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Jan. 3, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:54
January 3, 2013, Thursday, Hour #2
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Views Express by the host on this program, documented to be almost always right, 99.7% of the time.
Great to have you back, El Rushbo, the all-knowing, all caring, all sensing, all feeling maha rushy.
Here behind the golden EIB microphone, great to have you here.
The telephone number if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882.
And the email address L Rushbow at EIBNet.com.
We had a caller in the first hour.
Nice guy.
And he's he's like a lot of you, I assume, looking for something positive to grasp on to, which I totally understand.
I am the architect of such thinking, such behavior.
At the same time, it must be tempered with realism.
So the Bush tax rates remain the same for 98% of the country.
50% of the country's not paying income tax.
What we had last week, this fiscal cliff deal was nothing but a bunch of theater, folks.
Drama and theater, and it happens with regularity now.
This is what you happen to get with no budget.
So every budget item ends up being a crisis.
And every solution now is the Republicans giving away a core belief.
Every solution is the Republicans giving away a core belief while admitting that that core belief was the problem.
And the Republicans have been falling right in the line.
So all of this tax theater last week, and that's exactly what it was.
All of this tax theater, Obama and his cheering pep rally, it's going to generate $60 billion a year.
We're now going to have the fifth consecutive year of a trillion dollar plus budget deficit.
And all that tax theater, all that drama raises what amounts to a rounding error.
It is so insignificant in terms of dealing with the real problem.
But the theatrics and the image, why it's major what Obama pulled off here.
In his desire and his effort to transform this country into something it was never intended to be.
This was a major step forward he accomplished.
Under the guise and under the illusion of solving a problem.
No problem's been solved.
We are simply exacerbating existing problems and creating new ones.
All the while, the American people are being misled and being told that we're solving some of these things.
It's really breathtaking to watch.
I mean, I wonder how many, as As I listen to the inside the beltway media, including conservative media.
I have to wonder how many of them don't really understand what's happening either.
And then, be quite honest.
In the past week, I've been asking myself, am I really this out of touch?
Am I really one of only a hundred or so people who think what I think anymore?
I really was because no matter where I turned, no matter what I read, no matter what I saw, I saw people saying things that to me made no sense.
I saw people saying things, read people writing things that bore no relationship to reality whatsoever.
One of the things that I'll give you an example.
We I I said we keep throwing away our core beliefs in order to get to what matters.
Well, what really matters, apparently, is spending.
What really matters is uh out-of-control spending, and that's what we really have to get our arms around.
And this tax business, yeah, we were never gonna win.
Let's throw that away.
Let's just throw that.
And how many other things have we throw that away as that does let let's let's throw away our stand on immigration, let's throw away our stand on abortion, let's throw away our stand on the socialism.
All these things are causing us trouble, don't you see, Mr. Limbo get rid of all these things that we're gonna lose on anyway and get to what matters spending.
Because then I don't know where they get this thought process, but somehow we're going to win that while we lose everything else and throw everything else away and give up on everything.
We're going to win the spending argument.
And this is what I don't understand.
I'd like for it to happen, don't misunderstand, but I don't think our people get it.
I'm all for optimism.
When there are things to be optimistic about.
John O'Sullivan, the former editor of the National Review points out that optimism is a state of mind.
It is not a principle for governance.
Optimism is not a solution.
Optimism is not a policy.
It's a state of mind.
And it can be helpful.
But principles and policies and solutions come from understanding and admitting what's going wrong.
Only then can you come up with effective policies to fix solve, resolve, reverse, or what have you.
Now there's a popular piece of conventional wisdom inside the beltway.
It goes like this.
Okay, we've thrown the tax debate.
We got the taxes off the table.
They're no longer a distraction.
Obama got his measly little tax increase on the rich, and now we can get down to the real nuts and bolts of spending.
The country's fiscal future.
And the inside the beltway thinking is that because the Republicans, for the most part, won the fiscal cliff.
Yes, that is the inside the beltway.
Let me just don't let me a quick question.
Please be honest.
And if you don't know, then tell me you don't know.
Do you think, and forget what you've heard me say today, but when you got here today before the show said, do you think the Republicans won the fiscal cliff?
You didn't.
Brian did you?
Okay, they both are saying no.
The conventional wisdom ends in the beltway is, well, we might not have won, but I'll tell you what, we did better than the Democrats did, because the Democrats now have a problem because the Democrats now are going to be forced into talking about cutting spending.
What?
Who's going to force them?
The media?
Republicans.
Who who uh love for it to happen?
Don't misunderstand.
Why weren't the Democrats throwing any party?
They are secretly throwing parties over this.
Obama is doing pep rallies.
Obama went back to Hawaii to finish the vacation.
That's another slap in the face, by the way.
Gets back on Air Force One as soon as the didn't even say, you know what?
Obama used the auto pen in the White House to sign the legislation.
He didn't even personally sign it.
He didn't really even have to come back here.
He just did that for the theatrics of it all.
But so now the the table is somehow set for us to kick butt in the spending debate that is going to come up on the debt limit.
Last night saw Obama's demanding no debt limit, what's he just wants to get rid of it.
He wants to be able to set it himself.
But apparently there are people that think now that the uh the table is set for all kinds of spending reform since the Republicans got all the distractions out of the way.
Like defending success, defending achievement.
Throw that away, don't worry about that.
we get to what really...
I'm sorry, I don't see where we ever win any of these things, and I don't see where it's ordained that we've got Obama, the Democrats, over a barrel on spending, because I don't think they care.
I have been trying to put point out to people that there isn't any common ground between us and Obama.
He only wants entitlements to get bigger.
He only wants government to get bigger.
He doesn't believe that there needs to be any spending.
He talks as though he does, but he doesn't think there needs to be any spending cuts.
He doesn't think government needs to get smaller, and frankly, neither do very many Republicans.
Listen to this.
This is David Brooks in the New York Times.
Ultimately, this is after the fiscal cliff.
This is this is last week.
Ultimately, we should, maybe earlier this week, sorry, Thursday.
Ultimately, we should blame the American voters, writes Brooks.
Now remember, Brooks has been a pro-Obama guy.
Brooks, the so-called conservative writer for the New York Times, he's been he's been in favor of all this elitist inside the beltway thinking, which is that a select few really smart people should be making decisions for everybody in the country because everybody's basically a bunch of dunderheads.
Everybody's a low information voter.
Everybody doesn't know what they're talking.
You get a select few, really smart people making all the decisions.
Obama set crisp crease in his pants, great president.
This that's the guy we're talking about here.
He says maybe we should blame the American voters for this mess.
The average Medicare couple pays 109,000 into the program and gets $343,000 in benefits out, according to the Urban Institute.
That's $234,000 in free money.
Many voters have decided they like spending a lot on themselves and pushing costs onto their children and grandchildren.
You think this is true?
We had a call years ago on this program from a grandmother in Massachusetts.
There's a right, it was um Carolyn in Grafton, just off the moss turnpike.
And she wanted her kids to pay higher taxes because she wanted the benefits.
She didn't care at all what the tax rate on her children and grandchildren was.
It didn't bother her a bit that they would be pay more taxes because that meant they got a tax cut that meant less for her.
And she was dialed in.
She knew exactly what was at stake.
And the point here is that the average Medicare couple, Medicare for the Elder, they know they know the stakes.
They're putting 109 grand into the program.
They're getting $343,000 in benefits out.
That's $234,000 in free money to them.
Working just fine as far as they're concerned.
They've decided they like spending a lot on themselves.
They like pushing costs onto their kids and grandkids.
They've decided they like borrowing up to a trillion dollars a year for tax credits and disability payments and defense kinds.
The point is here that Brooks is making is hey, what's everybody so upset about?
Elected representatives are only giving the people of this country what they want.
And it isn't just low information voters, by the way.
It isn't just the poor.
It isn't just the do-nothings.
It isn't just the takers.
There's a whole bunch of people, elderly people who've worked all their lives and now want to be paid for their sacrifice.
It's people now at the uh at the elderly end of the life scale, as well as the young who are saying gimme gimme gimme.
They've decided they like all this.
They've found that the uh the rationale for these deficits provides a perfect cover for permanent deficit living.
They've made it clear that they will destroy any politician who tries to stop them from living life the way they are.
Anybody comes along and talks about cuts, anybody comes along and talks about reforming the city.
Anybody comes along and talks about doing anything to upset the current Apple cart is going to pay for it at the ballot box.
And most members of Congress are responding, writes Brooks to this popular will.
Large number of reactionary Democrats reject any measure to touch Medicare or any other entitlement program.
A large number of impotent Republicans talk about reducing the debt, but they're incapable of forging a deal that balances tax increases and spending cuts.
There aren't going to be what there the current theatrics, the current setup with the current cast of characters.
All this thinking inside the belt, well, okay, now we're going to get spending cuts.
we've got the leverage.
I want to know where is the evidence that we're going to get any spending cuts and there's going to be any serious effort made on it.
That whole premise just got beat in the last presidential election.
Just for one thing.
And now we come back and we'll put you in the mix.
800-282-2882, if you want to be on the program back after this.
Now that David Brooks excerpt I just shared with you about all these people who want all this stuff for nothing.
The average Medicare couple contributes 109 grand to the program, takes out 300 and some odd thousand, gets 234,000 in free money.
The vast majority of the American people want government goodies.
The thing that Brooks doesn't say, the thing that Brooks doesn't point out is that it's Obama who's promoting this.
In his effort to transform this country into this kind of a permanent, massive and growing welfare state, which at some point will collapse onto itself.
It must.
At some point, when we're already there and we've been there for a long time, you run out of other people's money.
We can't afford this now.
We can't afford the way we are administering this country now.
And at some point, it's all going to collapse.
And none of this theatrics that we saw last week is going to have one iota's worth of substance difference in stopping it.
Even while I was gone, I was blamed.
This is Sunday morning, December 30th.
Slay the nation.
Peggy Noonan's on there.
Joe Klein at Time Magazine.
And Peggy's talking about how wonderful it was with Reagan.
Back in the Reagan days, he'd bring Republicans in.
He'd bring Democrats in, and everybody would work together and bipartisan compromises, and everybody'd be happy and we get deals and blah, blah, blah.
And Joe Klein then said this.
When Ronald Reagan was president, Grover Norquist was in diapers, and Rush Limbaugh was a disjockey, I think, in St. Louis.
You have had a hermetically sealed culture grow up on the right in this country that, as we saw it during the last election, is removed from reality and is extreme in the most egregious way.
Now I was working for the Kansas City Royals when Reagan was president, and then in Sacramento, starting in 1984, Reagan's second term is when I started my talk show.
I was not a disc jockey, but the point is what Klein is saying, everything was hunky-dory.
Peggy, you're right.
Republicans, Democrats worked together, and Republicans gave away everything, and they compromised everything away.
And then, and back then Limbaugh, nobody ever heard of, but then Limbaugh came along along with Norquist.
And that's when the trouble began.
That's when the Republicans stopped giving things away.
That's when the Republicans stopped letting the Democrats have their way on everything.
And Limbaugh And Norquist then created this hermetically sealed, confined extremist right wing culture that is removed from reality and is extreme in the most what he's saying is that I haven't bought into Obamaism that this country and me are no longer simpatico.
I don't get good.
Klein's thinking that Limbaugh doesn't understand America anymore.
America's not what Limbaugh thought it was.
America's never going to be what Limbaugh thought it was.
We're now a welfare state.
Nothing Limbaugh can do to stop it.
He doesn't get it.
American people want big government.
The American people want their neighbors taken care of them.
The American people don't want to work.
American people want a cult figure present like Obama making them feel good.
Limbaugh just doesn't get it.
And it used to be this way too before Limbaugh came along.
We had this little interruption while Limbaugh was here, but finally we beat Limbaugh.
I tell you, all this revisionist history that's going on right now with uh Joe Klein and Reagan and Peggy Noonan.
And I want you to believe it.
Reagan and Tip O'Neill loved each other and they got to get every day and they had a beer after work and uh all is bipartisan.
Let me I I just have to remind you, Reagan fought the Democrats tooth and net.
We don't have anybody like Reagan in the Republican Party today.
Reagan was not a great compromiser.
In fact, that tax deal that gave uh what was it, uh three dollars in uh spending cuts.
No.
It was three dollars in in uh spending cuts for every every dollar new taxes.
It was Tefra.
Three dollars in spending cuts for every dollar news.
He got screwed on that.
There were never any spending cuts, and he said never again.
It was Reagan and nominated Bork who ended up getting Bork.
But the the the idea here that there was all of this hunky-dory love and bipartisanship during hated Reagan.
And then Joe Klein says, and then Limbaugh came along.
And Limbaugh came along and he created all this bipartisan, all this partisanship.
Limbaugh came along and blew it all up.
Limbaugh came along and destroyed it.
Well, now we've gone back to the way it was before Limbaugh and Limbaugh didn't get it.
Limbaugh's through.
Limbaugh's finished.
Limbaugh had 25 years to screw this country up, but we survived Limbaugh.
That's what Klein's saying.
And that's what they're all saying.
And when they say that, they're saying that conservatism has seen its last days.
It's over with, folks.
We're so outnumbered now that we're we're nothing more than a statistic.
Everything we're for is being defeated.
Everything that we're against is surviving and thriving and winning.
We're just the biggest oddball kooks that uh that that's that's the that's the spin these days.
And it's it's a it's it's amazing here to uh to see this.
And it continued Monday night, New Year's Eve.
Somebody on my staff was actually watching C-SPAN.
I You know, it's a good thing that I am a generous boss.
Somebody on my staff was actually watching C-SPAN on New Year's Eve to get us this next soundbite.
It was a forum on media history and influence that was actually recorded on December 3rd in New York City at the New York Institute of Technology, but C-SPAN aired it on New Year's Eve.
And during this forum on media history and influence, uh co-host Brooke Gladstone from NPR's on the media spoke about conservative media.
It has been 30 years of creation of this notion that mainstream media reports in a liberally biased way.
And there were a lot of people who felt ill-served by mainstream media.
In fact, there was one completely dead form of media that was singly handed, resurrected by Rush Limbaugh.
That is AM radio, because it was a place where people who felt ill-served or unserved by mainstream media could go and be angry.
And that exact formula was applied to Fox News.
Now strangely, I must give Ms. Gladstone some credit.
She has some things historically accurate here.
Her interpretation is all wrong.
But she does have some things like the like Fox News is a uh uh an expansion of the the whole the whole talk radio uh formulation, if you will, and she's right in this this AM radio business.
But of course, she's wrong when she says everybody was fine with the media until 30 years ago.
Limbaugh came along, and then Limbaugh convinced everybody that the media was liberal.
And Limbaugh ginned up a bunch of anger, and Limbaugh ginned up a bunch of hatred, and there already was some anyway.
There was some anger and hatred that people didn't like the media, and Limbaugh came along, saved AM radio, gave these people filled with rage a place to go.
And everybody went there, and everybody went there.
And that worked so well that they decided to do Fox News on the same basis.
And so now AM radio, talk radio, Fox News is where people filled with rage and hatred, and these idiots like you who think the media is biased to the left.
That's where you go.
But you see, again, in this formulation, you're the kook.
You're the oddball.
You're the weirdo, you're the nerd, you're the geek.
You're this fool who thinks that the media is biased.
You believe in life, and you don't believe that should do away with the Second Amendment.
You you you believe all these old-fashioned weird stuff.
You you believe in an America that isn't ever gonna be again.
And you just can't let go.
Because Limbaugh won't let go, and Limbaugh won't he won't let you let go, and you people are just gonna be further marginalized, you're gonna get smaller and smaller, you're gonna be ostracized, you and your little tea party bunch, and we're never gonna like you, and you're never gonna be cool, and you're never gonna be hip, and you're always gonna be outsiders, you're always gonna be marginalized, you're always gonna be creeps and kooks and weirdos.
And we're gonna keep talking about you that way.
That's what she's saying.
And then Oliver Stone, also on New Year's Eve, Showtime, Oliver Stone's untold history of the United States.
Oliver Stone's a guy, movie maker.
He believes that everything taught about American history is dead wrong.
This country's racist, it's been sexist, it's been blasphemous, it's been homophobic, it's been violent, uh, and that story hasn't been told.
And so he's telling the real story of the history of America.
And during a segment on Ronald Reagan, Oliver Stone said this.
In 1987, the FCC with Reagan's help repealed the fairness doctrine, which had required broadcasters since the 1940s to give adequate and fair coverage to opposing views on issues of public importance.
As a result, Rush Limbaugh and Talk Radio exploded on the scene, finding a massive audience.
By the end of the 90s, Clear Channel, Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, Talk Radio Network, Salem Radio, the USA Radio Network, and Radio America, as well as the proliferation of cable television networks had created a movement that would dramatically lower the standards of American political discourse.
And in general, doom prospects for progressive change.
So even the music was good.
I have to give it the music was good in that segment.
Oliver Stone gets in the act.
Rush Limbaugh, responsible for the last 25 years of negative political discourse in America.
We're the ones that uh brought Negative political discourse, doom and gloom.
We're the ones responsible for partisanships.
Twenty-five years ago, before I came along, everything was fine.
There was peace, and there was love, and there was partisanship, bipartisanship, and there wasn't any of this.
All he means is that 25 years ago, nobody ever challenged us.
Twenty-five years ago, nobody ever called us on uh who we are.
Twenty-five years ago, we didn't have to defend ourselves.
Twenty-five years ago, we didn't have to explain why we're doing twenty-five years ago we were able to get away with whatever we wanted to do because there wasn't any opposition.
Twenty-five years ago, Limbaugh came along, and now there's all this opposition.
And that isn't fair.
They ought not have any opposition.
Opposition is racist, it's sexist, it's homophobic, it's all of these things.
And they believe that they're finally getting all that back.
This last election marginalized everything you and I believe in.
And we never have we we've always been uh oddballs.
We never have been the mainstream.
We're never gonna be.
And it's an America that we're never gonna get back.
And as an American that's never gonna be again, and we're never gonna like it, and we're never gonna feel at home here anymore, and we're never ever gonna get back to the way this country was founded.
We're progressive.
We've moved on.
You people are for this is this is the message.
And they're not celebrating Obama is the catalyst for all this.
And uh one more bite, and we'll get to the the phones after the break here, just to show you how effective this stuff has been.
This is New Year's Day on C SPAN, Washington Journal.
They took some calls responding to the fiscal cliff deal.
The Republicans put us in this situation because when Bill Clinton left office, he left with a surplus, and the Republicans spent all the money, and we went into a recession.
President Obama came on the scene and got reelected, he bought us out of the recession, and it takes money to get out of a recession.
The Republicans, Mitch McConnell, he is a disgrace.
He wanted the president to be a one-time president.
But God let the people vote Obama back in.
Republicans in the house don't want to work with him.
They want to see him fail, but they are hurting the American people by not putting his agenda through Obama mean good for the country.
But the people listen to Russ Lombard and Fox News, and that's why this country is going down like it is.
Listen to the devil and his cohort.
So I just is the quintessential low information moron voter who buys into and only knows what he hears from the mainstream media.
Okay, your phone calls are coming up, folks.
I promised we'll get to them right after this.
Okay.
I promised we're going to get to the phones of So We Are.
Northern Iowa.
We'll start with Jeremy.
I'm glad you waited, sir.
Appreciate your patience.
Hello.
Hey, Rush, thanks for taking my call.
I just wanted to say I think you're on to something about this low information vulgar and uh this entertainment news.
I'm not gonna say my wife's the low information vulgar, but must have been last Friday when you started going through all the entertainment news.
Usually she's like, Oh, turn off Russia.
You gotta listen to us all the time, or turn that down while you're going through that stuff, and she was in the other room, and she actually told me to turn the radio off.
No kidding.
Yeah.
So you you're you're your wife is an admitted low information voter.
No, I'm not gonna say she is.
She voted for Romney, but she doesn't like to listen to you half the time.
She tolerates you sometimes, but as soon as you start talking about those entertainers, she wanted me to turn it up instead of turn it down.
So see, I knew it would work.
Yeah, I think.
My staff, my my staff said, you don't do that.
You're you if you you are you are you're gonna you're gonna make your real audience mad.
They did and I said, No, this will work.
There's room for, but we can compromise here.
We can do bipartisan, we can do some entertainment news.
And uh so you you're a testament here.
It actually uh worked on your wife.
She asked you to turn this program up when she heard me talking about um uh Kim Kardashian.
Yeah.
I don't know.
It was like it was two tries to go before you want to break, I don't remember who you're talking about, but yeah, she was she had her ears glued in.
So if you I don't know.
It might work if you include it in, but I don't know.
Would you say, would you say that this program or I uh make your wife nervous when she listens to it?
What is it about it that she's well, she just I listen to it every day, and she kind of gets sick of it, and our AM patient's a little static, so she she does she doesn't like it, she doesn't like it because you do.
Maybe.
I don't know if I'd say that, but that could be.
I appreciate the input, Jeremy.
I really do.
And uh best of luck in your marriage.
Yep, thank you, Rog.
How long you've been married?
Oh little over three years now.
We got two kids and you had to you had to stop and think about it.
Yeah.
Three years.
Jeremy, that two kids in three years.
That's cool.
Yep.
We know what you've been doing.
Thank you, Josh.
All right, Jeremy, here, Deborah in Muncie, Indiana.
We go back to the phones.
Hello and welcome to the EIB network.
Hi.
Good afternoon, Rash.
It's a pleasure to talk to you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Hey, I just wanted to call and say you're not alone.
I think there's a whole lot of us out here that are very disappointed in the Republican Party.
And I have been saying for the last four years, what do they really stand for?
You know, they talk about raising taxes, and that's one of our core values that you've been talking about today.
Talking about raising taxes on the wealthy.
Well, I seen an economist this morning who was talking about the impact that the tax increases is going to have.
And it's not the wealthy.
$38,000 a year income earners are going to have an automatic $570 a year increase in their taxes this year.
Yeah, that comes from the that comes from the payroll tax deduction going away.
Right.
But then we also have an increase in the Medicare tax.
And so if you're a hundred and eighty-five thousand dollar a year earner, you're going to be paying out fifteen thousand dollars more to the federal government.
And then that doesn't include your dividends and interest income and you know the additional five percent there, and who knows out of the other twenty-two tax increases to Obamacare, what impact it's really gonna have.
Nor does it include um, you know, your state and local income taxes, your sales tax, and etc.
So when they talk about their tax increases on the wealthy, um I'm not sure how they define wealthy.
I don't know whether they're having a Bill Clinton moment or what.
Deborah, remember now that this is this is this is theatrics.
This is not substance.
So the things that you are saying, uh until they happen, people aren't gonna know it.
You can hear an economist on TV or me.
Explain, okay, you you the here's the three point eight percent surcharge on capital gains, the Obamacare tax.
That is gonna add to whatever the capital gains rate is.
Then there is the 0.9% increase in everybody's income tax rate.
They say the Bush tax rates are locked in.
Well, hello, there's a for all intents and purposes, a one percent surcharge on income taxes now for Obamacare.
There is the payroll tax deduction that's gone away.
And for a family earning $75,000 a year, that is going to be right there.
That's fifteen hundred dollar tax increase.
If you are a hundred thousand dollars a year, the payroll tax deduction going away is gonna cost you over two thousand dollars in new taxes.
Just that one before any Obamacare taxes hit.
But nobody knows any of that yet.
That hasn't happened.
That won't happen to the first paycheck hits.
And for some of these people, it may not sink in for a while anyway.
All they know is that the only people had their taxes raised are people that make over $400,000 a year.
If you make less than $400,000 a year, you don't have a tax increase.
That's what they're thinking right now.
They don't know anything else.
No matter who tells them what.
And they're not going to know it until it happens.
And it will happen.
But you strip the theatrics away, and th there's one simple reality.
You can't take this kind of money out of people's back pockets.
You can't take this kind of money out of circulation in what we call the private sector and have an economy that grows.
The two things cannot happen simultaneously.
So we're going to continue to be in an economic quagmire, and it's going to get worse.
So I see that Al Gore has sold his TV network to Al Jazeera.
I wonder: does this mean that Joy Behar and Jennifer Granholm are now going to have to wear burkas and veils over their faces?
If they do, it might help, actually, uh raise audience levels.
Burkas and veils on their faces.
It could help.
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