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Nov. 20, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:32
November 20, 2012, Tuesday, Hour #3
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And we are back exactly as promised.
And as you expect, El Rushbo meeting ends surpassing all audience expectations every day.
That's right.
We do it every day here in the EIB network.
The Rush Limbaugh program, the most listened-to radio talk show in the country.
And we're glad to have you here.
Telephone numbers 800-282-2882, the email address El Rushbo at EIBnet.com.
So people, what are you talking about, this union stuff?
Here's a couple of them.
CBS LA, thousands of LAX workers set for walkout on Thanksgiving Eve.
Employees at LA International considering plans Friday to walk off the job ahead of what's the traditional busiest traveling day of the year.
The director of the Southern California Airports Division of the Service Employees International Union said that more than 400 LAX workers who do not have affordable family health care are going to walk off the job because the city didn't comply with the living wage ordinance.
What are these people unhappy about?
They just won the election.
They ought to be dancing in the streets and happy.
They're miserable.
And I don't know what they're trying to do here.
Get more members, just make life a living hell for people.
One of the two, but this is what this is their modus operandi.
I mean, and they are such a minority in this country.
Then CNN from New York, a Walmart workers group, prepares to stage a walkout on Black Friday.
The world's largest store is fighting back.
Walmart has, do you know that most Walmart campaign money went to Obama?
I just saw that, and I did a double take when I saw that.
And I'm going to have to check that again.
I've got to double-check that.
I mean, it was hundreds of thousands.
And what I saw, 80%, I think, went to Obama.
I might be confusing it, but it stood out.
So I will, I will, I'll double check it.
Anyway, Walmart's filed a complaint with a federal agency accusing, no, no, take it back.
It was.
It was Costco.
It was Costco.
Costco.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now I've confused myself.
I'm going to have to look it up now.
But there was some stunning stuff, breakdown of the big money, the hundreds of thousands and where it went.
And there was a lot of it went to Romney, but there's some surprising donations that went to Obama.
Anyway, so you've got the unions trying to stop Walmart, trying to stop people flying at LAX and a number of other little stoppages all over the country.
And why?
Because they don't have enough giveaways.
They don't have the pension they want.
They don't have the health care that they want.
I thought Obama fixed all of that.
I thought Obamacare was going to make everybody happy, particularly on the left.
Now, we had an item yesterday, and I don't know that this can be discussed enough.
Not only is it illegal, but we have these Republicans who want to really take issue with Romney, and they're doing it with me too, but not by name yet.
This Santa Claus business, Romney went out and said it, so they're focusing their fire on him.
But don't doubt that they mean me too.
But when you look at this, I don't know how you don't conclude that, in fact, you don't even need this.
The idea that it's news to people, the Democrat Party is the party of redistribution, which is taking from one group and giving to another group, taking from the haves and giving to the have-nots.
What is that?
Even the Thomas B. Edsel piece in the New York Times on Sunday, we have a fight shaping up here between taxpayers and tax consumers.
What is that?
But my point is: Republicans think, and maybe, I don't know, some of you, you know, we, you know, Rush, we just got to stop sounding so mean to the women and to the Hispanics.
And we've got to be more inclusive.
We've got to, what does that mean?
It means we've got to be more like Democrats.
We have to make Hispanics think that we don't oppose immigration.
We've got to make women think that we really don't mind if they have an abortion.
And my point is that no matter how close we get to duplicating or replicating what the Democrats say, they are always going to be able to move to such an extreme position that we will not go there, and the same situation will exist.
They can still point out Republicans really don't care about women.
Republicans really don't care about Hispanics.
I just want to ask you: what should the Republicans do about this?
This is the story that Obama has a website, USA.gov, that promises details, illustrates, and guides immigrants to all of the welfare benefits that they can get once they get to this country.
USA.gov is the website.
Government benefits, depending on your immigration status, length of time in the United States, and income, you may be eligible for some federal benefit programs.
Governmental assistance programs can be critically important in the well-being of some immigrants and their families.
Frequently, however, there is a lack of information about how to access such benefits.
Benefit programs can be complicated, and you may be given misleading information about how they operate.
The links below will lead you to official government websites describing a range of assistance programs.
And here's a list of Medicaid, food stamps, supplemental security income, federal information on other languages, temporary assistance for needy families, information on access to federal benefits and services for immigrant survivors of domestic violence.
Let's say you're a newly arrived immigrant and you just got beat up.
There's a website, a government website that you can go to for benefits.
Now, this is blatantly illegal, but nobody is going to say it, and nobody is going to charge it because they'll be said to be mean-spirited and extremist and what have you.
But refusing to admit what this is is a denial of reality and a pathetic attempt at pandering.
So, what should the Republicans do in response to this?
This is exactly what I mean.
You know that they're, do you think the Republican Party ought to put up its own website?
When you arrive in the United States as a newly arrived immigrant, you might need some benefits.
And here's what we in the Republican Party want to do for you.
Would we have a website of benefits?
I mean, and by the way, this covers practically every benefit they can get.
It's health care, it's food stamps, it's contraceptives, it's abortion advice, it's Medicaid, Medicare, housing assistance.
I mean, this is the how-to and where-to of virtually every government freebie that might matter to anybody, not just a new arrival, but to anybody.
Temporary assistance for needy families, food stamp programs, supplemental security income, SSI.
We're talking newly arrived immigrant citizens, whatever you want to call them.
We're talking about tacking them onto the social security system.
Now, how can anybody say, on the one hand, this is not Santa Claus?
How can anybody say that what the Democrat Party is not doing here is offering giveaways?
How can they say that the Democrat Party is not buying votes?
How can they say that the Democrat Party is not trying to create a dependence among people, particularly new arrivals, on the government, i.e., the Democrat Party?
So, what are the Republicans supposed to do?
Well, Mr. Limboy, you're not supposed to sit out there and describe just a Santa Claus.
Why?
It's exactly what it is.
I'm convinced the Santa Claus argument irritates so many people because it's so easy to understand.
And it's so descriptive.
It's so apt.
It's so fitting that it just.
No, you're not supposed to blow the cover like that, Limboy.
You're not supposed to.
No, no, no, no.
But my point to you is there's no way the Republicans are going to set up a website like this and offer newly arrived immigrants or anybody else instructions on accessing the welfare state.
If they do, they cease to be Republicans.
We don't need them.
So for everybody who thinks that we need to moderate, we need to more like Democrats, be more like Democrats.
What's the answer to this?
Seriously, what's the real-life answer and what's the political answer?
They ought to be the same thing.
What is it?
I'm going to take a break.
El Rush Bow at 800-282-2882.
Don't go away.
And back to the phones we go.
We got Groton, Connecticut.
Steve, great that you called, sir, and I appreciate your patience.
Hi.
Thank you, Rush.
And copious amounts of ex-Air Force aircraft electrician dittos to you.
Thank you very much, sir.
I appreciate that.
You know me.
I'm a big aviation guy.
Anything to do with it, electronics, wings, ailerons, you name it, I love it.
I do too.
Loved it, lived it for 10 years.
One thing I wanted to talk about, and then we're going back just a little bit.
A couple days after the election, I just absolutely felt like I'd been kicked in the stomach.
I could not understand.
Why did you think that we were going to win and you couldn't believe that we lost, or was it something else?
I thought it was a slam dunk for Romney.
I really did.
Now, why did you think that?
Seriously.
I'm not criticizing.
No, no.
No, no, I don't want to be.
I'm not criticizing.
I'm genuinely curious.
Why did you think that?
Because, you know, I had hoped that the American people would exercise just a small modicum of common sense when you compare the two.
Well, yeah, I know.
But I remembered back to something that I learned at the Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Yes, what would that be?
Well, I had a professor there, and he talked about the incrementalism and the patience of liberalism.
And I think what we saw on this election day was the culmination of that.
It's they completely taken over the school system.
Our schools are nothing more now.
Not all of them, but they're predominantly liberal indoctrination camps.
And then when these kids come home, if they're not killing a zombie on their PlayStation, they're being told by the mainstream media that everything they learned in school is correct.
And they don't have anybody that's counteracting these points of views, teaching them critical thinking skills.
Wait a minute.
Teaching them.
What about their parents?
Well, you know, the problem is I think we're on like maybe a third generation where the schools have been controlled by the liberals.
And I don't think the parents disagree with what these kids are learning.
Now, my kids are grown.
And my wife and I always had a policy of after school, we all sat down at a dinner table together, and I asked questions.
What did you learn in school today?
And my kids knew you better have an answer.
Now, if I had a disagreement, we calmly, openly discussed why I thought things were one way and why their teacher said it was another way.
And I always taught him, be respectful, but you can go ahead and say, hey, what about this point of view?
And I mean, they put up with it actually more in college, the liberal indoctrination, than they did through the public high schools and elementary schools.
Liberal indoctrination begins with daycare.
That's probably true.
Yes.
Obama is one of the kids.
He is the product of his education.
Everything Obama is doing, I guarantee you, is the result of what he was taught by his mentors when he was a teenager and even younger.
It's what he and his buddies at Harvard sat around, bitched and moaned about in the faculty lounge or whatever, about what they would do if they ever got because their minds have been totally conditioned to accept anti-capitalism.
Capitalism is unfair.
Obama is one of those guys, and so are a number of people that are his age.
That's how long this indoctrination has been going on.
You're right, it's a long game.
It is.
It's like the old Soviet Union.
We have four-year election cycles here.
The Soviet Union, the old communist Stalins, these guys, they didn't care.
Set back for two years.
That's all right, because their goal is the next hundred years.
So if you're living in 100-year cycles, if you're living in cycles that outlive you, then you're going to understand you might lose a couple years here or a couple of months or what have you.
But you never lose sight of the long term.
You never concede defeat, and you never give up.
You never stop.
Right.
Right.
And to support that, actually, I just recently moved to Groton before I got here.
I've only been here about five weeks.
I lived in the second congressional district of Illinois that actually elected Jesse Jackson Jr. while he was sitting in the puzzle factory at the Mayo Clinic.
And he won by a landslide.
And I look at that and I go, how do you defeat?
How does a Republican ever win a district like that?
He won't.
You're absolutely right.
Now, Connecticut's no red state either, but I just found it astonishing that the people in that district just don't care.
It's Jesse Jr., he's going to win, and that's that.
Rush, before you cut me off today, I have one thing I have to say, or I'm going to get a frying pan upside the head.
Happy 30th anniversary to my wife, Gina.
30th anniversary.
Yes, sir.
Wow, congratulations, sir.
That's absolutely wonderful.
Yes, it is.
Oh, that's so great to hear.
I mean, that is just the greatest thing I could have heard today.
You've been married 30 years, and you're happy about it.
I couldn't be happier for you.
Yeah, it's been a wonderful ride.
Oh, man.
You've made my day.
You keep on, man.
Keep on.
I guess your wife is ecstatic, too, right?
I hope so.
I want this woman to be married to me.
I have no doubt.
She'd have left you if she weren't.
Trust me.
Yes, yes.
All right, that's great.
Absolutely.
See, that's how you get the women vote, folks.
That's how you do it.
That's exactly how you do it.
So I'm learning.
I'm learning here.
Here's Jennifer in Lloyd, Iowa.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hi.
Hey, Rush.
This is just an honor to talk to you, and I want to wish you and Catherine a happy Thanksgiving.
Same to you.
Thank you very much.
Sure.
Hey, I was just calling.
My husband picks up children for church and stuff, and there was a...
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Your husband picks up children for church.
You mean like as a bus driver?
Yes, yep.
He does.
Yep.
Okay.
Oh, sorry.
But he does that.
Yes.
We had a, I think she was about fourth grade, and she was talking to my husband.
This is about a month before the election.
And she said.
Wait, wait.
Who's about fourth grade?
Somebody he picked up?
Yes.
Okay.
Yep.
And so they were talking, and she said, we're going to vote for Obama.
And he's like, why?
Because he's going to give us more money.
And she said, we don't like Romney because he has so much money and he doesn't give any of his money.
And my husband said, whoa, whoa, just a minute.
He said, Romney has earned that money.
That is his money.
Didn't matter, right?
Didn't compute.
What do you mean, earned it?
Still unfair.
It's still unfair.
Earned it.
Earned it.
What are you talking about?
Now she's a fourth grader.
Yes.
Okay.
So where do you think she learned that?
Well, I mean, I think it was probably from her parents, but like the caller before was talking about how her school...
Don't discount that she's hearing it every day in school either.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yep.
What a rotten, mean guy, Romney.
Look at all the money he's got, and he hoards it.
He's got it in the Cayman Islands.
And he builds big houses for his family, but not for anybody else.
And he's got an elevator for his cars in his house, his garage.
And you see what he does with dogs?
He hates dogs.
He puts them on the roof of his car on a vacation.
All this stuff.
The number of people I've seen polling, a number of people think Romney hates dogs.
You'd be amazed.
Because Obama's running those ads in the locals in the States and so forth about Romney being a cold, heartless guy, dog on the roof.
Actually had commercials with a dog looking panicked in a cage on the roof of a station wagon heading down the road.
Wow.
Replicating the Romney family vacation.
Wow.
But yeah, I mean, sure.
Obama was going to give them money.
He should have said, where's he going to come from?
But he also said he said, no, but another thing that Romney does, Romney gives a lot of his money to charity.
So he's giving his money.
Doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter.
Romney wasn't giving his money to the fourth grader.
That's all that matters.
What's charity?
You know what charity is.
A fourth grader has no clue what charity is.
And greetings and welcome back.
El Rush Ball is...
As usual, talent on loan from God.
May as well grab audio soundbites 14 and 15.
Ladies and gentlemen, I mean, I heard it. during the campaign.
I've ran into people, and it wasn't many, but if I ran into one or two, I know there are many more out there.
Romney hates women.
Romney hates dogs.
The thing that boggles all of our minds is that whether we even like Romney or not, we know that that's not true.
There's no way that somebody hates women.
I mean, you and I, I can't relate to an adult who actually thinks that.
But they're there.
Just like the four-year-old who gets on the bus.
We're voting Obama because he's giving us money.
Romney hates dogs or whatever.
The Democrats ran ads and people believed them.
And yet you cannot convince them of the truth about Barack Obama.
You cannot convince them of the truth of what he's doing, no matter what you do, no matter how you point it out, as reasonably, as slowly, as patiently, and as in deep concern as you can, explain to people how Obama's policies, not him personally, how his policies are destroying job creation.
No impact.
Their minds are made up.
No impact.
I don't pretend to have the answer other than to say those people, as we sit here today, are to be defeated.
But now the tipping point, you know, we lost the country.
According to this election, we're outnumbered now.
At least presidential elections, people that vote, national issues, we're outnumbered.
Now, some people want to, ah, rush, they look it.
There's a lot of fraud out there.
Okay, maybe there was, but it's still, even if we haven't hit the tipping point, it is far closer than it ought to be.
But the number of people who have been easily, easily persuaded that the things that made this country great are corrupt is astounding to me.
Something as simple as the explanation for where prosperity comes from.
Hey, I got a great example here.
You know what?
Michael Gerson, he's a former speechwriter for Bush, Bush 43.
He's columnist now at the Washington Post, and he's got a piece here, Making Economic Advancement Realistic.
And let me give you a couple pull quotes from this piece.
One is, growth is one thing, but it is not enough where a personal benefit from growth is not assured.
Now, ostensibly, Gerson is one of us.
And ostensibly, theoretically, Gerson is a capitalist.
And theoretically, Gerson believes in the concepts of capitalism that economic growth is how you benefit the vast majority of the people.
But now he's established a caveat here in terms of his recipe for what the Republicans need to do.
Growth is one thing, and growth is fine, but it is not enough where a personal benefit from growth is not assured.
And then this: the Republicans' task is to make capitalism work for everyone.
Now, let me really get controversial.
Some people, after I say this, are going to wish I hadn't.
And see, this is the rub.
There is not yet ever been the person or the government or the system who can guarantee that everybody personally benefits at all times throughout their lives.
It's not possible.
The only person that can do that is the person.
But Gerson is saying that the challenge or the task of the Republicans is to come up with a version of capitalism that assures people of a benefit from economic growth.
His way, if the economy's growing and people don't benefit from it, what good is it?
That's his point.
I fervently disagree with this, unless there's any doubt.
But it's this next one.
The Republicans' task is to make capitalism work for everyone.
Nothing works for everyone.
And there's that word again: work.
The GOP's task is to make capitalism work for everyone.
Stop and think now.
Is that even possible?
Is there a system?
Is there a person?
Is there a government?
Is there a place where whatever is going on works for everyone?
Let's look at domestic oil prices.
When domestic oil prices fall, you would say that that's working for the consumer because the price of energy declines.
Because when the if the price of oil declines, the price of oil products are going to decline.
Well, that ain't working for the oil producer.
And in fact, this actually happened in the 70s.
I don't know how well people remember the 70s.
It's kind of one of these decades.
You know, a whole bunch of garbage happened.
Not very many people remember it.
But it was bad.
And we capped that the domestic oil price plunged to such low levels that a bunch of domestic oil companies could not stay in business.
It was great for gasoline prices at the pump, but the producers capped their wells never ever to be productive again.
That didn't work for the producers.
They got creamed.
Capitalism, by definition, does not work for everyone, but nothing else does either.
There is no system that works for everyone.
Everyone is primarily responsible to themselves.
And if you turn that over to somebody else, you're cooked.
You turn over your security.
You turn over your prosperity.
You turn over your economic opportunity.
You turn it over to somebody else.
And I guarantee you, you're not going to do nearly as well as if you handled it all yourself.
But you see, ladies and gentlemen, there's a word that is applicable within any economic structure or system that is devised that is simply unacceptable in America today.
And that is failure.
We just think it's not fair that people should fail at something.
And it breaks our heart.
And it's so distressing.
And so we want to protect people from failure.
And that's, I think, a large part of the emotional appeal of Obamaism.
The emotional appeal of Obamaism is that go ahead, don't worry about it.
You fail, you're really not failing.
We don't even acknowledge failure.
We believe in outcome-based success.
And that is when we say you've succeeded, you've succeeded.
And if you fail, you really won't fail.
We'll take care of you.
So a lot of people are scared to death to take risks because there's always the possibility of failing.
So if you've got some messiah that comes along and assures you that even if you fail, you're going to be cool.
What are you going to do?
You're going to go with the messiah.
The GOP's task is to make capitalism work for everyone.
Capitalism works the best for the most.
It may not be perfect, but it is, and this country has proven it.
Capitalism is simply the best way for a culture and society to organize itself.
But there has been an all-out war and attack on capitalism since longer than I've been alive.
I mean, it's been as long as capitalism has been understood to be what it is.
That's nothing new.
And we've had periods of this country where we've, the socialists have won, or the progressives, FDR, Woodrow Wilson, and we've come back.
But I actually don't think we have come back from FDRism.
We still have all the vestiges of it.
In fact, we got even more.
We got Social Security, got all that stuff.
Now we got the Great Society, and then we got the war on poverty.
And we just added it.
We got Medicare, Medicaid.
I don't think we've recovered from FDR.
I think FDR is, in fact, the root of the very problem that we've got.
I think FDR sowed the seeds for the problems that exist today.
But this, this, capitalism, we got to make capitalism work for everybody.
There's nobody who knows how to do that.
What is working for everyone?
Everybody has $100,000 a year.
What is capitalism working for everyone?
That's exactly right.
It used to be opportunity.
Opportunity is what people wanted.
Opportunity is all they want.
Just give me a shot.
Just let me prove myself.
Just let me have at it.
Let me try to be the best I can be.
Let me use whatever talents and ambition I've got.
Let me employ excellence as it applies to me, as I know it.
That's out the window.
And now people are demanding outcomes.
And of course, we have some messiahs coming along guaranteeing or promising outcomes.
Obama, Santa Claus, whatever you want to call it.
For Republicans, the problem runs deeper than Romney's persona.
The GOP's economic message is well past its 1980 expiration dates.
Not enough to promote growth in an economy where a personal benefit from overall growth is far from assured.
Well, who the hell can assure growth for everybody?
Who can assure success for everybody?
Nobody can.
And by the way, this kind of talk is said to be why we're losing.
And all I am is the mayor of Rielville.
The traditional Republican pro-business agenda is necessary, but it does not adequately grapple with human needs, the prerequisite for personal prosperity.
A pro-business agenda does not adequately grapple with the human needs and the prerequisites for personal prosperity.
Well, what the hell does?
Does a pro-government agenda do that?
The GOP's task is not only to make capitalism more efficient, it's to make it work for everyone.
Well, that sounds wonderful.
I'm sure when he signed off, Gerson thought he'd written a winner here.
But that's not what capitalism is.
And now I've got, Rush, don't talk that way.
We're supposed to be.
No, no, no, we're not supposed to be.
You're talking winners and losers, and there aren't any losers.
We can't be the party of winners only.
We've got to take care of the losers.
I understand.
I understand the fear, but I'm just drifting away from the things that have made this country remarkable and great.
And we are really drifting away from a country which offered the opportunity for vast prosperity and wealth to the maximum number of people ever on this planet.
We are, we're casting it aside.
We're throwing that away for something so much less, something with so little expectation, something that's supposedly guaranteed that can't be, and that's economic security and happiness.
And all you have to see to see the proof of that is to look at every miserable liberal voter other than their rich ones.
Look at they're all miserable.
They're not happy with what they've got.
They're not happy with their lives.
It's not, the promise is never fulfilled.
It's never met.
Very simply, folks, making capitalism work for everybody is not capitalism.
That is a command economy.
Capitalism working for everybody is not capitalism.
And by the way, it's not possible.
There's not one bit of proof that it can be done.
The mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, wants to pass out driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.
Think the Republicans ought to agree with that?
Would that help with the Hispanic vote?
Let's join Mayor Emmanuel.
Let's support driver's licenses for illegals so that the illegals will understand that we like them.
You like that idea?
Isn't that what we're going to do?
Things like that.
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