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May 9, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:41
May 9, 2013, Thursday, Hour #2
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And welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, L. Rushbo here at the distinguished and prestigious Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
And once again, I serve as America's real anchored, a doctor of democracy.
And America's truth detector.
It's a delight to be with you.
The telephone number 80082882, the email address.com.
Many of you in the email say, rush, rush, rush, what up at Benghazi.
We spent a lot of time on Benghazi yesterday, and we told you practically every powerful detail.
We had the sound bites of every powerful detail.
And those of you who listen to this program know exactly what happened in Benghazi, and you know exactly why the White House didn't want anybody to know about it.
There's just one remaining question that I have been asking for weeks.
No, I've been asking this question for months.
Where was Obama during all of it?
That's the one thing that nobody knows.
Where was Obama when four Americans were under assault and ultimately being killed?
And there doesn't seem to be any curiosity inside official Washington.
But the reason that we're not spending a lot of time on it today is that we did yesterday, and you in this audience know everything about it that there is to know.
The media is treating it today as a non-event or as a Republican political effort to embarrass our delightful president and our future president, Hillary Clinton.
Dana Milbank in the Washington Post headline, whistleblower's yarn fails to tie Benghazi lapses to politics.
He claims that what happened yesterday was a bunch of storytelling.
That the witnesses spun a yarn.
Great lines for a movie, maybe, but really nothing to see here.
Now for everybody who had their hopes up that this was gonna mean something.
I warned you, media doesn't get behind this.
And if it only lasts one day, it's gonna come and go and become a non-event.
And the Republicans basically launched everything they had in one day, and that's it.
And so now the media is spinning it as a Republican political effort that failed.
The whistleblowers, you heard them, you heard them choking up and crying.
You heard their testimony.
We played it yesterday, and I'm sure if you watched some cable news last night, you got snippets of it.
You saw the pain, the tears, the choke up, the the suffering, the disbelief, the incredulity when they were told that this was the result of a video.
I mean, you you basically in this audience, you know what the truth was or is and you also know the administration's gotten away with it.
Not sold news.
They have gotten away with the cover-up.
They've gotten away with mischaracterizing it, they've got it and gotten away with spinning it as another failed inept Republican political effort.
Whistleblowers yarn fails to tie Benghazi lapses to politics.
Milbank says, of course the State Department would try to block this testimony.
Of course.
It makes perfect sense that the State Department would try to block this testimony.
And Milbank is saying, you think I'm gonna join you people in trying to harm Obama?
Who do you think I'm nuts?
I'm not gonna do that.
I'm here to protect Obama.
That's what my piece is all about here.
Now, Milbank does concede that Greg Hicks did have some damning things to say about the State Department trying to block him from cooperating with the committee, but that's that wasn't quite the evidence ISA had promised.
In fact, Milbank says here that Greg Hicks was of little use to Republicans in their efforts to connect the lapses in Benghazi to Clinton or Obama.
As though that's what they were trying to do.
Yeah, Greg Hick, he didn't help anybody.
He didn't help the Republicans.
I told you the Democrats look at everything politically.
Everything.
And in this case, they're judging this simply did anybody land a blow on Obama.
And their verdict is no.
Didn't happen.
All we got yesterday was basically a bunch of great lines in a movie and a bunch of storytelling.
Now the New York Times is a little different.
The New York Times story, diplomats says questions over Benghazi led to demotion.
They talk about Greg Hicks speaking to a congressman without a State Department lawyer being present.
Hillary's chief of staff reamed him, and then he got demoted.
And the New York Times does say that this is not really cool, but that's about it.
The only thing to see here.
But essentially, folks, there's nothing new here.
That's it.
That's the New York Times.
That's the that's the Washington Post.
I told you what Yahoo News reported on this.
Yahoo News basically says it's a failed Republican political effort.
Didn't land a blow on Obama.
So that's it.
Now I want to go back to this thing I alluded to in the first segment of the program today.
Yeah, I know.
Can you can you imagine in 1972, three, whenever the Watergate hearings were?
Remember that old Washington Post headline?
John Dean's yarn fails to tie Watergate lapses to Nixon.
Imagine that headline.
Remember that headline?
Remember the stories in the Washington Post?
Nothing to see here.
Democrats tried to attach this Watergate thing to Nixon, but they didn't land a blow.
We maybe got some yarns here, maybe some good lines for a movie, but nothing happened here.
You remember all of that during Watergate.
Anyway, James Peffick Cookis, who is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, published a blog post yesterday.
Didn't see it until last night, after the program yesterday, is the U.S. on the verge of running a budget surplus.
The U.S. government ran a surplus of 112 billion dollars in April.
That's according to the CBO.
That's uh $52 billion bigger surplus than a year ago.
Now, April is usually a good month for the Treasury thanks to income tax payments.
Still the surpluses recording recorded in April of 2012 and 2013 were the first seen in that month since 2008.
These are the first surpluses since Obama took office.
And there's even more good news.
Revenue for the first seven months of this fiscal year is up 16% from a year ago, same period.
To the number crunchers at Potomac Research, the combination of those surging revenues and the sequestration spending cuts points to a stunning possibility.
Are you ready?
Official forecasters will have to radically alter their projections this summer.
The Congressional Budget Office forecast of $845 billion in red ink, or $845 billion deficit.
5.3% of GDP.
That's hopelessly outdated.
The deficit will fall well below 5% of GDP, perhaps to about $700 billion.
Then the improvement really takes hold.
Instead of the official forecast of a six hundred and sixteen billion dollar deficit in fiscal twenty fourteen, we would anticipate something like $500 billion, close to 3% of GDP.
And in fiscal 2015, the deficit could drop below 2% of GDP, maybe to $300 billion.
You understand.
After we fully implement Obamacare, the deficit is maybe going to disappear.
Right in time for the 2016 presidential campaign.
Obamacare is going to be seen as wiping out the deficit, creating all kinds of unexpected revenue flowing into Washington.
Now these guys at Potomac Research, they finished their post with this.
Call us crazy.
But if the economy finally lifts off in 2014 or 2015, and the growth of the economy is in the 4% neighborhood, and if the sequester is still in place, we could see a surplus, a budget surplus by fiscal 2015.
It's not totally out of the question.
With revenue coming in above expectations and spending below expectations, the deficit numbers are turning out way better than anybody expected.
Merely a sharp drop might greatly influence the current austerity debate.
And if the federal government runs an actual surplus, this is Patha Kuka's writing.
If the federal government runs an actual surplus in 2014 or 2015, few politicians are going to hear much about deficit reduction, entitlement reform, none of that.
If we're running a deficit, then everything is going to be fine, and we're going to be able to spend even more money.
Not only might pressure mount to re-jigger the sequester, but there would be good luck to the Obama White House in getting more tax increases.
Because Obamacare and tax increases will be seen as the explanation for rising revenue and shrinking deficits.
Now I remember making a prediction.
It wasn't really a full-fledged prediction.
I mean just speculating many, many moons ago about the U.S. economy and the American people.
And when I speak about the American people, folks, I'm talking about you, those of you in this audience.
I know how resilient you are.
And I know that you people don't just sit out there and take it.
You're going to do what you can to overcome whatever economic obstacles are there, whether they are market-oriented or placed there by government.
You're not just going to sit there and take it.
The American economy is filled with ingenuity.
It's filled with creativity and it's filled with entrepreneurs.
And at some point, the American people are going to say the heck with this, and they're going to start doing whatever they can to prosper.
And they're going to do whatever they can to overcome whatever obstacles are there.
And if that happens, we could see an economic rebound.
I said this five years ago, four years ago, we could see an economic rebound, and then guess what?
Guess who gets credit?
Guess whose policies are going to get credit.
We ought to do a search, the archives of this program.
I would like to know for sure just exactly when I first posed this possibility.
Because it was quite a while ago.
It was multiple years ago, at least three.
And it was purely a political analysis.
And it was based on the belief that the American people as I know them, and I'm talking about you, you people in this audience, I know who you are.
You're not waiting around for Santa Claus.
You don't wait for things to happen.
You make them happen.
I know exactly who's in this audience.
And at some point you're going to get fed up with whatever the numbers are, and you're just going to try to overcome them yourselves.
And that you'll succeed.
But you won't get the credit for it.
Obama's policies will.
Now, if if you're feeling rotten today, can you imagine how you're going to feel if in 2014, if all this stuff happens to be right?
The fact that we've got a 17 or 18 trillion dollar national debt will not matter, folks.
It will not matter at all.
If we ever get, while Obama's still in office, to a budget surplus of even just one dollar, then you better get ready because Obamacare will be credited, stimulus will be credited, all of his jobs bills will be credited.
The sequester, not so much.
Because that's spending cuts.
It'll all be Obama's policies have caused this growing economy with new money pouring in.
And the stimulus and the home mortgage relief, all of those things will get the credit if this actually happens.
And these guys that are cited by Petha Kuka say that the timeline for this is 2014-2015, right about that time that we're all going to be re-electing or electing the next president.
Just keep it in mind.
I mean, I'm going to search the archives, try to find out when I first posed this as a possibility.
No, no, no.
If all this happens, it'll be in spite of Obama.
It won't be because of it, but that's not going to be what the story is, obviously.
Quick timeout.
We'll be back and continue after this.
Do not go away.
Ladies and gentlemen, I found it.
I looked it up in the break.
It was it was almost four years ago to the day, May 12th of 2009, where I first posited the notion that the economy would recover on its own, despite Obama.
Because of you, because of people like you, who are not just going to sit here and take it.
May 12th of 2009, when I said I posited the idea that the people of this country will cause this economy to rebound, and guess whose policies will be credited for it.
Now, one other thing, uh James Petha Kukis has another post today in which he says that good economic news is bad news for the Democrats.
And the reason is they've been claiming that the sequester is killing the recovery.
There is no bad news for the Democrats.
That just doesn't happen anymore.
The low information crowd, which still today can't get enough of Jody Arias, is not going to put two and two together and get four, and they're not going to think anything of it, even if they do.
I think this is where people trip themselves, a boy, yeah, the Democrats, you know, they're really gonna get killed.
They've been out there claiming a sequester, it b it kills the economy, it kills the recovery, and now it's sequester is contributing to our recovery.
Bad news for the Democrats, maybe in real world terms, but that's not gonna be the Democrats aren't gonna get criticized for this.
In fact, the sequester is going to be hardly mentioned when it comes time to start crediting the things responsible for recovery.
And notice, we're already now talking about a recovery in the midst of this economy, which is still in the tank.
All of a sudden now we're talking about a recovery and a deficit by 2015.
I mean, a surplus in 2015.
If people still can't find a job they want, I uh it this is mind-boggling.
But the idea that that a recovery, that economic growth is bad news for the Democrats with Obama in the White House, in whose world is that gonna happen.
Dana Milbank gonna write a story, but oh man, this is really bad for the Democrats.
Look at that.
The sequester is causing the economy to recover at faster rates than anybody thought.
Well, the Democrats are in deep duty.
It's never going to be written.
The Democrats are always vindicated by all facts.
The Democrats are never wrong.
The Democrats never make a mistake.
The Democrats are always right.
And right is always wrong.
And wrong is always right.
Even when they're wrong, it's right.
Even for the wrong reasons.
Now, in the old days, not too long ago, it might have been true that the Democrats bellyaching about the sequester causing the recovery to come to screeching halt, just the opposite happens, and they might have egg on their face, but they're going to happen now.
Just like, you know, Dick Morris was out there saying at the Benghazi hearings.
That was it.
That's it for the Obama administration.
Totally complete.
That's done.
It's over for them.
Once the American people learn that their president is lying to them, that's it.
That's the end of the relationship.
They don't have any idea he's lying to them.
And they're not going to be told that he's lying to them.
Benghazi's over.
And as far as the low information public in this country are concerned, it was a cheap political stunt by the Republicans that failed.
The only thing that came out of it was a bunch of storytelling that might end up as a great movie someday.
But that's it.
Nothing to see here.
Another brief obscene profit timeout don't go away, folks.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not trying to depress you.
Far from it, and I don't think all is lost.
I'm just, I'm just telling you, Benghazi's what it is.
It's exactly being portrayed as we knew it would be.
There was no way the media was going to report this accurately or even cover it.
And it was over, there was no way that this was going to lay a hand or a glove on Obama.
It was never in the cards.
It's going to be something totally surprising that you and I think is inconsequential and uneventful is going to trip them up, if anything ever does.
I just, on this economics business.
I know the New York Times, there are two stories that Jim Pathacuka cites when he says that the good economic news is bad news for the Democrats.
It really isn't.
There is no bad news for the Democrats, and this isn't going to be either, but there are two stories.
New York Times, economists see deficit emphasis as impeding recovery.
That's the sequester.
And everybody worrying about the deficit, why that's just going to get in the way of the recovery.
And then the National Journal.
Who says fiscal policy is hurting the economy?
Almost everyone.
And that's the sequester.
You got two stories out there just whining and belly aching about the sequester.
I guarantee you, the New York Times and the National Journal do not know about this Jim Pathacoukas post.
It's the American Enterprise Institute.
That's a foreign country.
But they'll hear about it because I've talked about it.
And they'll learn that there are now projections for a surplus in 2015.
And they're going to dump those deficit stories.
They're going to dump those sequester as bad stories like a hot potato.
And by tomorrow, those two stories you won't be able to find.
And everything's going to shift.
Now, with this with this talk of a possible surplus of 2015 to the miraculous, wonderful ways of Obama's policies.
They just took longer than people thought.
Because it was so much worse than anybody thought, because Bush didn't tell the truth of how bad it was when Obama took over for him.
I mean, this is so simple to lay out.
Your kid could do it.
Your kid could write this scenario.
Surplus By 2015, yeah, we thought it would happen by 2010 or 2011, but it was so bad, it was so much worse than even we knew.
Bush really kept it secret how bad it was.
I mean, uh the the depression, uh recession, uh financial crisis, it was so much worse.
And uh it turns out that uh if if Obama had a surplus twice as large as it was, why it might have happened sooner.
And if uh if if Obama had uh put Obamacare in in into play two years sooner, why we would be two years closer to a surplus.
That's what's gonna happen here.
And then the lesson they're gonna take from it is government spending led to this recovery, and it would have happened sooner if they would have just spent more.
Oh, and tax increases.
We've raised taxes on the top one percent.
So the tax increases and all this new spending, Obamacare and a budget surplus, if we'd had just raised taxes higher and sooner and spent more money quicker, we would be in Fat City now.
Lessons to learn for the next Democrat president, you see.
So that's how it's gonna play out if indeed this surplus stuff happens.
Now that's the big if.
Frankly, I can't believe that.
Honestly, I can't believe a surplus.
I can't not with Obamacare being implemented.
Look at all the people losing their jobs, look at all the businesses shutting down.
I don't see how that's gonna happen.
But they're out there hoping and praying.
That's what all these projections are about.
Hoping and praying that we do end up there.
So they're already setting the stage for it.
Just like in 2005, they started talking about a recession three years before it happened, media started talking about it, trying to convince you we were heading that direction, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy.
World was hating us because of Iraq, Bush was horrible, people were dying, it was unnecessary, global warming, all that for three years you were pounded.
The time it was over, you hated Bush, you thought America was hated, uh, we're in a recession because of Bush and the Republicans and all that, and there we go.
Same thing's gonna happen here on the upside.
We might be headed to a surplus.
Obama's policies are wonderful and great, but they should have been even bigger.
So a case had been made for raising taxes and spending.
Therefore, we should never ever even discuss again cutting taxes or cutting spending.
That's what gave us the recession, the Bush tax cuts.
I can see all of this with just that one report by Petha Cucas projecting a possible surplus in 2015.
You wait.
We'll see.
In the meantime, David in Fort Worth, Texas, welcome to the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Rush, Megadetto.
Thank you very much, sir.
My comment is this the statement that military assets were not uh going to be able to get to Benghazi in time could only have been made retrospectively.
For those in real linda, that means after the fact.
Um there was absolutely no way to know how long that siege would last, whether it's two hours or twenty hours to get military assets to uh that that location, uh the the statement that we just didn't have time to get to get things there, could only be made retrospectively.
Right, as a flimsy excuse.
And you are exactly right, and it just so happens.
I happen to have here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers a doubtless little scene post from PJ Media.com.
The title of the post is Seven Things We Learned from the Benghazi whistleblower hearing.
And I I don't think even very many people on our side have picked this up.
Here it is.
It dovetails with what you were talking about.
There were multiple stand down orders, not just one.
Now remember, during the attack, the order was given to stand down.
And by the way, Anne Wagner, who is a member of Congress from Missouri, is former ambassador.
And she said yesterday on St. Louis Radio, the only person in the United States of America who can issue an order to stand down is the president.
That order was given.
We thought one time.
It turns out we learned from the testimony yesterday that there were multiple stand down orders.
Special ops forces were told twice by their chain of command not to board aircraft of Benghazi to rescue the Americans then under attack.
The U.S. deputy diplomat Greg Hicks testified that the military commander, Lieutenant Colonel Gibson, had his team ready to go twice.
They were on the runway, about to board a flight to Benghazi in the middle of the attack.
They were ordered to stand down and remain in Tripoli.
They weren't in Italy.
They weren't in Spain.
They were in Libya.
They were in Tripoli.
They were on the runway.
They were twice told to stand down.
They were told, in fact, to stand down and remain in Tripoli to receive the wounded who would be coming out of Benghazi.
They were told to stand down twice and not go.
Now, up until yesterday, we knew of one order to stand down.
It turns out there were two.
And one of the orders came in the middle of the attack.
The other order to stand down came toward the end.
After Hicks's team had traveled from Tripoli to Benghazi.
Now, here's the point of this, and it goes right to what David and Fort Worth just said.
The fact that Greg Hicks's team was able to get to Benghazi before the end of the assault strongly suggests that the special operations team could have made a real difference.
Now the regime has said repeatedly, there wasn't time.
We couldn't have gotten anybody there.
That came out the Democrats made everybody made sure everybody heard that yesterday.
That was one of their only one of their few points that they kept pounding.
There wasn't time to get there.
It would have been a feudal exercise.
We couldn't have got there in time.
And David from Fort Worth Point is you can only conclude that after the fact, because in the middle of the thing, you don't know how long it's gonna go.
When it starts, you don't know how long it's gonna go.
This went on for seven or eight hours.
So what we know now from Greg Hicks, and by the way, Dana Milbank essentially says this guy's telling stories.
Dana Milbank and the Washington, yeah, you're spinning a bunch of yarns, you tell us the stories, make good movie lines.
It's right out of Millbank's piece.
Hicks is who he's talking about.
Hicks said they're on the runway.
They are ready to go to Benghazi.
They're told to stand down twice.
Instead stay in Tripoli to accept and receive the wounded.
But Hicks's team went anyway.
That's how we had three Americans in addition, the ambassador die.
Hicks's team was able to get to Benghazi before the assault ended.
So this idea that we couldn't have gotten there in time was disproven by reality.
We had a team that did get there in time.
They were just very small, and they didn't have any air support.
Now, at the same time, the State Department's commander on the scene, Hicks, ordered his personnel into Benghazi, and he went there himself.
Hicks testified, Lieutenant Colonel Gibson never told him who issued the stand down orders.
He commented that Gibson told him the military stand down was a shock.
And he quoted Gibson This is the first time in my career that a diplomat has more balls than someone in the military.
That's Hicks.
This is the first time in my career that a diplomat, me, has more balls than someone in the military, because the military was told to stand down.
Now, Ann Wagner, just reminding you again, a former ambassador, she's now, I think, out of St. Louis.
She said yesterday that there's only one person who can issue such an order to stand down, and that's POTUS.
So somebody was able to reach him after 5 o'clock.
Somebody was able to reach him and tell him what was going on, and he says, stand down.
Now people called here yesterday and want to know my opinion of why would stand down.
I don't know, folks.
I we went through the possibilities, didn't want to offend Libyans.
We didn't want to create the idea that Al Qaeda was real, that we're he had this false story, it was just a random protest.
You can't respond to something like that with military force, would look bad, whatever.
You come up with any number of excuses, reasons that are plausible, but we don't know.
All we know is that Hicks testified under oath.
There were two stand down orders, and diplomats went in anyway.
After the military would not.
Quick timeout, we'll be back.
Don't call white.
We are back.
Grab some bites 11 and 12.
John Boehner and CNN just broke in with this.
Now, this is interesting.
Boehner, we have these two sound bites.
Boehner has been trying to keep Benghazi going in in the face of the total media shutdown.
He wants Obama to release an email from the State Department to Rice before her Sunday show appearances.
He wants a massive email release.
CNN just broke in to Jody Arias coverage with this story.
It's two hours old now.
That they just broke in with it.
You know the thing about Benghazi, there's no sex in it, and that apparently is why the drive-bys aren't interested.
We had sex with Jody Arias.
We had sex with the Castro brothers in Cleveland, sex with Amanda Knox.
And no sex in Benghazi.
No wonder it's not interesting to people.
Anyway, here's Boehner.
This was this morning on Capitol Hill.
Four days before Susan Rice's TV appearances.
A senior State Department official emailed her superiors to relay that the Libyan ambassador, she had told the Libyan ambassador that the attack was conducted by Islamic terrorists.
The State Department would not allow our committees to keep copies of this email when it was reviewed.
And I would call on the president to order the State Department to release this email so that the American people can see it.
Now, obviously the importance here is that Rice blaming a video.
There is an email four days before she went on TV.
An email, senior State Department official emailed Susan Rice's superiors to relay that the Libyan ambassador, that she had told Susan Rice told the Libyan ambassador that the attack was conducted by Islamic terrorists.
Four days before she goes on TV and says it was a video.
She's telling people in an email that she told the Libyan ambassador it was terrorism.
And so Boehner said, Would you release that email?
Here's the next bite.
Our committee's interim report quotes uh specific emails where the White House and State Department insisted on removing all references to the terrorist attack to protect the State Department from criticism for providing inadequate security.
While a few of our members were able to review these emails, they were not allowed to keep them or to share them with others.
And I would call on the President to release these unclassified interagency emails so that the American people can see them.
Now Boehner is just being characterized as uh as a cheap theatrics speaker, simply trying to embarrass the president with another political tactic here.
Nothing to see here.
And Boehner is asking, look, look, we've seen these emails, but you wouldn't let them be used nor kept.
Release them.
Now we know this isn't going to happen.
The White House is not going to release these emails that show Susan Rice, knowing full well it was a terror attack, four days before she goes on five Sunday shows and blames a video.
They're not going to release the emails.
Boehner knows that.
He's simply trying via his appearance here to let everybody know the emails exist.
But again, he made this appearance before the cameras two hours ago.
CNN just now broke into Cleveland and Jody Arias coverage to report Boehner's demand or request.
New York Times today says that we will never know who changed the talking points or why.
From it was a terror attack to the video.
We'll never know.
Now in the old days, Watergate, New York Times, oh yeah, oh yeah, we'll never know.
You watch us, we're gonna find out.
Today the New York Times says, no, we can't tell you, and they say, Oh, okay, fine.
Well, stop asking.
Stephen Goddard, WordPress.com.
United States temperatures have dropped almost three degrees centigrade over the past year.
No warming, a three-degree drop in one year.
Global warming says a one-degree increase in a hundred years.
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