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Jan. 3, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:46
January 3, 2013, Thursday, Hour #3
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Time Text
John Boehner has been elected Speaker of the House and he says that we're here to do something, not be something.
Right.
Greetings and welcome back, 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, the email address, lrushbo at eibnet.com.
Al Gore.
Al Gore has sold his TV network to Al Jazeera.
Now, Al Jazeera, that's Qatar, Qatar, Cater, however you pronounce it.
They made their money from oil, which Al Gore hates, ostensibly hates.
He actually doesn't, but that's, again, the theatrics.
And I just, I do wonder if Joy Behar and Jennifer Grant home and others have to wear burqas now.
Do the females on Al Jazeera wear burqas?
I have never seen the Al Jazeera network.
I've seen individual reports.
And Glenn Beck says he offered money for it.
He said he offered more money than Al Jazeera did.
But that Al Gore took the oil money as opposed to the Beck bucks.
And Al Gore wanted the deal done before the end of 2012 before Obama's new taxes kicked in.
So all these Democrats that talk about the moral value of paying higher taxes, when presented the option, never do it.
They always go for the lowest.
I mentioned to you often that I read voluminously and I read omnivorously.
I read everything, not just politics and stuff.
And I am learning a lot as I do this.
One of the great advantages of reading a lot of different sources is you get a very good idea how effective the left is with their message and permeating virtually every corner of the world.
Now, my hobby is high-tech stuff.
I love it.
I absolutely physically enjoy learning about high-tech stuff and staying up to speed on it all.
So I read some of these blogs.
And every day, sometimes more than one instance, I literally stop myself when I read something and realize how effective our opposition is at persuading people of lies and convincing them that BS is the truth.
This latest example is, I don't believe it.
Well, I do believe it.
I'm just dumbfounded by it.
So I think the truth is not hard to find.
I don't think it's hard to find at all.
And I think finding the truth only requires a little curiosity and being a little dubious, being a little suspicious of everything you hear from everybody.
Benghazi, is it not widely, or maybe, maybe I'm wrong about this, is it not widely known now that the video had nothing to do with that event that killed four Americans?
My perception is that for the first two to three weeks, the administration, Susan Rice, all this, Obama, Hillary, doing ads in Pakistan, for three weeks, or two weeks, blame that video.
All during that two weeks, there was an entire media-industrial complex on the right that knew it wasn't true, and it was getting the message out that it wasn't true, that the video had nothing to do with it.
But all the while, the mainstream media was promoting the fact that the media, that the video had everything to do with what happened in Benghazi.
Mainstream media wanted to get nowhere near what really happened in Benghazi.
And then the latest development was that four State Department officials were fired, but they weren't.
Well, no, I think they were fired, but they were not made to leave.
They were fired and they stayed on the job.
More theatrics.
So, anyway, my point is: when I run across people who even now still believe that the video led to the death of four Americans, I'm sorry, but I have trouble processing.
How can people be so stupid?
But here is an entry in a tech blog, and this is probably a 24 or 25-year-old kid.
And what they have done, they've written a piece here on how the film was made.
Let me just read this brief excerpt: Back in July, a controversial film appeared on YouTube.
The low-budget, poorly made film appeared to have been made with the main goal of offending inflaming Muslims.
A lot of controversy resulted when the video went viral.
It didn't go viral, folks.
Nobody saw it.
This video never went viral.
But this kid at this tech blog thinks it did.
A lot of controversy resulted when the video went viral.
YouTube pulled it from several markets.
It was one of the sources of the protests which broke out in Benghazi, which resulted in the killing of our ambassador.
None of that's true.
There were no protests.
There was a terrorist incident.
There were no protests.
This is last September.
This tech blog happened on January 1st.
And people read this stuff.
I'm just, these are supposedly smart kids, smart in one area.
Look how duped they are.
There wasn't a protest.
The video didn't go viral.
And the video had nothing to do with the death of the ambassador or the other three Americans.
So, yeah, I'm dumbfounded by this.
When the truth is widely known, but it isn't widely known.
And of course, then I said, What do we do about this?
I mean, this is how lies, disinformation, misinformation, propaganda.
I mean, intellectually, I know it all works, but this have we not succeeded in exposing this by now?
The vast majority of Americans still think that a video led to protests, which led to the death of the ambassador.
And then I have to say, yep, probably the case, because nobody's really paid a price for this.
I don't know.
Maybe I shouldn't be so shocked or surprised.
And maybe I'm not.
I'm just disappointed, I guess.
And I guess the other aspect of these are these are these are not low-information people.
I mean, these are, well, turns out they are, but they're not stupid, not intellectually.
They have the ability to learn, comprehend, understand the truth.
In fact, the whole film was never even posted.
It was 30-second clips of the film that were on YouTube.
But it had, and then the guy is in jail.
The filmmaker is still in jail, and none of these civil libertarians on the left have the slightest problem with it.
The New York Times had a story recently.
They're very, very upset about something.
You know, we've got this fracking.
Oh, folks, that's another thing.
There's a movie of a Ben F.
No, Matt Damon movie called Promised Land.
And it's the new China Syndrome.
It is a movie about fracking.
It is a movie about the latest technology in getting clean energy out of the ground, natural gas, and, of course, oil.
It is a technique which has the potential to make this country more energy-rich than Saudi Arabia.
So right on queue, here comes Matt Damon with a movie claiming that it kills cows, that it kills people, that it leads to poisonous gases in the air and all this BS.
Now, in the case of Matt Damon, I know that he's an idiot.
Sorry.
Wrong thing to say.
Matt Damon's a hero.
But remember the China Syndrome, a Jane Fonda movie, did more to damage nuclear power and its advancement and spread in this country than anything else.
And the left is looking at this Matt Damon movie as having the same potential.
They hate fracking.
The environmentalist wackos hate it.
It's going to result in energy independence.
It's going to result in jobs, economic boom where it's happening.
They oppose it.
And so the New York Times has a story.
They're very worried here that teenagers in states where fracking is booming are choosing to work in these new oil-rich economies right out of high school instead of going to college.
It was a front-page story.
And the New York Times said taking a job is a lucrative but risky decision for any 18-year-old to make.
One that could foreclose on his future if the frenzied pace of oil and gas drilling from Montana to North Dakota to Texas falters and work dries up.
So you have some people, 18-year-old kids, who are deciding, you know, hell with college.
I mean, they're looking around.
They see an economy that cannot handle or absorb current college graduates.
They look around.
They see all the money it costs to go to college, the indebtedness you incur with student loans.
And they're saying, you know, I got this oil boom going on in my house.
I'm going to go work for the oil company.
I'm going to go work for the fracking company.
And they're starting to work for the fracking company, and they're making good money.
And the New York Times is worried that there might not be any jobs in that business down the road.
And these kids are screwing up by not going to college.
Now, I have a simple question.
What's going to happen to the fracking?
Is the New York Times aware that they're going to succeed in shutting it down, much like they shut down nuclear?
Is the New York Times aware that they're going to be part of an effort to try to freeze this entirely new way of getting oil and natural gas out of the ground?
Probably.
They also want every young skull full of mush they can get to go to college because that's where they're propagandized and indoctrinated.
That's where they're turned in to young mind-numbed liberals.
Every kid that doesn't go to college is a kid missed by the liberal propaganda machine.
But these are teenagers.
What are they learning when they go to work?
They're learning the basics.
It's great education, work is.
Right out of college, maybe a very smart thing to do to go to college right now.
Look at, they can see all these graduates with no jobs.
They can see all the debt that graduates are incurring.
So they decide to go to work for the fracturing cup.
They learn showing up.
They learn getting a paycheck.
They learn the value of work.
They learn a lot of lessons going.
There's a lot of great things that happen to you when you go to work.
And the New York Times is upset by this.
The New York Times is distressed.
So distressed that they put it on the front page of the newspaper.
What do you bet if these teenagers were deciding to go to work for some left-wing nonprofit that they wouldn't even write a story about?
That'd be fine.
If they were to say, go to legal aid or if they wanted to help recruit women for Planned Parenthood or some such thing, that would probably be cool.
But these kids in North Carolina, in Montana and in the Dakotas, North Dakota, all the way down to Texas, they're going to work for big oil.
A hated and reviled industry.
I just, stunning.
And yet, it's going to be one of the best educations these kids have had.
Quick timeout.
We'll be back and continue watch more right after this obscene profit timeout here at the EIB network.
Half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
I want to apologize for calling Ben Affleck an idiot.
That was the old Rush Limbaugh.
Matt Damon, Matt Damon.
Well, I've probably called Affleck an idiot too.
And I apologize for that if I did.
That was the old me.
We love Matt Damon.
And his wife and his kids.
And he's goodwill hunting.
Oh, oh, oh.
Yeah, right on, dude.
I just happen to think that he is wrong about this latest movie, Promised Lamb.
He's a great guy.
He's a wonderful guy.
If I see he's going to be on the e-entertainment network, I make sure to DVR it.
Just so you know.
Back to the audio soundbites.
Here's Obama.
This is yesterday.
This is on the website.
I mean, Obama's got a video, a campaign video.
I mentioned it earlier.
The Obama campaign is producing videos saying we're not through raising taxes.
He's doing pep rallies.
His voters, his supporters are showing up to cheer tax increases on the rich.
In effect, they're cheering other people being punished by the government.
That's what is happening.
That's what Obama wants the perception to be.
People cheering the government punishing other citizens.
So here's a portion of what Obama was discussing.
And now that he has gotten his Republican confession that tax cuts for the rich led to all these problems.
And make no mistake, that is what happened.
In the fiscal cliff dealer, Republicans, as far as Obama's concerned, they admitted it.
By agreeing for the first time in 20 years to get rid of their promise never to raise taxes by throwing that away, that's a major achievement Obama says he got.
Got them to admit culpability in the economic problem.
Now that he's got that, he has declared that there will be no future tax cuts or no spending cuts.
There will be no spending cuts without tax increases in the future.
Here's what he said.
Just recently, Republicans in Congress said they'd never agreed to raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans.
We've now raised those rates permanently, making our tax code more progressive than it's been in decades.
Obviously, there's still more to do when it comes to reducing our debt.
And I'm willing to do more, as long as we do it in a balanced way that doesn't put all the burden on seniors or students or middle-class families, but also asks the wealthiest Americans to contribute and pay their fair share.
Oh, wait, I thought they already did.
I thought the fiscal cliff deal, what is this?
He's just recycling it.
Even after tax rates on the rich went up, we got to do it again.
The wealthiest Americans must contribute and pay their fair share.
I guess even with this latest increase, that's not enough.
So in this video to his supporters on his campaign website, Obama is assuring his voters that he's going to go after more.
He says, just recently, Republicans in Congress said they would never agree to raise tax rates on the wealthiest.
Well, we've now raised those rates permanently.
He got his concession from them.
He got them to confess.
And now he's telling us there's going to be more.
And there aren't going to be any spending cuts.
By the way, those of you in the middle class, here's Peter Orsog.
This is Obama's former management budget director.
He's one of the architects of Obamacare.
He was on CNBC this morning.
It's like we've passed the midterm, the final exam's coming up.
It's a pass.
Lots of good things, a permanent AMT fix.
I'm actually worried, this is outside the political conventional wisdom, but I'm worried that we've now locked into a revenue base by making even the middle-class tax cuts permanent that doesn't really work in 2020, but that wasn't ever going to be any different.
So it's a pass.
Orsag is saying, I'm not crazy about this deal because it doesn't raise taxes on the middle class.
It locks in tax rates.
He said, we're going to need taxes from the middle class.
What Orsag is saying is your turn is next.
You're coming.
You and the middle class think that only the rich are getting punished, but you're next because you have the money.
Back to the phones, just a second.
But first, John Boehner just was reelected the Speaker of the House.
And this is among the things that he said.
Put simply, we're sent here not to be something, but to do something.
Or as I like to call it, doing the right thing.
It's a big job, and it comes with big challenges.
Wait, wait, wait.
Our government hold it.
Hold it.
Did you hear that?
One person, maybe two people, applauded when he said doing the right thing.
Go back to the top.
There's a modicum of applause when he says we're sent here to do something.
When he says, or as I like to call it, doing the right thing, there's here, listen for it.
Put simply, we're sent here not to be something, but to do something.
Or as I like to call it, doing the right thing.
It's a big job, and it comes with big challenges.
Our government has built up too much debt.
Really?
Our economy is not producing enough jobs.
And these are not separate problems.
At $16 trillion and rising, our national debt is draining free enterprise and weakening the ship of state.
The American dream is in peril so long as its namesake is weighed down by this anchor of debt.
Okay, sounds good.
I would say that the Republicans have been sent there to undo something.
Now, I may be splitting hairs semantically, but it has been years and years and decades of Washington doing something that has us in this mess.
It's time now to undo a bunch of stuff and to get started with undoing a bunch of stuff in the last four years.
That would seem to me to be the primary objective.
But, of course, I'm in a very small minority of people that don't see it that way at all.
Not there to undo.
We're to just a cockeyed view.
Here's, where are we starting?
Where are we starting on the phones?
Nobody's got a line lit up up there.
Okay, let's see.
I don't see that.
There's nobody from Texas up there.
Could just put a green, just to highlight one of those.
Okay, I'm just Ken in Raleigh, North Carolina.
I'll just call it.
You guys make sure that guy gets in the air.
Hello, Ken.
Welcome to the program.
Thanks for having me on, Rush.
That's really good.
You bet.
We've got a debt ceiling coming up, and they're going to shut down non-essential parts of government if we don't have an agreement.
And I think that's definitely something we should do.
Also, if you look at the academic research...
Wait, wait, wait.
Hold up.
I want to be youth...
We've got a debt thing coming up, and they're going to shut down non-essential parts if we don't have any.
You think we should have a shutdown?
If it's not essential, then why is the government doing it?
And like I was saying, if you take a look, we've got 200 years of nation's history on what works and what doesn't work.
If you look at economic data, if you look at the 18th century.
Well, no, wait.
Wait, that's interesting.
Hold it just a second.
That is right now.
You say we got 200 years of the nation's history of what works and doesn't work.
Yeah.
We do.
But the interpretation of what works and what doesn't work is really the battleground.
And the Obama view is that those first 200 years have been unjust, immoral, and ill-gotten, that this country has been founded and was founded on a flawed premise by flawed people.
And he doesn't think that the lessons of the past 200 years are what need to be built on.
They need to be corrected.
Well, we've got data that shows us when we have economic growth and when we don't.
He can even go back just and look at the Clinton administration.
Now, I won't give Clinton credit for this, but the size of federal government shrank from 22% to 18%.
And if you only look at Democrats, the Democrats that shrank the federal government as a percentage of GDP had more rapid economic growth, 3.6% versus 2.2% for those that grew.
The same is true of the Whigs.
The same is true of the Democrat-Republicans.
The same is true of the Republicans.
Same thing happened with John Adams, the Federalist, and George Washington cut federal spending by 46% from the future to his left.
Wait a minute.
None of this matters.
You're looking at growth rates of the economy.
Yes.
Now, four years ago and prior, that mattered.
It doesn't.
We're not interested in private sector economic growth.
That's not what Obama's about.
What Obama is about is steering people away from that.
Obama's theory is that that private sector economic growth was immoral.
It happened on the backs of slaves.
It happened on the backs of women and gays and discrimination and all sorts of horrible social ills.
So that economic growth was illegitimate.
Well, we should go to recent history and compare JSK and Bill Clinton, who've cut the size of government as a percentage of GDP, against Barack Obama and Jim Carter, who increased the size of government as a percentage of GDP.
Whether you go back 200 years ago to, you know, four of the five smallest government people were Democrats.
They spent less than 2% of GDP.
18 of the 20 presidents with rapid economic growth rates spent less than 4% of GDP.
We've got 200 years of data.
Even recent history tells us that...
What is your point?
My point is...
My point is that we have all the data.
It's not out there.
People aren't educated and don't realize that this issue is settled.
The academic research shows us that smaller government produces more rapid economic growth.
And we need to educate people and get the word out.
You're a dinosaur.
Do you think TMZ and EOnline care about any of this?
Well, that's a good point.
Although I do think we have some cards here with the debt ceiling issue where we don't raise the debt ceiling and we spend what we bring in.
We don't have any cards.
Well, we've got the House.
We don't have any cards.
Well, as long as we still have the House, we can refuse to raise the debt ceiling and spend what we bring in in revenue.
Revenue is up $108 billion over the last four years.
So it's not a revenue problem.
The spending is up $800 billion over the last four years.
No spending problem.
Yeah, if we don't raise the debt ceiling and spend as we go non-essential services of the government shut down, why should the government be providing non-essential services in the first place?
I agree, but that's not even relevant.
They're not going to refuse to raise the debt ceiling.
The Republicans in the House are not going to refuse to raise a debt ceiling.
The debt ceiling is going up.
Our indebtedness is going up.
Everything you said about economic growth, be it Democrats or Republicans, we've got data.
You're right, doesn't matter anymore is the point.
This is not about economic growth.
This is about shrinking the economy.
That's the objective here.
This is about growing government.
This is about changing people's minds about the fact that it's a big government we want, not a growing economy.
A big government is what takes care of people fairly and equitably.
A growing economy is where all the unfairness and all the illegitimacy is.
Well, then we're going to end up with Europe.
If you look at economic growth, you know, Europe's size of government went from 10% of GDP to 50% of GDP from 1870 to now.
And Europe is an economic stagnation.
While the rest of the world's grown 31% over the last five years in economic growth, Europe is stagnation.
Last warning to the rest of the world.
Wait a second.
The last time people saw Europe on TV, the Olympics were taking place and everything was fine.
Nobody is starving in Europe.
Nobody is being thrown out of work.
Nobody is being thrown out of their houses.
Nobody is living on the streets.
All of this talk about Greece.
There's no evidence that any of this stuff is true.
You can find a GDP.
20% unemployment in Spain and Greece.
They were rioting in Greece.
Nobody saw it.
It didn't happen.
People are leaving.
The population of Greece has declined over the last 10 years.
Nobody saw it.
It didn't happen.
Nobody saw it.
It wasn't on TV.
It didn't happen.
Well, I think it's all about education, getting the word out.
And the Republicans still have the House.
We could do the good fight in the House and not cave.
We've got a lot of cards in our hands.
The president says we need to pay our bills.
Well, let's just pass a budget in the House that only spends what we bring in in revenue.
We've got plenty of revenue.
We've got more than enough revenue.
No, we don't.
We're $16 trillion in debt.
But we're spending the $2.5 trillion a year we're getting in revenue is more than twice the optimal size of government.
It's more than twice what we should be spending to maximize economic growth.
There's nobody.
In history, it's six times what we traditionally expect.
There is nobody interested in what should be.
Well, that's how Rolls Education is.
You are a dinosaur.
You're old-fashioned, and you're out of touch if you're talking about what should be.
We're talking about transforming them.
We've got 200 years of data.
We know what works and we know what doesn't.
And the thing is, I don't hear it being discussed too often.
What's the data?
Because the data is on our side.
Academic research is on our side.
What is being taught in this country is that 200 years of this country have been flawed.
200 years of this country have been the result of unfairness, inequality, exploitation.
Let's get to that one.
Gini coefficients.
If you look at disparity between wealth, the countries with the highest Gini coefficients, the 10 highest disparities in income, have grown 8.5% over the last 10 years.
The 10 countries with the lowest disparity in income have grown 1.6% over the last 10 years.
So Gini coefficients, disparities in income, is correlated with high rates of economic growth.
When you have flat rates of income inequality, like Japan, which has the slowest growth rate of any developed nation, or Ethiopia, you have low rates of economic growth.
So we don't want to have a fair society, a communist society, a flat level of income, a socialist society.
Those societies have low rates of economic growth.
That's exactly where you better get used to it.
That's where we're headed.
I know that's where we're headed.
We've got to change it.
We still have the House, and we can still educate people on your program, which is getting to millions of people right now.
Well, all I know is that the TMZ doesn't care about any of this.
You're from another time and place.
You're talking about things and an economics that used to be in this country, but that's been shown to be illegitimate.
It was flawed from the get-go.
Your data is worthless.
Even the Democrats want to return to the Clinton administration, so let's go back to Clinton administration spending.
No, they want to return to the Clinton administration tax rates.
That's all they want to return.
They don't want to go to Clinton-era spending levels.
I know they don't, but we should insist on that in the House.
Don't raise the debt ceiling unless we incorporate the part that worked in the Clinton economy.
We've been insisting on manhood and manliness in the House for I don't know how many years, and we're not getting it.
Well, shut the government down like we did under Gingrich.
Shut it down.
Get rid of these non-essential services.
If they're not essential, why aren't the government providing them?
We can't afford it.
It's a luxury.
What year do you think this is?
I understand the general population doesn't know these facts.
You better be careful because under cover of darkness, the authorities are going to come with a straitjacket for you if you don't get your mind right very fast.
And we'll be back.
Don't go away.
Look, folks, don't misunderstand.
I understand about economic growth.
There's nobody talking about that.
There's nobody talking about economic growth.
GDP, Gini coefficients.
Nobody's talking about that.
There's not one policy in place currently in our country that is oriented, not federal policy, oriented toward economic growth.
Just the opposite.
Every policy in place is designed to take money out of the economy.
And I think I'm going to start instead of private sector people don't know what I'm talking about.
But there isn't any growth in the economy.
That's not the objective.
There are no growth policies.
And so we may have a 200-year-old track record of how to get economic growth, but that's not what we're about.
That's not what the people of this country voted for.
And that's not what this government is focused on.
There is no economic growth.
The history of economic growth is irrelevant.
What is growing is government.
And what also is growing is the power of people in it.
And that's the agenda.
The objective is for this economy to get smaller.
The objective is taking money away from people who've earned it and giving it away to others and growing government at the same time.
There isn't any economic growth.
The government is oriented in exactly the opposite direction.
And I don't see anybody interested in economic growth other than perfunctorily, other than just saying so, talking about it.
Obama talks about it and all the people.
There isn't one policy oriented toward economic growth.
That's, I mean, look at the unemployment claims are up 10,000 last week.
Didn't get reported on because it doesn't matter anymore.
The election's over.
And the previous week's unemployment numbers were revised up, as always.
So the previous week's number was really up.
It wasn't down.
The number of new claims was 495,000, almost 500,000 unemployment claims before the seasonal adjustment kicked in.
And of course, that's the real number before the adjustment's made.
And you might also note that an extension of unemployment benefits was part of the fiscal cliff deal.
So in addition to money being taken away from people who earn it, more money was allocated to give to people who aren't.
Would somebody explain to me where the economic growth is in that kind of thinking?
There isn't any.
It's not the objective.
It's not what people voted for.
That's why I say the Republicans ought to realize they have been sent there to undo something.
Because just going along with this ain't going to cut it.
So I'm looking at Twitter and there's some idiot on Twitter that $30 billion in new unemployment benefits will result in $48.3 billion in economic growth.
30 billion people and people aren't working, 48 billion in economic growth.
This is the kind of mindless ignorance that we are up against.
I mean, we may as well just nobody work and that's how we grow the economy.
That's what a bunch of twits think out there.
Anyway, we'll see you tomorrow, folks.
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