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Dec. 31, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:02
December 31, 2012, Monday, Hour #3
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Yes, if you if you switched off your radio because that guy who came on at one thirty was was droning on.
It's uh it's safe to switch it back, it's safe to switch it back on again.
Uh I normally uh don't uh I get normally get these complaints when I'm on the air, like I get these emails saying, Why does Rush have these lamo guest hosts?
This is the first time I've ever done the show where uh where people have said, Oh no, no, no, no, don't please don't cut away to the Barack Obama speech.
Uh so I've been instead of been getting all these emails in the uh last uh one thirty half hour saying, Oh my god, these Rush guest hosts.
So who's this guy now droning on?
These rush guest hosts are getting worse.
That wasn't me, folks, that was President Obama.
But I got all these emails saying, Oh, this uh God, this uh new guy they've gotten on the air is even worse than that uh panty waist uh snot nosed foreign guy they have on.
Uh but Obama has finished speaking now.
He has finished speaking, and it turned out to be a big nothing.
Turn out there is no fiscal cliff deal.
Amazingly enough, this is the the latest exciting plot twist.
We knew, we thought that on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day there would be a fiscal cliff deal, but now we've had this is like the moment, you know the moment in the horror movie when they think they've driven the stake through the monster and they've killed the zombie or whatever, and then they're all like the uh the wholesome teenagers who all say, Oh, thank God that's all over then, and then the hand reaches up out from the ground, the rotten hand, and the zombie turns out not to be dead and drags down, and they have to go in for the big finish and big kill.
That's the equivalent of this moment.
The fiscal cliff is not yet dead.
It is still the fiscal cliff is still there.
They do not have a deal.
They do not have a deal.
But uh President Obama nevertheless assembled an entire chorus line of supporting middle class dancers, pre-selected and pre-screened, to announce that they're very close to a deal.
To announce that the deal is within sight.
The fiscal cliff is within sight, but apparently the deal is also within sight.
So it's your choice, America.
They're both within sight.
Do you go for the fiscal cliff or do you go for the deal?
The deal is within sight.
So he called a press conference with carefully demographically selected members of the middle class.
They all w is that right, HR, they were all women except for one, there was one guy.
There's one guy, there's one guy still in the American middle class.
Otherwise it's all it's like all the professions now.
It's all it's all women, isn't it?
Uh the guys, I don't know, the guys are out there, uh don't know what they're doing.
The guys are all on social security disability, and the women are all in the middle class now.
That's the way it works in America.
But anyway, there was one guy, the last guy, still in the American middle class, he was there standing behind President Obama.
They thought they were gonna be there for the historic signing, the announcement of the Fiscal Cliff deal.
They thought it was gonna be as historic as Neville Chamberlain standing there when he was at Heston Aerodrome, 1939, and he got there and he said, I have here a a piece of paper from Herr Hitler.
And they thought Barack Obama was gonna be standing there saying, I have here a piece of paper from Herr Bahner uh announcing peace in our time, and instead instead, there's no deal.
There's no deal.
So he's not he doesn't get to be Neville Chamberlain.
Is Neville Chamberlain it may happen.
It'll be happen around eleven o'clock tonight.
But right now they are close to a deal.
Here's what uh Mitch McConnell is complaining about that uh after he agreed a deal, he spent all night with Joe Biden.
That's the sacrifice he was prepared to make for this.
He spent all night in a room with Joe Biden.
And he thought it when he came out that he had a deal, and then Obama, who wasn't in the room all night with Joe Biden, I'll bet you Obama has never spent the night in a room with Joe Biden, said uh added something else to the deal.
Something to do with sequestration or something.
Uh he said, yeah, the cut uh oh the cuts, he said the cuts have to be put on hold for a year.
And Mitch McConnell had never agreed to that.
And uh he spent all night in a room with Joe Biden for nothing.
He had said, in fact, Mitch McConnell reached out to the vice president.
He said, I need a dance partner.
That's what he'd explained.
I need a dance partner.
Jeff, there's one thing I loathe more than senators, it's senators talking folksy.
But I would uh I would cut uh McConnell a pass on this because he said uh I need a dance partner and he spent all night dancing with in a room he spent all night in a closed room dancing with Joe Biden.
How many people have done that?
You know, when Biden called Obama's decision to take out Osama Bin Laden, the toughest decision that anybody in the history of the planet has ever had to make ever.
I disagree.
I think the toughest decision that anybody has ever had to make ever was Mitch McConnell's decision to spend all night in a room alone with Joe Biden dancing.
So they spend all that night, they spent the night together dancing.
And this actually sounds like a I think I saw this film.
It was on Turner Classic Movies, wasn't it?
I think it was uh Clark Gable and uh who who else I forget who was in it now.
Uh Mitch McConnell spent all the night dancing in a closed room with uh with Joe Biden, thought he had a deal.
Now it turns out he hasn't had a deal.
So President Obama was supposed to announce the result of, you know, dancing with the stars in the final.
We got Joe Biden, uh, we got Mitch McConnell, they're in there in the locked room, they won, we have the deal.
Here it is.
I have here a piece of paper from Herr Boehner, and in the end the deal, the deal is not done.
So we do not yet have a deal on the fiscal cliff.
Uh and uh just uh just to when all the theatre is said and done, here's the point.
We've already fallen, actually, we've already fallen off the fiscal cliff.
We're just at we're at the bottom of the fiscal cliff, and we don't know it.
We don't know it.
That's like a this little this what they call the fiscal cliff is just this little indentation in the ground ahead of us.
We're actually already at the foot of the fiscal cliff.
And the danger is that we're still going to be standing there talking about all this nonsense when uh an avalanche of multi-trillion dollar debt slides off the fiscal cliff and onto our heads, and we can't dig ourselves out from that.
Uh that's the point.
Uh, that uh uh at the moment, because interest rates are historically low, you can borrow a trillion dollars a year, and it doesn't actually cost you anything to borrow uh a trillion.
I mean, it costs you a third of a trillion or whatever to borrow it.
But compared to what it would cost uh if interest rates were to return to anything like normal uh that they were around the turn of the century, uh then that would be then we would absolutely just be not drowning in debt, because that goes without saying, but just the interest, just if the just the interest in the debt will kill us.
Uh the interest on the debt will enable the Chinese, for example, to quadruple the size of the uh of their military and charge it to American taxpayers.
Just the interest on the debt.
So this whole thing, this whole little bit of pointless theater.
And now, and now uh the word is out that they don't like the deal.
They don't like the deals.
Uh the the McConnell thought he had a deal, and then Obama stiffed him because the whole thing was supposed to be that the sequestration cuts, these actually relatively modest cuts would still all be going through.
But Obama suddenly, and that's what he agreed with Joe Biden.
Now Obama says, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, no, no.
That's out.
So they don't have a deal.
Uh I like this tweet on the internet, on Twitter, somebody claiming to be Ankala Merkel, Chancellor of Germany.
Not the real Ankler Merkel, though, I don't think.
But this is the sort of I bet this is the sort of thing that Frau Merkel will be saying in private.
If the fiscal cliff were in Germany, we'd have installed a cable car by now.
That's uh that's probably true.
Angela Merkel uh tweeting about the, or somebody claiming, purporting to be Angela Merkel, tweeting about the fiscal cliff.
So, although Obama has spoken, and he didn't speak for long, the Dow dropped 40 points, apparently while he was speaking, and then he stopped speaking and it stabilized.
And that's like amazing, because there's none of no there's nobody on Wall Street today.
There'd been the the Dow had fallen, I think 17 points.
Uh, there'd been no movement at all.
The Dow was like Deadsville, because all the people who are normally there, they're all skiing in aspen or whatever.
But they all came back, they cut short their ski vacations the moment Obama uh started speaking, and the Dow fell 40 points.
So he now uh has stopped speaking, and it's safe to turn on your radio again.
We're talking about that on the Rush Limbaugh show live coverage.
There is no fiscal cliff deal.
The selected members of the American middle class have now leaving the White House, they've been uh shown out the tradesman's entrance and getting back on the Greyhound to wherever they came from, and uh they're looking for a whole new bunch of selected members, pre-approved background checked members of the middle class to appear with Obama in the event that there actually is a fiscal cliff deal before the clock strikes midnight tonight.
But at the moment, negotiations, Mitchell Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden thought they had a deal.
Mitch McConnell now feels he's been stiffed on the deal and so there is no deal.
We will talk about that on the Rush Limbaugh show.
1 800 28282.
Don't forget by the way we got a best of rush uh to start the new year tomorrow and then Doug Ubanski will be in on Wednesday and Rush returns live on Thursday for another year of excellence in broadcasting.
How bad a state is the environmental movement in this this uh story uh came out uh uh a day or two ago uh I always I thought the Republican Party had the world's worst diversity problem.
The Republican Party because all the jokes people make about it is it's too old, it's too white, it's all the rest of it.
And it turns out the environmental movement environmental activists say their own party is almost as old and white as the Republican Party.
People don't realize this because they call themselves the Greens but they're not in fact the green at all.
They're in fact white pasty white if they call themselves the white movement people would know that.
The Green Movement does not uh enjoy wide and deep support among Latinos and African Americans.
You should fish where the fish are biting said former said Van Jones the former green jobs advisor to Barack Obama.
This was the guy who had to uh resign when it emerged he may we he was a nine eleven truther who was a member of the Communist Party or whatever.
And I by by the way when that came up I thought he was just one of these guys who was a student in nineteen sixty eight and uh you know joined the commies just like everybody did for twenty minutes back then.
But actually he didn't join the Communist Party until something like 1996.
In other words he joined the Communist Party even after the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe had given up on him on communism.
Van Jones, former Green Jobs advisor to Obama he's actually black he's the black green jobs advisor or the green black jobs advisor to Obama and he said that uh that the new emerging majority in the United States will be a non-white majority and the trouble is that the environmental movement doesn't have any diversity the green issues are the purview of white liberals.
This is a story from Politico.
So they need to figure out how you make carbon trading uh ha sexy to Hispanics and they haven't succeeded in doing it yet.
So this is a big problem in the in the the environmental movement which has suffered uh already uh from the lack of global warming and all the other things now is beginning to look as old and white and unrepresentative and non diverse as the Republican Party.
That's uh that's a shocker to me.
Al Gore, he he looks pretty old and when actually when you think about it all these guys uh you go along to an environmental thing the Sierra Club very white very white.
How many how many Hispanics I mean it's got a Hispanic name the Sierra Club but other than that how Hispanic is it?
Mark Stein Hispanics are uncomfortable with the Sierra Club why are they?
Why would they be uh uncomfortable with the Sierra Club?
They they there were no Sierras around until the Hispanics came up with it.
Anyway we'll uh talk about that and lots more uh straight ahead on the Rush Limbaugh show 1 800 28282 Mark Stein in for Rush as the fiscal cliff looms let us go to Lauren in Old Forge Pennsylvania.
Lauren you're live on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Great to have you with us.
Oh so so pleased to be on thank you so much for taking the call Mark.
My my pleasure and happy new year to you Lauren.
Happy New Year to you and it's Laureen and um oh is it Laureen?
Okay even better that's uh I like that.
That's like the Prime Minister of Canada's rights.
Actually, I talked to you about three years ago on Cap and Trade, and you put me on some kind of list of names.
I don't know what it meant, though, but...
Yeah no no it's Rush is uh I should check this with HR it'cause Rush has uh keeps a list of favored women's names.
Is Laureen on there uh HR oh it's gone it's gone down a bit to number fifteen but it's just bubbling outside the top ten Laureen so you are still on Russia's list of favorite names.
Okay the reason I'm calling is because of um our state in Pennsylvania we're trying to get right to work past here.
And um in my district uh in Old Forage, Pennsylvania which is by the way the cat Pizza capital of the world, um, we have had uh consistent strikes held in our district uh which you know are becoming such a nuisance that they actually went on strike two days before the Christmas holiday.
I mean, it's just insane.
They they they just decide they're going to go on strike, they haven't had a contract for two years, and they're getting an average salary here in uh where our city has about nine thousand residents and nine hundred and fifty students.
That's just an average.
Right.
And they're getting paid an average forty-seven thousand eight hundred and ninety-one dollars a year according to their fact sheet.
Um all of their benefits paid for and uh their benefits, which people should look into for health insurance costs in their areas.
Our health insurance for our teachers is costing us for a single family seven thousand two hundred and forty-five dollars a year and seventeen thousand nine hundred and twenty-one dollars for a family coverage.
And that's in the in the county level, the borough, and in the the school district.
That's what we're paying just for health insurance alone for uh teachers and union uh workers.
Yeah, in the just so out of control.
And you're talking here, you're you you say it's a town of about nine thousand people.
So that's that's that's not a big tax base for a for uh but the public sector workforce to in effect uh uh be subsidized by.
And that's where people as a matter of fact, we had in our county this past year a hundred and thirty-four judicial sales.
Now our city got a five thousand dollar check and they were in the paper, and our commissioner actually said that it was a win-win for the districts because we got to divvy up all that money from all the homes that were sold on that judicial sale.
I mean, that's the arrogance of the politicians today.
They literally call the taxpayer deadbeats, and they're happy to redistribute that money from the sale of their homes throughout each of the different cities throughout our county.
Now, you know, at some point people this is this is where people should laugh at the president.
When the president starts talking about investing in education, uh there's enough by any reasonable standard, about forty percent.
And Pennsylvania, by the way, comes out uh relatively high, as you've just explained to us, uh, is one of the high spending states on edgy on education.
Well, by any reasonable measure Philadelphia and Lackawanna and Luzerne County that are controlling the vote here uh because of the popular vote.
You know, I mean, they they have all these areas covered.
There's two areas that you hear of Joe Biden and Barack Obama going to Philadelphia and Scranton.
And why is that?
Because they have those areas populated to the point where they can win the vote through the popular vote.
They don't need the other counties because we don't look at it um through the electoral college.
We look uh we do the popular vote.
No, no, and the but it but it but Biden in particular, I mean he went to he was talking to some fourth graders in uh in Pennsylvania.
I think that was in York, Pennsylvania, if I remember correctly.
And he was telling them that teachers were being laid off and there was no money for teachers, and so the federal government was going to give money for teachers.
Uh that's not the situation at all.
Most by by uh compared to historic norms compared to global norms, uh there are far more teachers uh than uh uh than than uh there's a rational need for, and certainly far bigger administrative stuff, and they're all lavishly remunerated.
Because you when you talk about those things for health care benefits and everything, everyone assumes that's actually for the lady who's teaching arithmetic and the lady who's teaching history and all the rest of it.
Uh but it actually isn't.
It's it's uh it's not just those people, it's for this vast administrative apparatus that uh that the teachers that uh that has exploded in uh uh school houses in the last forty years as well, Laura.
Well, I think that the teachers are stuck in the middle of the taxpayer and the unions, and uh that's why I believe in Pennsylvania right to work so so much.
And um, you know, once they take that power out of um these you know unions and arbitrators' hands and put it back in the taxpayer and the uh teachers to negotiate.
Because right now in in our contracts here, uh the current contract does not allow the district to hold an open house for parents.
Right.
And you know, we can't e our contract puts the decision to fill teacher vacancies in the hands of all forage education association, not the district.
You know, they're taking so much of the power and control away from the teachers and the parents that we really have no say in its definite taxation without representation.
No, and the unionization of the American uh school system has been a disaster.
Two hundred years ago, uh this uh young Republic achieved unprecedented, unknown rates of literacy.
And teaching was a community.
I I have neighbors who are old enough to remember that uh the small one room schoolhouses and local school boards hiring teachers, and the teacher would then come from a uh the uh uh couple of towns away or whatever, and would board with within the community, because that was the way she wanted to teach.
She wanted to teach in a one-room schoolhouse, uh, and that's what they did.
And that is better than having a big unionised bureaucracy increasingly at odds with the community it purports to be a part of.
Yes, fiscal cliff excitement building.
We don't have a deal, but the president gave a speech uh to announce that uh we were close to the he thought he had a deal uh and Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden spent the night in a room together.
I think it was at the Econo Lodge, just uh around the back of the freight yards.
Uh uh Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell spent the night together in a room dancing uh and thought they had a deal, but then the President of the United States uh changed parts of the deal, apparently, and so there is currently no deal.
But even when America goes over the fiscal cliff, some fellas are riding down in the express elevator.
Uh and that is uh the news that uh President Obama has signed an executive order increasing the salary of himself, the vice president, and members of Congress.
Uh one Democrat congressman uh is objecting to the fact that uh uh the uh congressmen have had their salary increased and is calling on Congress to reject it, to reject uh Obama's executive order increasing their salary.
But uh right now it looks like uh they will be going over the fiscal cliff with their pockets stuffed full of cash.
I have before me the full transcript of President Obama's remarks on the fiscal cliff negotiation.
So if you missed it last hour, uh I can now do it.
I I can't do the accent.
Rush can do a great Obama accent.
And I love the way Rush is back live on Thursday, by the way, and he can do the Obama accent.
I can't do it, so I'll just do it.
Hello, everybody.
Applause.
Thank you.
Please, everybody, have a seat.
Welcome to the White House.
And then a s a middle class person says, Thank you for having us, and there's laughter.
Actually, I can't, I'm not gonna do that.
I mean if I do this, I might do it in a Scottish accent.
Okay.
Obama says, Hello, everybody.
Oh no, that's more Irish.
I'm not gonna do it in any accent.
The point is what he said here.
Again, he's talking about millionaires.
And uh as we made the point earlier, if you are a uh a public sector retiree and you have a pension of forty thousand dollars, you have the equivalent net worth of a millionaire.
Uh Kevin Williamson, I quoted Randall Hoven's piece in the American thinker.
It's a wonderful piece that explains that because most of us don't think in terms of our net worth.
He keeps talking about millionaires.
We actually think of a millionaire as someone who goes around with, you know, a million dollars in large bills in his wallet.
But that is not what a millionaire is.
A millionaire is a reference to net worth.
And if you are a public sector retired teacher, uh unionized teacher of 55, and you've got um uh pension of 40,000, you've got the net worth of a millionaire.
And in fact, Kevin Williamson over at National Review points out that even that is an underestimate that in fact Randall Hovind at American Think is uh is underestimating it.
And in fact, the average Illinois uh public sector retiree uh actually has the equivalent of a net worth of two point four million dollars.
So in other words, he's distinguishing here.
The the the president when the president says he wants millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share, he actually wants uh the non-productive class.
Uh the he he wants the productive class, the producers in Society to pay more.
He's not talking about government paying more.
He's not talking about government workers, or he's not talking about uh people whose uh w you know work in those jobs where the if the the actual uh take home pay at the end of the month is relatively modest, but the bulk of the salary is actually long term in benefits and pensions and health care and all the rest of it.
He's not talking about that.
Uh the president, so the president of the United States said nothing new.
He came on to ask, he said uh he used the word folks a lot.
He said preventing that tax hike has been my top priority because the last thing folks like the folks up here on this stage can afford right now is to pay an extra two thousand dollars in taxes next year.
Well, they're gonna have to.
They're gonna have to.
Because right now the problem is that America has a more progressive tax system than socialist countries in Europe, uh, because people think uh that you can just uh that in fact uh you're not sticking it to the wealthiest one percent, you're sticking it to your children and grandchildren, and eventually that bill becomes due.
But he used the word folks a lot, so people think he cares.
Uh Mitt Romney never used the word folks, so people thought Mitt Romney was just some guy in a top hat and a monocle, strapping America to the railroad track and twirling his mustaches as the fiscal train bore down on it.
Uh but in fact it's not enough just to say the last thing folks like the folks up here on the folksy stage, he got all the folksy folks from the folksy middle class, he got his selected members of the middle class.
Uh but he is actually peddling a delusion.
There are not enough rich people in this country to fund this level of spending, and there never will be.
And one of the great clarifying uh aspects of life under big government in Europe is that people understand that if you spend at this level, you have to uh you have to raise taxes at this level.
There's no there's nothing difficult about it.
You don't even have to be European.
Most countries, most functioning societies uh manage to more or less raise what they spend.
Some even do a little better.
Swaziland, Swaziland spends about uh 34% of GDP on government.
That's rather less than the United States, and they raise 36%.
So they actually have a budget surplus.
Uh but but most people are basically in the ballpark.
Uh Slovenia spends a little more than uh the United States does.
Uh they spend about 44% of GDP.
Uh but they raise in taxes about 38%.
In other words, their point is, they understand that the point of government spending is to raise enough money to cover the spending.
Uh I'm just looking through the list alphabetically here.
Slovenia, uh that was Slovenia, Slovakia, which is next to them.
If you're having trouble uh differentiating between Slovenia and Slovakia, Slovakia has a much smaller government than Slovenia.
They spend about thirty-five percent uh of GDP on government, but they raise thirty percent.
So there again, they're in the ballpark.
We are not.
We spend forty-two 41, 42 percent on government, and we only raise 24% in revenues.
And you cannot close that gap with uh billionaires.
There aren't enough Warren Buffett's, there aren't enough Bill Gates, there aren't enough Mitt Romney.
So you have to be honest.
If you want big government, you gotta have if you want European sized government, you've got to have European sized taxes.
And they're not even trying.
This is why the whole system is dysfunctional.
Uh there's no the the even Obama, Obama wants the spending.
Uh the Republicans supposedly want spending cuts, so there's no reason for them to try and make this arithmetic uh add up.
There's no real reason for them to try and close that gap.
But the Democrats are the guys who want this spending.
Well, you've got to close the gap.
You spent this money, you've been spending it now for years.
You keep spending this money, and you're barely raising half of the money you need to cover it.
So what's your plan?
How do you make that arithmetic add up?
There's nothing in this ridiculous speech by this rid the the the this guy came out and gave a totally pointless speech.
And you should demand, you should if if Americans were still the Americans of 1776, they would deduct from their taxes next year on April the 15th, the amount of time they wasted watching the president give this totally bogus speech uh with pre-selected members of the uh American middle class supposedly uh they're supporting him.
Because he's not trying to close that gap.
And if he's as long as He's not trying to close that gap.
He's just screwing over your kids and grandkids.
And that's, as I said, that's big government types in Europe at least are honest about it.
They're uh the Swedes are honest about it.
The Norwegians are honest about it.
The Danes are honest about it.
The Belgians are honest.
The Dutch are dishonest.
Our big government guys are worse than those guys because they're lying about it.
They're saying you can have European sized government and American sized taxation.
There is no way it can be done.
And we that is why we have the worst gap between revenue and uh spending of any developed nation.
And at some point that has to mean something.
Because if it doesn't mean anything, then the dollar collapses, and that's a real.
You know, that that's that's a real fiscal cliff, then.
That's not just a bit of theater in which Mitch McConnell gets to enjoy the benefits of a night hold up in a room with Joe Biden.
Uh that's that's a real fiscal cliff.
But they're not even talking about it.
They're not even talking about it.
So here we are now.
Uh it's just over an hour since the president went out because he thought he had a deal on the fiscal cliff, and it turns out that he had no deal.
And Mitch McConnell is wandering around saying he he's basically thought he had a deal with Joe Biden, and uh, and then the president uh toss these insisted that the discretionary spending cuts that uh the Democrats don't want apart from defense.
I mean, Obama's quite happy to cut the size of the military, but uh the other discretionary spending cuts uh had to be removed, and so Mitch McConnell is now feeling he got stiffed on that.
Mark Stein in for rush on New Year's Eve as the deadline looms.
Lots more still to come.
Music by Ben Thede New Year's Eve at the S Excellence in Broadcasting Network, let's go to John in Hebron, Nebraska.
John, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Great to have you with us.
Mark Mark, it's uh great to be with you.
Just want to say your wit and humor make these discussions even possible.
Appreciate it.
It's small consolation in the abyss of despair that I thank you.
I thank you for your kind words, John.
Uh the fact that we have two people, McConnell and someone as smart as Biden sitting in a room that did get to decide who gets to keep what in this country is it's insulting to me.
I can't believe that more people don't think along the lines of why do why do we even have this event?
Why is it that two people get to decide who gets to keep what and who gets to get taken from one person, handed to another citizen?
I think that is by definition a lack of liberty that this fact even takes place.
Actually, when you put when you're my grandparents grew up in a different country than what I'm growing up in, people accept these things as they're as legitimate, and they're not.
Our government was never designed to have these people have this much influence in our lives.
No, and when you put it like that, John, you're right.
If if people said, well, you know, Mitch McConnell has been holed up in a room all night with uh George the Third or Lord North negotiating your future, people would rightly think uh nuts to that.
That's not the American way, and you're right.
Uh it's it's not, and in a sense it's uh i it's a negation of the American spirit.
The people think that I mean, by the way, John, just to back up on that point, I was talking about those other big government countries over in Europe.
It is absolutely incredible to me that we are sitting here in the afternoon of December 31st, and that nobody can tell you what the tax rates of the United States will be tomorrow.
That in itself is also, you know, uh I understand no taxation without representation, but no taxation without a little bit of notice would also come in handy too.
I mean, that is also an American, John.
That's right.
It you know, I I take this back to the Declaration of Independence.
It says that we were given life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness by our creator.
And the Fifth Amendment goes on to describe what that pursuit of happiness means.
It says that without due process, you cannot be deprived of life, liberty, or property.
Due the pursuit of happiness is our property.
What people work for, what they spend their life and their energy, their efforts, their talents to create and get paid for, that's their property.
And everyone, every one of us is turning over that property to two people sitting in a room.
They don't know my name, they don't know what I make, what my family's needs are, what health health care needs I I would like, what education I'd like for my kids, and yet they get to make all these decisions.
Why can't my neighbor stand up and realize this is not liberty, this is not freedom.
This is this is uh soft tyranny, and until people decide to put it in those terms, we're never going to vote differently.
And you're right, actually, to put it in due process terms, because if uh it's going to come down to the wire now, it's going to come down to 1159 p.m.
It's going to come down to Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden going back into their their room to know whether you're uh you're you're gonna have 35% or 39.6% uh whatever it is confiscated.
Uh there has been no due process there.
And actually, Mitch McConnell, all this th there is something if these guys if these guys want to do it, why don't they just do it out there in the open?
This is public policy.
These are tax rates uh for the citizenry.
Why is that something?
We're not talking about uh negotiating a deal with the Taliban uh in some murky part of Waziristan.
Uh we're talking about public policy for the citizens of this country.
Why is is that something that can only be done in a closed room?
Why can't we talk about this up front?
Your your point is absolutely right, John.
Where's the due process?
If I'd like to make one last point for all my liberal friends out there, and we you and I, we all have we all have them.
They don't understand why we talk about the Constitution and why we revere that word.
And it comes down to something very simple.
James Madison, who said to be the father of that document, said that if men were angels, we wouldn't need government.
And if angels were to govern men, we wouldn't need the Constitution to put limits on what those people elected can do to us.
And because we have strayed from the Constitution and we know we're are no longer anchored by it, there are now no limits.
These people are sitting there in a room deciding what you and I get to keep.
They want to decide what we can eat, whether or not we can have a weapon in our home.
They want to decide what kind of vehicle we can drive, and for some reason, the liberal friends of ours, they don't see this.
They don't equate the people that they vote for with removing these liberties.
Well, thank you for speaking up uh for the United States Constitution, John, and uh and happy new year to you.
Uh I should add that if you disagree with John, there is a piece in the New York Times today, written by a guy who has taught constitutional law for uh forty years and who says uh oh, Madison, forget him.
The U.S. Constitution, forget it.
It just gets in the way.
Why should the people, why should uh Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden, when they're negotiating how much of your wealth they're gonna confiscate, why should they have to be hamstrung by this ridiculous two-century-old document that ought to that ought to be decaying in some museum vault somewhere?
Uh so that's how that's how people think.
They in fact accept the premise of uh what Madison was saying that government that angels do run the government, that if you believe in big government, you are an angel, and for that reason you don't need to be hamstrung by the United States Constitution.
That's how these guys uh think.
Thank you very much for uh for your call, John.
The good news is uh that after today we will no longer have to hear the word fiscal cliff, because it will either be at the bottom of it or this fake crisis will have gone away, and we'll be on to the next fake crisis, whatever it is, the debt ceiling coming up in a couple of weeks' uh time.
We won't have I never liked the term fiscal cliff anyway.
It uh always sounds to me like it ought to be a male stripper, Fiscal Cliff.
Is Fiscal Cliff the guy who's the father of uh Kim Kardashian's uh child?
I don't know.
Uh Kim K Kim.
Yeah, no, we're still waiting on that.
Anyway, Kim and Fiskal Cliff Kardashian are expecting a baby.
Mark Stein, InfraRush, on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
you The Senate is lurching toward a deal.
The President of the United States stands ready to give another press conference with selected pre-screened, pre-approved demographically representative members of the middle class.
Don't wait till midnight to go over the fiscal cliff, folks.
If you go over now, if you go over now, it's 3 p.m.
Eastern, uh, you can still get the early bird special.
So think about that.
You don't want to be there in the midnight rush.
If you're gonna go over the fiscal, I'm flooring it for the fiscal cliff when we're uh off the air uh right now.
Uh best of rush tomorrow, Doug Urbanski Wednesday Rush returns on Thursday.
Always an honor to be here on America's number one radio show.
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