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Dec. 26, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:44
December 26, 2012, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Yes, America's Anchorman is away and this is your undocumented anchorman sitting in live at Ice Station EIB in the frosty wastes of northern New Hampshire.
Just an old bootlegging route away from the Canadian borders.
If you're fleeing, do swing by and say hello.
Mark Belling is going to be in tomorrow and on Friday and Rush will be back to start another year.
of excellence in broadcasting live next week.
Greg Walkins just did this tweet, which is a terrific tweet.
We've been talking about this David Gregory business, who's David Gregory held up his high-capacity magazine on Meet the Press as an example of these outrageous weapons that should be banned.
And he confronted, he taunted Wayne Lapierre from the NRA with this high-capacity magazine in defiance.
Unfortunately for David Gregory, it turns out that having a high-capacity magazine on the set of Meet the Press is actually illegal.
And now he's being investigated by the District of Columbia Police.
And I like this tweet from Greg Walkins.
If you outlaw high-capacity magazines, only David Gregory will have high-capacity magazines.
That's it.
That's what it boils down to.
You outlaw guns.
He'll still have his kids in the special secure school.
Bloomberg will still have his personal security detail.
The ruling class will still be protected by their various security forces and their gated communities and all the rest of it.
And you, you, the poor Schlubelooser, you'll just have to take your chances out there without anything to protect you.
That's what the whole thing is about.
I mentioned earlier something else, just another bit of unfinished business from last hour.
The so-called Benghazi firings where four people were induced to fall on their swords to basically take the fall for Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton was actually the one who fell, but these four guys were prevailed upon to take the fall in the bureaucratic sense.
She literally fell, which is why she's now resting up for a year or two before she'll be able to testify.
She'll be able to testify about midway through Joe Biden's second term, I believe, on present plans.
But so she's, instead, four subordinates were prevailed upon to, quote, so-called resign, unquote.
And it now turns out that they haven't, in fact, resigned.
They've just been moved sideways.
And this is, again, there's no accountability in U.S. government.
None whatsoever.
When does anybody do anything for which they actually have to clear out the desk and leave the building, never to return?
Do you remember I mentioned before 9-11, nobody had resigned, but it was worse than that.
Six months to the day after 9-11, Mohammed Atta had his visa approved by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Now, he was dead then.
He was in particles in a big hole in the ground in Lower Manhattan.
But his flight school in Florida received a letter from the INS that Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shahi, one of his comrades, had had their student visas approved six months after they're dead.
By the way, that gives you an insight into the efficiency of the I don't want to sound personally bitter or anything, but that gives you an insight into the general efficiency of U.S. bureaucracy and all the rest of it.
So six months after he's dead.
Now, what happened there?
President Bush was furious, and he said somebody wanted the INS to take decisive action against those responsible.
So they did.
They moved a lady called Janice Spozato, Quote, sideways to the post of Assistant Deputy Executive Associate Commissioner for Immigration Services.
I was mocking U.S. bureaucratic titles in the last hour, but this is a real one.
Assistant Deputy Executive Associate Commissioner for Immigration Services.
She had issued a visa.
She bore ultimate responsibility for issuing a visa to Mohamed Atta six months after he'd died.
And by the way, not only did they issue the visa to a guy who had been dead for six months, they sent it to the wrong address because they sent it to his flight school in Florida instead of addressing it to big hole in the ground, Lower Manhattan, New York, New York.
So she got the address wrong, too.
It wasn't just the fact that he was deceased for six months.
They moved Janice Sposato sideways to the post of Assistant Deputy Executive Associate Commissioner for Immigration Services.
That's a real job.
I don't know what post she was moved sideways from.
It was probably Associate Executive Deputy Assistant Commissioner for Immigration Services.
Whatever it was, she was moved sideways.
Now they've done the same thing over Benghazi.
There's no accountability, no accountability at that level of government.
But don't worry, President Obama is flying back.
He's a take-charge guy.
When the going gets tough, the tough cut short their vacations in Hawaii.
So he's flying back in tonight as the fiscal cliff looms.
We're only five days away from the fiscal cliff.
That means there are another five days of fabulous preemptive concessions you can wring with very little effort out of the Republican leadership.
So President Obama is flying back in to Washington to attend to.
Well, that's the question, whether in taking a two-day break, Mr. Snerdley, for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, he cut out two valuable days that would have enabled Republican leaders to pre-capitulate even more.
Anyway, he's flying back in.
On Friday, he gave this eulogy for the late Senator Daniel Inouye.
Amazing, very moving, incredible.
What a beautiful eulogy.
The way he talked about that person really brought him vividly, poignantly to life.
The only problem was the person he was talking about was Barack Obama, and he didn't have anything to say about Daniel Inouye.
He talked about the fact that when Daniel Inouye became senator, Barack Obama was two years old.
And then he talked, he went off and he did this long riff about the vacations he took on the mainland, his first vacation on the mainland when he was 11 years old.
This is Obama, by the way, not Senator Daniel Inouye.
When Obama gives a eulogy, it's we are gathered here to remember, insert name here.
It's terrific.
I'm hoping he'll give my funeral eulogy because it certainly isn't going to distract him into writing a new speech or anything.
So he talked about how he gave this long riff on talking about his summer vacation when he was 11 years old.
It was the first time he'd been to motels and he was fascinated by the Coke dispenser in the motel and all the rest of the thing.
And like this guy's there, they go, wait a minute, this is Inouye's funeral, isn't it?
Obama was basically stood up and gave a eulogy to himself in the same way that he did.
If you remember on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, he went, he did this video message to the people of Germany saying, who would have thought that a mere 20 years after the Berlin Wall came down, that an African American would be elected as President of the United States.
So you talk about that when he was doing the Berlin Wall too.
It's like if he'd been doing the speech that Reagan gave, it would have been, tear down this wall so they can get a better look at me.
And that's basically what he was doing at the EROA funeral.
So he's done his, he's flying back in now, though.
He's take charge guy.
He's flying back in to prevent America falling off the fiscal cliff.
The numbers, the numbers of the American economy are actually quite unbelievable.
In the 1970s, one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps.
Today, one out of every 6.5 Americans are on food stamps.
The percentage of working age Americans with a job has been under 59% for over three years now.
When you total up all working-age Americans who do not have a job in America today, it comes to more than 100 million.
These numbers, by the way, come from a terrific roundup at the website zerohedge.com called 75 Economic Numbers from 2012 that are almost too crazy to believe, too crazy to believe.
And that is the world that Obama has made, and it requires a particular genius for the Republican Party who are out of power.
They control one house in Congress.
That's all.
Basically, everything that happens has to be done with the approval of Harry Reid and the President of the United States.
And yet, somehow, all this is the fault of John Boehner.
I always get asked when I'm sitting in, because I mentioned when I was here a couple of years ago, there's a story about the four Uyghurs who were sprung from Gitmo, and Obama gave them as a gift to the people of Bermuda.
And I happened to run into them in Bermuda, crossing the crossing at St. George's in Bermuda, like the famous cover of the Abbey Road album.
I can't remember whether one of the Uyghurs wasn't wearing shoes, but they were in Gitmo, and he sprung them to Bermuda.
So people always ask me if I'm on on a Wednesday, is it going to be Uyghur Wednesday?
Are we going to have any Uyghur news?
And yes, four Uyghur men have been sentenced in China to death for plane hijacking.
The World Uyghur Congress, the World Uyghur Congress has said the trial was unfair and that it was not an attempted plane hijacking, but it was actually a dispute over seating.
You know how that can happen.
If you've been on US Airways or United and you thought you had a business class seat and they moved you back to the back of coach and you asked the stewardess about it and all gets out of hand.
What happened to four Uyghur guys on this plane in China and they've now been sentenced to death.
So they won't be joining the only four Uyghurs that Obama for well it depends.
The Chinese necessarily can't believe this now.
The Chinese say they were attempting to hijack the plague.
The World Uyghur Congress says it was a dispute over seating.
So I don't know you could go either way on that one.
But basically, they're in the same position, these Uyghurs, that Piers Morgan is.
It was the same thing.
When Obama sprung the Uyghurs from Gitmo, he said, America doesn't want them.
You've got to get out of America.
But they were Chinese citizens and the Chinese said, well, we don't want them either.
So they wound up at Bermuda.
Now, Piers Morgan, they've got up a petition to deport him from America for trashing the Constitution and the Second Amendment.
But in the United Kingdom, there's a counter-petition saying, we don't want Piers Morgan back in Britain.
You let him in, America.
You can keep him.
So they've got to find a third country that Piers Morgan can now be deported to.
So we don't know where it's going to be.
I think North Korea has offered to give Piers Morgan asylum.
So he'll be doing Piers Morgan tonight every night on North Korean TV.
And you don't have a lot of celebrity guests there.
You've just basically got Kim Jong-un to interview every night.
But Piers will adjust to it.
Don't worry about it.
Anyway, that's so far looking the best bet that North Korea may have offered Piers Morgan asylum.
Mark sign-in for Rush, 1-800-282-2882.
More of your calls straight ahead.
Mark Stein for Rush, gun craze.
David Gregory, now being investigated by the District of Columbia Police, will not host this Sunday's edition of Meet the Press, according to NBC.
Yes, he's no, he doesn't.
Mr. Snerdley is so cynical.
He says, does he have a concussion?
No, he doesn't have a concussion.
When Hillary Clinton fell off the wall, she landed on David Gregory.
That's why he's out.
She got the concussion, but he cushioned the fall, but he's got a little pain in his stomach.
So he's not going to be on Meet the Press.
Either that or it's like NBC have taken him outside and administered Comrade Stalin seven grams of lead or whatever, embarrassing them on the gun issue.
Anyway, David Gregory.
Yeah, Hillary Humpty Clinton sat on the wall.
Humpty Clinton had a great fall and landed on David Gregory.
So neither of them are available at the moment.
Let's go to Chris in Houston, Texas.
Chris, it is great to have you on the Rush Limbore Show.
Yes, sir.
I just wanted to make a comment.
Earlier you were talking about having law enforcement in schools and how it would end up having to be some kind of government-run program because some schools couldn't afford it and others could.
Actually, here in Texas, almost every school district either has its own police department or sets up a contract with whatever local agency is out there.
And they have at least one officer in every school.
It's not some kind of police state estapo thing.
There's an office they have.
If there's incidents, they get called and they just patrol the halls normally like they'd patrol if they were in a car.
They just walk around, make sure everything's all right.
There's no checkpoints or anything like that.
There are some schools that, because of the area they're in or the people that they have there, they have metal detectors, things like that.
But still, it's not that it's not like it's infringing upon anybody's rights in the way the TSA does.
It's nowhere even remotely close to TSA.
No, but you know the reason it will be federalized.
And in fact, as I understand it from Wayne Lapierre, this is actually what the NRA, the NRA suggestion is, is for a national program in which it will be local police officers will be hired under some kind of national program.
The reason it will become bureaucratic, though, Chris, is because, for example, in my state, where poor towns actually vote down school budgets, putting in the money for a police program in either the police budget or the school budget in a poor town would be a contentious issue.
And you would have a situation where the fancy town 10 miles down the road would have an officer in the school and they would be willing to fund it.
As Mr. Snerdley would say, or as Cornell West would say, the vanilla towns will have the security, and then the poor old chocolate town 10 miles down the road, they won't have the money for it.
And so then you would have like a disparate impact situation.
So you would start to have some kind of government, you would have government involvement to the degree that the federal government would be underwriting the security program in every school, Chris.
Well, they actually do have things like that wouldn't normally be a problem, but they actually have grant programs to help smaller departments that don't have the money, state grants, federal grants to do that.
but they don't come in there and tell you what you have to do.
No, but under the...
You don't have enough officers, or you don't have enough equipment, or you don't have the equipment to do your job.
They actually will provide grants that you can get, like you can get a student loan or grants to do research, things like that.
You can get that.
They provide the money to get equipment, officers, things like that.
And all small departments do that.
No, no, that's true, Chris.
But what we're talking about here, for example, is at the moment, schools determine their own level of security, right?
A school, so for example, you're at a school in Houston, Texas.
At my local grade school, there is no security because nobody's ever gone in there and tried to shoot the place up.
They don't have a lot of drug gang problems or the rest of it.
So there's no security there.
There's a police officer who stands watch as the kids cross the street to go into school in the morning, and that's it.
And then he goes away after 20 minutes.
So if you had what we're talking about here is exactly like Sandy Hook Elementary School.
The Sandy Hook School Board, the Newtown School Board, had no need for a police officer until the guy showed up when all hell broke loose.
In other words, there was no rational basis at Sandy Hook for saying we need to have police security or whatever there.
So they took the decision that they didn't need one.
What we're talking about now is that all those Sandy Hook type schools that figure they didn't need police officers, that they don't need police officers, because they haven't yet had the crazy guy showing up out of nowhere and blowing 20 of their kids away.
All those so-called safe schools, the vanilla schools, as Cornell West would say, in the nice no-crime, low-crime towns and suburbs, are going to be looking for police, some kind of form of police security now.
So even if you don't have any need for it, what Wayne Lepierre is talking about is in effect a kind of federal program, a standardized program, a one-size-fits-all program from Maine to Hawaii, in which a bureaucracy would, in effect, administer it for all 300 million people in the United States and all their school districts.
Yeah, well, the point I'm trying to make is that you wouldn't need to have anything like that.
Like HIST, for example, Houston Independent School District has its own police department, and they've got plenty of low-income area schools.
I mean, most of their stuff is like that, and they've got their own department, and they don't have issues with that.
Well, we'll see how we'll allocate the money.
It comes down to knowing what you need to spend the money on and being able to allocate the money properly.
And that's a completely different of itself.
Yeah, that's my point, Chris.
Thanks for your call, by the way.
That is the central point.
It comes down to knowing the issues, knowing what money you've got to spend, and knowing what your needs are.
And the best people to do that are the school districts doing it at town level themselves, the people who are closest to the situation.
And my great fear of all this is if we take up the Wayne Lepier suggestion, that we will have just another federal bureaucracy, which is the last thing this country needs right now, is another federal bureaucracy.
Letting local people determine their local needs is the way to do it.
Thanks for your call, Chris.
More to come.
Hey, great to be with you.
Rush returns.
Next week to kick off another year of excellence in broadcasting.
Tragic, tragic news.
Ben Affleck has taken his name off the list of possible candidates for John Kerry's Senate seat, which will be happening once the senator from Massachusetts is confirmed as Secretary of State.
Maybe it's bad.
Why couldn't he have a fall like Hillary Clinton?
John Kerry is going to be Secretary of State.
Ben Affleck has taken his name off the list of possible candidates to succeed him.
So has Ted Kennedy Jr., Who is president of a financial services company in New York and lives in Connecticut?
But that's apparently no obstacle to being eligible for a Massachusetts Senate seat.
So he has announced that he will not be running either.
So they have no celebrities and they have no Kennedys.
So the Democratic Party is in a very bad situation here because you've got no celebrities who want the seat and they've got no Kennedys who want the seat.
So a celebrity Kennedy would be the all-time great solution, or maybe one of those fake Indians like Elizabeth Warren, one of that, the Foca Hontis Croca Jawea lady who's now in the Senate.
So it's exciting news.
We're watching this, but the tragedy is that Ben Affleck has announced that he will not run for John Kerry's Senate seat, and nor will Ted Kennedy Jr., which is a pity, a great pity, I think, because I like this House of Lords aspect to Senate seats where they just bequeath to the next generation on and on.
Let us go to Jim in Bucks County, beautiful Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Jim, you're live on the Russian Labor Show.
Merry Christmas.
Thanks for taking my call.
Oh, yeah.
Merry Christmas to you.
Happy Bucks.
I have a question about your own home state.
And my wife and I go up to the Connecticut Lakes for vacation every year.
And I listen to Rush on WNTK.
And I'm taken with New Hampshire, the beauty of it, the live-free or die, the no taxes.
But the thing I don't understand is what is happening politically.
I mean, is the New Hampshire that I always admire going away?
I don't know.
I don't really, I mean, this is a very painful subject for me to address, Jim.
How about if you're the right person?
Two years ago, we were all excited because under the leadership of former Governor John Sununu, the Republican Party had a terrific year in the midterms.
They swept the elections.
Whatever it is, three-quarters of the state house went Republican.
Something like six-sevenths of the Senate went Republican.
The entire Executive Council, which is like the cabinet of New Hampshire, more or less, the whole thing went Republican.
It was a Republican sweep, and we thought that was great, great, great.
And the party was, the state was back on the red state side of the ledger.
And then tragedy struck on November the 5th, and everything that could be lost was lost.
And it was a humiliation.
And states that had never gone, states, towns that had never gone Republican, suddenly got the Obama fever, and they voted for Obama, and even more spectacularly for down-ticket Democrats.
And it's interesting.
It's a fascinating thing: is that when you lose a state, when you lose a state, it becomes harder and harder to turn it around and get it back.
And I love that live-free or die motto.
And people made, by the way, Jim, just to put this in perspective, since we've been talking about vanilla chocolate thanks to Cornell West and all the rest of it, just to put a vanilla chocolate melange spin on this, when the Republicans lost, I was running out of ice cream flavors there.
But when the Republicans lost nationally, when Romney lost, they said, oh, the Republicans haven't done enough to appeal to Hispanics, that they're the party of white people.
Well, New Hampshire is a state that is 99.999999998% white.
There are no Hispanics here.
Okay, that's a lie.
There are three Hispanics down south by the Massachusetts border.
But it's basically a white state.
And it went crazy for the Democrats.
No minorities need to be involved.
But why did it go crazy?
I honestly don't know, except that I think there's a fellow who does a show on your home station after you who does a lot of local New Hampshire politicians and the former representatives.
And it sounded like things were so solid.
Well, things are solid to this degree.
When I say I don't know, I mean, I'll have a shot at it.
And I think it's this way.
That there are people who are, there is a professional class who are doing well, who feel that they can afford Obama.
There are people who are associated with government down in Concord.
There are people associated with Dartmouth College, with Hitchcock Hospital, which is a prestigious elite hospital.
And if you're associated with those institutes, you're doing well, and you feel you can afford Obama.
Then there's another kind of guy, the guy who isn't doing too well.
And in those parts, in the poorer parts of the state, they're basically clinging to Obama because he's the party of extended unemployment benefits and greater food stamps and all the, and basically more welfare.
I mean, the shorthand is more welfare checks to spend at the gun shops.
In other words, they're people who have the cultural habits of the sturdy, self-reliant citizen.
They like the pickup.
They like the gun rack.
What they don't like is the sturdy and the self-reliant part.
And I think there is an evidence.
Didn't this turn around two years ago, or has this been 30 years in the making?
I think it has been part of a gradual transformation.
And this is why I'm fascinated by demographics, by the way.
Because again, if you look at Vermont, I'll give you an example of that.
White Christmas, Bing Crosby, Danny Kay, 1952, Rosemary Clooney and Ver Ellen, marvelous film.
At one point, Bing and Danny Kaye wind up in Vermont and they're trying to put on a show at this broken-down ski lodge.
And they're trying to come up with an attraction that would bring people in and rescue this dying ski lodge from bankruptcy.
And they say, well, what could we bring to Vermont that would be different that no one had ever seen before?
And Danny Kaye goes, I know a Democrat.
Because at that time, Vermont, 1952, Vermont was as Republican as you can get.
The first Democrat to be elected statewide in Vermont was Pat Leahy, who's still there, the senator from Vermont, until the, who's the congressional guy?
I've forgotten the name of the congressional guy in Vermont.
But until he was elected, Pat Leahy was the only Democrat elected statewide in Vermont's history.
Vermont was a solidly Republican.
Now we think of Vermont as barely American.
I used to joke that it was America's leading Canadian province, but I'm actually insulting Canadian provinces by saying that.
And Vermont ought to be in the European Union.
I mean, I call it a People's Republic.
Yeah, but that is 1952.
Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, they say, well, what could we bring to Vermont that nobody would ever have seen before?
I know a Democrat.
And everybody in the movie theater roars with laughter.
And in 60 years, the state was transformed.
Now, Vermont was consciously transformed.
I think it was Playboy Magazine, late 60s.
Somebody said, what about if all us draft dodgers moved to Vermont and we turned it into a hippie state?
And so they all moved to Vermont, and you got your Ben and Jerry's ice cream and your peace pops and all the other stuff.
And they transformed the nature of Vermont from that Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye joke in 1952 to the state of Howard Dean and gay marriage and all the rest of it.
And people, that's why the Republicans underestimate the culture, the broader cultural issues.
In New Hampshire, they ran very much on a narrow economic basis, that there was no sales tax, no income tax.
And the Democrats called their bluff on that.
These are not Democrats like they are in California.
They're not big spending Democrats.
They're Democrats who stick to the lingo of no sales tax, no income tax, and all the rest of it.
But are and that reductive argument, when you reduce it to a narrow economic argument, Democrats can easily swallow just enough of that to get themselves elected, and the Republican Party can wither and die.
And I am very concerned about that.
I'm tired of this narrow red state, blue state divide where there's like New Hampshire was one of five or six purple states.
I think that's the way to put it, Jim.
Five or six purple states that all the genius consultants that Mitt Romney gave a billion dollars to, all the genius consultants said, well, if you just target New Hampshire and you just target this part of Ohio and you just target Florida, and we need to get out of that.
We have got tunnel vision.
And what the Democrats did to Vermont, they will eventually do to everywhere.
You can transform the big government transforms the character of a people.
And you can do that.
And once you do that, it's very hard, as they're discovering in Europe, as they discover in Canada, as they discover in California, wherever you go.
Once big government has done that, it's very hard to persuade people to turn back.
I miss the new, I don't look on myself as that old, and I don't know that I've been in New Hampshire that long, but I miss the New Hampshire of 20 years ago.
And I wish we could get back.
I wish live free or die on the – nobody seems to think that having live free or die on your license plate is an obstacle to parking it in front of the Social Security office and signing on for Social Security disability because you feel you've been unemployed so long that it's no chance of anything else coming on.
So we've got to reconcile the difference between, because there's nothing so pathetic as macho blood-curdling rhetoric when you're just a big government nanny state like everywhere else in the Western world.
Because say what you like about the Greeks, but they don't drive around with live free or die on their license plates.
Thanks for your call, Jim.
I hope that's partly answered your question.
I've depressed myself now.
I love this state.
I love this state.
I moved to this state almost by accident.
I fell in love with the land, the mountains and the lakes.
And then after I'd been here a while, I fell in love with the system of government, the same way Tocqueville did, system of town government, most beautiful thing in the world, New Hampshire town government.
And I fell in love with it.
I learned to love the way this state did government.
And I'm very worried at what's happened to it, but I'll still love this state and I'm happy to sync with it even if it even if my neighbors all vote for the wrong party every time.
Mark Stein in for rush, lots more still to come from Politico.
Barney Frank says, I'm tired.
More quality time with his husband is just one of the many things Representative Barney Frank is looking forward to in retirement.
After serving in Congress for more than 30 years, the Massachusetts Democrat says he's ready to say goodbye to the grueling work schedule that comes with being a congressman.
After 45 years, I'm tired, he said.
Yeah, I'm tired too, Barney.
I've had enough quality time with Barney Frag.
I think we'll be having quality time thanks to Dodd Frag Wall, the Dodd Frag Wall Street bill with Barney Fragg for years to come.
Enjoy your quality time.
If you'd only said you were that tired, maybe we could have brought in an early retirement thing for Congressman.
They could all retire at 34 or something, and you'd have more quality time.
Let's go to Ron in Sacramento, California.
Ron, great to have you on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Yes, hi, Mr. Stein.
It's a pleasure to talk with you.
A big fan of your demographics, Destiny columns.
Two things.
One is a quick comment on the Second Amendment.
The militia is the reason for the right, but the right is reserved to the people, not to the militia.
So the people is everybody.
The militia is the militia.
But my main point is on the fiscal negotiations.
The way it's going now is Obama wants to get the rate increases now, either through going over the cliff, which everything I've heard is he's not opposed to, or by negotiation to satisfy the liberal left people in Congress while fracturing the Republicans.
Then, later on in 2013, in future negotiations, he wants, I think that he wants to end up getting the deductions to get more quote-unquote revenue so that what we'll end up with by the end of 2013 is higher rates and the reduction of the deductions so that he gets both.
And so that we get, for the 2013 tax returns, we're going to get like a double whammy.
And so he would win with on every point, stronger Democrats, weaker Republicans, higher rates, lower deductions, all with essentially no real budget cuts.
No, the budget cuts, you may be right on that, Ron.
The important thing to remember is that spending is not on the table because this dramatic increase in spending, which was originally done in 2008 because there was an emergency, supposedly, but which he wants to establish as the permanent baseline.
So in other words, instead of going from around 18% of GDP being spent by Washington to around 24% to 25% as a permanent fact of life.
And the point is, once people get used to the spending, he's happy for that.
That's the important part for him.
You can get used to figuring out a way to cover it.
That will come next.
So you're right, I think, is that initially he'll make the rich people pay more and the rates will go up.
And then one by one, all the deductions will go.
Because the reality is that at some point, if you're going to have European level spending, you've got to have European level revenue.
And that's the difference at the moment.
We've got European level spending, but still American-level revenue.
And he figures if you get people used to the European level spending, then by the time you start to raise the rates and then you eliminate the deductions, it's basically a fait accompli then.
And they'll get used to the European level taxation.
Thanks for your call, Ron.
I think that's right, by the way.
That's why it doesn't matter.
He wins.
It's either of the above.
He wins.
You go off the fiscal cliff, he gets his rate increases and all the rest of it.
That's fine.
Or you negotiate an agreement.
That works too.
But either way, the spending, the spending stays at the current level.
And the spending at the current level will absolutely destroy any possibility of an America that bears any resemblance to the United States as it existed for its first two centuries.
Markstead for Rush.
I shouldn't have finished on that.
Markstead for Rush boy in a moment.
In Indianapolis, Montserrat Shirley, her boyfriend and his brother, who pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, arson, and other counts.
Prosecutors say they rigged Shirley's home to blow up by filling it with natural gas.
The blast destroyed Shirley's home and five others, killing two next-door neighbors.
Gas kills people.
We need gas control.
We need serious gas control now.
Now, I know what the Gas Association says.
If you outlaw gas, only outlaws will have gas.
But we will just have to take that chance because these Montserrat Shirley, her boyfriend, and his brother have pleaded not guilty to charges of murder from blowing up a home by filling it with natural gas.
I'm sure Mark Belling will address that.
He's in Thursday and Friday.
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