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Dec. 24, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:14
December 24, 2012, Monday, Hour #2
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And ladies and gentlemen, Santa Claus is still getting ready to leave the North Pole.
The Queen is still asleep in Buckingham Palace, and Barack Obama is still in Hawaii, probably in a mansion, probably playing golf, and all is right with the world.
Welcome back to the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Duggar Bansky filling in for Rush.
One 800-282882 is the number.
You know, within the past year or so in the United Kingdom, there was a debate about taxation and about how much money the citizenry would be allowed to keep.
And the discussion actually got round to the public discussion in England got round to that to the concept that your paycheck would go 100% to the government first, and they would then distribute to you how much you were going to get out of that.
In other words, how much you could keep.
This is within recent history, I mean, within the past year, year and a half, this was discussed there.
And about just under a year ago, last February, Obama gives a talk at George Washington University, and one of the things he alludes to in that talk, and it was a disgraceful talk, he alludes again to this idea that all money, but all govern all money, all everything produced belongs to the government, and that they determine how much you get to keep.
When he appointed to the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, she had written about this, about the concept that all money, all wealth belongs to the government first, and not to the people.
So when they talk about tax cuts, well, we can't afford this.
How are we going to pay for it?
They're not going to pay for it.
They shouldn't pay for it.
It's not theirs to pay for.
Tax cuts means you get to keep more of your money.
So right after the election, middle of November, Obama goes out there and he's talking, I think he's in Ohio, and he's talking about the need for higher taxes on the rich.
And he is out there in Ohio promoting this idea, and he slips in a new thing.
Middle of November, he slips in this idea, oh, by the way, let's just do another 255 billion stimulus package.
So, in other words, the president was proposing more stimulus spending as a means of offsetting the impact of his own tax hikes.
All right.
So, this guy has just completed a campaign.
He rewon the presidency, claiming that raising taxes on rich people would be good for the economy, and the low information voters went, yeah, that sounds good.
But now the president seems to want more stimulus spending as the means of saving the economy from his own economic policies, you understand.
So, those really bad rich people who are around who are amongst us, those people are the people who need taxes raised, and if I do that, it will slow down the economic activity, may bring about a recession.
So what if we also have a stimulus?
Because he's now suggesting that the government spend tax dollars to stimulate the economy.
But I ask you this, ladies and gentlemen, if the tax hikes themselves didn't occur, then the need, using the president's own logic, then the need for a stimulating offset would also be unnecessary as well.
If the idea here is economic growth and prosperity, very simple equation, but the idea is not economic growth and prosperity.
The idea here is for the government to control more wealth, to have less wealth in the possession of private individuals.
They wanted redistribute it.
There are people he believes are deserving to have the wealth and their politicians.
And I talked a little while ago about Howard Dean's comments.
Howardan Said he wanted across the board income tax increases.
He likes the things entailed in the physical cliff scenario.
Can you imagine the White House went crazy because Howard Dean was actually speaking honestly, saying it exactly how it was.
And Howard Dean was advocating the benefits to a painful recession.
He said there will be a short recession.
He says this on MSNBC.
He says it will be painful.
He's speaking with language that the Democrats believe that this White House knows to be the case.
They want higher taxes.
They're intoxicated with the idea of higher taxes.
They love the idea of further cuts in military spending that come along with the fiscal cliff.
These characters, a recession is acceptable because it gets them what they want in the end, which is control of private wealth.
Doesn't matter if you lose jobs, careers are hurt.
The goal is government control of the economy.
Which, by the way, you know this because you are not a low information voter.
Government control of the economy has never worked in the places where it's been tried very aggressively.
So you've got this this whole idea.
Look, the fiscal cliff, ladies and gentlemen, exists precisely because the House, the Senate, the president didn't have the courage to make the cuts intelligently the first time around.
And a stimulus is a good idea too, according to this president.
Let's face it, I mean, there's a lot of folks who got to pay back for the victory in November.
And maybe a 200 billion dollar or higher stimulus is the is the way to do it.
They either seek recession or they or they seek no growth.
It's one of the two.
I mean, is it possible that they have a that they have a goal which is stagnation?
Maybe modest growth in corporate America.
I'll tell you this, though.
They long for, they lust after robust growth in government power.
They crave the shrinking of the more independent, less easily controlled small businesses.
All of this tax talk we're engaged in, tinkering around the margins, this is all a little kabuki dance.
And way over on the other side, when you're not paying attention, the real power grab is going on in the regulatory apparatus that I was talking about in the last hour.
Real growth of the small business sector and among entrepreneurs would expand credit.
It would balloon the money supply.
It would raise interest rates.
By the way, raising interest rates is not a bad thing.
Not a bad thing.
It would be good for the economy because it would force Ben Bernackey to stop monetizing the debt, and it would help force Washington to cut spending.
That's part of the problem is low interest rates.
That's part of the whole issue.
And of course, you have what I was talking about a little while ago, Obama's threat to the charities.
The left hate the charities.
They hate all forms of charity that does not come from government.
If these characters are statists through and through, and I think every intelligent person knows that this is the case, and every intelligent person who is not a low information voter, which means you know that they hate charity that doesn't come from the government.
Because as I mentioned a little while ago, they believe that all the money belongs to the government.
And every one of these fellow travelers believes the exact same thing.
They would be fine with the proposal I was talking about a little while ago, the proposal in England that people's salaries are sent directly to the government.
And then the government officials decide how much you get back and how much the state gets to keep.
Hillary Clinton, and we're told she'll be the next president with certainty by experts.
Impossible to digest this.
Even Hillary Clinton proclaimed During her run for the Senate from New York, she said, people don't always spend their money the right way.
And that went completely unnoticed, uncommented on, or worse, it went or worse, it met with approval by the majority of the New Yorkers who agreed with her.
But if anybody look, if anybody seriously believes that that the rhetoric about taxing the rich is really about revenues, then we'd be having a discussion about revenues.
But every economic argument, every last one of them with the Democrats fails because it isn't about economics.
It's about control.
It's about rallying the masses with speech of envy, speech of division.
Which brings me now to another sad reality.
I wonder.
The difference between Democrat and Republican politicians is that the Democrat politicians want to control all the wealth in the country, while the Republican politicians only want to control most of the wealth in the country.
You think I'm sounding cynical.
I mean, a cynic might think the problem is not whether you're Democrats or Republicans, but this brings me back to what I was talking about in the first hour.
They are politicians at the end of the day.
And when it comes to charities, you know, the giant state, the omnipresent, the omnipotent, the omniscient state, doesn't need or desire the services of private charities.
There'd be no need for charity in their mind.
Get rid of the March of Dimes, St. Jude's, the Heart Association.
The collective desires everything to be under their control in the name of diversity.
Under their control, they'll protect that.
And the low information voter is very easily duped by all of this.
You know, I I quote Rush again, paraphrasing, that the most expensive thing we have in this country is the ignorant voter, the ignorant, the ignorant we pay a price for.
And as we are increasing the number of ignorant, disinterested, low information voters, stupid people, call them what you will in this country, who don't have a clue about what makes an economy work.
we will never get the support for the type of politics that us as conservatives want to see practiced.
Thank you.
The left has this idea that they can keep drawing blood from a host that's already anemic.
And that somehow by drawing blood from the host that's anemic will somehow make our circumstances better.
This is insane, of course.
Obama is clever enough to realize the stupidity of today's voter.
It was a campaign, as we said a year ago, aimed at the naive, aimed at the uninformed, and they took advantage of it daily.
And equally unfortunate is the lack of the ability from our side, from cons from conservatives, to carefully, clearly, simply talk in big, bold, bright colors, to communicate the impending danger of these policies.
And our side has been woeful in that regard.
Effective totalitarian control of the economy as an objective is not anything new.
That's always been the goal of the modern elite ruling political class.
The ability to confiscate for their own power mostly, their own enrichment to decide arbitrarily who gets what.
And as long as you've got a large class of voters who either think it's a righteous thing that government give them what they want and what they need, taking the wherewithal from those who weren't granted what they have by benevolent rulers, or because the ruling clique has been so sabotaged, so shriveled and so shriveled the private sector economy that they despair of any real alternative to the government's role.
All right.
Gotta take a short break, ladies and gentlemen, Duggar Basky for Rush, be right back.
It's Duggar Basky filling in on Christmas Eve.
Merry Christmas, by the way, to all of you.
Merry Merry Christmas.
Duggar Basky filling in for Rush Limbaugh here.
Let's take a call, shall we?
Let's go to Perry in Cranberry, New Jersey.
Perry, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Merry Christmas to you, sir.
Thank you, uh happy holidays to you.
Happy holidays.
Thank you.
What about Merry Christmas?
Wait, Perry, what about Merry Christmas?
And I'd like to make a comment on something you said before about Governor Romney being attacked for not being in touch.
Well, I want to just mention a quote that he said that the liberal media really did take out of context, but I'd like to put it into context, which was that if you don't like your insurance company, fire them.
I'd like firing people.
Now I and the vast majority of people who are insured in this country are insured through their employer.
So if you if someone tells you to fire your insurance company, what they're telling you to do is quit your job.
And it doesn't take a a a genius to know that I can't afford to quit my job, therefore I can't afford to fire my insurance company.
And that's out of touch.
And as long as that keeps on going on, the Republican Party is going to be continued to lose.
Because the same thing goes with the $250,000 a year deal.
$250 grand, I'm not smart, but I can count.
That's a thousand dollars a day.
What plumber, what electrician, what carpenter, what nurse, what cop, what teacher makes that kind of money.
The vast majority of the people in this country don't make that kind of money.
I have a friend over here in New Jersey who works for a big big grocery store chain.
And she's unionized, she makes twelve dollars an hour.
And they have her on uh health insurance uh plan with a four hundred dollar deductible.
So she's gotta work a full week before she can even really afford to go see a doctor and get a prescription.
All right, Perry, when we began this conversation, did you say that you were a low information voter?
Yes.
Okay.
And you also wish me happy holidays instead of Merry Christmas.
You not like Merry Christmas.
No, I just don't want to no, I'm I I just don't want to insult anybody.
Like me?
Yeah.
Well, look, as far as Merry Christmas goes, the only problem with that is the demonic aspect of it.
To save us all from Satan's power.
Which is which is to say, Merry Christmas.
And if you don't believe this, you're gonna burn in you know where it turns.
All right.
Well, you know, Perry, I I'll say to you, Merry Christmas, and um I don't even know where Perry, here's the thing.
We talk about Romney's comment, and you know, that would be on the list of things that were wrong with the with the Romney campaign and candidate Romney.
That would be like on my list of like number 175 of the things the things they did wrong.
It wouldn't be on my top ten list.
And I I I must tell you, Perry, I I know you're stressed out there.
I appreciate the input from a I mean I that's why I asked the question, Mr. Shirtley, if he really was a low information voter, because um because he he was he Perry was sounding like one, and he then he Yeah, the thing about thank you so much, Perry, for calling the Rush Limbaugh show.
The thing I love about a call like that is that um he's very honest.
So you ask him the question, are you indeed a low information voter?
He said, Oh yeah, I I didn't need to ask the question.
I think we kind of already I was just verifying it, that's all.
Just just verifying it.
Oh, ladies and gentlemen, yeah, we talk about that two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Um brings up the question of success.
What makes a person successful?
Uh the left will say that the right is obsessed with money, that's our definition of success.
The ones who are obsessed with money, of course, are the left.
How much money you earn, how much money you get, it's the left who interests that.
I have an interest in that.
It's Christmas, and it's a good time to say people measure success in different ways.
You don't have to have a lot of money to be successful.
You can be a very successful father.
Or husband.
Or if you're Perry, you don't want to you don't want to offend anybody by suggesting they'd be saved from Satan's grasp.
Oh, ladies and gentlemen.
No, no, no, though.
If you're but if you're rich, it doesn't mean you're a successful father or husband, but it doesn't mean you're successful in the measure in the standard of measurement that we're talking about.
The standard of measures measurement when it comes to the money grab that's so obsessed that's obsessed the left.
You know, tax the rich, tax the rich, tax the rich.
This is just a propaganda ploy.
It's just a he knows if he said tax the successful, that would not be acceptable to most people.
It's those greedy rich versus the greedy successful people.
The rich are the people who earn their money without having to truly work for it.
Perry, I'm gonna have to take up your thoughts about the rich people when we come back.
It's Dugrobansky, we'll be right back.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.
I want to go back to this concept of term limits.
You know, all the time.
Um I'm getting emails over the years about term limits, and I sort of delete them and ignore them, and then I start doing research about them.
It's a very controversial topic.
But if we accept that we're dealing in the day and age when the low information voter decides your fate and my fate, and that the entrenched political class in Washington, D.C. Wool the levers of power, the levers of control, and they're addicted to this.
It's very hard to give up this stuff.
I find it appealing.
So I go online and I read about this stuff, and boy, oh boy, oh boy, the left does not want you to talk about term limits.
Now you would do a little bit of a research, and of course you find out what many of us know, which is taking as an example the 26th amendment to the Constitution, which was granting the right to vote to 18 year olds.
Which, by the way, I had a draft card.
I was of that age where I actually, during the Vietnam War, where I actually had a draft card.
That amendment took three months and eight days to be ratified.
And it was very simple reason why.
People demanded it.
And that's back in 1971.
There's no emails, there's no computers, there's no cell phones.
The country just swelled up and said that's time for this.
So there are many amendments.
Seven amendments to the Constitution took one year or less, and it was all also because of public pressure.
So there's a comment out there on the internet, and uh part of it's discredited, part of it's true, and it really doesn't matter if it's discredited or not, because good ideas are good ideas, whether whether they're discredited or not.
Warren Buffett apparently said in a recent interview, you know who Mr. Baggy Suits Buffett is.
He said in the interview with MS with CNBC, when the discussion was apparently about the debt ceiling, he said I could end the deficit in five minutes.
He said you just pass a law that says any time there's a deficit of more than three percent of the GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.
Now, I don't know if he said that or not.
Some websites say he didn't, but others say he said it on CNBC, but whether whether Baggy Suits Buffett said it or not, it doesn't take away from the fact that there's an interesting idea, because we're now at the point where we have to protect ourselves from the low information voter and also from the career class politician.
That's all.
That's all.
Now, there are all sorts of things that would go along with that.
No tenure, no pension.
A Congressperson, a senator collects salary when in office, and no salary collected when out of office.
They retire with these huge pensions.
You don't get that.
Even Perry, our caller from a little while ago doesn't get that.
All funds in the Congressional Retirement Fund should move to the social security system, so that they participate with the American people.
Congress No longer allowed to vote themselves a pay raise.
So their pay raise will rise by the lower of the CPI or three percent.
That they have to equally abide by all the laws they uh impose on the American people.
We've got to change the way that that we think about this stuff.
The whole idea of service and government was that it would be service, that it would be an honor, that it would bring your best most responsible game to the table.
This is the whole idea was not that this would be a career.
The whole idea was that we would have citizen legislators.
They would come, they would serve their term, they would go home, go back to work.
There's a lot of bright people out there in the United States.
A wealth of people to draw from.
I mean, Harry Truman was a haberdasher, if you remember.
He was he was a tailor.
So, yeah, you can read about this stuff, term limits, and they'll say it's well, it's rumors.
None of these things are true, they're bad.
The whole idea of term limits, well, it means look, there's a need.
Urbanski is saying, in my fantasy, there's a need for congressional term limits.
If we want to address the low information voter, as long as we have to pass an amendment to establish term limits.
Yeah, we can make a lot of other adjustments at the same time.
That makes sense.
We can repeal the 17th Amendment.
Well, this is an idea that I've loved for many years, which was to go back to the election of senators, not by the population, but by the state legislatures.
That was working fine.
And there's Congress, as you know, they're allowed to make the by the Constitution make their own rules.
And what happens is you get the career politicians who are self-centered at heart, and the members have done so over the years as a means of job security.
They make their own rules.
For example, the speaker, the speaker is elected by open ballot, which causes repercussions assured by the new speaker, because then he gets to pick who chairs the committees and you know which hold on to power.
What about a secret ballot?
That's the thing we want to see in unions.
What about the speakership and secret ballot?
What about it?
Anyway, I've got to let's take a call.
Let's go to Columbus, Ohio.
Larry, you've been holding for a while.
Larry, welcome to the Russian Limbaugh Show.
How are you today, sir?
I'm well, thank you, Doug.
Happy Christmas.
Happy Christmas, Mary Christmas.
I love what you're saying about Congress and uh the whole idea of changing how making Congress gr uh uh live under the laws that they pass for everybody else.
And this is my response, Larry, to the whole idea of the low information voter.
It is.
It's a great idea.
And term limits on the surface is a great idea too.
Now, in Ohio we have term limits, and I voted for that when it came up as a constitutional amendment uh about 20 years ago.
And at the time it seemed like the very right thing to do.
The problem with term limits is that um representative A says, oh no, I can't be elected to the House anymore, so I'm gonna trade my seat with somebody from the Senate.
Right, and that senator is gonna come over and take my my place in the House.
And it just gets to be a real mess.
But the worst part of this is that the staffs never change.
It doesn't matter whether it's guy A who's there or guy B who's there.
The staffs that are behind them are basically the same.
And that's true even today in Congress.
You know, most of most of the staffers, if there's a Republican elected, or if there's a Republican holding a seat and another Republican's elected, most of that same staff sta stays over.
So if you have term limits, now what you're doing is actually empowering their staff and the bureaucrats who are running their offices to actually push the bills.
Yes, Larry, I understand all of this.
I want to come back at you about this.
I I look, I understand about the staffs.
Even Ronald Reagan tried to clean out the State Department and couldn't do it to the way he wanted.
Um problem is this.
You've got to somehow really cause the best and the brightest and the strongest to want to run for office and win our votes.
And sure, you're gonna have times when politicians will swap out and say, I'll run for this, if you run for that, and sure they're gonna face these entrenched staffs.
But it ain't gonna start to change until you have very strong politicians fighting over every vote.
I mean, it's like anything else.
The minute you put real competition into the marketplace, the staff situation will be dealt with by strong men and women who come in and are duly elected to do a certain job.
But you see, once you make this across the board, you're dealing with a more competitive and level playing field.
Look, it's imperfect.
I and I'm not even I'm I'm throwing this out there as a fantasy, but we've got to do something to protect us from the low information voter.
And we've got to do something to protect us from this class of people, Larry, inside of Washington, DC, the political class who sit there immune, who have every advantage to get re-elected, who keep things deliberately complicated.
Don't you think?
Absolutely.
I agree with you a hundred percent.
We need to get this amendment that's been floating around on the internet and proposed to make Congress responsible under the laws that they've asked to make them uh not to take away the perks to make it so that they have to live like the rest of us with the same health insurance, the same retirement plan, the same no uh no extra airplanes to go fly home every two weeks.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
The high high time has come.
And then, you know, you add to that what else I was talking about, which is the simplification of the tax code to a flat and or a fair tax.
You add to that the withdrawal of all regulatory agency power that has the effect of law, so that anything you what it what's that, Larry?
Doug there, you've just hit on the you've just hit the nail square on the head.
That's where the power's at.
If you really want to go after it, that's the thing to go after.
But don't you understand that here's the thing, Larry?
Larry, they all have this unholy relationship.
It's a perfect circle.
The career politicians, they they pass over all this power to the regulatory agencies so that everything they pass has the effect of law, but it's never debated or discussed in the sunlight.
It's a perfect circle.
Time to clean them all out, get rid of the tax code, get rid of the regulatory agency authority, put it back in the Congress and make sure that every elected official has to fight for our votes.
I'm running long, Larry.
I appreciate the call so much that Sucker Bassi had a scoot.
We'll be right back.
Ladies and gentlemen, Duggar Baski's sitting here filling in for Rush Limbaugh.
Merry Christmas to you.
Merry, Merry, Merry Christmas to you.
Thank you, sir.
Um I found it odd we had the what's that?
Yes, it was odd we had that caller that said happy holidays because he didn't want to offend anybody.
Uh I want to can I take it.
Mr. Sterley, may I take a personal moment about Christmas?
I may.
It is not my show.
I am here filling in for Rush.
That is my whole whole purpose of being is to fill in for Rush when he when he's not here and hopefully make an interesting show for you.
But I do want to take a personal moment about Christmas.
Um not been here for Christmas before.
I want all of you to think about something, and I want all of you to do something.
And it's a nice thing.
It's an easy thing.
And Christmas is a time where I like to focus in on those amongst us who are lonely.
Now, lonely, as you know, is not the same as someone who's alone.
But there are people who are lonely.
Many of them, but not all are elderly.
There's the man you know who may be a widower for eight years, who doesn't who you may think is the cheerful neighbor, but he may be painfully lonely.
I want you to go through your minds, and I know you are stressed, and I know you don't have a lot of time, and I know that life is exhausting.
You may even be tight for money.
But I want you to think About the people you know who may be lonely.
And your Christmas present, your Christmas present to those people, is to call them up.
Drop them a note.
Go visit them.
And don't just do it at Christmas time.
This is the thing.
Find a person who's lonely or two or three.
And kind of adopt them.
And you don't need to spend a lot of money on a Christmas gift.
A simple card, a little note.
You have no idea what it can mean to people.
I'm very serious.
Buy them an apple at the grocery store and attach a card and take it over.
They'll understand your circumstances.
Trust me, ladies and gentlemen, the meaning behind it will be mountainous.
The time when you make that meatloaf for your family, save an extra slice or two.
Take it over to your friend who's lonely.
You don't have to visit them every day or even every week.
But I'm telling you, ladies and gentlemen, from my heart, I do this, I really do, and I'm a very busy person.
I have friends who are elderly who are lonely.
And I do indeed go visit them, and I do.
If I do make a meatloaf, I take them a few extra slices.
There's nothing that you'll find more satisfying.
It's a Christmas gift that you can give all year long.
And it doesn't mean that you have to go to a store or a mall.
I've got nothing against stores or malls, don't get me wrong.
But the nicest, the nicest Christmas gift, is to really identify the friends of yours, the acquaintances of yours who may be lonely and help fill that void.
Loneliness is a terrible, terrible, terrible thing.
The television does not keep them company.
The radio, to a certain extent, of course, does.
But go visit the lonely and go talk to the lonely.
That's my whole Christmas admonition.
My whole Christmas recommendation to you.
And that's the whole personal moment I wanted to take.
It was nothing fancy.
Nothing fancy about this.
No, no, there's nothing fancy about this.
But it is good to do.
It's good for you, and it's very good for the people who are lonely.
You know, we set aside people.
We're so busy.
The malls are full of people.
We're driving out there in traffic, and we set aside people.
And we never ever take the time to say, is that friend of mine lonely?
Is she she lives on her own?
She's is she lonely?
She seems always very bubbly.
Let me tell you, people put on a good mask.
Some don't.
But many do.
Go see them.
Drop them a note.
Take them something simple.
You don't have to spend even a dollar to buy them something.
Because it will have the weight of gold.
It will have the weight of gold to know that they're making contact with another human being who cares about them.
That is my two cents, ladies and gentlemen for Christmas.
You can do lots of other stuff also, but that's if you do that, if you can do that, and if you can do that consistently, and you can do that all year this year and next year and every year, and it's a good thing.
Then it's a good thing.
Then you're carving out a little chance at a little chance at sainthood for yourself, even.
I don't want to offend Perry or earlier caller who's concerned about Satan and all the others.
But do that for me, would you please, ladies and gentlemen?
I got a scoot, I'll be right back.
Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Basky back with you filling in for Marshall Limbaugh.
You know, we're talking it's it's Christmas Eve.
Obama's in the mansion in Hawaii, probably playing some golf.
All is right with the world.
Um John Kerry is nominated to be the Secretary of State.
Um there's a lot on the left who would have us believe that the Constitution and the Bible are very much the same thing.
Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you know it or not, but the Constitution is a document that is a restraining document, a document restraining the government to protect your liberty by definition, by definition, the Constitution supports free enterprise.
Some call it capitalism, because there is nothing, I mean, there is nothing that is free enterprise more than economic liberty, which is what it protects.
And that and as that protection extends to all faiths, whatever your faith is, including atheists, including secularists, it applies.
Free enterprise.
That's what the Constitution is a document for.
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