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Nov. 21, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:18
November 21, 2012, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Greetings, my friends, and welcome to peace.
Peace broke out six minutes ago.
I want you to take stock and pause and reflect and remember just how you're feeling now.
And remember how dramatically different you feel now than you did just six or seven minutes ago.
Because the peace has broken out and it broke out because a deal was reached with Hillary Clinton.
That's what it's being reported as.
Hillary Clinton peace deal, ceasefire deal.
Has been reached via Hillary Clinton.
No more firing, because they've ceased it.
Now peace is broken out in Israel and Gaza and the region, Benjamin Netanyahu this afternoon in Jerusalem.
I would also like to thank the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and to express my appreciation for the efforts of Egypt to attain a ceasefire.
In the talk that I held this evening with President O'Connor and Obama.
I agreed that it was a good idea to give an opportunity to the ceasefire in order to enable the situation to be calmed and to enable Israeli citizens to return to their day-to-day lives.
At the same time, it is self-evident that Israel cannot sit and accept as our enemies continue to arm themselves with terrorist arms.
And so I have agreed with the President that Israel and the United States would work together to prevent the smuggling of arms to the terror organizations, the vast majority of which comes from Iran.
So you see, Hillary and Obama have brought us peace.
It broke out eight minutes ago now in Gaza and in the Middle East.
That does raise a question, though.
Why did it take so long for Hillary to show up and get the credit she deserves of the The peace was announced 24 hours ago.
The ceasefire was announced 20.
Now this isn't going to be reported, and I don't want anybody getting mad at me.
I'm not trying to do anything here.
I just heard that they actually had a peace deal 24 hours ago, but they they they had to wait for Hillary to arrive to make it official.
And in those 24 hours, there was all kinds of violence and death, mayhem murdered it took place.
But I it's just, I guess the cost of war.
So uh Netanyahu, uh Fox News Hillary uh brokered the peace, the ceasefire.
It's over.
There's peace now.
That reminds me of all the times.
Yeah, yeah, there's peace now.
It reminds me of all the times that we've uh uh fixed the budget deficit.
Now we've done that.
Let's see.
I remember at least since 1992, six different times that we've eliminated the deficit problem.
It's great.
It really is.
And now we've after how many years, fifty, sixty years of peace.
Admittedly, yeah, Hamas.
Well, you heard Netanyahu.
We're gonna be working uh uh Obama make sure that the Iranians don't smuggle any weapons in there to Hamas.
Yeah.
Uh I've soon the Iranians have agreed.
That's what Hillary and Obama told them what for, just like they told uh Morsi, the uh Muslim Brotherhood guy.
Look, stop this stuff in Gaza.
We're not gonna put up with it anymore.
And it stopped.
They say stop, it stops.
So this probably means Congress will give Egypt that extra four hundred million dollars that uh Obama and Hillary have been asking for that the Muslim Brotherhood wants.
It's a great day.
The day before Thanksgiving, peace.
Cease fire, wonderful.
I'm happy wrong button.
I'm happy to have been here when it happened.
And to share this this this once-in-a-lifetime world moment uh with you.
I'm sure you've got a a a wave of warmth oozing through your body.
Realizing what has happened.
Now back to more mundane things.
Susan Estrich, who ran, by the way, the campaign for President Mike Dukakis, 1988, is now a lawyer, a law professor at USC.
She's a commentator on Fox.
She also has a syndicated column.
And her most recent syndicated, she's alarmed.
She is worried about Obama's tax policy.
The title of her column here is The Mandate to Raise Taxes on the Rich.
And she says here, well, she lists all the reasons she voted for Obama.
I voted for him because I know how hard it is to buy health insurance for a single person.
In case of my nanny, housekeeper, dear friend, it was it was gastritis, pre-existing condition, and she couldn't get insurance, but now she can.
That's why I voted for Obama.
Years after I stopped worrying about unwanted pregnancies for myself, I didn't want to risk Roe v.
I was appalled that contraception could even be an issue.
I voted for Obama for that reason.
I believe whoever wants to marry should have a right to do so regardless of their sexual orientation.
I voted for Obama because I worry about cutting back on environmental regulation.
I voted for Obama because I believe local squirrels need help from the federal government because I believe we are one country, and that if there's an earthquake in California, we'll we'll need as much help from our fellow states, which is to say the federal government as New York and New Jersey do in dealing with the aftermath of the hurricane.
I voted for Obama because how well he fixed that aftermath.
I added that.
She didn't actually write that.
He's committed to ending the war in Afghanistan, but I did not.
This gets to enough of it now.
She writes, I did not vote for Obama because I think I'm paying too little in taxes.
Like many people, I know I'm rich by Obama's standards.
I pay more taxes percentage-wise than Mitt Romney and Warren Buffett because I earn virtually every penny of my income.
I work, and yes, all those deductions that allow the truly rich to not work or at least to not work all the jobs, I do.
It makes me angry.
I'm all for closing loopholes.
I'm all for ending deductions for things I don't even understand, but I am not for putting a low cap on deductions that would make it all but impossible for the charities I support to raise money.
See, there's a couple things coming up here in this fiscal cliff deal.
Obama is going to put a very low cap on the deductibility to charitable donations.
Now, Susan, if I may, I know this is not enough for you to have changed your vote, but this isn't news.
Obama announced four years ago that he wanted to end the charitable deduction.
He wants the government supporting every charity.
He wants the government getting credit for it, and he wants the charities dependent on government.
Now, this is not something that was unknown.
She also is upset that Obama is going to put a limit on the mortgage interest deduction.
She says that would that would mean that middle class people in California would be priced out of the housing market, and that charities I support would not be able to raise what they need to survive.
So now all of a sudden that it reaches her on a personal level.
She's got problems with Obama.
See, she likes charitable deductions to all of her big leftist nonprofits.
That now will probably dry up.
And the home mortgage interest, that is gonna do real damage to middle class people.
That's the only way they can afford to buy homes.
Is being able to deduct the interest on the mortgage.
That's where they get their refund in large part.
Sides, I find it fascinating.
And so now you know what she wants in this column.
Now she wants bipartisanship.
Bipartisan solutions.
That's right.
Now she wants the Republicans to stop some of this.
She's hoping that the Republicans can exert enough pressure to change all of this.
Obama needs to be very careful.
Yes, he was re-elected, but so were all those folks who blocked the extension of the Bush tax cuts if they excluded individuals and small businesses.
We need to avoid going over the fiscal cliff, but Obama must also avoid the political cliff.
Susan, if I may, and let me get into my prediction here on the fiscal cliff very quickly.
Not only are we not going to avoid the cliff, it is my contention I say to you today that the Obama agenda is to go off the cliff.
He wants the cliff.
And he wants it for two reasons.
A, because of the genuine economic damage that it will do, and B, for the politics of it.
What happens?
If we go over the fiscal cliff, what happens?
Taxes go up.
Simply by virtue of the expiration of the Bush tax rates, taxes go up.
They go up on everybody, not just the rich.
And as is also a part of the fiscal cliff, defense spending gets cut.
Which Obama wants.
If you don't believe me, don't forget that Obama has doubled his request for tax revenue from $800 billion to $1.6 trillion.
That's his opener in his negotiations with the Republicans to stop going over the fiscal cliff.
I'm here to tell you, because I don't know this.
But using my intelligence, guided by experience, there will not be any entitlement cuts as part of any cliff deal.
because Obama does not want any.
The Democrats do not want any.
There will be no cuts in the entitlements.
And the fact is, I don't think anybody in Congress wants any cuts in entitlements either if you get down to brass tax.
So what's gonna happen is this.
We'll go over the cliff.
We won't get a deal before we go over the cliff.
The tax increases.
By the time we have a new Congress sworn in, we're going to have tax increases and we're going to have military cuts.
This is going to happen.
I fear.
But what happens next is the politics.
As part of a final deal, Obama, the president, will submit a budget that has a significant tax cut for the middle class.
And it will be the restoration of the Bush tax rates for the middle class only.
And who will oppose that?
Nobody.
And who will get credit for cutting taxes?
Obama.
After he allows them to go up, but it will not be him.
It will be the Republicans who refuse to deal.
Obama will stand fast protecting Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid.
I'm telling you what'll be reported.
Obama is not going to let the Republicans take this country off the cliff.
I am not going to sit by and let Medicare and Medicaid, uh, health care for the poor and the elderly and social security.
I'm not going to let the Republicans cut it.
And when the defense cuts happen, we've got to start somewhere, folks, in paring down our budget.
And I've just gotten us out of two wars.
We don't need to be spending as much on the military anymore.
Remember, the Republicans can't stop any of this.
Really, the political will isn't there to stop it anyway.
So taxes go up, defense gets cut, and here comes Barack Obama in the first three months of next year with tax cuts for the middle class.
And he'll probably, I wouldn't be surprised if he even suggests putting back some military spending.
Because the Republicans will not oppose either.
How can they?
So we're going to go off the cliff.
Obama wants the cliff.
He wants to go off the cliff.
He's said this.
He's telegraphed this.
The cliff is the result of a budget deal, a debt deal limit that he was behind.
All of this is what he wants.
And after it happens, and the pain hits, who proposes solutions to the pain?
Obama.
They will pass.
He will get the credit for it.
And there'll be an agreement that supposedly is related to the cliff.
And it'll happen after all of this takes place.
So that Obama gets credit for it.
The cliff, in fact, was Obama's idea.
And the fact you hear all these Democrats now say it's not really a cliff, it's a slope.
You heard that?
Diane Feinstein and others, it's not really a cliff.
It's not that bad.
It's just it won't be so bad at first.
It's just this little slope.
It's not, it's not really that bad.
So that's what I think is going to happen.
I don't think the Republicans are going to demand tax cuts now.
They may make a show of opposing tax increases.
But those are going to happen no matter what, with the expiration of Bush tax rates and the further implementation of Obamacare.
Yeah, deficit reduction well, uh with taxes going up, that's that'll equal new revenue.
That'll do deficit reduction will be said to be part of what happens here.
And cutting military spending, that'll be said to be part of deficit reduction.
In terms of what's said, how it said what's reported, going over the cliff will be said to be positive in terms of deficit reduction.
Let's just see if I'm right.
We'll know by April of next year if all this transpires.
I'll take a quick break and we'll be back.
Folks, is it peace where you are?
Here's what's going on.
Fox News is reporting rockets and mortar fire from Gaza into Israel after the ceasefire.
So there's no peace.
CNN says it's celebratory gunfire.
Can be heard all over Gaza City.
So CNN, the official network of Amas says, no, it's just it's just there's a celebratory gunfire.
It's been reported at Fox as uh rockets and mortar fire into Israel from Gaza.
It's kind of like the weather.
Call somebody.
Is it raining where you are?
No, it's totally beautiful here, not a drop.
Any peace where you are?
Well, no peace here.
They just started launching the rockets again.
We've got gas masks out here, but that's good that you're you're cool.
No, no, no rockers.
We got no peace, you got peace.
Now, the way it's gonna happen, folks, uh snerdily asks, well, uh, if the taxes go up, well, how Republicans got the blame.
They're refusing to make a deal.
So we go through all through January, and then we go through the motions of the lame duck, and there will be discussions of negotiations and so forth.
And there won't be any agreement.
And then the Bush tax rates expire that go up for everybody.
And everybody, I guess I guarantee them to you first paycheck of the year.
Whenever you get yours, it's gonna be smaller.
Your your net's gonna be smaller, the taxes are gonna be up, your your take home pay is gonna be smaller.
You can look at what the hell happened.
And the media and Obama have the answer.
Well, taxes went up.
The Republicans refused to deal with the president.
He didn't want this to happen.
And but it tried, but they couldn't come to So Obama will then come or he'll propose a middle class tax cut, maybe restoring the Bush tax rates for certain groups, the middle class, certain levels of the middle class, not rich, of course.
And uh started, you I can't believe you either know entitlement cuts.
Wasn't that the linchpin of the deal?
does anybody really believe that a Democrat president is going to ever preside over anything where entitlements are cut?
Yeah, but they all were close to a deal.
They were close to a deal and then an invader all of a sudden left it.
Yeah, why did Boehner because Obama, if you'll remember, raised again his demand for taxes to double what Boehner had agreed to and Boehner walked away.
Obama doesn't want a deal.
And there won't be a deal with a Democrat in the White House that cuts entitlements.
Unless a new entitlement is created to replace whatever we cut.
And I'm not being, I'm half serious with this.
I'm mayor of Realville.
It is what it is.
I'm mayor of Realville.
Okay, folks, we're gonna go to the phones here, and uh shortly we'll have a Thanksgiving tradition on the EIB network, the recitation, the reading from my uh second book, see I told you so, the real story of Barack Obama and the nation's first Thanksgiving.
But first, Greg in Denver, welcome to the EIB network.
Hello.
Rush.
Megadetto.
Thank you, sir.
From a conservative outpost in Denver, Colorado.
Yes, sir.
Wonderful to have you here with us.
Rush, I'm I'm a CPA, and I knew after the 2006 midterms, the Republicans were going to have to neutralize the Democrats' political advantage resulting from the Clinton surpluses, or we, meaning all Americans, were going to lose for years.
And Rush, you know, I've studied this issue for years, and the path to recovery starts by explaining the fundamentals of the Clinton's balanced budgets, specifically focusing on the tax revenue to GDP spike being caused from the temporary dot-com boom and explain how the revenue spike had nothing to do with government policy.
And from there, Rush, you can expose how the Democrats have systematically used the end of the temporary economic events during the Clinton years as a basis to blame Bush for destroying the economy.
By destroying the Clinton surpluses.
Right.
Okay.
So to whom, you see, there really weren't any Clinton surpluses, though they were imaginary.
But but but to whom do we start talking about the revenue spike and government policy relating to tax percentages a share of GDP?
Who do we tell that story to?
Well, that's exactly the issue.
It is a difficult story to explain, and that's why the Democrats have been able to capitalize on the difficulty of the issue.
But the fundamentals of the economy, which are the truth of the matter, are the only way to neutralize the Clinton surplus.
Maybe I could go on dancing with the stars as a contestant, and then when they interview me, talk about it there.
Or maybe I could arrange, you know, election.
Right now, here's the here's the way here's the way the point's gonna have to get communicated.
George Washington High School or someplace.
It's gonna have to start with the debate in Congress, where the people in Congress understand what caused the debate, and we can start to change the dialogue in this country to focus on the temporary event.
Bush had nothing to do with eliminating the temporary events associated with the dot-com boom.
You know, I I uh look, I know exactly what you're saying.
I understand it, and and uh everybody has in their review of history something that they think if we just tell a story about this, and this is this is an important one, but uh you got Bill Clinton out there, and I had uh we finished our uh two tour with with with surpluses and and Bush just ran right through them,
and our counter to that is no, if you go back and look at the percentage of taxes compared to GDP and the temporary spikes in revenue caused by tax rate, we've lost them.
And I'm there's over half the co well, at least half the Congress isn't interested in the truth about this.
Uh there's there are a lot of lies that we've got to figure out uh a way to counter.
There are all kinds of truths that we have got to be able to tell.
And whoever comes up with a way to get through to the people that need to hear it is going to be immensely popular and successful.
In any which way he or she chooses.
I'm glad you called Greg.
Thanks much.
I'm I'm I'm gonna time crunch here because it's gonna take a while to read the um true story of Thanksgiving.
Here's Elizabeth in Acton, Massachusetts.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
Forgive me for being nervous.
It's a real privilege to talk to you.
Um please don't get upset with me for saying this, but please stop telling m um everybody that Barack Obama is Santa Claus.
Uh when I grew up, I thought St. Nicholas was a really great guy because he breaks into your house and he leaves presents he made himself and then he runs away before you can thank him, which is a purely Christian concept.
I I never found this anywhere else.
What?
Breaking and entering is a Christian concept?
No, leaving presents and not expecting anything in return.
Unconditional love.
Okay.
Uh, you know, he's a saint.
He was a real man.
Uh I think it was the Emperor Diocletian who had him uh beheaded, but that's history.
Anyway.
But Barack Obama does not break into my house and give me presents he made himself.
He breaks into my house when I'm at work.
I'm a nurse, right?
I go to work, I work really hard, I come home, I feel like the guy broke into my house and he stole all my best stuff, and he drove two you know, two uh towns away and he's handing it out to people.
I know.
They don't even know it's from me, and I'm wondering where all my stuff went.
You know what?
Even if they did, they wouldn't thank you.
Um no, probably not, because they think I owe it to some buttons Exactly.
I I was raised by a very liberal family, and I was a liberal because I didn't know any better.
Because my mom said, Oh, the liberals care about poor people, which is kind of like saying, well, Santa Claus cares about poor people.
But my oldest son went to a book sale and he saw these books by you.
See, I told you so, and the way things ought to be.
He was twelve years old, and the guy said, Oh, don't buy those.
That guy's a troublemaker.
So my son bought them and he followed me around the house reading these books to me.
And it was like these lights were going on in my head.
I was thinking, oh my goodness, this guy is telling the truth.
I've been an idiot my whole life.
Now, my oldest son is in the military now, so he's not here to speak for himself, but I have to say I really credit that kid with you know for being smart enough to try to say, look, Mom, you know, there's a different way of seeing things here.
So I want to thank you for those books.
I want to thank you for two as by tea.
My oldest son loves that stuff, and we love it.
It's really the best the best iced tea I've ever had, and even if it's not cold, it's thirst quenching and it's so delicious.
Wow, that's fabulous.
Wonderful.
Thank you very I really appreciate that.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
The Santa Claus business is just a simple way of explaining the and by the way, it has been pretty effective because they're all going bat excrement over it.
So and it was just a little innocent throwaway.
Elizabeth, thank you much.
Tabitha in Warrington, Virginia.
Hi.
Hi.
Um I noticed a while ago you said about the late twenties women that they don't vote Republican.
They don't have to be a good thing.
And I'm 26.
And I didn't vote for Mr. Obama the first time, and I didn't vote for him the second time either.
Good for you.
But most women your age who are unmarried are.
Yeah, well, I I'm single, not stupid.
Well, there's a line there.
Um But there are some of you there, but the exit polling data is pretty pretty clear on the vast majority of women under 30 who were single or divorced, voted Obama and Democrat as I think that's a real shame.
I think it's our duty as an American citizen to do her research on who we're voting for in a while.
Obviously, obviously it is, but they think they are getting research when they hear the president.
What greater authority could you have?
And this guy says that Republicans want to take away your birth control pills.
And what does that mean?
It means you're going to get pregnant.
What does that mean?
You don't want the baby.
And then Republicans are also going to stop you from having an abortion.
You can't take the chance you vote Obama to save you.
That's how it works.
There's no research involved.
It's all about insecurity.
Anyway, I appreciate the call.
I really do.
I gotta take a break, folks.
The real story of Thanksgiving coming up.
What is the story of Thanksgiving?
What I was taught, what most people my age were taught, maybe even many of you were taught.
The pilgrims got to the new world and they didn't know what to do.
They didn't know how to feed themselves.
They uh they were escaping tyranny, but they got here.
And the uh Indians, uh, who were eventually to be wiped out, taught them how to do everything, fed them and so forth, and um in this big feast, where they sat down and uh thanked the Indians for saving their lives and apologized for taking their country and eventually stealing Manhattan from them.
But that's not what really happened.
The story of the pilgrims begins in the early part of the 17th century.
Church of England under King James I was persecuting anyone and everyone who did not recognize its absolute civil and spiritual authority.
Those who challenged ecclesiastical authority and those who believed strongly in freedom of worship were hunted, imprisoned, and executed sometimes for their beliefs.
So a group of separatists first fled to Holland and established a community after eleven years there.
About 40 of them agreed to make a perilous journey across the ocean in a new world where they would certainly face hardships, but they could live and worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences.
So on August 1st, 1620, the Mayflower set sail.
It carried a total of 102 passengers, including the 40 pilgrims led by William Bradford.
On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract with all of them that established just and equal laws for all members of the new community.
Didn't matter what their religious beliefs were.
Now, where did the ideas of the this is the Mayflower Compact, where'd they come from?
They came from the Bible.
The pilgrims were a people completely steeped in the lessons of both the old and new testaments.
They looked to the ancient Israelites for their example, and because of the biblical precedence set forth in Scripture, they didn't doubt that their experiment would work, but it was not a pleasure cruise.
The journey was long and arduous.
When the pilgrims landed in New England in November, they found, according to the journal at Bradford wrote, a cold, barren, desolate wilderness.
There were no friends to greet them, no houses to shelter them.
There were no inns where they could refresh themselves, not even any hot tubs.
And the sacrifice that they had made for freedom was just beginning.
During that first winter, half the pilgrims died of starvation, sickness, exposure, including William Bradford's wife.
When spring finally came, Indians did teach the settlers how to plant corn and fish for cods, skin beavers for coats, life improved for the pilgrims.
But they didn't prosper.
Not yet.
It's important to understand because this is where modern American history lessons often end.
Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives.
That's not what it was.
Here's the part that's been omitted.
The original contract the pilgrims had entered into with their merchant sponsors, people that paid for this trip in London, called for everything they produced to go into a common store.
Everybody was entitled to one common share.
It was a commune.
It was socialism.
All the land they cleared, the houses they built belonged to the community as well, not to the individuals who built them.
Bradford, who became the new governor of the colony, recognized that this form of collectivism was costly and destructive to them in their first harsh winter, taking half of the lives of the pilgrims.
So he took what was bold action.
He assigned a plot of land to each family to work and to manage.
And they could do with it whatever they wanted, and he essentially turned loose the free market on them.
Long before Karl Marx was even born, the pilgrims had discovered and experimented with socialism, and they found that it didn't work.
What Bradford found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anybody else, because everybody ended up with the same thing at the end of the day.
Most of the rest of the world's been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years, trying to refine it, perfect it, reinvent it, but the pilgrims proved early on it didn't work, and they scrapped it permanently.
What Bradford wrote about this experiment should be in every history lesson.
The experience that was had in this common course and condition tried sundry years that by taking away property and bringing community into a common wealth would make them happy and flourishing, as if they were wiser than God.
For this community, so far as it was, was found to breed much confusion, discontent.
It retarded much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.
For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for others when they weren't going to be paid for it.
What he was saying was they found that people could not expect to do their best work without any incentive.
So what'd they tried next?
Free enterprise.
Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work, permitted to market their own crops and products, and the result was, well, Bradford wrote it, they had very good success, for it made all hands industrious.
So much more corn was planted and otherwise would have been.
They had miraculous results.
In no time they found they had more food than they could eat themselves.
So they set up trading posts.
They exchanged goods with the Indians.
The profits allowed them to pay off the people that sponsored their trip in London.
The success and the prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans, began what became known as the Great Puritan migration.
And they shared their bounty with the Indians.
Actually, they sold some of it to them.
The true story of Thanksgiving is how socialism failed.
With all the great expectations and high hopes, it failed.
And self-reliance, rugged individualism, free enterprise, whatever you call it, resulted in prosperity that they never dreamed of.
Quick timeout.
Back after this.
Back after this.
Folks, that's it.
Be gone for a couple days and a couple days next week, a little R and R. But I uh I can't leave here without once again telling all of you how utterly important you are to the country, to this program, how much you've meant to me, my family, all of us here, the overrated staff, everybody.
This show would not exist and it would not be what it is without you.
And we love you to death here.
I do personally, and I wish there were ways beyond words I could show you and express, and hope you have a great Thanksgiving weekend.
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