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Dec. 31, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:05
December 31, 2012, Monday, Hour #2
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Yes, America's Anchorman is away and this is your undocumented anchorman Mark Stein.
Honored to be here on a history-making day for the United States of America.
At the 11th hour, the Congressional Cavalry are riding to the rescue to prevent America from going over the fiscal cliff.
Headline in Politico, as we speak, fiscal cliff, Senate lurches toward deal.
And you know that when the going gets tough, tough senators start lurching.
They are lurching toward a deal, even as we speak.
Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell apparently spent the night together in...
That's one hell of a lurch right there.
Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell spent the night together engaged in furious overnight negotiations.
Don't worry, that's not a euphemism like Kim Kardashian and Kanye West or anything.
They spent the night together engaged in furious negotiations to avert the fiscal cliff.
Barack Obama will be appearing at the White House 1.30 Eastern Time, and that's in about 20 minutes time with selected pre-approved background checked members of the American middle class to announce triumphant victory and a rosy future for America.
Trembling on the brink of the fiscal cliff, he will have pulled us back from the edge and he will be there celebrating in about 20 minutes time with selected pre-approved Security Service background checked members, authentic members of the American middle class, will be appearing with him live, 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time.
And we will bring you all the breaking news in this last minute, unexpected development in the fiscal cliff negotiations.
We're live here at Ice Station EIB in far northern New Hampshire, a stone's throw from the Canadian border.
But don't throw stones because otherwise they might invade.
They don't have a fiscal cliff over in Canada.
That's how sorry and pathetic they are.
There's no fiscal cliff in Canada, but there's one in the United States.
And it has provided untold hours of entertainment and gripping drama in the weeks since the election.
Oddly enough, one never heard about this fiscal cliff thing in all the many months leading up to the Election Day.
But since Election Day, we've talked about nothing else.
And it's provided many hours of gripping white-knuckle thrill ride drama.
But all good things must come to an end.
And we are now moments away from a fiscal cliff deal.
Barack Obama will speak to the nation with authentically typical members of the American middle class.
They can't get more authentically typical.
Even though this deal is a last-minute deal, they have spent weeks preparing this, screening, approving these selected members of the middle class.
And they will be appearing with Barack Obama live at the White House, 1.30 p.m. Eastern in about 20 minutes time.
This is gripping stuff.
It's also the day that Joe Lieberman, retiring chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, chose to release his Benghazi report along with Susan Collins, who is the ranking Republican member there.
And it's full of fascinating stuff, actually, and it goes well with the fiscal cliff because it tells you exactly why American government is entirely dysfunctional.
And although nobody will pay any attention to this Benghazi thing, and Benghazi is over as a political issue, four Americans died.
Dead ambassador and three other Americans died.
The Benghazi thing is not going to go anywhere, but it is worth, it is fascinating nonetheless just to look at it as an example of American government in action.
This was a temporary facility because Benghazi is a terribly dangerous town.
And so they didn't have a permanent facility there.
They just had a temporary one.
And the great thing about temporary facility, if you build a permanent consulate or embassy in, say, Belgium or Sweden, then it has to meet State Department security standards.
That's why, if you've ever tried, here's a competition you can try.
If you've got any friends who are Canadians or Australians and you're stuck together in a foreign capital and you get mugged, and your Canadian pal or your Australian pal says, well, I'm going to the embassy to get a replacement passport because I've just been mugged.
And you say, well, I'm going to the U.S. embassy to get my replacement passport.
And you just both set off for the embassy together.
He'll be back with his new passport from the Canadian embassy in the time you're still standing in line to get into the U.S. embassy because they've got the security.
When you go to Gothenburg, Sweden, or whatever, the consular security there is like you can't get into the joint, can't get into the joint.
There's a hilarious line.
If you've seen Taken 2 with Liam Neeson, this came out about a week after Benghazi.
And this is one of these films where Liam Neeson goes to a foreign city and kills 47%, guns down 47% of its inhabitants.
He did it in Paris in the first film.
Now he's doing it in Istanbul.
And at one point, he tells his daughter, things are getting a little hot and people are firing at him.
And he tells his daughter, go to the U.S. Embassy.
You'll be safe there.
That was a week after Benghazi.
That's a great line.
That's the funniest line in the picture.
The hilarious thing about this is that because the Benghazi facility was a temporary facility, no security standards applied to it.
So in other words, if you put a consulate in, or an embassy in Dublin or in Naples, you've got to meet State Department security standards.
But if there's a war zone and a revolution and everything's all a bit chaotic and you put up a consulate in the middle of the war zone or the post-revolutionary chaos, no security standards applied to it.
This is page 15 of the report.
No security standards applied to it.
Now, they recognized, right, that this is a dangerous situation for American diplomats.
So 2004, the Accountability Review Board recommended the installation of pedestrian barriers at U.S. diplomatic facilities overseas.
Because right now, there's like a vehicle barrier to stop vehicles getting in and out, but there's no pedestrian barriers.
There's no like a turnstile or gate like there is on Nanny Bloomberg subway or whatever.
2004, the Accountability Review Board recommended the installation of pedestrian barriers.
The 2009 Department of State Inspector General report five years later also approved it and endorsed that.
We are now, what, coming up to nine years after the Accountability Review Board recommended the installation of pedestrian barriers, and there's still no pedestrian barriers at any of these places.
That's your government in action, folks.
That's what you're getting more of under the fiscal cliff deal, the fiscal cliff deal, under which the United States government can't enact a recommendation of its own State Department within nine years.
Within nine years.
You know how, you know, the original, all these, these guys who died on the roof, those two brave men, they were CIA.
The CIA is the child of the OSS that started in the Second World War, after Pearl Harbor, after Pearl Harbor.
FDR directed the setting up of an intelligence service.
Now, if we worked then the way we work now, someone would have issued a report after five years saying we need an intelligence service and nine years later they would just about be starting to think about setting up the intelligence service.
This whole fascinating report is a story of bureaucratic sclerosis and inertia.
And that's why it's expensive and that's why the deal that is being agreed even as we speak doesn't deal with actually the central problem about American government these days is that no matter how much you spend, it can't do anything in a timely and efficient manner.
The people they sent to rescue, they called in a rescue after meeting.
They discovered this was going on in Benghazi, 3.40 p.m. Eastern Time, 9.40 in Benghazi.
A couple of hours later, Defense Secretary Panetta directed that one fleet anti-terrorism security team platoon stationed in Rota, Spain, be deployed to Benghazi.
They didn't have one.
Benghazi comes under AFRICOM in terms of the divided commands of the U.S. military.
They didn't have a fleet anti-terrorism security team platoon.
There is none in AFRICOM.
They've started one now since this.
But they had one in Eastern Europe, right?
Because the United States has a big problem with anti-terrorism in Eastern Europe.
Don't you find that?
Haven't you noticed all the stories in the papers about anti-American terrorism in Bulgaria and Slovenia?
It's just all over.
It's all over the map.
It's happening all the time.
All the anti-American terrorism in Slovakia and in Macedonia, it's just non-stop.
It's on the news all the time.
But in Africa, where there's no terrorism going on, I mean, you never hear anything about terrorism in Yemen or Somalia or any place like that.
The world's most lavishly funded military operation does not have a fleet anti-terrorism security team in Afrikom.
So they couldn't send one from the so-called command.
They had to get one there eventually from Eastern Europe.
And I love this, the fleet anti-do you know why they call it a fleet anti-terrorism security team?
Because the acronym is FAST.
And that's just great, isn't it?
FAST.
So they set up this fleet anti-terrorism security team system because it's got a cool acronym, FAST.
Call the FAST Squad.
Get the FAST platoon here.
Something's happening.
Something's happening in Benghazi.
Get the FAST team here.
We're going to send the FAST guys in here.
The FAST guys arrived at the end of the day the previous day.
The so-called FAST guys got there 27 hours after everything had happened.
That's how fast they are.
But they've got the cool acronym.
I bet the badges look really great too.
This whole Benghazi report, no one will pay attention to.
Kim Kardashian, the Fiscal Cliff deal, nobody's going to pay any attention to this thing.
It is a fascinating document of the world's most lavishly funded inertia and is a perfect microcosm of everything that is wrong with American government, with American money, no object government.
And that's what we've just dealt has just endorsed for the next however many years until the next bit of high-stakes drama, until the next time America's tied to the railroad track or hanging by its fingernails off the fiscal cliff.
That is a classic, in-depth example of American sclerosis and American inertia.
1-800-282-2882.
We are counting down the minutes.
Barack Obama is going to appear at the White House with selected pre-screened, pre-approved members of the American middle class as a deal as the Senate, in the words of Politico, lurches toward a fiscal cliff deal.
We will lurch toward the fiscal cliff with them.
And let's hope those senators don't lurch too carelessly and wind up toppling backwards into the fiscal abyss.
but they are lurching toward a deal, even as we speak, and we will cover that live on The Rush Limbaugh Show.
Mark Stein in for Rush.
President Obama has called the father of Kim Kardashian's baby a jackass.
This is Kanye West.
You may remember he rather ungallantly seized the microphone, or you may not remember, I certainly didn't.
He rather ungallantly seized the microphone from Taylor Swift when she won the MTV Video of the Year award and said that the award should have gone to Beyoncé instead.
And President Obama called him a jackass and said he preferred Jay-Z.
Well, the jackass has had the last laugh because he is going to be the father of Kim Kardashian's baby.
And as far as I know, neither Jay-Z nor Obama have fathered any Kardashian babies.
So Kanye West, the father of Kim Kardashian's baby, has been called a jackass by President Obama.
The man who called Kanye West a jackass.
Well, I don't agree with President Obama on much, by the way, but I agree with him on that.
Kanye West did the world's all-time worst ever version of Diamonds Are Forever.
So I agree with President Obama.
In the spirit of New Year's Eve bipartisanship, I agree with Obama on that.
He will be speaking live from the White House in six minutes' time.
Let us go.
While we wait with bated breath, let us go to Mark in St. Louis.
Mark, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Happy New Year to you.
And happy New Year to you, Mark.
Thanks for taking my call.
I'm calling because both today and on your previous show for Rush, you indicated that the firepower of the Defense Department, which is deployed all over the world, could not provide a force sufficient to intervene in the Benghazi murder and sodomizing of our representatives of American government.
And I think there's more information out there that the media has kept from you and the American people.
Number one, there was a task force named Task Force Stennis on aboard an aircraft carrier who had the mission to respond to the attack.
And the Rear Admiral by the name of Gowette, G-A-O-U-E-T-T-E, was prepared to do that when he received an order from someone in the chain of command to stand down.
He was subsequently alleged to have said, I will not.
And he was fired.
He now sits up at Bremerton Naval Air Station in Washington awaiting his future, which could be a court-martial.
His boss is a general by the name of Ham, H-A-M, AFRICOM Commander, who apparently agreed with Admiral Gowette.
He was also relieved and has been reassigned.
So there's been a whole piece of this mystery that has been shielded by the media.
I would just ask a couple of quick questions, if I could.
Number one, why don't we see the videotape from the White House Situation Room like we saw when Osama bin Laden was taken down?
No, no, that's right.
Who was there and who was not?
What will be happening to Admiral Galwet for his apparent willingness to take on the commander-in-chief and say that we can make a difference?
We can get the, we can save lives.
Two questions along with who invented the story about the Islamic video anti-Islamic video.
No, you're right.
You're right on that.
You're right on that, Mark.
But I just want to emphasize one thing that in case it wasn't clear, you're right, too, that there are brave, out there on the sharp end of things, there are no end to the number of brave guys ready to do what's necessary.
The two CIA men who died, in effect abandoned by their government on the rooftop in Benghazi, actually disobeyed, actually disobeyed orders.
They went back from the annex to the so-called diplomatic facility.
They didn't have to do that.
In fact, they were ordered not to do that.
But they went back and they saved about, by most estimates, 50 American lives, and they died on that rooftop.
And there are many things that are in this report that are indicative of bureaucratic, just a kind of bureaucratic torpor.
The Americans from Tripoli who landed at Benghazi airport to go and rescue their colleagues, their compatriots in the Benghazi facility, and they were held at the airport by Libyan forces mysteriously for something like three and a half hours.
Why was there no one in Washington?
Why did the president nor the Secretary of State actually pick up the phone and get the Libyan president, the guy whom we supposedly installed, the guy that we got rid of Gaddafi to put this guy in charge?
Why didn't anyone get on the phone to that guy and make it happen?
The reason this consulate was so vulnerable, they're not calling it a consulate, it's apparently a, it didn't offer consular services.
I mean, it's a very mysterious, I don't know what it was doing in Benghazi, it's a very mysterious business.
But why did after the call for beefed up security went out, a guy, only one guy could actually get into the country.
The others couldn't get visas.
Why does the most powerful, this is what I'm talking about, Mark, about American power.
What's the point of spending 44% of the world's military budget if you can't make anything happen?
The State Department is more lavishly funded than any other foreign ministry on the planet, and it can't make anything happen.
So it responds to a call for beefed up diplomatic security, and only one guy gets a visa.
These are guys that we bankrolled.
We toppled that ridiculous pockmark transvestite and got rid of him, Gaddafi, in order to put this guy in office, this new regime in office, and they won't give visas for security personnel at an American diplomatic facility, and nobody, neither, nobody at the State Department gets on the phone, gets that guy, and makes it happen.
What's the point then?
What is the point of this level of spending on the world's most biggest governor?
Yes, yes, tis the season of lame guest hosts of the EIB Network.
But don't worry, it could be worse.
We could cross to live coverage of President Obama's speech.
So there is that.
I've been getting emails, deluge from emails, since I announced about half an hour ago that the president, right about now, will be speaking in the White House with selected members of the middle class.
And they said, oh, no, no, don't make my day any worse by bringing live coverage, cutting over to live coverage of President Obama.
We'd rather have the lame guest host.
Lame guest host today, Best of Rush tomorrow, another lame guest host.
Doug Urbanski is the lame guest host on Wednesday, and then Rush Back Live for another year of excellence in broadcasting.
But the president is speaking even as I speak.
He's speaking even as I speak.
I must work on that line.
The president, he hasn't started yet.
He's late.
I'm here in far northern New Hampshire where they haven't introduced television yet.
And so I can't tell.
But if the president does start speaking, I will speak to you about the fact that he is speaking about the fiscal cliff deal, even as I speak.
I think that's right.
Anyway, the president about to speak with selected members of the middle class.
This is an entirely spontaneous event because we haven't yet had the fiscal cliff deal is just minutes away.
But he thoughtfully anticipated it and chose selected members of the middle class and had them pre-screened by the Secret Service so that it was safe for them to be admitted to the White House and stand behind him as the Radio City rocket line of his scintillating fiscal cliff number, which is coming up even as I speak.
Let us go to Bill in New York.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great, Bill.
Good to have you.
I'm going to put off the conference.
I have to get over there.
I'm actually playing the role of token middle-class white guy with a job in the back of the president there.
Oh, no, they're not doing that.
I'm waiting to talk to you.
But what I want to talk about is all this fiscal cliff stuff is going to go on and on year after year because the spending is easy.
The message, we're going to give you anything you want and the rich guy pays for it is really easy to sell and really hard to go to intellectually and say it's not going to work.
And it's only going to stop when the taxpayer stops paying the taxes, when they stop paying the bill, either because they run out of money or because they just decide they're not going to do it anymore.
But otherwise, I see no indications of this ever slowing down.
Well, you know, Bill, it will slow down before that, because I think it's actually quite hard to get to that point, particularly in this country where the IRS can press a button and not just freeze your bank accounts, but freeze all your family members' bank accounts too.
So when you actually start having resistance at that level, I think it's actually harder to do than it is in, say, Greece, where a lot of people get tax bills and don't pay them.
But the difference here, Bill, is that you're right, that this is the perfect system.
If you want big government and you can just blame it on a small group of people that nobody knows, they're just like these obscure rich people who are going to pay for it.
The fact that actually you're not paying for it, you're just borrowing it and borrowing it and borrowing it.
That's the perfect system for liberals.
It's actually better than big government in Europe because big government in Europe, generally speaking, they are taxed at about the cost of that big government.
I mean, if you look at Scandinavian countries, they spend about just shy of 50%, around 50% at government level, and they take in a few points less than that in revenue.
So they're basically trying to raise what they spend.
Nobody's pretending to do that in this stupid deal.
Right now, all levels of American government spend 42% of GDP, and they only raise in revenue 24%.
That's barely half of what they need.
And it's perfect.
As long as you can keep on doing that.
In other words, if you're telling people you can have big government and you don't have to pay for it, that's like the perfect combination for a lot of people, Bill.
So I'll tell you what, Bill, you're in New York.
You're on the sharp end.
Nanny Bloomberg's New York.
He's got tons of plans for regulating soda and all the rest of it.
How do you stop this, Bill?
You mean Bloomberg?
No, how do you stop spending?
How then do you reign in this?
It's going to have to stop, and it either will be stopped by the market, you know, the borrowing market drying up.
Eventually, the interest rates that they pay on their bonds are going to, they're being held at almost nothing.
Those are going to drift up.
No one will buy our bonds.
We can't keep buying our own debt.
You know, eventually it's going to implode.
And I think the easier way out is not, you know, people advertising that they're not paying their taxes, but more or less civil disobedience.
You know, people working less, people using every loophole they can find.
You know, I'm not saying just don't pay your taxes.
I'm saying tax resistance, you know, like Dante did.
I think that would be easier than the catastrophe we're reading to when all of a sudden we can't borrow money anymore.
I love that image, Bill.
Basically, you're looking for a fiscal gandhi for nonviolent fiscal resistance.
I love it.
That's a terrific image, Bill.
Happy New Year to you.
And Bill, Bill was saying he's late getting to the White House because he was supposed to be the, he had been pre-designated amongst all these middle-class people as the white middle-class guy with a job who was supposed to be standing behind Barack Obama.
But instead, he's offered to play the role of a fiscal gandhi wearing a fiscal loincloth and offering nonviolent fiscal resistance to what's going on.
Bill is actually, you know, that's the point here.
We don't pay for it.
We've got ourselves into the sweetest situation that anyone could be in.
Because generally speaking, if you want European level of government, you've got to be taxed at an awful lot higher rate.
We, by the way, have a more progressive tax system than Europe, than places we think of as socialist basket cases.
Middle-class people here have to understand that if they want Swedish-style government, they've got to be taxed like Swedes.
Right now, this whole delusion, the illusion of the whole fiscal cliff negotiation, that somehow there are enough rich people out there to close the gap, or at least partially close the gap.
Nothing that is being agreed to today is going to do anything for the gap between spending and revenue, which is greater here than in any other developed society.
And the only reason, which Bill alluded to, that we can do that is because interest rates are extremely low.
So it's cheap to borrow, and it's particularly cheap to borrow for the Americans because America is in a unique situation where we borrow in the debt in the currency in which the debt is denominated.
So we can basically, I mean, if you think about what Ben Bernanke's been doing with the quantitative easing, where basically America is buying 70% of its own debt, Greece can't do that.
Greece doesn't print its own currency.
Spain can't do that.
Spain doesn't print its own currency.
Ireland doesn't print its own currency.
And so because of that, they have forced on them a good faith effort to at least attempt to raise what they spend.
Nobody needs to do that in America.
As I said, total government outlays about 41%, 42%.
Total revenues in the last year, 24%.
That's barely more than half of what is being spent.
And the only reason we can do that is because the dollar is the world's global reserve currency.
Let us go to Chris in Toronto, where there is no fiscal cliff.
Chris says, are you a Canadian in Toronto, Chris?
I am, Mark.
I'm a Canadian.
Hey, good for you.
I was born in Toronto at Wellesley Hospital.
Well, we look forward to you every time you come back.
No, I love it.
I love it.
I love being there.
And Wellesley Hospital, you can't be born there anymore.
I think they tore the building down and salted the earth after I was born there because they didn't want to take a chance on that happening again.
So, how are you saying?
I've been talking about the medical system.
What I did want to talk about, though, Mark, if you don't mind, is I'm thinking to myself that if there is no deal that's reached, most of the talk is that this is going to be the end of the world as far as the economy goes at some level.
And yet, you know, 60 days from now, Timmy Geithner is going to be looking for an increase in the debt ceiling.
And Americans are going to be sitting there saying to themselves, my taxes just went up this outrageous amount of money, and it's still not enough.
And the reality is it's only going to be half of enough because if this fiscal cliff happens, it's going to become a fiscal reality check when they realize that $600 billion in tax cuts and tax or spending cuts and tax increases is only half of the $1.2 trillion that they're borrowing.
Yeah, and that theory, which a lot of people speak of, that the best thing that could happen is we go off the fiscal cliff, people adjust to new taxes, and it makes them understand that there is a cost to government this size.
The problem with that, the problem with that, Chris, the countervailing argument, is that there would still be so many people untouched by the increases in taxation, relatively untouched by it, that even that would not be enough.
And they would think then when it came to the debt ceiling negotiations, well, that's what we need to do.
If we can increase the borrowing, then that will mean we get taxed less.
I mean, it's a gamble, Chris.
I understand what you're saying.
But everyone always thinks that at some point the electorate will sober up.
And that in the end, as we saw in November, that actually starts to become quite a long shot, Chris.
Yeah, it is kind of scary, though, isn't it?
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, I think if you go back to that old line, I think it was Gerald Ford's or Barry Goldwater's, that the problem with a government big enough to give you everything you want is that it's big enough to take away everything you have.
That's actually not the problem.
The problem with a government big enough to give you everything you want is that it's not big enough to get you to give any of it back once you've gotten used to it.
And that's the case in Greece, for example.
Once people get used to retiring at 50 or whatever, then they decide when the government says we'd like you to retire at 60, they say nuts to that.
And I think that's the danger here is that once you get people used to it, Obama calculated that if you get used, if you get people used to this level of government spending, they would get used to it very quickly and they would accept it as the new baseline, Chris.
And that seems to be pretty much what's happened.
Well, and it's scary as a Canadian because it's kind of like your neighbor's house being on fire.
That's never going to be a good thing.
This is a Canadian, folks.
He's talking about you.
He's living there in the nice manicured lawn and the nice well-maintained house, and he's looking at you next door and he says your house is on fire.
That's a terrific line, Chris.
Do you know, for the first time in history, by the way, the net worth of Canadians is higher than Americans.
This is the world we live in, folks.
Mark Steinen for Rush, the president, the president has begun speaking.
So this is a perfect time to go to a commercial break.
And with luck, he'll have finished speaking by the time of the end of the commercial break, so we won't have to cross life to him.
But you never know.
The President of the United States is speaking as we speak.
This is the Rush Limbaugh Show.
More still to come.
The President of the United States with very finely demographically calibrated members of the middle class is speaking to the nation as well.
Judging from actually the picture, the shot I'm looking at, apparently most members of the middle class are women these days.
There don't seem to be any.
I don't think there's one guy.
Is there still one guy still in the middle class?
Okay, that's good.
There's still, yeah, otherwise all the middle class are women.
Isn't that just the way?
And they, oh, come on, HR.
That is.
HR is making ungallant remarks.
I think if you're one of the pre-selected, it is fair enough.
If you're one of the pre-selected members of the middle class, you could probably dress up to appear as one of the president's extras.
Although probably you don't want to dress up too much, because then it looks like you wouldn't benefit from his new federal tax credit.
So you don't want to be too well dressed for it, HR.
I think that's, you don't want to be over-groomed for it.
Anyway, he's now addressing the nation and the contours of a deal.
He's talking about...
I love this.
We've been negotiating this for months.
And he's talking about how the contours of the deal that are emerging will allow for investments in education.
What does that actually mean, by the way?
But it's like investments in education aren't anything new.
The United States government spends more than any nation except Switzerland on education.
The pupil-teacher ratio is half of what it was.
The average American is now almost in 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, 1940, the average American had an eighth-grade education.
By the way, that was the so-called greatest generation.
They were eighth graders, and they went on to win the Second World War and build the greatest economy that's ever known.
Now everybody stays in school twice as long, has twice as many teachers, gets twice as much attention from your school mom.
And the benefit to student performance is absolutely undetectable.
What more do we need to spend?
Okay, we're spending the Swiss have something to show for it.
He's now talking about more in so-called investments in education, which, by the way, means unionized administrative stuff.
It doesn't mean your kid is going to be doing calculus or Latin or physics or anything like that.
It just means more on administrative costs.
And yet that's his big idea.
Why call a press conference?
This guy is saying, this guy is just saying what he said all the time.
He's not saying investments in education, why do you need?
If I was one of his selected middle-class props who'd been pre-screened by the Secret Service and were deemed sufficiently safe to stand behind him when he's giving a teleprompter address, I would be furious at coming all that well.
I mean, I take it they're nearby.
They haven't been flown in from Alaska or Guam or anywhere.
But I would be furious at taking a big chunk of time out of my day to go and stand behind the president to listen to him triumphantly announce this deal and hear him boring on about investments in education all over again.
Same old, same old, same old.
The United States government spends more than anybody except the Swiss.
And by the way, that's the average.
York City School District, Pennsylvania.
We had a teacher from Pennsylvania who wanted to talk to me, but he didn't wait.
But this is fascinating to me.
York City School District spends $13,000 per pupil.
That's a third more than the Swiss spend.
And there's nothing to show for it.
Slovakia spends about half the American average, and the Slovak kids beat the United States at mathematics, which may well explain why their budget arithmetic is rather more closely tied to reality than ours is.
Yet he still thinks that investing in it, he thinks he can stand up there and say investing in education with a straight face as if it means anything.
This is just more the same.
I'd rather slide off the fiscal cliff.
I would rather be at the bottom of the fiscal cliff.
I would get down.
I would land with a thud and I would be covered in bruises.
But after I'd got to my feet, I would rip open my shirt and say, thank God Almighty, free at last.
The fiscal cliff, if this is what it means to be averting the fiscal cliff, to have to listen to him talk about we need to invest more in education, stand well back, get out of the way.
I want to dive off that fiscal cliff and into the fiscal abyss myself.
Mark Stein for Rush, more to come.
There actually isn't a fiscal cliff deal at this moment, but Barack Obama has come out to say that it may possibly be a fiscal cliff deal, that they're getting close.
He's HR points out, he's like, it's like if Kim Kardashian's doctor came out and announced that we don't know yet whether it's a boy or a girl.
She hasn't had anything yet, but we're confident that it'll be a boy or a girl at some point in the future.
That's basically what Barack Obama has come out and announced, that there is no fiscal cliff deal.
Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell says that he's been stiffed by the White House, which reneged on its previous commitment.
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