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Dec. 31, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:08
December 31, 2012, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Yes, America's Anchorman is away.
And this is your undocumented anchorman, Mark Stein sitting in.
No supporting paperwork whatsoever.
Tomorrow, it's a best of rush.
Is that right, HR?
Best of Rush tomorrow.
And then who's going to be here Wednesday?
Doug Urbanski comes in on Wednesday.
I'm fully ready for the show, as you can tell.
Got all the information at my fingertips.
Doug Urbanski will be here on Wednesday.
And then Rush returns Thursday to launch another year of excellence in broadcasting.
We are live at Ice Station EIB in far northern New Hampshire, a mere stone's throw from the Canadian border.
So do swing by if you're fleeing the country.
There's a big sign up just before the interstate exit.
Last Rush guest host before the border.
So you can't miss it.
And from here it goes, as you just heard, I mentioned HR.
He's down in New York.
And then it goes up to the big satellite and out to the world.
1-800-282-2882 is the number on America's number one radio show.
The big day is here, ladies and gentlemen.
New Year's Eve, not only the eve of a new year, but the eve of America's first year at the bottom of the fiscal cliff.
Congress is in session at this hour, working tirelessly for the American people unto the final chime of midnight, when to the strains of old Lang Syn, America slides off the fiscal cliff and into the fiscal abyss.
Should old acquaintance with fiscal reality be forgot and never brought to mind?
That is the question confronting Congress this very day.
This is it, folks.
Midnight.
Gripping stuff.
It's gripping stuff.
Harry Reid has convened the Senate.
They're covering it live.
Pat Leahy has given a speech.
This is history in the making, folks, and they're going to stay there for as long as it takes, or at least until the last orders for lunch at the Senate cafeteria.
This is breaking news about brokering a deal.
And we will cover any breaking brokering live as it happens.
I came here this morning ready to do the job of keeping you fully up to speed on any breaking brokering.
But nobody cares.
Nobody cares.
Instead, the streets are thronged with a joyous populace cheering deliriously the news that Kim Kardashian is with child.
She's anticipating a blessed event, a little bundle from the stalk.
She's in a delicate condition.
She's wearing her apron high, as we say in this part of the country.
She's in the family way, except for the bit about the family, of course.
So nobody cares.
Nobody cares about the fiscal cliff.
The fiscal cliff is Deadsville, Yornsville, over.
America is ringing out the old, all that downer stuff about fiscal cliff sequestration, alternative minimum tax adjustments, the expiry of the deferment of the Medicare sustainable growth rate.
To hell with it all.
America is ringing out the old and ringing in the new.
Kim Kardashian's bundle of joy, Kim's baby, has single-handedly saved America from all this downer talk about debt and spending.
And people are dancing in the streets.
Ding-dong, the cliff is dead.
Witch old cliff, the fiscal cliff.
Nobody cares anymore because Kim Kardashian is having a baby.
Her husband, what's name, whoever he is, he's not the father.
That much we do know.
So we'll try to narrow it down a bit in the course of the show.
It's not Mitt Romney.
He's been through his binders full of women and he says there are no Kardashians in there.
So we'll try and narrow it down a bit more.
But if you are the father of Kim Kardashian's baby, do give us a call.
1-800-282-2882.
And we will bring you breaking news on what Kim Kardashian's baby's father thinks of the fiscal cliff.
The Senate Committee on Homeland Security has released a damning report on the State Department's role in the Benghazi fiasco.
Good luck getting anybody to pay attention to that because they released the report on the day Kim Kardashian's Blessed Event was announced.
I'm not a big believer in conspiracy theories, but when you have a big document dump on Benghazi on the day that Kim Kardashian's baby is announced, you're not trying to tell me that that is coincidental.
Anyway, we will have a look at that.
The big Benghazi report from the Senate committee, the stalk delivered a little bundle of Benghazi reports to the State Department, and Hillary Clinton shoved them up the front of her dress and announced she's expecting Kanye West's love child.
So that's going nowhere.
But we will nevertheless, we will be the only, everyone else will have wall-to-wall Kim Kardashian baby coverage, but we will be the only ones to go to for in-depth coverage of the Benghazi reports shoved up the front of Hillary Clinton's dress.
Hillary is the most admired woman of 2012, according to Gallup.
The most admired woman in America.
They polled Americans.
They don't prompt them on this.
They just say, who is the woman you most admire?
And Hillary Ronham Clinton is number one.
Michelle Obama is number two.
I can't help feeling Michelle isn't going to be too happy about that one.
But Michelle and Hillary, Hillary is number one.
Michelle Obama is number two.
And then there's various losers like Sarah Palin, Her Majesty the Queen, Mrs. Thatcher.
My God, there's a big shortage of Americans on this list.
This is incredible.
There's no half the women that Americans most admire are non-American women.
There's Malala Yousafzai.
That's the young Pakistani girl who was attacked and is now recovering in a British hospital.
She's in there.
No, I think you didn't have to write the name down, HR, because good luck with that.
Malala Yousafzai.
Malala Yousafzai.
She is, they didn't have to write it down, but she knew, apparently they knew it.
I mean, apparently she came in there, big hit position number six.
So she's just outside the top five.
She's just breaking outside the top five.
Malala Yousafzai.
Queen Elizabeth is at big hit position number seven.
Mrs. Thatcher is at number eight.
Mrs. Thatcher's been out of office for 22 years and still cracks the top 10.
Aung Sang Su Kyi, the Burmese dissident whose name was mispronounced by Barack Obama, is in there at big hit position number nine.
And at number 10, it is the lovely Kate Middleton, Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge.
So half, basically, half the top 10 are for, yeah, half the top 10 are foreigners.
And in fact, they're all from current or former realms of Her Britannic Majesty.
So I don't know why you don't know why you guys bother.
Piers Morgan has got a point here.
I mean, why are you guys bothered throwing off the British crown if half the women in your most admired woman list for 2012 are British subjects?
It's beyond me.
The most admired man, number one, Barack Obama.
Mitt Romney came in at third, which is almost as well as he did in the presidential competition.
So that's pretty good.
And he didn't campaign.
He didn't campaign for this one.
He spent a billion dollars to come in in second place in that presidential thing, if you can remember back that far.
He didn't spend a dime for this one, and he came in in big hit position number three, right behind Nelson Mandela.
Reverend Billy Graham at number four, George W. Bush at number five, and then Pope Benedict, Bill Clinton, the Dalai Lama, George H.W. Bush, Ron Paul, and John McCain are all tied in final place.
Coincidentally, I think all these people are also the basically top 10 rumored fathers of Kim Kardashian's baby.
So we'll keep you up to speed on that if we can narrow it down a bit more.
But these are the people Americans most admire in the year 2012.
And in the women's list, it's Hillary Clinton, number one, Michelle Obama, number two, Kim Kardashian, number three, Courtney Kardashian, number four, Chloe Kardashian, number five.
And yeah, I can't read any further down the list.
It's too depressing.
But we will see that it's surprising Sarah Palin, Mrs. Thatcher, the Conservative, and Mitt Romney coming in with an impressive third place in the most admired man of the year.
So this is the way to think about it.
Republican Party spent a billion dollars on the election and had absolutely nothing to show for it.
They could have saved the billion dollars, and on the evidence of this poll, Mitt Romney would still have come in third.
So that might have been just as good.
So we will talk about that and all the other end-of-the-year news as we ring in the old and ring in the new.
The whole, I should always say this, you know, in a sense, when we talk about the fiscal cliff, I said this when I was here on Boxing Day, it's like completely ridiculous.
It's like the fiscal cliff is no more real than the Mayan apocalypse.
It is slightly more real in that you guys are just going to be drowning in new taxes and all the rest of it.
That's true.
But it is essentially an entirely contrived date and an artificial piece of drama.
And all this stuff, even though Pat Leahy is speaking and Harry Reid has convened the Senate, and as gripping and mesmerizing as that is, there's, oh, look, I think Joe Biden was seen.
People got their hopes up that there was a deal because Joe Biden was seen.
Is this right, HR?
He was whispering in Mitch McConnell's ear.
Is that right?
People getting very excited about it.
But it turns out he was just asking Mitch if Mitch was the father of Kim Kardashian's baby.
So we're no nearer a deal than we were before.
But this is an entirely artificial piece of theater.
It does nothing for what is really going on with the crisis of debt and entitlements.
And you would be just as well investing your time in discussing Kim Kardashian's baby.
Nevertheless, we will follow every gripping, twisting, dramatic, exciting twist as America's car careens along the bends to the edge of the fiscal cliff.
We will stay there live in the out-of-control Honda Civic that the brakes have been removed from.
Someone cut the brakes and we are careening in the Honda Civic toward the fiscal cliff.
If we were careening in a Chevy Volt, it would be okay because it would just run out of power 200 yards before the fiscal cliff and we would come to a nice soft stop on the shoulder.
That's why we need more sustainable green energy.
But instead, we're in the Honda Civic, careening toward the fiscal cliff, and we are live in the vehicle with you as we cover every dramatic twist as Midnight looms on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Mark Stein in for Rush.
More straight ahead.
Mark Stein live for Rush on the Rush Limbaugh show.
New Year's Eve on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Don't forget that Rush returns live for the start of another year of Excellence in Broadcasting this Thursday on the EIB network, talking about Kim Kardashian's baby.
It's the exciting breaking news of the day.
We don't know who the father is.
It's apparently some pop star.
I gather.
I'm just getting up to speed on this story.
Apparently some pop stars.
I don't know.
Is it Ricky Martin?
My money's on Ricky Martin.
Anyway, we'll find out about that.
1-800-282-2882.
If you are Ricky Martin and you fathered Kim Kardashian's baby, do call in.
It's a lot of changing things, you know, in the American family.
A Craigslist sperm donor has been forced to pay child support to a lesbian couple despite signing an agreement with them that he would have no parental rights and no parental obligations before he handed over the sperm.
Angela Bauer, 40, and her partner, Jennifer Schreiner, 34, placed an ad on Craigslist for 2009.
William Morota gave them the sperm for free.
Now, he didn't charge them for the sperm.
And now he's being ordered by the state of Kansas to pay child support because the lesbian couple have split.
And the one who's taking care of the baby needs child support.
And the other one has been left unable to work due to ill health.
So they're looking for someone to stick with the cost of the kid.
And this guy who made a one-time free, he was just doing it as an act of neighborliness.
He's from Topeka, Kansas.
And he just gave them a beaker of sperm.
And he's now being told that he has to, has to, by the state of Kansas, that he has to pay, that he is the father of this child.
And so although he's got a legal agreement, they say the legal agreement is not valid because the sperm was not administered through an official sperm donor clinic.
So that is the, that is the, that is, this guy, that is, do you know, I'm old enough to remember that when I was an adolescent, they used to tell you to cut it out because it would make you blind.
But in Kansas, it makes you broke.
This guy, one sperm donation, it's going to be, he's been ordered to pay child support.
He's got $6,000 of medical bills to pay for this lesbian couple's child that the state of Kansas is demanding he pay.
Millionaires.
Don't you hate millionaires?
Barack Obama.
He says, all we want in our society is for millionaires and billionaires to pay their share.
Because those rich guys, there's some fella tweeting on the, he did a big tweet on the internet.
The guy who directed that movie, Anchorman, with Will Ferrell a couple of years ago, he says, all that conservatives care about is they want rich white guys to be able to urinate in diamond encrusted toilets.
Because we all hate rich white guys, these millionaires and billionaires.
All we want is for them to pay their fair share.
A millionaire, there's a terrific piece by Randall Hovind on American Thinker Today.
A millionaire is someone whose net worth is $1 million.
That's what it means to be a millionaire.
That's the definition of millionaire.
A century ago was a very rare event, and that's why being a millionaire was impressive.
And it all sounds great now, just talking about millionaires, million this, million that.
But it's a person whose net worth is a million dollars or more.
If you've got a million dollars socked away, Randall Hovind writes in the American Thinker, that would be equal to about $40,000 income every year.
Now think about that.
Think about that.
If you're a retired teacher or a public sector worker in your early 50s and you've got a $40,000 pension that is going to go on until the day you die, in terms of net worth, you are a millionaire.
That's what it means to be a millionaire.
If you've got a million dollars in the bank, you're getting the interest you're getting on that, the income you'd have to live off would be $40,000 a year.
So if you're a public sector worker, if you're a public sector retiree, if you're a retired teacher and you've got a pension of $40,000 a year, you are as wealthy in terms of income as a millionaire, and it's time for you to pay your fair share too.
It's a fascinating piece, fascinating piece by Randall Hovind.
If you have an annual pension of $40,000 a year, you're effectively a millionaire, especially if that pension is adjusted for the cost of living.
And he points out, he lives in Illinois, and he says the Illinois State Board of Education puts out a report on teachers' salaries.
By the time a teacher retires, she could be making $55,000 to $120,000 a year.
And when that teacher does retire, what is her pension?
And he points out, in other words, that huge numbers of retired Illinois school teachers are millionaires.
Teachers who retired from the Chicago school district get 60% of their health insurance premiums.
They're millionaires too.
And so it's a question of how you think about things.
People use this term millionaire and Obama banders it around talking about people having to pay their fair share and everything.
But in fact, if you've got like a $40,000 pension, if you're lucky enough to have a $40,000 pension, that's the equivalent of a net worth of $1 million.
A great piece by Randall Hoeven in American Thinker this morning.
And this is why the fiscal cliff discussion is entirely absurd, because there are never going to be enough real rich people, even if you take the wealth of the 1% and everything.
Even if you raise money on all the richest 1% to close the gap, it's a spending gap.
It's a spending gap.
And spending isn't even part of the discussion here.
The Republicans are caving, caving, caving on all the taxes.
Oh, yeah, okay.
We'll agree to let people over a million dollars a year be taxed.
We'll agree to let people over $600,000 be taxed.
We'll agree to let people over $400,000 be taxed.
You can never raise enough money that way.
At some point, if you want big government, if you want European-style spending, you're going to have to have European-style taxation.
And there is no discussion of this anywhere in the fiscal cliff negotiations.
Yes, it's New Year's Eve on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Tomorrow, best of rush, Doug Urbanski will be here live on Wednesday.
Rush returns Thursday.
We are hours away from that big moment when we all, the clock chimes midnight and we all clasp hands and pop champagne corks and go over the fiscal cliff life.
Because of the way the time zones work, Australia and New Zealand have already gone over the fiscal cliff because it's 2013 there.
So they've already slid off the cliff.
So anyone who's listening via the internet in Australian New Zealand and wants to call in and tell us what it's like at the bottom of the fiscal cliff, now you've gone over and just give us a hint of what we can expect when we slide off the fiscal cliff.
Call us at 1-800-282-280.
Oh, wait a minute.
You don't have a fiscal cliff in New Zealand and Australia.
That's just unique to America.
That's terrific, isn't it?
So no point.
Don't bother calling in if you're Australian New Zealand.
You've got to be an American to go.
Only Americans go over the fiscal cliff.
And some of us immigrants, but we're not going to let Piers Morgan.
Piers Morgan, he's out of here.
We want him deported before he can go slide off the fiscal cliff with the rest of us because that guy shouldn't be here.
He shouldn't have the right to go over the fiscal cliff.
All of us are going to be over, we're going to be landing there.
We're going to be sliding off the fiscal cliff and landing in Kim Kardashian's brand new bassinet.
She's bought the world's biggest bassinet for her newborn baby.
And when we slide off the fiscal cliff, it will be there to break our fall.
There are rumors.
Now, rumors.
Is this right?
That a deal is a surprise.
Who thought this would happen?
What are we?
Oh, it's half past midday Eastern time.
Half past midday Eastern time.
AP sources, Associated Pred, breaking news, breaking news.
Fiscal cliff deal emerging.
This is breaking news.
AP, fiscal cliff deal emerging.
The contours of a deal.
Washington.
I'll make it Washington.
Digline, Washington.
The contours of a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff were emerging that would raise tax rates on couples making over $450,000 a year, raise the estate tax rate, and extend unemployment benefits for one year.
That's according to officials familiar with the negotiations.
It's not a done deal yet.
They're probably going to drag it out for a few more hours, you know, till, I don't know, maybe half past nine Eastern tonight.
So it's all a bit a bit more dramatic.
But by the 11th hour, by the 11th hour, they will have a fiscal deal.
A fiscal cliff deal is emerging.
The deal in the works would return tax rates on families making over $450,000 to 39.6%.
And the tax on estates worth more than $5 million would increase to 40%.
And unemployment benefits would continue for one year.
But they're at an impasse.
The White House and Republicans were at an impasse over what to do about the automatic across-the-board spending cuts set to begin taking effect on January the 1st.
These are these nothing little cuts that all sound very dramatic, but in fact, I think by the year 2020 would make America's debt about $200 billion lower than it would be anyway.
In other words, they make no more.
By the end of this next Obama turn, we'll have a $20 trillion national debt.
And this would be equivalent, these savings over a decade would be equivalent to less than 1% of that.
But the Democrats, nevertheless, it's still to cut anything is just not in the spirit of New Year when we're all popping those champagne corks.
So Democrats want to put off the cuts for another year.
That is the sticking point.
But otherwise, AP sources say fiscal cliff deal emerging.
There is no truth to the deal, to the rumor that John Boehner had agreed to increase taxes on persons making more than $200,000 a year in exchange for Mitch McConnell fathering Kim Kardashian's baby.
That turns out to be an unfounded rumor.
But we are following this closely.
Surprise, surprise, a fiscal cliff deal emerging.
The American maiden tied to the railroad tracks while John Boehner twirls his moustaches.
At the last moment, a bipartisan posse is galloping up to untie the American maiden from the railroad tracks before the high-speed Joe Biden Memorial Rail Link comes and plows her into the ground.
So that's the terrific news.
A fiscal cliff deal is emerging, even as we speak.
Let's go to Alan in Rockford, Illinois.
Alan, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh Show this New Year's Eve.
Great to have you with us.
Happy New Year, Mark.
How are we here today?
Happy New Year to you.
Happy 2013.
Thank you.
I wanted to comment on the teachers' public tensions, et cetera, all the time.
In the area I live in Rockford, Illinois, you can look up teachers' salaries.
The state of Illinois publishes that information.
And as long as teachers have their master's degrees, which took them approximately one year at night school to get, you know, you're seeing kindergarten, first grade, second-grade teachers in their $70,000 to $85,000 a year range currently.
Their health insurance is 4% as compared to 24% for the private sector, and the taxpayer is funding their retirements.
At age 55, when they retire, they can buy and five additional years of tenure, which are step increases.
And so you start seeing down the road here a 40-year-old in our school district who's making, let's say, $73,000, $74,000 a year, will be making upper 80s.
When you discount that debt and those continue to grow, you're talking about teachers that are worth $3.4 to $4 million a year.
So really to call a teacher a millionaire is an understatement.
They're more like multi-millionaires, wouldn't you agree?
Yeah, that's right.
And as you say, they can basically retire.
You can have two people living side by side at 23 and 25 Maple Street in Rockford, Illinois, and they'll have gone to the same grade school together.
They'll have known each other all their lives.
And one of them has become a unionized teacher in the Illinois education system and can retire at 55 on a multi, as you said, a multi-millionaire's income, while the other one has to work in the hardware store till the day drops dead in order to provide his neighbor with that multi-millionaire's income.
And that's why that can't stand, by the way.
Those two people ultimately cannot coexist in the same street.
So unless at some point, unless the unionized work, the lavishly remunerated unionized public sector union retirees are going to all move to some one big gated community, it is not going to get very pleasant when these things start to cause real tensions.
Wouldn't you agree, Alan?
Has Alan gone?
Oh, Alan disappeared.
He did make a good, he made a great, he made a terrific point there, and it's one worth that we should take seriously.
I mean, the discrepancy between a public sector, the benefits accorded to a public sector.
By the way, this again has a massive distorting effect on the economy.
Just leaving aside whether you actually really people say, well, we want to invest in education.
We want to invest in education.
There's a piece in the New Republic this week by John Judas, and he says he's talking about how it's absurd.
It's absolutely absurd to think you can ever shrink government.
Because the public demands affordable health care, quality public education, retirement insurance.
So government at all levels will need to grow and take up a larger percentage of the nation's GDP.
Now, it's grown dramatically.
A century ago, the federal government spent 2.4% of GDP.
Under Barack Obama, that's gone up to 24, 25%.
So in other words, I mean, it went up under FDR and under LBJ and all the rest of it.
It goes up, basically it goes up, up, up.
But it's gone from 2.4% in 1913.
In other words, a century ago, the federal government paid little part in your life and spent very little of your money to 25% today.
Total federal state and local spending has gone from about 8% a century ago to 41% or so today.
And John Judas in the New Republic says it's got to go up even more because people want, quote, affordable health care and, quote, quality public education.
And by quality public education, what that boils down to is teachers, not just teachers, but all kinds of other administrative personnel who are remunerated in ways that have an ever-growing discrepancy between them and the communities they supposedly serve and they live among.
And that situation can't endure.
It's a distorting factor in the economy.
I notice in my part of New Hampshire, for example, a lot of people take jobs they don't want to do for the so-called benefits.
In other words, you're starting out, usually it'll be the wife, but it's sometimes the husband too.
The wife will take a job, say a dull administrative job in a school district where she has to basically keep an eye on one of the special ed children for a few hours a day just because it accesses benefits for her, while her husband, doing a bit of snowplowing or a bit of contracting or whatever, doesn't have those, doesn't enjoy those benefits.
So people, and I think that's a kind of tragedy in a way, that's worse than just big government socialism style, is where people are making decisions about their careers based on, and the jobs they take, based on the level of benefits.
And those government jobs, the benefits of those jobs, which get better and better as you get older and older.
And if you prioritize security, as many people do, then those jobs basically are the thing to get.
So people take jobs.
It's arguable about whether these jobs are even necessary.
It's arguable about whether the massive explosion in administrative jobs in the education system in the last four years, 40 years.
It's arguable whether over those 40 years you need all those extra administrative jobs, but people want them.
People want jobs like that because they believe that in difficult times they provide security.
So dark days could be ahead in the year 2013.
But don't forget the great news.
The great news is that AP is reporting that a fiscal cliff deal is emerging, even as we speak.
We'll keep you up to date on that and all the other exciting, breaking fiscal cliff news on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Lots more still to come.
Barack Obama is giving a press conference at 1.30.
Did you expect this last-minute development in the exciting fiscal cliff, final day of the fiscal cliff?
We're all looking forward to going over the fiscal cliff at midnight at the stroke of midnight.
But Barack Obama has now scheduled a press conference at 1.30 in which he will be accompanied by, this is the detail to watch, selected members of the American middle class.
We don't know who they are.
This is select, yeah, it is exciting, HR.
I mean, I don't know who these, these may be the final five or six contestants in the competition to identify Kim Kardashian's baby's father, or they may be beneficiaries of the fiscal cliff deal that is said to be emerging.
I don't know.
It could be Kim Kardashian, potential Kim Kardashian baby fathers, or they could be beneficiaries of the fiscal cliff deal that has apparently been negotiated by Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell.
And we'll see how we'll keep an eye on how that works out.
But that is happening live, 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time today.
This totally unexpected, last-minute fiscal cliff deal that is now said to be emerging.
It all came about.
Joe Biden was seen earlier in the Senate.
I don't know whether it was on the floor of the Senate, in the well of the Senate, in the men's room of the Senate.
I've been in the men's room of the Senate.
I was standing next to, I accidentally used the Senate bathroom you're not meant to use unless you're a big-time senator, I think, or at the very least a senior aide.
So I've been there.
I use the senator's elevator improperly too with Strom Thurmond and a lot of the guys.
That's going back always, but I know what it's like in there.
I know the high drama that attends the world's greatest deliberative body.
And Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden were seen whispering, whispering this morning.
And nobody knew, but apparently it is the contours of a deal.
Chuck Todd, Chuck Todd from NBC and MSNBC and all the other NBCs.
Chuck Todd says, has now treated, the more folks on both sides in House and Sen learn about this McConnell-Biden deal, the more they don't like, oh, come on, guys, you're just extras.
That's all you have to do.
It's like Joe Biden whispered to Mitch McConnell, said, okay, do you think we've strung it out long enough now?
Can we announce it?
What about if we announce it at 1.30?
We don't want to be leaving it too late until everybody's left for the New Year's Eve party.
And Mitch McConnell said, you're right.
It's dead.
Washington is Deadsville.
We want to get out of town.
So let's not leave it until after lunch.
So the fiscal cliff deal has been negotiated by Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell.
And there will be in there in the fiscal cliff deal.
Breaking news, 1.30 p.m., Barack Obama will be selected with, will be appearing with selected members of the American middle class.
Here we go.
Obama, quote, will, quote, deliver remarks about the fiscal cliff at a White House event with middle-class Americans who claim to have fathered Kim Kardashian's baby.
That's live, 1.30 Eastern Time.
Now, here's the thing.
How do you rustle up half a dozen members of the middle class at 1.30 at short notice on New Year's Eve?
Aren't they all doing stuff?
And they say, oh, I'm sorry.
How do you rustle up half a dozen members of the middle class who have so-called stories to tell at short notice?
Do you get the feeling these selected members of the middle class have been selected in advance?
Do you know to get into the White House, by the way, if you're just an ordinary American now, you have to undergo a Secret Service background check to get anywhere near the president, unless you're like some gun nut like David Gregory.
David Gregory is the only guy in the country who's wanted on firearms offenses who gets within three feet of the president.
But unless you're for that exclusive interview on Sunday, anyone else, any regular gun nut, can't get, won't pass the background check.
If you think of the situation David Gregory's in, you know, you're being investigated by D.C. police on firearms offenses.
Anybody else try to get near the president wouldn't work.
But David Gregory does.
But everybody else, to get near the president, you've got to undergo a background check.
And yet, amazingly, at short notice, even before the deal has been agreed, they have found selected middle-class Americans to appear with the president at the White House, where he will deliver remarks about the fiscal cliff deal.
What a stunning and unexpected development, just in the nick of time, to save America from going over the fiscal cliff.
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