Greetings to you, uh, music lovers, thrill seekers, and conversationalists all across the fruited plain.
It's Friday, and even as we speak, my friends, a joint session of Congress is convening as we speak to count the electoral college votes.
So there's still hope, folks.
So live from the Southern Command in Sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
Just kidding.
Judge Kitty, happy to have you here.
Open line Friday, greatest career risk.
Since Beyonce left Destiny's child, Rushland Boy at 800.
282, 2882.
The email address, L Rushbow at EIB net.com.
It is getting visious out there.
It is getting brutal out there.
Kim Kardashian's mother is furious.
Kim Kardashian's mother is Chris Jenner.
Chris Jenner used to be married to Bobby Kardashian.
Bob Kardashian was a best friend of O.J. Simpson.
Bob Kardashian was there every day of OJ's trial.
He's sitting there at the primary lawyer table.
He was there with Johnny Cochran, is there with uh Bob Bob Shapiro.
Unfortunately, uh Bob Kardashian passed away, and his wife then went out and married Bruce Jenner, and that's how she became Chris Jenner.
But she's the mother of Kim Kardashian and the other Kardashian sisters.
And apparently, a bunch of people went on Facebook shortly after New Year's Eve and really insulted her daughter Kim.
This is a really vicious out.
You know what they did?
There were people on Facebook and Twitter that were calling Kim Kardashian a slut because she pregnant with Kanye West.
How do you do that?
In this day and age, what's Kim Kardashi never done anyway?
So anyway, Chris Jenner, and I have it's right here in the UK Daily Mail.
British press, they have the important stuff, folks, before the American media gets it.
Chris Jenner, the mother of Kim Kardashian was with Kim on New Year's Eve as they were celebrating in Las Vegas.
And so she launched a counterattack on Wednesday on her Facebook page to defend her daughter.
New Year's Day, New Year's Eve of Kim and the whole, but they were partying in Vegas, and that's when all the tweets about Kim being a slut because she's married, not married to Kanye West, but pregnant.
And and this didn't sit well with with the with the mother Chris Jenner.
So she went to her Facebook page on New Year's Day.
And she reposted something that she had tweeted, and here's what she posted.
Kim Kardashian, listen to this now.
Every mother should be like this.
Don, I want you to listen to you to tell me if you would defend your daughter this way, if somebody insulted your daughter the way Kim Kardashian was insulted.
Chris Jenner went to Facebook and repo put a tweet up there that said, Kim Kardashian is 32 and she's pregnant, but y'all are hoes.
You be 16 with four kids and no baby daddy, and y'all calling her a slut.
Please have a seat.
Now, how about that?
Is that not that is Kim Kardashian's mother defending her daughter on Facebook after her daughter was called a dirty word by a bunch of faceless nameless people.
Well, I think the president, you know, because Kim Kardashian was called slut.
And so the question is Obama gonna call and commiserate with her over this.
But but I mean, here's to Chris Jenner, because she went out there and she didn't she didn't sp it didn't take an hour.
And she's out there defending her daughter.
Speaking of stuff on on the internet, this is hilarious.
As you know, ladies and gentlemen, beginning with the first day of the year, and because the fiscal cliff deal, the temporary partial tax cut on the on the on the social security tax expired.
There was a temporary partial exemption on on the on the on the payroll tax.
Well, they it was it was uh if most people noticed it.
They didn't notice it until they were told about it.
It it added up to um, depending on your income.
It could be $1,000 a year that you had extra because of this partial tax.
Anyway, on January 1, that partial temporary tax cut expired, and now everybody's payroll tax is back up to 100% of what it should be, which is 13%.
The employer pays half and the employee pays half.
The employee pays it all, but that's too complicated, even for people understand the economy.
Anyway, anyway, here's the thing.
What happened here?
The first paychecks of the new year for some people have gone out, and they have noticed that their paychecks are smaller.
And somebody went to Democrat Underground.
Somebody got the idea to go there and just troll and look around, and one of the first posts on Democrat Underground last night was this.
What happened that my social security withholdings and my paycheck just went up?
My paycheck just went down by an amount that I don't feel comfortable with.
I guarantee this decrease is going to hurt me more than the increase in income taxes will hurt those making over 400 grand.
What happened to the average Democrat who was out there applauding the tax increase on the rich, discovered smaller take home pay in his first paychecks.
What the hell happened?
So he looked into it and he found out that his payroll tax is now gone back up to what it should have been all along, and the temporary partial deduction expired, and his take home pay is less.
He thought only millionaires and billionaires are going to be paying more in taxes.
He finds out, and we tried to warn everybody here, that the middle class was going to have a tax increase because the payroll tax deduction expired and it was going back to full boat.
6.2% employee pay, 6.2% employer pay, 6.2%.
The 6.2 employee payment was 4.2 for the last year or two.
But now it's back up to 6.2, which is gonna mean, depending on your income level, somebody making $75,000 a year, it's $1,500 a year taken out of their paycheck that has not been in the past two years.
Anyway, this began a thread at Democrat Underground with all kinds of ticked-off Democrats, livid Democrats.
And what was hilarious about it was that over half of them were blaming George Bush for it.
When it was Obama, it was all Obama.
Obama and the and the Democrats engineered and the Republicans went along with this, the payroll tax cut, which was a temporary partial tax cut on the employee side, but it was restored with the fiscal cliff deal.
So paychecks beginning this year, first week of the year smaller.
And you should see the thread of all these ticked-off Democrats who had no idea they were going to be paying more in taxes.
And as part of the thread, there are people trying to explain to them what happened, and some of them understand it, and some of them don't, but they're all livid.
They're fit to be tied.
And then they resort, it's probably Bush's fault, they think.
They think that Bush has come back from four years of a presidency that's expired to bite them in the bullet.
And they're livid over.
It's a classic illustration.
You talk about low information voters.
You talk about people who have no clue.
You talk about people that support things they have no idea what they're doing in terms of harming themselves by virtue of what they support.
The Democrat under what happened that my social security withholding and my paycheck just went up.
This guy had no idea.
And it's a long thread.
I don't know how long it is now.
And this is happening all over the country.
Now, people that get paid every two weeks, this hadn't happened to them yet.
You get paid on the 15th or the 30th of every month or whatever.
your shock is yet to happen.
But some people somehow have already gotten their first paycheck of the year and they've noticed it.
Okay, I gotta take a quick time out.
We're gonna come back and get started with your calls because it's open line Friday, so sit tight, be patient, and get ready.
And we're back.
It's open line Friday, and let's go to the phones.
We're gonna start in Enid, Oklahoma.
This is Stella.
It's great to have you on the program.
Hi, Stella.
Hi, Rush.
I just want you to stop campaigning for the Democrats.
We've got a chance at the next uh midterm election.
You know, the Democrats haven't done anything.
They haven't got a budget, they haven't lowered taxes, they haven't limited turns, they haven't cut out the fraud and social security Medicare, they haven't cut spending.
They haven't done a thing.
Keep repeating that and all.
They haven't kept one promise.
Let them Wait, wa wa wa, wait, well you you confuse you you see I uh what do you mean I'm campaigning for the Democrats?
Well, you keep talking how the Republicans need to do this, the Republicans need to do that, and uh and you have we have gone over that where every everybody keeps saying that about what the Republicans need to do.
The Democrats are smiling, they think, yeah, that's right, the Republicans are the blame, Republicans are the if we would start saying the Democrats need to c keep their word, the Democrats need to keep their promise.
They haven't done this, they haven't done that.
Point out what they haven't done, let the people see them for who they are, and stop telling people what we know what we need to do.
The Republicans know what they need to do.
They've learned they've learned from experience, unfortunately.
And the Democrats just sit there and they don't have to do a thing, they just have to keep listening to us and tell tell ourselves what we need to how we need to improve.
Start telling people what they have not done, what they have done to us.
Uh Stella, if I may, I've been doing this program for twenty-five years.
Mm-hmm.
And I don't think in American media today, and I don't I'm not don't missin' stunt don't misinterpret my tone, but I'm being honest, I don't think that there is a person in American media who has done more to illuminate and explain who the Democrats are and what they're doing and how they're getting away with it than I have.
I don't think there's anybody that can even come close.
But your callers don't get that.
They they call in to complain.
They call in to complain about the Republicans.
They need to stop complaining and uh about the Republicans and start complaining about the problem we have with the Democrats who are in control, who were in control for two total years and did nothing.
See it you you're talking about you mean my audience does, or callers don't get it.
Remember the callers of a talk show are less than one tenth of one percent of the audience.
At any one time here, we've got six million people listening.
I take maybe ten calls a day.
You can't you can't extrapolate what the audience thinks by virtue of what callers say.
But that's just an inside baseball radio comment.
The point is, for twenty-five years, I have been explaining to everybody who the Democrats are, who Obama is, and I've done it better than anybody.
And it hasn't mattered, Stella.
It hasn't mattered.
The American people think the Democrats are doing everything right.
The American people think the Democrats love them.
The American people think the Democrats care about them.
The American people think the Republicans don't.
The American people think the Republicans don't have their best interests at heart, their best wishes at heart, think the Republicans are mean, they're racist, they're sexist, they're bigots, they're homophobes, they are against people, they're against they're they're they're they're for big corporations, they're for the rich.
This is what the American people think.
This is at least the ones who vote.
A majority of those who vote, this is what they think, despite twenty-five years of illuminating who the Democrats are better and more consistently than anybody ever has.
The Democrats are so against women they wouldn't even consider Hillary.
They'd do anything.
They would do anything rather than have Hillary run.
So they looked around the room to see who they could get the most votes from, and they spotted Obama.
Right.
And you know, they think all the time about what sad stories they can tell, because every time people hear sad stories, they want to donate.
You hear the news at night, somebody had an accident, send your money to bank so and so.
I mean, you know, the y you're not talking to the to people who really seem to get the message that they are the ones who need to to go out and vote.
They're the ones who need to tell people who are the ones who are not running the government the way they should.
And we think that's a good thing.
I guess.
Twenty-five years, a quarter of a century.
I have done better and more consistently than anybody else, what you are demanding be done.
And has it mattered?
Look at Obama's approval rating is over 50%.
What's the Republican approval rating?
Five percent.
The reason people are telling the Republicans what to do, Stella, is because people think the Republicans are clueless in how to deal with this.
And they're right.
American people are frustrated because the Republicans don't seem to know what we're up against.
The Republicans and even the conservative media to this day does not seem to really get what we're up against.
They don't know who Obama really is.
It's just to them the latest winner of an election has to be a Democrat, so we'll play ball like we have to, and we'll win next time.
And it's but it's it's an entirely different playing field now that they don't get that's why people call and are frustrated because they don't see the Republicans opposing any of this.
They don't see the Republicans opposing any of it effectively, despite having a blueprint on how to do it.
That's why they're frustrated, and I don't blame them being frustrated.
It's not that it's not that people don't understand what the Democrats are doing.
Everybody does.
It's that we can't find a way to beat them that frustrates everybody.
We know the hypocrisy.
We know how they're getting away with destroying things, the economy, the culture, the country.
That's not a mystery.
The problem is that of the people who vote, a majority don't understand and furthermore, don't care.
They don't have any problem with what's going on.
They don't think that it's the Democrats who are racist.
They don't think it's the Democrats who are sexists.
They don't understand that it is the Democrats waging war on women, not the Republicans.
They don't understand it and they don't care to understand it.
So where we find ourselves now, uh the the the there is no tactic.
The Republican tactics are pathetic.
There is no strategy.
So now we find ourselves in a circumstance where we're gonna have to wait for events to take place that will do the work for us, that will somehow convince.
And it's going to be little things like this payroll tax increase that people that vote for Obama think everybody else's taxes are going up and not theirs.
They haven't the slightest idea what's about to hit them.
They really don't.
They don't have they don't have a clue.
But they're going to find out.
And how they react to it's going to be very interesting to me.
And we will be here monitoring it all.
Stella, thanks for the call.
Appreciate it, but I am not campaigning for Democrats.
And I never have.
And I've also offered plenty of tactical advice for the Republicans, and they don't listen to it.
And that's fine.
I don't walk in their shoes.
I don't really know their business.
I'm in radio.
They're in politics.
So I don't sit here and tell myself that they ought to be doing what I think they ought to do.
I don't have that attitude.
I mean, I I think they're they could be better at what they do, but I don't pretend to have the answers for them.
And clearly they don't have any, and they don't think anybody else does either.
So that's where we are.
Appreciate the call.
This is uh Natalia in Odessa, Missouri.
Great to have you on Open Line Friday.
Hi.
Hello.
I want to make a comment, a message to everybody sitting on Capitol Hill right now.
I have two sets of twins under the age three.
My family is about to do without.
Obamacare of a hundred and thirty-five dollars is gonna come out of our paychecks and hit us.
Plus the Social Security tax has risen.
Another eighty dollars Per a check.
That's almost three hundred dollars.
My family.
Four kids under the age three is gonna do without.
We have just filed chapter seven a few months ago.
The economy is still recovering.
How are we gonna survive when they are hitting us with these tax rates?
You know, Natalia, I'm gonna tell you the truth.
I don't think it's what I just said.
I don't think the people in Washington have the slightest clue what you're going through.
If you go to Washington, you know what?
Every restaurant's open, every restaurant's profitable, all the shops are open.
The unemployment in Washington and the surviv surrounding environments 3%.
Washington's where all the money is.
And everybody in Washington is doing well, and nobody's being fired, nobody's being laid off.
They're getting raises, in fact.
They don't have the slightest clue in Washington what this economy is actually like for people like you.
We played the soundbite earlier in the program, Ally Velshe, the ace economics reporter for CNN said that the great thing that's happening in America today is that finally the American people understand economics.
They understand what's going on, and they understand that the debt limit, for example, has nothing to do with federal spending.
Is it a long time coming, but they finally understand it?
Now, I mentioned moments ago when I was telling you the outrage on Democrat underground at people whose paychecks were smaller because their social security tax went back to normal and didn't know it was coming and they were livid and they're blaming Bush.
So I got some email.
What do you mean blaming Bush?
It's a good question.
I should have explained it.
Here is the thinking.
And remember, Ali Velshi says the American people understand economics.
On Democrat Underground, they blamed Bush for causing the economic crash by cutting taxes.
In other words, the the the people at Democrat Underground believe the recession happened because of tax cuts.
Now, what if I may again remind you what I was saying throughout December, up until the time I left for the Christmas break, what was Obama's objective?
Obama was attempting to achieve a confession, obtain a confession from the Republicans.
He wanted them to break their pledge to never raise taxes on anybody.
But Obama particularly wanted him to break that pledge on the rich so that he could spin that into the Republicans admitting that tax cuts cause the economic problems.
This is why I don't think the Republicans have the slightest clue what's going on, folks.
This is, and this is why I say it.
The Republican brand, if you will, if it's known for anything, it's tax cuts.
Which means a growing economy.
Tax cuts mean you keep more of what you earn.
It means that there are more jobs created.
It means you broaden the base, you increase jobs, and therefore you increase the number of taxpayers.
And the more people there are paying taxes, the more revenue there is to Washington.
But you don't have to raise individual taxes to increase revenue to Washington.
You can get more revenue by simply creating jobs, and you do that by lowering taxes.
And that's what the Republican Party's been known for.
And Obama wanted to strip them of that.
And furthermore, he wanted that identification.
And he's got it.
Obama's the big tax cutter now.
That's what people think.
But the Republican tax cuts caused the problems.
This has been Obama's point for four years.
Obama even admitted earlier this week that what he pulled off was one of the most profound political achievements in 20 years.
And he's right.
He got the Republicans to agree that their tax cuts, particularly for the rich, led to the recession that we're in.
And so more Americans now, quote unquote, understanding the economy.
That's what they think.
So an over Democrat Underground, Here are these schlubs falling right in line.
Bush tax cuts led to the recession.
Which means that Obama, in order to grow the economy, had to raise taxes.
That's what they think.
This is what we're up against.
I don't think the Republicans in Washington have the slightest clue.
And I don't think that a majority of the conservative media in Washington has the slightest clue what's really happening, or who Obama really is.
I mean, they marvel at his brilliant political skills at winning a debate, winning a policy debate, or humiliating Republicans.
But in terms of who he really is and what he intends for this country, I don't think they get it.
I really don't.
But the proof's in the pudding.
These people at Democrat Underground are the exact low information voters we're talking about.
And they are upset that their taxes went up, but they also think that they had to go up in order to revive the economy.
They think they're making a sacrifice for economic recovery because their taxes go up.
They're a little bit miffed because they didn't think their taxes were going up.
They thought everybody else's taxes were going up.
And this is what Obama wanted them to believe.
Obama wants his voters to think their taxes aren't going up, just everybody else.
And everybody else happens to be the rich who aren't paying their fair share.
Well, now they are.
Except their taxes, the non-rich, the Democrats, their taxes are going up too.
So the way they're rationalizing that, well, Bush cut taxes and that destroyed the economy.
And so Obama has to raise taxes to get the economy going again.
Now, that is, as we had a caller yesterday, that that is demonstrably untrue.
We can show it in any number of statistical or real world ways.
Raising taxes and having government increase has never led to an expanding private sector.
It never has.
Outside of World War II and maybe similar events like that, but in standard normal everyday economic activity, a growing government does not equal a growing private.
It can't happen.
The two cannot happen at the same time.
Most people don't know that.
They're not taught that.
They believe, as these posters at Democrat Underground believe, that tax increases grow the economy.
And that's what Obama's doing.
Because they think that's what Obama wants, because Obama says that's what he wants, but he doesn't.
Does this sound like I'm campaigning for the Democrats, Don?
I can't believe that.
I have to stop campaigning for the Democrats.
25 years, and that's a comment that I got to stop campaigning for the Democrats?
Me.
Now, to our caller from Enid, Oklahoma.
She was crying.
This woman has four kids, two sets of twins.
She can't afford the additional hundred and thirty dollars that the payroll tax increase is costing her.
She can't fit that into her budget.
And it's not just that.
She talked about the new costs related to Obamacare.
And she's got four kids, two sets of twins.
She needs assistance with health care.
And so Obama was going to make all this fine.
Obama was going to take her tears away.
Obama was going to fix this.
It's getting worse, folks.
She calls here in tears.
Did you hear what she said?
She started off her call, Would people at Washington please listen to me?
Her instincts are that people in Washington have no clue what really is happening to her and her family and people like her.
And I firmly believe that.
Yesterday on this program, I want to I want to read something to you that I said yesterday.
As I listened to the inside the Beltway media, including conservative media.
this is an observation, by the way, I was making when I paid attention to the news when I was gone on vacation.
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 to be quite honest, in the past week I'm 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?
Am I really the oddball?
Am I really among people so distanced from reality that I don't get it?
I was asking myself that.
And the reason no matter where I turned, no matter what I read, no matter what I saw, no matter what I heard on radio or whatever, I heard people saying things that to me made no sense.
And to give you an example, as I gave you yesterday, one of the conventional wisdom theories in Washington now is okay, the Republicans are really set up now, in good shape.
They've brilliantly maneuvered things to get spending cuts.
I heard that, start scratching my head and said, What in the world did I miss here?
The Republicans keep giving away core beliefs.
They just threw away their ownership of the concept of lower taxes equaling economic growth and increased prosperity and freedom and liberty for people.
They just threw that away.
Just gave it to Obama.
But the theory went, we got the tax argument off the table.
We're going to lose that anyway, they said.
We were going to lose the why is it assumed we're going to lose everything?
Well, we lost the election.
Yeah, I'll tell you why it's assumed we're going to lose everything because we don't know anybody, we don't have anybody who knows how to win.
Which nobody will admit.
We're chalking up the fact that we can't win because we are up against an immutable force.
We don't have anybody who thinks they can win.
I don't know that we have anybody outside of Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio even know how to win.
But that's for another discussion.
The point is, and I'm listening to all of this that makes no sense to me.
And I'm asking him, I the oddball?
Because I'm going to tell you something, folks, we are not set up to win anything on spending.
There aren't going to be any spending.
I'm going to tell you right now, January 4th, is it this is the fourth?
It is.
There are not going to be any spending.
We're not going to get entitlement.
Who in the world thinks that?
What are they smoking?
We're going to get Social Security cuts, Medicare reform, whatever it is, Obamacare rollback.
We're going to get these things?
How?
Well, Rush, what you don't get is that we've uh we've conceded on taxes now, now it's Obama's turn, and the media is going to oh, give me a break.
The media is not going to force Obama to do anything but keep shellacking us.
I'm I'm I'm stunned.
People think that we're set up now to win on the debt limit and spend there isn't going to be any winning on spending.
Not with the way things are now.
And I'm not saying we can't.
I'm saying the circumstances under which we're proceeding do not bode well for winning.
What do you?
Uh well, Boehner said he's not going to negotiate in private with Obama.
He's going, oh, oh, that's going to make a big difference.
I want to see the evidence.
I want to see some historical evidence that we have succeeded in getting Democrats to agree to real spending cuts.
I don't think you can find any for me.
But somehow we're set up now to win, because since we agree got taxes off, we're going to lose that anyway, so we got that off.
What?
What kind of thinking is it?
Okay, let's give up this core belief and give up that core belief because it distractions get them out of the way, and that sets us up for it's like the same kind of thinking that says, let's let the Democrats win everything and let everything go to hell, and then people will see how we go to hell, and they won't want to ever vote for it again.
Well, we're there.
We've been there for four years.
The theory doesn't work.
It got reelected.
Going to hell got re-elected.
Now back to the caller from Enid, Oklahoma, in tears.
A hundred thirty dollars a month is wrecking her family's financial security.
I don't know if she believed you or not, but Obama was telling her buddy her premium is going to go down 2500.
Everybody's premiums, if they're going to be able to maintain insurance, are going up, as are their taxes.
Everybody's taxes are going up.
In fact, the UK Daily Mail has a story talking about how workers making $30,000 a year are going to take a bigger hit on their paychecks than those earning $500,000 under this new deal.
And I'll give you the details how that's true in a moment.
But it is true.
The real money in this country is still in the hands of all those people in the middle class.
There aren't enough rich people to balance the budget.
There aren't the rich people taxes are going to generate $60 billion, and Obama just gave $10 billion of that away for Sandy relief.
People are falling for outright lies.
But I don't think Washington is in any way aware of how $130.
Oh, they talk as though they are, and they they go through the motions.
$130 a month.
Have you been to Washington lately?
It's a boom town.
The economic meltdown did not touch them.
The unemployment rate's 3%.
All the restaurants are open and they're full, and all the boutiques and all the shops are open.
And cheap little condominiums are still selling for $800,000 and up.
There is no housing crisis in Washington.
There is no.
Yeah, I gotta take a break.
Sit tight.
I'm not finished.
All of our money is being redistributed to Washington.
It's a boom town.
There's no evidence of the economic collapse in our nation's capital.
In fact, I think the zip codes around Washington happen to be now in the top five wealthiest zip codes in the country.
Stands to reason.
That's where all the money is.
And that's where it goes to be redistributed.
It's where all the people get their mitts on it.
They don't have the slightest clue.
Look at Obama.
He goes off to Hawaii.
What is it?
A trip out and back is four million bucks on Air Force One.
Not to mention what it's costing us to rent his home when he's out there.
You don't have the slightest idea.
Obama couldn't pay for one one hundredth of the lifestyle that he's living on his own.
Never.
He couldn't do it.
But he's living it.
And a lot of people in Washington, there is no real estate problem.
There is no restaurant closing problem.
There is no shops closing.
There are no vacancies in the malls.
Everything's open and booming and buzzing.
I think it's a it's it's a huge meanwhile, what's everybody thinking of Washington?
What they got to do?
Reach out to Hispanics.
Reach out to minorities.
That's where the problem is.
So it's it's really it's it's one of uh situation of uh relatability.
And story out of Kansas.
Some schlub who no doubt thought that he was doing a godly good thing.
Sperm donor for a pair of lesbians who wanted a child.
But because they're lesbians, it wasn't physically possible.
So sperm donor comes along and one of the lesbios lesbians gets pregnant, and guess what?
They're out of money, and he is being sued for child support.
The sperm donor is being sued for child support in Kansas.
San Francisco, we can understand.
New York, Boston understand, Kansas.
And he's probably going to lose.
Sperm donor, child support.
So a sperm cell obviously is a child.
Imagine that.
A minor correction.
Very, very, very minor correction.
It's the state of Kansas that is suing the sperm donor for child support.
But the state of Kansas is not the mother.
It's so convoluted, what the heck?
Anyway, I gotta take a brief time out here at the top, folks, but we got much more.