All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 25, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:28
January 25, 2013, Friday, Hour #1
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
So what difference does it make, folks?
What difference does it make if Barack Obama is acting like he's leading a banana republic?
Great to have you.
It's Rush Limbaugh, the all-knowing, all-caring, all-sensing, all-feeling Maha Rushi here on Friday at the EIB Network.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday.
And it's your day.
That's what Open Line Friday is.
When we go to the telephones, whatever you want to talk about is permitted.
See, this is a benevolent dictatorship, this program.
I am the benevolent dictator.
What I say goes here in terms of what we talk about Monday through Thursday.
But on Friday, they're all let out.
Whatever you want to talk about is okay.
I shed the clothing of the benevolent dictator and become essentially your slave.
So the telephone number is 800-282-2882 and the email address, illrushbow at eibnet.com, a federal appeals court has ruled that President Obama violated the Constitution when he bypassed the Senate to fill vacancies on the National Labor Relations Board.
This is the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
It said that Obama did not have the power to make recess appointments earlier this year to the NLRB.
The Senate was not in recess.
I'll never forget this.
The Senate wasn't in recess and he made recess appointments.
And there was barely any outrage over that.
I mean, there was here because the Constitution's revered here on this program, but out there in the hinterlands, it was, well, so what?
Obama was elected.
He should be able to put every wants on these boards.
We love the government.
The government's looking out for us.
Government's taking care of us.
National Labor Relations Board making sure that people who have jobs have good relations.
What's the point?
What does it matter who Obama was?
Shouldn't he have his people in there?
This is a reaction.
And I said, what difference does it make?
What difference does it make?
Because, hell, Obama won.
And who says he can't do what he wants to do?
That's what his supporters were all saying.
Well, there's this thing called the Constitution.
Now, the president said that he acted properly because the Senate was away for the holidays.
That may have been, but they were not shut down.
The court says that the Senate technically stayed in session when lawmakers gabbled in and out every few days for so-called pro forma session.
I remember this quite well.
I forget the specific reason, but it was a reason why they didn't.
The Senate, Terry Reid was playing games about, I think this is a way for the president to do what he did.
Reid was playing games, shutting the place down for a couple hours or a couple of days, and Obama would make his appointments.
Anyway, Republicans used the tactics specifically to prevent Obama from using his recess power to fill vacancies in an agency they claimed was too pro-union.
I'm reading now from the AP story.
Now, this decision is going to be appealed to the Supreme Court.
This is not over, but it's a major statement.
It's a major statement.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has essentially said to Barack Obama, you have greatly abused your power, and it is not permitted in our Constitution.
You read the summary of the ruling from the court, and it's apparent here.
All kinds of people can file briefs, organizations, institutions, amicus briefs, friend of the court briefs.
I want to get on any action briefs.
What difference does it make, briefs?
I want to play ball here, too.
Any number of legal groups can file papers, essentially, that the justices read, the judges read, hoping to educate them to a particular point of view.
I'll tell you, if you go through this, there's a fantastic founders constitutionally based legal foundation, landmark legal foundation, and their arguments appear to be almost universally adopted by the court when you read the rulings.
So congratulations, a landmark legal foundation.
As you know, it's headed up by our good buddy here, Mark F. Lee Levin.
And it's a major, major statement for the D.C. Circuit to essentially tell the President of the United States that he has abused his power.
He does not have this kind of power.
This is not going to sit well in the White House.
So they'll take it up to the Supreme Court, and we'll see what happens from that point on.
I think what they'll say is, what difference does it make?
What difference does it make if the president wants to make appointments?
What difference does it make whether it's constitutional or not?
Constitution is old-fashioned.
Look at the Second Amendment.
It was never supposed to be in there.
The Constitution doesn't have anything in there when it was written about abortion.
Constitution permitted slavery.
How about a Constitution?
What does it matter?
That'll be the reaction of many on the pro-Obama side.
What do you mean, separation of powers?
Why do we need separation of powers?
We think Obama's power is absolute.
Why do we need to separate Obama's power?
That would be the low-information voter reaction.
What difference does it make if the president has no limits in his power?
The president's a good guy, cares about us, loves us, Santa Claus.
Why shouldn't he have all the power he wants?
It's what we're going to be up against.
But we are blessed, folks, seriously here by the fact that there are still serious people who are continuing to work very hard to stop these abuses of power.
Congratulations to the Landmark Legal Foundation.
Houston, Four Seasons Hotel.
Oh, before I get to that, made myself a note.
I was watching Fox this morning.
Well, I never really watch it.
It's just on while I'm in the midst of doing show prep.
Sometimes, for whatever reason, I'll actually look at the monitor.
Something attracts my attention.
Sometimes I'm just looking for a break from what I'm doing.
I looked up there and I saw this graphic at the bottom of the screen.
You know what it said?
Sandy victims shiver in Northeast without heat.
Victims of Hurricane Sandy.
Remember, this happened back in late October, early November.
Happened a week before the election.
This happened way back last year.
And I, ladies and gentlemen, I'm being dead serious with you here.
Do not infer anything in my tone of voice.
I thought that it had been fixed.
We haven't heard since a couple days after the election anything about the Northeast.
Well, there were occasional stories that people still didn't have power, still didn't have gasoline.
Homes still hadn't been rebuilt.
But those stories died away shortly after the election.
Chris Christie wasn't talking about it much anymore.
Andrew Cuomo wasn't talking about it much anymore.
The president wasn't.
Mayor Doomberg wasn't talking about it.
And as time has gone on, I just thought that problem had been solved.
Honestly, I did.
I thought the power had been restored.
I thought gasoline stations are back open.
I thought people moved back into their houses.
I was shocked when I saw this.
Here is January 25th.
By the way, it's my cousin Steve's birthday today.
Steve Jr., Cape Girardo, Missouri.
Happy birthday.
He's what?
I think two years younger than I am.
Anyway, I really, folks, I thought it was done.
I haven't heard any complaints about it.
I haven't heard anything worse, FEMA.
I haven't heard anything about people freezing.
I haven't heard anything.
Not like I heard in Hurricane Katrina.
We heard about that for a year.
No, I'm not, Dawn.
I'm not trying to be cynical.
I'm telling the truth.
This surprised me.
I thought it had been fixed.
The president got together with Christie.
They said they set up this hotline.
They were going to eliminate any bureaucratic red tape.
If you called with a problem, it was going to get attention in 15 minutes.
And here it is.
There's a big cold snap in the Northeast to go along with global warming.
Oh, by the way, that reminds me, I should have mentioned this yesterday.
Derek Jeter.
You know, Derek Jeter is Davos at the World Economic Forum, and he's over there.
Because the reason he's there is that Pepsi owns Gatorade, which Jeter drinks.
Jeter endorses, well, I assume he drinks it because he endorses Gatorade.
So Pepsi's over there because Pepsi's a big, evil corporation.
As such, there's a meeting of a bunch of evil CEOs planning how they can get all the money for themselves in the next year or two, which is what they do at these CEO economic forums.
Everybody knows that.
These guys just get together to figure out how they can get more and more money for themselves and find ways to screw their customers and maybe even kill them at times.
Anyway, they drag Derek Jeter over there.
And Derek Jeter was talking about Hurricane Sandy.
He said, we've got to do something.
Something's causing these hurricanes.
Something's causing them.
And we've got to get going on global warming.
We've got to get working on climate change.
Now, this is very unusual for a professional athlete to throw himself headfirst into a political issue.
Nicholson didn't even do this.
Mickelson didn't join a cause.
Mickelson didn't start advocating for lower taxes.
Mickelson didn't try to change policy.
Mickelson was just, my gosh, I'm keeping 38 cents out of every dollar.
I think I might move.
And for that, there's still, there's another story out today, that the media jihad against Phil Nicholson isn't over.
I'll get to that in a minute.
But Jeter is now thrown himself into the policy mix here with global warming.
So I was thinking, I was remiss yesterday.
I should have pointed out that if Jeter's serious, he ought to put forth some ideas to help the cause.
And one of those things would be, what?
No more night games in any sport.
Look at all the electricity used.
You ever been to a baseball or football game in an overcast day?
They turn the lights on at the stadium in the daytime.
Just because it's, you know why they do that?
They do that for television.
They do it to eliminate shadows for television.
Even in the daytime.
The lights are on it.
Most of these stadiums.
You know how much electricity that's bringing on CO2?
You realize the carbon that we are putting into the air?
So Jeter at least could come out for all day games.
Maybe something a Jeter could then say a minimum of four people in every car traveling to a stadium.
Baseball, basketball, football, hockey, soccer, doesn't matter, minimum, four people in a car.
I mean, if he's going to get involved here, he should go all the way.
But it's clear PepsiCo dragged him over there because he's an endorser.
Anyway, I just, I then saw there's a Fox News story.
Sandy victims left out in the cold during the Arctic blast.
The brutal cold snap affecting much of the country is taking a devastating toll on victims of Superstorm Sandy, many of whom are camped out in tent cities or living in homes without power or heat or running water.
I had no idea.
I honestly thought that this had all, I don't know, been fixed, put back together.
I thought that power was back on.
Hundreds of people, Staten Island along the Jersey shore, are still without basic necessities nearly three months after the storm hit.
Jeanette Van Houten, a resident from a small New Jersey town that was among the hardest hit community, said, many families in Union Beach are using space heaters to warm upstairs.
There's people with no heat, no electric, but they are staying in the house because it's better than having to deal with FEMA and having to leave hotels every two weeks.
There are families who have chosen to stay in their homes just to have some sort of normalcy.
I really thought, and again, bottom of my heart, I'm not trying to be sarcastic or say nothing.
I actually thought it had been dealt with because everybody involved at the government level said they were going to expedite things and get it all fixed.
And there hasn't been any reports of any problem.
Not like Hurricane Katrina.
We know that nothing was put back together fast then because the media was there every day and telling us.
The people in the Northeast have just been abandoned.
For that week before the election, everybody drove in, flew in, photo ops, made promises.
Since then, Governor Christie doing a fundraiser with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook.
I don't have Springsteen done anything more for the Sandy victims.
I know he was involved there.
He cares a lot.
I know that.
I remember him saying so.
But I'm shocked.
I mean, this is, you know, liberal Mecca, Democrat, forget liberal, Democrat Mecca.
And still no heat.
No heat, no, no running water in three months.
I did not know.
I take a quick time out here, folks.
It's open.
Oh, and speaking of that, you know, I talk to you about Gawker now and then.
It is a website.
It's a blog.
It's oriented toward gay issues.
It's quite ribald.
It's very, very dangerous to go there.
I'm not advocating you, but I like the Gawker guys.
They have a running back and forth with me.
But one of the Gawker guys, Travis Okulski, posted a tweet about this.
You know what he said?
He's a young guy.
I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that this cold weather is far worse than the Holocaust.
And he means it.
I mean, he's dead serious.
I can't tell you.
I'm not trying to overdo this.
I can't tell you how surprised I was when I saw that graphic on Fox, Sandy Victims Shiver in Northeast without heat.
I literally didn't know that electricity hadn't been restored and that the gasoline stations were open and food was being trucked in.
I had no clue, folks.
There hasn't been anything in the news about it.
Maybe where you live in the Northeast, there has every day, but there hadn't been here outside the Northeast.
I saw public opinion polls.
What is it?
Cuomo and Christie have the highest approval ratings they've had in a long time, and I'm not kidding.
According to the polls, both Governor Cuomo and Christie are wildly popular right now.
It doesn't jive with the idea that apparently nothing's been done.
Apparently, so little, so few repairs have been made that it's breathtakingly shocking.
I mean, I haven't seen any pictures of FEMA trailers.
I haven't seen the FEMA people on TV describing their actions, you know, the photo ops, wanting credit for it.
The assumption was it was over.
They fixed it.
It was done.
I got this global warming stuff going on out there.
In the middle here of global warming, Obama even made that a major part of his immaculate address.
What's wrong with the little cold weather then?
If we get global warming, shouldn't everybody be breathing a sigh of relief at the cold snap, cooling things off a little bit.
I have to tell you, folks, I thought I knew a lot starting today.
I'm really confused now.
Travis Okulski, the senior writer, the second name on the masthead for Gawker Media.
Well, that they have a car blog at Gawker called Jalopnik.
Travis Okulski says, I don't think I'm exaggerating.
This is on his tweet.
I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that this cold weather is far worse than the Holocaust.
Man, it must be bad.
Cold weather is worse, far worse than the Holocaust.
There must be a lot of people dying that we are not being told about that Travis Okulski is aware of.
By the way, folks, when it comes to Hurricane Sandy and Relief Everett, didn't they do a concert?
They had a concert, right?
Bruce Springsteen played, and a number of other well-known musicians played to fix it.
What happened?
They had a concert and that to fix Hurricane Sandy.
I don't know.
I just continue to, I mean, every time I look at the news these days, I'm shocked and stunned.
Houston, Four Seasons Hotel suing the NAA LCP.
Wait till you hear about this kind of typical.
The Four Seasons Hotel is suing the NAA LCP, National Association for Advancement of Liberal Colored People, claiming that the NAA LCP owes them almost $100,000 for a summer banquet.
A lawsuit claims the NAA LCP owes the Four Seasons about $100,000 for various unpaid charges from July to November for an event held at the hotel.
The suit alleges that the payment was due on November 27th, remains unpaid after a second request for payment in December.
An invoice submitted as evidence shows banquet charges of 34 grand and 39 grand and room charges, among other items on the list.
A hotel claims the entire bill was not paid.
Well, who do they think they're?
What do you mean, paid?
They didn't, the hotel didn't get the memo that this is a donation.
You telling me the four seasons had an NAA LCP convention and expected to get paid?
What kind of bias is that?
You see, this is the kind of racism that is way, way, way too frequent in this country.
And it's way too blatant and it is way too obvious.
I mean, it's one thing to quietly expect to be paid.
I mean, that's typically racist, but then to file a lawsuit and call people's attention to it.
This is why African Americans vote Democrat.
And the sooner the Republicans figure this out, the faster they're going to be able to repair the breach.
This hotel, whoever runs this hotel is going to have to go back to training or something because you don't expect to get paid in the NAA LCP has a convention.
Talk to the people that have hosted Al Sharpton events.
It just doesn't happen.
Those are called donations.
Contributions.
The Four Seasons didn't get the memo on that.
I mentioned that the sports media jihad against Phil Mickelson is continuing.
To borrow a phrase from our president who said, the future must not belong to those who slander paying high taxes.
This article, it's a CNN story by Tammy Luby.
I'm assuming it's a female here, T-A-M-I.
And the story starts out: there's no doubt that Phil Mickelson pays a lot in income taxes, a California resident, but it's not as much as he thinks.
What an idiot he is.
This reporter is in a much better position to know what Mickelson's paying in taxes than he is.
Who does he think he is going public talking about his tax rate?
You don't even know what he's talking about.
That's the point of the story.
But Tammy Luby of CNN knows.
She claims in the story that Phil Mickelson's probably only paying about 53%, not 63%.
And the reporter even claims that Mickelson is actually paying less than that, since millionaires pay an average around 26%.
She looked it up.
And so, since there's an average tax rate of 26% that millionaires pay, and by the way, she's including people like Buffett and his secretary and Gates, who don't pay income taxes.
Tammy, I'm sure, doesn't know that.
She's a little confused, but cut her some slack.
That, of course, ignores the fact that most millionaires pay a lower rate because they're not paying income taxes.
They're paying capital gains taxes.
But most of Mickelson's income is wages.
Mickelson is not a coupon clipper.
Mickelson's earning is what's called earned income, just like yours.
His income is not being taxed at 15 or 20%.
He added up his federal rate and his state rate.
And then what happens to his rate in California, the proposition 30?
He's self-employed.
He's adding up what he pays for Medicare.
People that are not self-employed don't understand.
The Medicare tax is 3.4% on everything.
Social Security, at least, stops at $115,000.
Medicare tax is 3% or 4% on everything.
Let's add it up.
Mickelson, 39.6, say 40 federal, 13.3 California.
That's 53.
He's going to have a 3% Medicare tax.
That's 56.
Then there's going to be the 0.9% surcharge on income.
Obama is another that's 54%.
Then there's the 3%.
There's another Obama tax that gets tacked onto here.
And then there's California taxes.
And for people at Mickelson's earnings level, he doesn't get to deduct very much, including whatever his state income taxes are.
So he's in the gross before he starts factoring deductions.
And remember, as a 39.6 bracket guy, he doesn't have many.
They've taken a lot of those away.
So he's calculating he's up around 62, 63%.
But Tammy Luby at CNN says, no, no, he's not paying as much as he thinks.
He's only paying 53%.
They quote him.
Tammy Luby, CNN, quotes him from Yahoo Sports.
Mickelson said, if you add up all the federal and you look at the disability, the unemployment, the Social Security, the state, he may not have even added the Medicare tax in this.
My tax rate is 62%, 63%, so I've got to make some decisions on what I'm going to do.
And that's all it took.
And the sports media descended on this guy like buzzards and vultures.
And Mickelson thought, okay, okay, okay, I'll go apologize.
It's insensitive.
I'll apologize for being For just mentioning that I'm keeping 37 cents of every dollar I earn.
That's the way to look at it.
Don't look at it that Nicholson is paying 63%.
The way to put this in proper focus and context: ask yourself, you keep 37, 38 cents of every dollar you earn.
Are you going to talk about it?
And then is the sports media going to descend on you as some insensitive buffoon?
The jihad against Phil Mickelson continues.
This reporter here pretends that Mickelson was just talking about his income tax, even though he's quote, that's how she gets to the 53%.
She's not factoring in the other because she doesn't know about it because she gets a paycheck with all that withholding from CNN.
She doesn't know what self-employed people pay.
She probably doesn't know that Mickelson files quarterly estimates.
She probably didn't know what that is.
Well, she may know that.
Hell, I don't want to assume what she doesn't know.
But based on the story here, she's just looking at income tax and not adding anything else to it.
For those of you who smoke, by this, you know, in Oregon, told you yesterday, if in Oregon, they're going to try to make cigarettes available only by way of prescription.
Yahoo News is reporting today.
Actually, it's the AP via Yahoo News, Ricardo Alonso Zaldivar.
Millions of smokers could be priced out of health insurance because of tobacco penalties in Obamacare, according to experts who are just now fleshing out the potential impact of a little-noted provision in the massive legislation.
The Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, allows health insurers to charge smokers buying individual policies up to 50% higher premiums starting next January.
See, this thing doesn't start fully implementing until 2014.
And one of these things is next January, a year from now, smokers who buy individual policies will automatically face a premium increase of 50% above what already is being charged for a 55-year-old smoker.
That penalty could reach nearly $4,250 a year.
A 60-year-old smoker could wind up paying nearly $5,100 on top of the premium.
The $4,250 is on top of his premium.
That's the penalty for smoking.
And don't forget, the sales tax revenue from tobacco sales is funding children's health care programs.
Little known provision.
Oh, there are so many of these.
Ladies and gentlemen, violence is flaring.
It's a sad day.
It's a very, very depressing out there in Egypt.
Terrari Square, remember that two years ago?
The outbreak of democracy, the Arab Spring, a beautiful thing.
We're going to get rid of a mean, bloodthirsty dictator, Hosni Mubarak.
We're going to put in an Obama acolyte in there.
You're going to have freedom and democracy.
They told us this at the Weekly Standard.
A number of conservative media places, and the Obama media said, oh, yeah, it's Arab Spring.
This is the outbreak of democracy all over the world.
And Middle East.
Bye-bye, Jihad.
Hello, Flower Children.
And it's really going to be a beautiful thing.
Well, I'm sure everybody had the highest hopes.
And I'm sure everybody gave it everything they had.
It's just a sad thing.
Hundreds of youths are at the moment clashing with Egyptian police in Tarriri Square in a violent start to the second anniversary of the uprising of the toppling of Hosni Mubarak.
So two years.
It's so depressing.
It's so very sad.
Two years after this momentous, wonderful, beautiful explosion of democracy, the Arab Spring, Tarrary Square.
Apparently, it's all falling apart.
Now it's just violence, protests, people shooting each other with guns.
Still have guns.
They haven't banned them yet.
It's a shame.
It's just too bad.
I don't know.
It's such a sad day of the violence taking place in Tarrary Square.
We want to go back.
One of my all-time favorite series of soundbites.
I just love these.
Our old buddy Nick Robertson, CNN, February 11th, 2011, in Tariri Square, celebrating the outbreak of the Arab Spring and trying to get people involved in the protests to praise Barack Obama for it.
Ahmed, you've been here down on the square for many days.
The United States and international community have just listened to President Obama say that America will support Egypt if it wants help and assistance and hopes that there'll be a good transition for jobs for the young people.
What would your message be for President Obama?
We do know actually who he's supporting.
He searches for his own burgers and the Egyptian people seeks for our freedom and democracy.
Any democratic country should seek for the people, not for it.
I just, folks, I love this.
This is Nick Robertson, these people in the midst of protesting what they think is for their freedom.
What would you say to President Obama?
Who is likely responsible for your being able to breathe today?
Do you love President Obama?
What the hell did he have to do with it?
So Nick moved on now to Mustafa since Ahmed didn't come through for him.
Up next, Nick Robertson here with Mustafa and Tahriri Square.
Mustafa's joining me now.
We just heard President Obama say that he wants to extend support and assistance to Egypt and Egyptians if he wants any hopes that there are more jobs for the young people in the future.
What's your message for President Obama?
Well, my message for Brilliant Obama is just we started this revolution without any outside help and we are going to finish it also without any outside help.
Our message to President Obama is where the hell has he been?
He didn't have anything to do with this.
What are you asking me about President Obama for?
I'm in the middle here trying to fight for my own freedom, get rid of a dictator, what an Arab Spring democracy.
You're asking me, what is my message for Obama?
So our old buddy Nick Robertson, CNN, he tried Ahmed, then he went to Mustafa, and he said, I'm going to give Mustafa one more chance here to praise Obama, which was all CNN cared about.
Are you pleased that President Obama has come out, however, now and said he supports this change and supports the people and supports the young people and what they've done?
Well, actually, Brilliant Owana's views were kind of conflicting during the last weeks.
But now he's saying that he's supporting the change.
Well, at least, Mustafa, are you pleased that President Obama has come on and said he supports the change, supports you, the young people and jobs?
Well, actually, Nick, old buddy, Obama's views were kind of conflicting during the last week.
We don't really know where he was.
So old buddy Nick here spoke to Ahmed and Mustafa, wanted them to praise Obama in the middle of the Arab Spring, making it about Obama.
These guys wouldn't play ball.
You heard it.
You heard him basically, Obama's not here.
He hadn't done anything.
We don't know what he believes.
It's time for Nick Robertson to wrap it up and tell the CNN viewers what they just heard.
The view from here is one of very happy now to hear that President Obama has swung behind the people.
Really?
That's what we just heard from Mustafa and Ahmed?
That the view from Tahriri Square is one of very happy people to hear that Obama has swung behind the people?
No, Nick, we didn't hear that.
That's what you wanted them to say.
It's a danger of live tough TV.
See, if they could have videotaped these guys, they could have found a couple guys to say what they wanted.
But that's the risk of going live TV.
The odds are going to find people don't like Obama.
▲
Export Selection