Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
One big exciting broadcast hour remains.
Telephone number 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, the email address L Rushbaugh at EIB net.com.
Open line Friday, but I haven't explained this yet today, but I assume you know, but just for those of you new.
Monday through Thursday, callers have to talk about what I care about or say don't get on the air because I don't want to sit here and be bored.
Well on Friday, broom that and whatever you want to talk about's fine.
Even if it does bore me, I will fake it.
Act like I care or I won't.
However I feel.
Whatever you want to talk about on Friday is fine.
We always try to take more phone calls on Friday as well.
So again, the number's 800-282-2882.
This rising gas prices business.
I had a a memory jog during the break.
So I went back and searched our own broadcast archives.
You remember all those stories that the rising gas price didn't matter to you anymore?
Remember all of those stories that like this?
Reuters, Wednesday, August 22nd.
Rising gas prices, not a big concern for voters.
By John Whitesides.
CNN's Money.com.
Rising gas prices aren't as bad as you think.
March twenty-first, two thousand twelve.
And there were a bunch more.
And we marveled at it just as there were stories in the mid-90s that Clinton was president.
lying is actually good for us now.
The little white lie is actually really good.
They spare people's feelings and nobody gets hurt.
Actually, it's it's a it's a cool thing to lie.
Because Bill Clinton was.
And gas prices, and remember when unemployment started skyrocketing under Obama, we had stories about, you know, this is actually good.
Families are finding each other again.
Families are finding one another.
Uh and we actually had a new word coined by the media, fun employment, to describe all of the discovery people were experiencing as they didn't have jobs.
Able to work on their hobbies, they didn't have to have to worry about being paid, none of the pressures of showing up every day at the same place at the same time.
There were there were stories galore about the expanded opportunities for you if you lost your job, and and how people were reveling in this new way of life in America.
And by the same token, we had these stories on gasoline prices going up and how it wasn't a big concern for you.
That's Reuters in August.
CNN in August, rising gas prices aren't as bad as you think.
It's for those of you who tell us there isn't any media bias.
And then March 21st, 2012.
I'm sorry, in 2006, New York Times, Democrats eager to exploit anger over gas prices.
Michael Janowski, April 24th, 2006.
so So we had we can go back and we can find all the stories of rising gas prices during Bush and how you were angry, how you were enraged, and we can find stories of gas prices going up in the last three years.
It wasn't a big deal to you.
Rising gas prices aren't as bad as you think.
Rising gas prices, not a big concern to voters.
Losing your job?
That's more family time.
That's more time for you to explore your hobby.
I'm sure you remember all this now that I jog your memory.
By the way, cookie found the bite.
This is uh June 10th of 2008, CNBC.
Your money, your vote.
The chief Washington correspondent John Harwood is interviewing Obama.
And Harwood's question.
Could the high prices actually help us?
Now Harwood is speaking here to Obama as an equal.
As though they're both on the same team, which of course they are.
Now, Harwood, if he were here.
No, no, no, I meant us being America.
Yeah, right, John.
We watch you every day.
We know how you vote.
President Obama, could the high gasoline prices help us?
I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment.
The fact that this is such a shock to American pocketbooks is not a good thing.
But if we take some steps right now to uh help people make the adjustment, first of all by putting more money into their pockets, but also by encouraging the market to adapt to these new circumstances more quickly, particularly U.S. automakers.
Right there, Obama was saying high gas prices are fine since 2008.
In June, he'd not been elected yet during the campaign.
High gas prices, fine.
Fine, because that would make people adapt to alternative energy sooner.
And that's what Harwood was eliciting.
An eager beaver journalist collaborator.
Mr. Pencey, Mr. President, could the gas prices help us?
Could the high prices help us?
Huh?
Huh?
And then the professorial, brilliant Obama.
Well, yeah, I gradual adjustment, I'd prefer go a little slower, but the fact it's going up is fine.
And uh, if it gets high enough, then uh people will be more uh car makers too.
Uh be more inclined to uh use alternatives.
Well I'm not inferring, I'm inferring that our president doesn't.
I'm talking to Chester.
He our president doesn't care about rising gas prices.
Chester calls here and he says it's costing him sixty two hundred dollars a year, additional.
And I told him that's the plan.
You're supposed to suffer.
It's supposed to get you back on mass transit, it's supposed to have you be more accepting of alternative energy.
See, alternative energy right now doesn't make any economic sense.
There isn't any to speak of.
But Obama still loves it because in his alternative universe utopian freaking world, windmills and solar are the answer to everything, including hunger, strife, death, taxes, whatever.
Well, there isn't any.
It doesn't exist for all intents and purposes.
But he still wants you in it.
So if gasoline gets up ten bucks a gallon, eight bucks a gallon, and that's more in line with what alternative energy is, then alternative energy becomes more acceptable.
You don't care what costs you.
Obama phone.
What about Romney?
He sucked.
Obama phone.
That's how you handle it.
Call Obama, say you're on disability on food stamps, he applauds and sends you a phone.
Where he can then call you and tell you when to vote and how many times.
Or whatever.
I'm just telling you, rising gas prices, bottom line, that's the plan.
Economic suffering is the plan.
Old Chester's got too many cars.
He doesn't deserve that.
He's not entitled to that many cars.
Doesn't matter if he worked hard and got the money to pay for them himself.
It's not fair.
He shouldn't have that.
Nobody needs that many cars, particularly when their people only have two.
Or in some cases don't have any.
This is not right.
Here's Obama last December 23rd.
It's on ABC News, Trinchy Chinchy with Barbara Walters.
And they're talking about the president's personality traits.
What's the trait you most deplore in yourself and the trait you most deplore in others?
Laziness.
You're lazy?
You know, it's interesting.
There is a deep down underneath all the work I do.
I think there's a laziness in me.
I mean, it's it's probably from growing up in Hawaii, and it's sunny outside and sitting on the beach.
He said it himself.
So what's the problem with Sununu saying it?
He's lazy.
Deep down underneath all the work I do.
There's a laziness in me.
It's probably from growing up in Hawaii.
Sunny outside sitting on a beach listening to Frank Marshall Davis telling me how wonderful communism is.
Yeah.
So what's the big deal with with Sununu saying it?
Now we move on to Vice President Bike Me.
He was in Council Bluff's Iowa yesterday.
Just a portion of what the vice president.
I thought they were actually trying to keep this guy sequestered until the debate with Ryan.
He must have gotten out of the cage.
On top of the trillion dollars of spending we've already cut, we're gonna ask, yes.
We're gonna ask the wealthy to pay more.
My heart breaks.
Come on, man.
You know the phrase they always use.
Obama and Biden want to raise taxes by a trillion dollars.
Guess what?
Yes, we do in one regard.
We want to let that trillion dollar tax cut expire so the middle class doesn't have to bear the burden of all that money going to the super wealthy.
That's not a tax raise, Rob.
That's called fairness, where I come from.
Okay.
Now the sad thing here is that I'm sure every derelict in that crowd agreed with him.
I I don't even know where to start with it.
He's actually wants that crowd at that rally.
Anybody else who hears this to understand that he and Obama can't wait for a trillion dollar tax increase on the wealthy.
Come on, man, my heart breaks for him.
Screw the rich, which is what we intend to do.
Come on, man, my heart breaks.
Guess what?
We're gonna let that trillion dollar tax cut expire so the middle class doesn't have to bear the burden.
All right, let me tell you what's gonna happen.
Here's what he's talking about.
If nothing happens, the current tax rates on everybody expire.
The current tax rates are erroneously called the Bush tax cuts.
They are 11 years old.
They are the existing tax rates.
And what is it, 35.9 or 5 for the upper bracket?
No, it's 35.
And it's gonna go up to 39.6, basically 40 percent.
If the Bush tax cuts expire, everybody's tax rates will go up to what they were in 2001.
Not just the rich, everybody's.
But let's for a moment say that only the rich rates were gonna go up from 36 to 40.
I want to know from people who are not in that tax bracket.
How does somebody experiencing a rate increase from 36 to 40 percent?
How in the world does that matter to you?
Terms of your back pocket, your take-home pay.
Because Biden says here, we want to let that tax cut expire so the middle class doesn't have to bear the burden of all that money going to the super wealthy.
So you see, you are supposed to be satisfied that the increased tax payments from the rich go to government.
That's supposed to make you happy.
The rich are getting screwed.
That's what they want you to think.
We're really showing them the shaft.
We're screwing them.
5% tax increase, 4% rate increase.
It doesn't matter.
It's not coming to you.
I I this this whole notion, this is just obscene to me.
And it's it's pathetically stupid.
I have a friend of mine in Delaware golf buddy who thinks Biden's the smartest guy's in.
I can't, I can't, I can't relate to that.
I just can't.
When I hear stuff like this is that how can anybody think this guy has an IQ over that of a pencil racer?
We want to let that trillion dollar tax cut expire so the middle class doesn't have to bear the burden of all that money going to the super wealth.
So somehow you're sitting out there paying whatever tax rate you are.
The rich are paying a 35 or 36% tax rate.
Somehow that's a burden on you.
Whatever the rich tax rate is a burden on you.
And so we're gonna raise the tax rate on the rich and somehow relax the burden on you.
How does that work?
How does anybody's taxes changing alter your life, your take home pay, your financial circumstances?
It doesn't.
But that's irrelevant because the fact is everybody's tax rates are going up on January 1st.
The Bush tax rates are not just for the rich.
I watched Rudy Giuliani on MSNBC after the debate.
And it was some they said he was a guy, the host.
They said he was a guy.
I'm it could have fooled me.
I don't remember the name.
Biggest dunce that it can make this this guy was believing that Rudy Giuliani was getting away with murder.
The Bush tax cuts.
He he what this guy's point was that Rudy Giuliani wanted the tax rate stay the same because that would equal a big tax cut for the rich.
And Rudy said, I don't understand.
The rate is 36%.
If it doesn't change, how's it a tax cut?
And this kid, who had been totally indoctrinated and programmed by whatever journalism school or whatever school he went to had no answer for it.
Because in his world, the Bush tax cuts not expiring equals a tax cut for the rich.
It makes no sense whatsoever.
Then this little kid, think he was a guy, started accusing Giuliani of having secret contracts with Homeland Security.
And that's why he was interested in the Bush tax rates changing so he would get a tax cut.
And Rudy was pulling out what little hair he's got left.
He doesn't have much left.
Rudy couldn't believe all he used to he it was beside himself.
Couldn't believe he was talking to me so stupid.
Rudy didn't know how to make himself dumb enough to talk to this kid.
It's difficult enough for me to repeat it.
It was so stupid, I'm not sure I've got it right.
And I've got it right.
This kid thought that the tax rate saying this if the Bush tax cuts don't expire, they stay the same.
So I don't care what his name is.
36% is what it is.
If it doesn't change, if the if the Bush tax cuts don't expire, which they didn't, they were supposed to in twin 2010, and Obama knew that if the tax rates went up, that would be bad for the economy, so he extended the Bush tax rates.
The left calls on the Bush tax cuts, but they're the existing tax rates for 11 years.
If those tax rates don't expire, everything stays the same.
Somehow that becomes a tax cut.
We gotta take a break here.
Don't don't don't go.
And we're back.
Open line Friday, Rush Limbaugh and the excellence in broadcasting networks.
Who's next?
Colorado Springs, this is Jeff.
I'm glad you waited.
Uh welcome to the program, sir.
Hello.
Hey, thank you, Rush.
I just want to say uh I hope I don't bore you first of all, but thank you for converting my wife.
Wow.
That's major.
That's major.
Yeah, she's a registered Democrat.
She voted for Obama in 08, and uh despite all my warnings by listening to you of what's gonna happen.
Uh she's seen everything that you've predicted come true, and for the last four years, I just I listen to your show and I take back everything you say to her, and she said, I am voting for Romney, and how do I change my party affiliation?
Oh, so she does mean it.
She's not just saying that to get you off her back.
No, no, not at all.
Nope, she means it.
She's actually seriously seriously contemplated, changing her party and want to deregister as Democrat and become Republican.
That's why we're here.
Bring people to the light.
Yep.
And you do a great job every day.
Thank you so much.
You bet it.
I I I really appreciate that.
I really do.
Thanks.
Uh thanks so much.
I'm sitting here.
Folks, remember when Obama said we can't drive our SUV as much as we want to eat all we want and set the serma thermos at 72 degrees.
Um the rest of the world won't like that, or the rest of the world that that that's not leadership or something.
You remember that quote.
So here we are.
We're getting closer, closer to the election.
All we're getting now is a rerun of 2008 and that campaign.
And the uh and the elements of it.
As though, as though Obama has never served, as though he's not been president, he's never been in the White House.
Which might be the case in terms of I know he's been president, but he's not there much.
Who's next?
Where are we headed on the phones?
This is Sue.
Oh, that's right.
There's not enough time.
Uh the clock got just away from me there for a moment.
Not enough time to be fair with uh with another caller.
But it is Sue in Cincinnati.
And she's got a good point about uh the unemployment numbers.
Also, the next football coach to be in the crosshairs is the defensive coordinator to Tennessee Titans, apparently.
I'll have the details.
Not quite a bounty program, but we're getting close, maybe.
Okay.
Uh just a couple quick things here.
First of political, Jim Lara says he was effective as presidential debate moderator.
There's one story.
Jim Lara says he was effective.
DC examiner, PBS CEO doesn't defend Jim Lara debate moderator.
And listen to this.
PBS CEO Paula Kirger, maybe Kerger, I don't know how she pronounces it, refused to defend PBS host Jim Lara's debate performance, even failing to push back against the idea that Lara is too old and too white for the job.
Whoa.
Can you believe Jim Lara being called too white for the job?
And that's reserved for people like me.
But to call an accredited left-wing establishment elite liberal too white.
Apparently there's some criticism of Jim Lara that he's too old and he's too white.
And the PBS CEO refused to defend him on that.
It's a very complicated debate structure, and you saw uh uh uh you saw that, I think, uh, in the debate last night, Kirger said, uh, when asked to evaluate Lara.
Carol Costello asked whether Lara should have been doing the job in the first place.
There was some criticism when Jim Lara was initially named to be a moderator, said Carol Costello.
People said, Oh, another white guy, too old to be doing this.
We live in a new world.
We don't need an old-fashioned journalist doing these things any longer.
And the CEO PBS let that slide.
Again, I think it was a complicated structure for the debate.
How low are we sinking in this stupid culture when I mean of all the Jim Lara is not too white and too old?
That's my gosh.
I just nothing to do with it.
He is the fact that he's white has nothing to do with it at all.
And and neither does his age, I don't think.
Unless unless his age is he's slobbering up there and drooling and and doesn't know where he is, but that's not the case.
I don't what?
This is the thing.
Here's Carol Costello.
Who the hell is Carol's Costello?
Hey, Carol, you know, I look at you, I say, Eat!
You look like a cadaver.
Does that disqualify you from being on CNN?
Jim Larer, too old and too white.
Well, it's just as ridiculous, isn't it?
Snerdle, I can't believe you're describing Carol Cos.
That's the point.
Anyway, and to the rescue was Fred Barnes.
Fred Barnes here in the in uh DC uh uh uh Fred Barnes Weekly Standard.
Jim Lara, model debate moderator.
He's just the right age and just the right shade of white.
Nothing wrong.
So there.
Now, you know, I I I keep up a National Football League, and I'm keeping up with it this year uh with a different lens.
Because you are aware I have made known the concerns I have about this game and where it's and now that the left has gotten their hooks in it.
It's too dangerous, calls for banning the game in high school and so forth.
And lo and behold, there is a story uh uh in the in the National Tennessean, Jim Wyatt covers the beat, the Tennessee Titans.
And the defensive coordinator for the Titans has said some things here that don't sit well, apparently, with some in the National Football League.
Maybe the journalists are not.
But here's here's what he says.
Name uh is Jerry Gray.
Jerry Gray is a defensive coordinator for the Titans, the the former Houston Oilers.
Gray told Jim Wyatt of the National Tennessean that he wants his guys to play without worrying about fines.
Quote, if you're worrying about fines, you're not gonna go out and try to blow the other guy up.
Great football players have to put that out of their mind.
You have to say this in my territory between the numbers, and if you throw the football, you better go get the gator truck.
Well, that has sent up red flags.
The ever eager sports media just waiting to spot the next overzealous, inhumane football coach is zeroing in on that comment.
Do you know why?
You know what the gator truck is, Snurdly?
The gator truck is the green cart that they use to take the injured off the field.
So the defensive coordinator to Tennessee Titans just said that he tells his players, don't worry about fines.
This is my territory between the numbers, and if you throw the football, you better bring the gator truck.
I want my guys knowing that I I I want my opponents thinking if they come into my guy's territory, we're gonna need the gator truck.
Well, that is being translated in the new NFL to meaning that the defensive coordinator of the Titans is encouraging his owners to our players to injure opposing players.
And so I'm just telling you, just telling you, I don't know it yet, but I I it won't surprise me if this poor guy in Tennessee becomes the next Greg Williams target.
How long will it be before we hear the apology?
Oh, of course not.
I'm not encouraging my players to injure the opponents, no way.
That's just the way we in the game talk.
Not anymore.
It could be nothing, too.
Could be nothing.
I just with the heightened sensitivity everybody has about this now, keep a sharp eye.
Okay, here's Sue in Cincinnati, and I'm glad again I appreciate your patience.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
Pleasure to talk to you.
Thank you for taking my call.
You bet my pleasure.
And thank you just for being our voice and giving voice to our passions.
Um my point is um during the RNC convention, I couldn't help noticing how many uh states were to Republican governors were touting their dropping unemployment numbers.
And I had the thought then that boy, if uh the national average does begin to drop before the election, who's gonna get the credit but Obama?
But the credit really belongs to the states that are in cl Uh putting in good policies because of their governors.
Yeah, but these guys today didn't even cite that.
No, they wouldn't.
They didn't cite the real job creation going on in the States.
Wisconsin's one.
Um what about what about is Ohio the job improvement?
Ohio's d has dropped somewhat.
I couldn't tell you the exact one.
But we all know North that North Dakota's going nuts because they all boom, but I guess a Democrat governor, if I'm not mistaken.
I think I remember Oklahoma hearing they were way down.
Oh, yeah, Oklahoma, too.
Yeah.
But that's as far as Washington skins, Oklahoma, not even the country.
Yeah, that's a good one.
Oh, see.
Well, you have a you it's a good point.
Thank you.
Virginia?
Virginia looks pretty good, Bob McConnell.
But that, see, that's D.C., that's a D.C. suburbs.
That's government.
And and employment there is great.
Unemployment in the federal government is four percent.
That's that's uh the the full-time jobs being added.
A lot of them are federal government jobs, if you want to.
And guess what?
Guess what we learned today from the Washington free beacon.
I just saw this on Drudge.
It's probably been up there a while and I just missed it.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is the outfit that puts out the unemployment numbers.
And we learned today that two of the leading economists at the BLS are big Obama donors.
Now, wait, doesn't mean anything.
Of course not.
Nothing to see there.
Two leading economists at the BLS just happened to come up with a miraculous way of lowering the unemployment rate four-tenths of a point, or was it three?
I think it was three-tenths of a point.
I think it was 8.1 to 7.8.
In the month before the election.
Move on, folks.
Nothing to see here.
Nothing to see.
And I am I'm back here.
Half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
L Rushball watching Obama in Cleveland now in the rain at a campaign appearance, repeating everything he said in Virginia this morning.
And it's it's it's it's filled with just uh pure didn't stop the rain.
Pure idiocy.
We have to, we have to.
We have to increase enrollment at junior college about two million to bring down tuition costs.
What?
You increase enrollment two million at junior college to bring down tuition costs?
These idiots in the crowd applaud.
You know, there are people in big bird suits uh showing up at Romney events.
You know, if I you know what?
If if I were around me campaign, I get a bunch of people dressed up as Jim Lara and show up at Obama events.
Okay.
He also repeated this lie that Romney wants to cut taxes for the rich five trillion dollars.
Nobody has ever proposed that.
The only guy who has any relationship to five trillion dollars in this country is Obama, and he spent it and added it to the national debt.
Last night on Aaron Burnett out front on CNN, she interviewed Stephanie Cutter, who is the chief spokesbabe for Obama Biden.
She said here at CNN, we fact-checked that five trillion dollars in tax cut line, and we've we we've come up Stephanie, that just isn't true.
Mitt Romney has not promised that because he's gonna be closing loopholes and deductions.
His tax cut wouldn't be anywhere near that size, Stephanie.
He's campaigned on lowering tax rates by 20 percent for everybody, including those in the top one percent.
That was one of the main selling points in the Republican primary.
Right, so you're saying if you lower them by 20 percent, you get you get a twenty five trillion dollar tab, right?
It's a five trillion dollar tab.
But then, when you say he's a document, it's not gonna be anywhere near five trillion dollars.
That's our analysis.
Well, okay, stipulated.
It won't be near five trillion dollars, but it's also not going to be the sum of five trillion dollars and the loophole says he's gonna close.
So it is gonna cost someone, and it's gonna cost the middle class.
So Aaron Burnett's Stephanie, you ain't gonna be five trillion.
Okay, okay, it won't be five trillion.
So she's admitted there's no five trillion dollar tax cut.
CNN went and checked it.
I don't even know why they wasted their time.
Does anybody believe $5 trillion tax cut?
I mean, even if you want to say it's over 10 years.
Here's Obama.
I mentioned this.
Cookie found the exact quote, June 10th, 2008, CNBC.
Your money, your vote.
John Harwood.
No.
Wrong.
Oh, wrong piece of paper.
I got too many pieces of paper.
It's it is 2008, May 18th.
Sound by 32.
Roseburg, Oregon, during a campaign rally.
Here is Senator Obama.
We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times.
And whether we're living in a desert or we're living in the tundra, and then just expect that every other country is going to say, okay, you know, you guys go ahead and keep on using 25% of the world's energy, even though you only account for 3% of the population, and we'll we'll be fine.
Don't worry about us.
That's not leadership.
That's the Obama campaign 2008.
I find it fascinating that in listening to him today, we're going back and finding sound bites in 2008 that he has said to explain and justify what's happened.
Rising gas prices.
He was in favor of it.
And here, for those of you worried about it, Obama is fine.
We can't keep driving our SUV.
We can't eat as much as we want.
We can't keep our home some two to 72 degrees, no matter where we live, and just expect other countries to say okay.
So I'm just telling you, what is happening now is what was intended to happen.
We're going back and playing tapes, highlights from the 2008 campaign.
It's also interesting that stuff from the 2008 campaign is relevant.
today.
Reuters has just released the following statistic.
One in five voters.
That would be 20% for those of you in Rio Linda.
One in five voters said that Obama's performance in the debate in Denver on Wednesday made them feel more negative about Obama.
Only one in five.
That's all, according to Reuters.
Folks, have a great, great weekend and enjoy yourselves, and we'll be back here on Monday.