete with anyone in the world.
We will compete.
We will win.
And by the way, if we do those five things, we'll create 12 million jobs and finally see a rise in take-home pay.
And so, from our standpoint, we don't want four years of what we just had.
We want four years of what I just described: a brighter, more prosperous America with a strong and prosperous future.
I'm going to tell you, right, right.
If Romney and Ryan win, we're not going to need to wait for calendar 2013 to see movement.
If Romney and Ryan win, you're going to see immediate economic results.
You're going to see immediate changes, positive changes.
You wait.
There are a lot of businesses that do have some money.
They're sitting on it that don't feel comfortable expanding.
The more they make, the more that's going to be taken from them.
And then taxes are going up.
There's a lot of inactivity out there in the American private sector based simply on outrage and fear of what's in store if Obama wins another four years.
But, you know, this Obama bashing that's going to take place together.
Let me put something in perspective for you.
A lot of people, viewers, are going to hear it for the first time.
They haven't heard Obama bashing before.
The late-night comedians don't tell Obama jokes.
They're still out there saying there's nothing funny about the guy.
And in a way, that's true.
They're really, narcissists are not particularly funny people.
But they're covering for him.
Now, there's nothing really here, see here.
No big joke here.
A very serious guy, first black president.
How in the world do we make jokes about that?
So there hasn't been a whole lot of Obama criticism that the audience of the mainstream media has been exposed to.
At least not on their televisions, folks, not in their TVs.
And I think people are going to love it.
Just like this Dinesh D'Souza movie, 2016 Obama's America.
This movie is going gangbusters.
The Hollywood press is writing about this in a shocked and dismayed way.
Overflow crowds.
This movie is going to be on over 1,000 screens this weekend.
I wouldn't be surprised if Dinesh's movie is the third or maybe the second highest grossing box office movie of the weekend.
I'm not, I'm wouldn't be surprised.
Number three, I would not be surprised.
And stop and think, it's a documentary.
What's it up?
It's up against the Expendables 2.
By the way, folks, I saw Expendables 2.
You know, as a powerful, influential member of the media, I was sent my own personal copy by Sylvester Stallone.
Did you see The Expendables?
Did you like it?
Do you remember it?
This The Expendables 2, it's over-the-top funny.
It's got a lot of violence in it, but it's not offensive violence.
But you know what this thing really is?
It's got Schwarzenegger is in it.
Bruce Willis, Chuck Norris, what's it, Van Damme?
Right.
Jean-Claude Van Damme.
It's a stellar cast of all these guys who have played superheroes in previous movies, and there's a lot of inside baseball, inside jokes, self-deprecating humor.
In one instance, Bruce Willis and Schwarzenegger driving around in one of these little smart cars.
Schwarzenegger said, my shoe is bigger than this car.
And they're driving around an airport terminal shooting up bad guys.
And Schwarzenegger says, I'm back.
And Willis says, no, you're not back.
You've been back too many times.
My turn to be back.
It's just, it is, you have a smile on your face the whole time watching this movie.
It's camp, but the heroes, the winners, the good guys triumph over the bad guys.
It's a movie that 20 years ago was common.
American patriotism, good guys, tough guys make no excuses for being tough guys.
Make no excuses for drinking beer.
Make no excuses for being guys.
And they run out and they do whatever's necessary.
As I say, some of the stuff, I mean, it's almost comic book in a way, the violence, but it just adds to it.
I got a kick out of it.
Expendables 2.
That and Dinesh's movie, they're going to be probably the box office attraction.
But Dinesh's movie, I wouldn't be surprised if it comes in number three.
And people are seeing this that have never, ever been exposed to this kind of discussion or criticism or explanation, probably a better word, for who Obama is.
Much better done than Michael Moore.
Michael Moore's documentaries are filled with lies and deceit.
This stuff is top to bottom, honest, thorough.
If you haven't seen it and you got nothing to do this weekend, I'd go.
Check it out.
Yes, I've seen it, of course.
I had my own private link to the movie long before it was even on DVD for the screeners out there.
But the Expendables is just, it's fun.
It's one wouldn't call all these guys throwbacks, but some of them are.
It's just, you can't help.
Every good guy in this movie is a good guy.
And they're all guys, and they make no excuses for it.
And it's, as I say, some of the stunts and the violence are over the top and unbelievable, but it just adds to it.
And nothing to dislike about it.
Let me take a brief time out.
We'll come back since it's Open Line Friday.
Your phone calls are coming up, so stay where you are.
Okay, it's Open Line Friday, and that means making tracks to the little blinking lights here on the phones.
You never know what lurks there, particularly on Open Line Friday.
So Naples, Florida, Bob, you're up.
It's great to have you here, sir.
Hello.
Hello, Rush.
How are you?
I'm pretty good.
Thank you, sir.
Good.
Rush, this morning I was listening to Fox News, and Ed Rollins was on there, and he was talking about the campaign, and he made a backhand remark about Sarah Palin not having much substance when she was a VP candidate.
And it just kind of hit a raw nerve.
And I was just wondering where.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
I.
I didn't see Rollins on Fox.
Did he really say that?
Yes, sir.
He said they were talking about Ryan.
He said the difference between Ryan and Sarah Palin is Ryan has more substance when he was talking about how much the VP was going to help.
All right.
But wait a minute.
The first thing you said was that Ed Rollins said Sarah Palin didn't bring much substance.
That's different than saying Ryan has more.
Well, I just, I want to get, how truthful is it to say that Rollins insulted Palin?
That's how you took it?
Yes, I did, because he said that Ryan brings more than Sarah Palin did to the VP candidacy.
So I just took that as a backhanded slap at her.
And I just wondered, basically.
Ryan has more substance than Obama.
Ryan has more substance than anybody.
Well, he was referring to Sarah, so that's what really kind of pushed my tail.
But I was just wondering what's going on?
Where is she as far as this convention?
Nobody is talking about why she's not being asked.
Has she been just forced out or what?
Well, no.
I don't know.
She has written on her Facebook page about it, and it was somewhat vague.
She simply said that she wasn't going and that this convention, it's time for let others have the microphone.
It didn't seem that she was bitter.
She did not say she had not been invited.
She didn't say that she turned down an invitation.
So best I know is that she's just not going, but I don't know why.
And her Facebook post was not the way I read it, it wasn't bitter about it.
She was trying, in fact, be positive about the people who were going to be there speaking.
Well, I just was wondering because, I mean, you take Bobby Jindal, I'm not knocking any of them, but none of these people could go anywhere like into Texas and pull for an underdog candidate like Sarah did and bring him up on the winning end of it.
Yeah, it just seems to me that they've just forgotten that there's no question.
See, this is what you know.
This is what you bring to the equation.
You know that the establishment Republicans don't like her.
You know that the Republican consultants community, the advisors to candidates, they don't like her.
The McCain people have tried to trust.
So you know all of that.
And when she doesn't go to the convention, you are assuming that they're insulting her and not inviting her.
It's a logical assumption to make, except I don't know that that's what happened.
It's a logical assumption to make that the establishment leaders of the party think she's a big negative and don't want her there, just like they think I'm a big negative and they wouldn't want me there because the independents get all riled up here and there's a time and place for everybody and at the convention.
We don't want natural, to think that.
But I don't know that that's the case and I'm not covering for anybody, I just don't know.
I don't want to answer your question.
No, I think she's a plus wherever she goes, pure and simple, she is a net plus for the Republican Party and she is working harder than any of them are to try to get decent, really qualified conservative candidates elected and I think she doesn't deserve the the treatment that she's gotten in any way shape, manner or form.
Uh, Don and Rancho Cucamanga, California.
Great to have you on open line Friday.
Hi oh, thank you.
I'm glad I finally got through to you Rush listen I, I come from a real staunch Democrat family, from my grandfather to my father.
My father was president of Democrats United.
He was on the Democratic Central Committee here in California and we, our whole family, just blindly been voted Democratic.
You know, and I've been listening to you for about eight or nine months and, Rush gosh, I thank you so much for opening my eyes.
I just thank God that that you're on the air and you know I'm trying to write letters to some of my family to get them to to listen to you and get their eyes open to what's going on.
I love this country and you know I Don.
What was it that opened your eyes?
I mean, I know listening here is what you're saying and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I appreciate that.
But what you've been you and your family, Democrats for generations the last eight to nine months and you're amazed at what you've learned right, you're amazed at what you didn't know about Obama.
Am I ever?
I am just like I said Rush, we just blindly voted Democrat, like as if you were raised Catholic.
You're Catholic, you know and and so on, and you know the education that I've gotten from listening to you.
It's overwhelming and I don't want this country to go down the tubes and I'm afraid that's where we're headed and you know if, if we don't, this is a major turnaround for you.
After eight and nine, can you imagine?
Do you ever stop to think how disappointed you are not, having discussed this, discovered this show 20 years ago instead of eight to nine months ago.
Yeah, exactly exactly, and I don't know why, because I was a long-haul truck driver all my life and listened to radio most of the time and I don't know how I didn't get hooked up to you, but I'm sure glad I did.
You're your affiliate out here in LA KFI.
I listened to and and I, since I've retired, I'm listening to radio, you know, and the talk shows and you come on and you know.
I started listening and sir, I gosh The things that I didn't know.
I know exactly how you feel.
Whenever I learn anything, particularly that is something diametrically opposed to what I thought, it's earth-shattering.
But it's like a light going off, a big light going off.
And you want to know more.
You want to learn more.
I've been where you are, and I really thank you and appreciate the fact that you got in and tell me this.
You made my day.
I really do appreciate it.
That's Don and Rancho Kukamanga, California.
We will be right back.
Okay, I am told that Sarah Palin was offered a chance to speak at the convention, but that they never were able to put together a specific day and time slot.
So apparently she was offered a prime prime spot, but for some reason, it never got past negotiations to an actual time slot and date.
So, best I can do.
What else was Gloria in Vero Beach, Florida?
Great to have you open line Friday.
Hello.
Hi, Mr. Raj.
Yes, it is.
It's such a pleasure to talk to you.
Thank you.
I really commend that last gentleman that you talked to.
He just sounds so sincere, and I really respect him so much.
But what I was going to get to is Obama's catering to all these college students and promising them anything they want to hear.
But these brilliant students aren't really realizing when they get out of college that they're going to have to pay back all the student loans and the private loans, but also the Obama health cap taxes.
And these guys are going to be stuck for that the rest of their life, and they've got to pay the taxes before they pay the student loans.
Well, if I may interject here, I actually think that more college students than you are aware are frosted over this.
I think they're very much aware of how much in debt they are.
And many of them are starting to question whether it was even worth it to go to college because there aren't any jobs.
So they go to college, they get educated, some of them in worthless majors, by the way.
Then they come out with anywhere from $20,000 to $200,000 in student loan debt, which is now totally run by Obama and the federal government, with just a couple of three exceptions.
The government runs the whole thing.
We had a story yesterday.
I can't remember the, it was a poll, and I don't remember the group, but it indicated that the millennials, the ages 18 to 29, are just fed up with the job circumstance that they face, the economy, and that they're going to vote in droves in numbers 50% higher than they did in 2008.
They're going to have to pay back what we owe to China.
I think a lot of college kids are profoundly aware of it.
They've been showing up on television.
I'll tell you what to fear, Gloria, if you want to be worried about something.
And Obama's even alluded to this already, but I wouldn't be surprised if sometime in October, Obama and may even spring it in a debate.
I don't know.
But float the possibility that he knows how tough it is out there.
And this economy was so much worse than anybody knew that he and Biden inherited this mess that Bush and Cheney never were honest about.
It's that bad.
And their policies, they're working.
It's just, boy, if we hadn't done the stimulus, if we hadn't done this, you think it's bad now, you don't know how bad it'd be.
Our policies have actually done magic.
But still, it's really tough out there.
So he'll float the idea of forgiving the student loans or writing off the interest or whatever to make these college kids think that if he's elected, their debt will go away.
And I wouldn't be surprised if he does the same thing with mortgages.
Offer people whose homes are underwater the idea that the federal government will just pay it for them.
He's capable of anything, and it's what he wants people to think that's going to happen to them anyway.
That's what he wants people thinking of when they think government.
Pay off the mortgage, pay off student loan, take care of stuff like this.
That's what the government's for.
That's what being an American is.
Being an American means you don't go into debt.
Being an American means that banks can't screw you.
Being an American means that Obama's government's going to take care of all of us who get ripped off by a corner drugstore to big mall and the bank.
There are a lot of arrows still left in Obama's quiver that he can pull out of here.
And he'll do it as we get closer to the election.
The story in the New York Times: big income losses for those near retirement.
Americans nearing retirement age.
What is retirement age now?
I mean, I know it differs from person to person.
What is the retirement age?
65, 55, 50, 40?
60.
Well, Americans nearing retirement age have suffered disproportionately after the financial crisis.
Along with the declining value of their homes, which were intended to cushion their final years, their incomes now have fallen sharply.
The typical household income for people 55 to 64 is almost 10% less in today's dollars than it was when the recovery began three years ago.
This is all according to a new report from Centier Research, S-E-N-T-I-E-R, Centier, Centier, Centure, however they pronounce it.
They are a data analysis company, specializes in demographic and income data.
Across the country, almost every demographic, Americans earn less today than they did in June of 2009 when the recovery technically started.
Now, stop and think of that.
That's not Bush, by the way.
This is the Obama recovery.
By everybody's definition, by the media's definition of Democrat, it's Obama's recovery.
You can't escape the word recovery in every news story on the economy.
The jobs numbers.
And news that could provide disappointing news for the ongoing economic recovery.
So everybody acknowledges we've been in an economic recovery since June of 2009.
Obama emaculated in January 2009.
So to hell with Bush and to hell with all that stuff that Obama wants to blame it on, incomes have fallen since the recovery began.
Since the regime began.
Typical household income for people 55 to 64, 10% less in today's dollars than it was when the recovery officially began three years ago.
Younger Americans have also felt income declines in the three years since the recovery began.
Black Americans appear to have suffered the most.
Across the country, almost every demographic, Americans earn less today than they did in June of 2009.
And according to this report, black Americans appear to have suffered the most.
What do you mean it's racist?
I can't say that.
Why?
Why is it racist to say black Americans appear to have, oh, because Obama's black?
Well, if he didn't do it and they didn't do it, who did it?
Oh, Bush did it.
Okay.
I got Rick Warren.
You remember Rick Warren, the big confab between Obama and McCain back in 2008?
I remembered that.
I remember what.
McCain did really well in that thing, by the way.
McCain was smoking in that thing.
But the whole thing ticked me off anyway because what everybody wanted to do in 2008 was stand in the light of Obama.
That's when everybody was buying into all this messianic stuff.
Everybody thought we had somebody brand new, unlike anything we'd ever had in politics before.
And I disagreed.
To me, Obama was just the next liberal to come down the pike.
And if you know one liberal, you know them all.
And there's no such thing as a new one.
And no such thing as some liberal like we've never seen before.
We've seen every extreme.
I mean, the differences in Obama are not ideological.
Well, he perhaps maybe is more extreme and more radical than some of the others.
But still, there was, and I just, I really winced when I see people falling for the image that everybody was.
And I thought Rick Warren fell for it.
I thought Rick Warren was like everybody else.
Okay, here's a chance for me to get my church in the news, get me in the news.
I'll have Obama here.
That'll be cool.
Well, you know how all of you feel about Aiken destroying a country.
That's how I felt about people sidling up to Obama in 2008.
It's the same way.
Well, anyway, Rick Warren has canceled this year's version of that thing of his forum at the Saddleback Church.
And he was asked, he said, you canceled the presidential civil forum because of the negativity and the lack of civility in the discourse out there at a larger issue.
What's that?
And Warren said it's the crumbling of our Constitution's first guaranteed freedom, the freedom of religion.
This issue is more significant, has far greater implications for America's future.
People have forgotten that America was founded by people who came here to escape religious persecution.
Freedom of religion is the first freedom.
Mention of the Bill of Rights.
It comes before freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to assemble, every other freedom.
And yet today at the city, state, and federal levels, government bureaucrats are daily trying to limit that freedom, impose restrictions, and stifle expressions of faith.
It's one guy doing this, and his part is Barack Obama.
It's Barack Obama, the Democrat Party.
See, my point is that this could have been known back in 2008.
It was known.
He's a liberal.
This is what they believe.
He hasn't changed.
Everybody who thinks, well, this Obama guy, you know, four years ago, he was really cool.
Now, look, he's the same guy.
It's what's been frustrating.
Anyway, I welcome it when anybody sees the light.
I do.
I just wish Todd Aiken would since I brought that up.
Okay, we go back to the phones open line Friday.
JR, Madison, Wisconsin.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Hello.
Hey, Mega Ditto's Rush from behind the cheddar curtain in Madison, Wisconsin.
Thank you, sir.
I was remembering when I first heard you quite a few years ago back in the late 80s, and not only remember where I was at, but I remembered what you were saying and some of the things that helped me start a business and do some things that put me in a place where I'm at today.
Things like self-reliance, individualism, and most importantly would be when there's a recession or the chips are down that you don't have to participate in it if you pull yourself up by the bootstraps and get it on.
Exactly.
Now, how did you feel when the president told you back on July 13th that you didn't do any of that?
Well, yeah, obviously, you know, that's not the case.
But, you know, when I started the business and started things rolling, it just infuriates me and a lot of people that are around.
I mean, I think you're going to have a big surprise when election time comes around because these polls don't mean anything.
According to Obama, you owe me a certain percentage of the profits because if it weren't for me, you wouldn't have done what you did.
You just said so.
Yeah, well, believe me, they are taking it already.
They just don't know it.
Anybody that's in business realizes the impact that government has when they keep taking.
They're the first ones to take and the second ones to take.
But, you know, hard work and, you know, just, you know, being self-reliant, and it's really important that you just got to get in there, find out what your passion is, as you always said, and then go after it because it's there for you.
And I think people are going to have a lot of opportunities when Obama gets tossed out and we get some fresh ideas in there.
You just talk about self-reliance and all that.
What is your philosophy on setting goals for yourself?
Well, aim high.
Aim high, and things are obtainable, and it might seem like the chips are down, especially in the Madison area, it's always negative news all the time, and they feed off of that negative energy.
You know, let me tell you something.
Wisconsin is case number one why nobody should believe negative polls.
Not after what happened in Wisconsin with Scott Walker and the recall.
That's a great example of how people ought not listen.
And you said at the beginning of your call, you think these polls are way off.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think when Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan get in there, I mean, they're going to be like a fox in the hen house.
It's going to be easy to clean some stuff out of here and get things on the right track.
If anybody's ever considered starting a business, when this thing turns over, things are at the bottom.
Things are going to turn around.
I mean, we just need to stop the bleeding right now.
Get rid of this guy and start moving forward.
But, you know, aim high with goals.
And, you know, listen to your show.
I'll tell you what, there's a lot of good things in there, and people just need to listen and believe that they can do it and believe in themselves.
It's huge.
I thank you so much for being able to voice that.
You just don't get that in this area hardly at all.
So thank you.
Thank you, JR.
I really appreciate it.
More than you know.
And continued good fortune to you.
Here is Eric in Conover, North Carolina.
Hello.
Hey, Rush.
Hey.
I'm actually in Lenoir today.
I'm on the road, but I'm from Conover.
App business grad and Christian school parent dittos to you.
I appreciate it.
I just have two points that I can't believe that they're not being discussed or brought out with Obama, Mr. Blaine, president, trying to not take responsibility for what's going on.
If you remember, and you're the one, one of the ones that talked about it, when Obama became the clear nominee in May of 2008, the stock market was over 13,000, if I'm right.
And at that point, the stock market began to fall when it became clear that Obama was probably going to be the nominee.
Not because he had taken control, but because we knew with your education of the public what he was about.
And the same thing started happening with unemployment.
It started going, unemployment started going through the roof in October and particularly November after Obama won.
No, you're exactly right about that.
Businesses started hiding.
They started retreating.
They started getting conservative in their decision-making because they knew the storm was coming.
Or at least smart businessmen did.
Since you're bringing up the stock market, since you're bringing up the stock market when Obama was nominated, anybody remember what the gasoline price was when Obama was emaculated?
Try under two bucks.
And now it's over $4, back up to $4 in California and in other places.
And that's got to be the comparison.
When he was emaculated, what was the gas price?
What is it?
This week, folks.
I had a story from AP.
And you know what it said?
Gas price over $4, but people don't care now.
Just not that big a deal to people anymore.
It's an amazing thing.
Nothing to see here.
Let's talk about how Romney killed a guy's wife.
Well, compare it now to when Obama was emaculated, everything else, and it's utter disaster.
Okay, folks, we've got to take a brief time out here at the top of the regroup and come back with our final big, busy broadcast hour on today's edition of Open Line Friday.
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