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Aug. 9, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:45
August 9, 2013, Friday, Hour #3
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As usual, my friends, half my brain tied behind my back.
Just to make it fair, Rush Limbaugh Open Line Friday.
Let's roll.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
It's Sui Bob.
We go to the phones.
That's where you can talk about whatever you want to talk about.
The telephone number is 800-282-2882.
And the email address, illrushbo at EIBNet.com.
Remember now, Monday through Thursday, it's what I care about.
Because I don't want to be bored, but on Friday, it doesn't matter.
Bore me.
Ask me anything that you want.
And remember, the role of a caller is to make the host look good.
And that does not mean endless, lavish praise.
I can praise myself.
I can do that.
I don't need others.
That's not what is intended.
Again, 800-282-2882 if you'd like to be on the program.
And I didn't get into much detail about this, but last week we ran on our 25th anniversary.
Was it last week?
Yeah.
I don't know where the time is going.
It was last week, our 25th anniversary.
It's a little over a week ago.
And we had a special promotion at 2FIT.
And I don't know how to tell you.
It just we sold out.
And we did not have a tiny stock.
We thought we were totally capable of handling whatever demand we got.
Anyway, we have now begun the restocking process.
And if you have been trying to purchase whatever your favorite flavor of 2FIT is and been greeted with that dreaded sold out, please come back.
Well, it's time to go back.
I just wanted to pass it on as a customer service.
From the New York Times, just get this story.
Repeated polling has found a racial gap in the races for mayor and controller of New York City.
Black voters are far more likely than whites to view Elliott Spitzer and Weiner favorably and more likely to say they deserve a second chance.
The statistical evidence is reinforced on the campaign trail.
This week, for example, a predominantly black audience at a mayoral forum in Laurelton, Queens cheered Weiner and jeered at another candidate, George McDonald, a Republican, who called Weiner a freak.
What's so hard to comprehend about that?
They call the guy a Republican.
People in New York are going to jeer a Republican, and they're going to cheer somebody like Weiner.
And then the next, they're going to cheer somebody like client number nine.
Weiner and client number nine can do anything and be cheered in a New York audience if a Republican is also up there on the stage.
But it goes further.
Interviews with black ministers and political leaders and scholars and voters suggest two factors at work.
An emphasis on black congregations on forgiveness and redemption and an experience, particularly among older black voters, of having seen their revered leaders embroiled in scandal.
So this story makes the case that black voters don't care what Weiner did, what Spitzer did.
They don't care because they in their churches and congregations are devoted to forgiveness and redemption.
It's just amazing that they would even think to poll it this way, but they did.
Blacks have no problem with Spitzer and Wiener.
And that's not what it is.
It's not that they don't have problems with Spitzer and Wiener, it's that Spitzer and Weiner were Democrats.
And as far as black voters are concerned, Democrats can't do any wrong.
Not really.
They don't care if Santa Claus is a pervert.
They don't care if Santa Claus happens to be a philanderer.
They don't care.
What they care about is that a Republican might win.
That's dangerous.
That is unacceptable.
But these other guys, as long as they're Democrats, it doesn't matter.
Now, do you remember a Democrat wordsmith, a professor of University of California, Berkeley by the name of George Lakoff, rhymes with?
I'm sure you do.
George Lakoff, rhymes with, was a guy, still is a guy, who would advise Democrats on the way to structure their language on the political stump, the campaign trail, and in ads in order to appeal to voters.
Well, there's a story.
Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner uncovered a document of 80 pages.
It's 80-page talking points titled Preventing Gun Violence Through Effective Messaging.
And it's written by three Democrat political operatives.
And I took James Taranto at the best of the web today, the Wall Street Journal, also highlighted this, what Paul Bedard at the Washington Examiner had found.
And when you go through this, what you have here is the Democrat playbook in print in black and white.
And I guess the way to characterize this, what they're attempting to do is incite moral panic.
They want moral panic.
That is the way that Democrats are being advised to reach voters.
This is how they're reaching the young, and this is how they're reaching women.
Now, what's interesting is if you read this thing, you quickly figure out something that you and I both know.
They can't win in the arena of ideas.
They cannot win a debate of their ideas versus ours.
So what they have to do is come up with fake imagery and words, if you will, to incite emotions to get their way.
They do not even try to win a debate of ideas.
The point of this 80-page talking point, little, it's called a monograph, written by these political operatives.
The purpose is to teach Democrats how to engage in campaigns.
And the first thing that you come away with is do not go anywhere near real ideas.
Don't debate them.
Don't talk about them seriously.
All they're to do here is package everything in a hyper-moral sense.
And it is said in this piece that it works best with women and 18 to 26-year-old young people.
Now, this particular story happens to be about guns.
The Democrats are still trying to win the gun issue, which means taking yours away from you.
Democrats winning the gun issue means getting rid of the Second Amendment, getting rid of the right to bear arms.
This little manual here is a how-to manual in persuading people to agree that everybody else needs to get rid of their guns.
And they make the point, they don't say it this way, but it's obviously very clear.
Don't even go near the right versus wrong of the Constitution.
Don't go near any statistics about gun usage, about defensive, don't even go near there.
Strictly emotion.
It instructs politicians and advocates to hype high-profile gun incidents like Trayvon Martin to win support for new gun control laws.
And as Taranto characterizes it, it is a how-to book on inciting moral panic.
The do's and don'ts are consistent with this advice.
When talking to a broader audience, we want to meet them where they are, the authors advise.
That means emphasizing emotion over policy prescriptions or fixes.
Don't talk policy.
Don't talk, you know, don't use think tank lingo.
Don't talk about anything to do with policy and how to fix a problem.
Don't talk about facts.
Don't get into that.
Make the case simple and direct and avoid arguments.
Avoid arguments that leave people thinking they don't know enough about the topic to weigh in.
The purpose of this is to overcome people thinking, well, wait a minute, I don't know enough to decide.
That's not going to be an obstacle if these people get their way.
For example, power language.
In this how-to manual, this is what Democrats are being advised to say.
Three different things here.
It breaks my heart that every day in our country, Detroit children wake up worried and frightened about getting shot.
Another one, just imagine the pain that a mother or father feels when their young child is gunned down.
Another one, the real outrage, the things that makes this violence so unforgivable is that we know how to stop it and we're not getting it done.
Now, those are three examples of effective ways to go out and talk to people and get them on your side to convince people to give up their guns.
Here are examples of ineffective language as denoted by this manual.
You are as a Democrat never to say anything like, there's a clear body of research demonstrating the high social cost of gun violence.
Never, ever talk that way.
Do not say the policy outcomes that we're after are the ones that can have the most beneficial impact on the rates of violence among the most affected populations.
Don't even confuse people with that kind of talk.
Don't say this.
Of course, gun violence affects people's lives, but it also has a devastating economic impact to the tune of over $100 million a year.
That's a number that ought to get every American taxpayer's attention, except it doesn't.
$100 million, nobody can contemplate losing it because nobody can contemplate having it.
Nobody can contemplate spending it because nobody ever has it.
So their theory is using big numbers and economic mumbo-jumbo is not going to persuade anybody.
But you emote and you talk about pain and you talk about suffering in these communities where this is happening.
And you position the gun as the sole reason people are suffering.
You position the gun as the sole reason people are hurting.
The gun is the reason for crime.
The gun is the reason for death.
The gun and the people who like them are the reason there's so much pain.
Now, James Taranto here says that it campaign proved remarkably ineffective.
A few states, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, New York, enacted new anti-gun laws amid the post-Newtown panic, but it was hardly a national trend.
Democrat Party dominance of state government was a necessary condition.
So right now it's not working.
But the manual, nevertheless, is an open book.
So Republican operatives, if they really want to differentiate themselves from Democrats, need to be looking at this and finding out, because the Democrats have just admitted it here.
Issues don't matter.
Facts don't matter.
Right and wrong doesn't matter.
What we want is all that matters.
And how can we make people feel the way they need to feel in order to agree with us?
Total 100% emotional manipulation, which again is called moral panic.
Quick timeout.
Back with more.
Don't go away.
And here's a call we had from yesterday that I didn't get to, and they graciously allowed us to call back.
Matt in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Thanks for letting us call you.
How are you, sir?
I'm just fine.
Good afternoon, sir.
For quite some time now, you've been advising listeners not just simply not to participate in the recession.
And I took your advice, and I'm better off for it.
I am not involved in this recession.
That's someone else's problem.
It doesn't affect me.
I have to say that.
Now, that's fascinating.
People are going to have some questions for you.
They want me to ask you.
First thing is, what line of work are you in?
In AutoBodies.
Automotive repair.
You're an autobody.
Okay, so how did you make that recession proof?
Well, I was a general manager for a body shop and making six figures, and the body shop principals said they were not selling, kept saying they were not selling.
All of a sudden, they sold.
And the first ones to go were the highest paid people, which would be me.
So I went on my way, refusing to give up.
I got myself another job, paying about half of what I made before.
Okay, well, that's what I meant.
So you were not, the Autobody was not immune to the recession.
They closed up.
They sold everybody, got rid of you, and you had to go do something else.
Yes.
And what is that?
I work for an insurance company.
You sell insurance?
No, sir.
I drive around and I look at wrecked cars and I'm an adjuster.
Okay, you're an adjuster.
So you just, what was it that made you, I mean, you're crediting this with they gave a recession, but I'm not going to participate.
But how did that manifest itself?
You simply say, okay, I've lost my job, and I'm going to get another one.
And maybe if I can't replace it the exact amount of money, I'm still going to get a job and work no matter what.
What was your process?
Well, what we went through is that my wife said, well, I can do something.
I can contribute.
We're going to have to sit down.
We're going to make a budget.
We're going to cut out everything that's unnecessary.
Whatever is necessary, that makes the budget.
Whatever is not necessary just does not make the budget.
It's just not going to happen.
My car has 200,000 miles on it.
Sure, I'd love to have a new car.
It's not in the budget.
So I keep driving the car that I have.
I'd love to have the latest, greatest gadgets.
It's not in the budget.
I gave up playing golf.
It's not a priority.
Putting my kids through college, paying my bills.
I have no debt other than my mortgage.
My cars are paid for.
And unless I have the cash to pay for it, I don't get it.
Why didn't you choose the 99 weeks of unemployment?
What's wrong with you?
Oh, I don't know.
Call me crazy.
Maybe from my six years in the Marine Corps.
Well, you know, you laugh, but I'm sure that's a factor.
But still, I mean, it's fascinating.
You said you heard me say that if there's a recession, you're just not going to participate.
And what that meant to you was you were not going to pay attention to how dire the media said the job market was, and you were going to go out there and find one, and you did.
Absolutely.
And it's a matter of personal responsibility, personal fiscal responsibility.
I mean, I had a friend that said, you know, oh, you could probably go get food stamps.
I don't need food stamps.
I can work.
I have a strong back, two arms, two legs.
I can do something.
I don't care if it's cutting grass.
I will find something.
I will find a way to provide for my family.
It's just not part of me.
Well, but you know, you could have provided for your family.
You could have gotten food stamps.
You could have gotten Medicaid.
You probably could have got an Obama phone.
And you could have gotten 99 weeks of unemployment.
I mean, this is what the Democrats have wanted people to be able to take advantage of.
You decided you didn't want any part of that.
I think the interesting thing with you is that your sense of personal responsibility took over.
Well, if you take these handouts and you take all of these government programs, you are no longer in charge of your own destiny, and you are not providing anything.
The government is providing for you.
Yeah, but weren't you mad at the guys?
Weren't you mad at the guys that owned the Auto Body Shop for shutting down and firing you?
And didn't that make you say, well, hell, they're the reason I'm out of work.
Hell with them.
Bunch of mean, rotten SOBs.
I'm going to go on unemployment.
Really soak it to them.
You obviously did not have that attitude.
No, it's their business.
They can do whatever they want to with it.
Well, you did me.
I wasn't an owner.
I had no, I was just running the place.
Right.
And probably you realized it wasn't productive to be mad at them because it didn't fix anything.
Absolutely.
I mean, it was just totally counterproductive to be upset with them, and it doesn't hurt them.
It doesn't affect them.
At the least, they don't lose any sleep.
Well, Matt, congratulations.
I'm glad you called, and I have a feeling that you're going to be fine.
You keep hanging in.
Appreciate it.
We'll be back.
Open Line Friday continues.
It's Open Line Friday.
Rush Limbaugh.
This headline.
Now here's another example where I printed it out and it doesn't give me the source.
I'd have to click on the link.
Doesn't matter, it's.
It's it's legit.
Obama administration makes new rule to compel diversity in neighborhoods.
Now, before the election, I remember we highlighted a couple of pieces that were written by a guy named Stanley Kurtz at National Review Online.
And he had a well-developed theory on Obama and his resentment, deep resentment of the suburbs, deep resentment of people who fled the cities for the suburbs because they could.
They could flee the suburbs.
They established their own enclaves, as Obama would look at it, where they hung around people only like each other.
And they didn't have to face people of color.
And they didn't have to face people in poverty.
And they didn't have to face dire economic consequences.
And they didn't have to take mass transit.
And they didn't have to take the subway.
And they just fled urban areas and left people basically alone and suffering in these sewers.
And as such, Obama has had a deep resentment.
And by the way, all this is true.
I believe, I think Kurtz is right.
He's a deep resentment for suburbia.
And I talked to you earlier about this TV show, Crossing Lines.
Not going to repeat what I said, but one of the reasons the left is enamored of Europe is that everybody uses mass transit.
And because of that, they don't have the travel freedom or luxuries that Americans have.
They're more constrained and they're more controllable.
And people are more able to herd them and keep them together.
And the left is enamored of Europe in this regard.
That's why Obama's constantly talking about building bullet trains that don't go anywhere and ratcheting up mass transit.
And it is why even, you know, a year ago when Apple released its maps program and it had some problems, one of the criticisms from the left-wing technical community was that Apple didn't have walking directions in its maps.
And Google did.
And as such, Apple sucked because a lot of these people don't have the money for a car and they have to walk where they're going.
And they can't get there unless Google tells them how.
I'm not making this up.
This mindset doesn't believe in suburbia, doesn't like suburbia, doesn't like the freedom of it, doesn't like the flight aspect of it.
They want people congregated in the cities.
Stanley Kurtz is exactly right.
Suburbia, by the way, is also an electoral threat to Obama.
You go look at where Obama and the Democrats win elections, and it's in deep urban areas, large population centers.
The spread out.
You take a look at that map where you've seen county by county, and that map is all red.
The map that Bush wins, the map, voted for Romney.
The map of the Continental 48 is all red except for New York, L.A., San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Detroit.
Outside of that, this country's red.
Obama doesn't like all that red.
Liberals don't like all that red.
I thought Kurtz was on us.
It was a little esoteric to make it an election issue, but it was still interesting.
In a move that some claim is tantamount to social engineering, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the regime is imposing a new rule that would allow the feds to track diversity in America's neighborhoods and then push policies to change those it deems discriminatory.
So the federal government wants control over the diversity of neighborhoods and they want to define it.
They want to define what proper diversity is and they want the power to somehow engineer it.
The policy is called affirmatively furthering fair housing.
It'll require HUD to gather data on segregation and discrimination in every single neighborhood and try to remedy it.
Can I tell you this again?
The policy is called affirmatively furthering fair housing.
It'll require housing and urban development to gather data on segregation and discrimination in every single neighborhood and try to remedy it.
Remedy it how the HUD Secretary, Sean Donovan, unveiled this new rule at the NAACP convention in July, which just happened to be in Orlando, I believe.
Yeah.
It just happened to be in Orlando to coincide with the Trayvon Martin George Zimmerman case.
Sean Donovan said, unfortunately, in too many of our hardest-hit communities, no matter how hard a child or parents work, the life chances of that child, even her lifespan, is determined by the zip code that she grows up in.
This is simply wrong.
You know, you let the Democrats win the House 2014.
This is the kind of stuff that is going to be coming at us every day.
Except it's not going to be a proposal.
It's going to be an executive order or a hastily rushed piece of legislation.
This is the kind of stuff that they're going to do.
They're going to go into neighborhoods.
They're going to not like the way it looks.
And they're going to compel diversity.
And if you're saying, well, how are they going to do that, Rush?
Just, folks, I don't know, but it's the federal government and the power to compel.
There's any number of things they can do.
Regulation, intimidation, denial of services, you name it.
There's all kinds of things the federal government can do to punish, say, a neighborhood that's not diverse as they want it to be.
And don't believe that these people won't do it.
Now, they're going to portray this as something wonderful and great, and it's going to make America greater.
The diversity is the key to anything involving humanity being successful.
And of course, that's a crock.
But it's all about control.
It's all about you not living your life the way Barack Obama or Michael Bloomberg or take your pick, any Democrat.
You're not living your life the way they think you should.
You have been warned.
Wyatt, Springfield, Missouri.
Hello, sir.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
It's an honor to speak to you.
Thank you, sir.
Well, I'm Colin.
I've heard you talk the last couple days about pessimism in America and how so much of it is a result of liberalism.
And I wanted to ask you what it was like to live in, live in the U.S. when Ronald Reagan was president.
How old are you, Wyatt?
I'm 17.
17 years old.
When Ronald Reagan, in 1980, when Ronald Reagan, well, he was inaugurated in 1981.
At the time, I was 30 years old, and I was making, and this is relevant, I was making at the time, $13,000 a year.
I was working for the Kansas City.
No, yeah, 13,000.
I was working for the Kansas City Royals in sales and marketing, and Reagan was elected.
The election of Reagan was a huge triumph.
I was in Kansas City in 76 when the Republican Convention was there, and that was uplifting.
He ended up losing to Gerald Ford, but it was uplifting as it could be to be in Kansas City in 1976.
Reagan emotionally, intellectually owned that election, but the Republican convention, the Republican establishment, had political ownership of it.
But when Reagan was inaugurated, the hostages from Iran were released.
The Jimmy Carter years of economic melees were vanished in people's minds attitudinally.
And I can tell you that there was, in a general sense across the country, a great optimism and a sense of renewal.
Those four years of Carter were absolute horror.
They were some of the worst economic times that people at that time had ever experienced.
They were horrible.
And Carter had made them worse by acknowledging how bad it was.
He called it the national melee in a speech.
And he was telling people that we needed to lower our standards, lower our expectations, that being an American didn't mean what it used to mean, that we had dwindling resources and more people.
And it was classic.
It was classic doomsday pessimistic liberalism that they were trying to make a new normal.
Reagan, his campaign and his first years in office was the exact opposite.
He was optimistic.
He was smiling.
He was in a good mood.
The thing, if you ask people back then, Wyatt, particularly the first four years of Reagan, you would hear them say, he makes me proud of my country again.
And I can't tell you, if that were to happen today, you couldn't contain it.
There is, I think, a sense of a bit of repetition going on.
There is pessimism.
It's like a fog bank has come in and has enveloped this country.
And there's a sense of pessimism and no way out, and that this is the new norm, and that the better days are behind us, not ahead of us.
Reagan always said the opposite.
If somebody could come along and rejuvenate the American people's faith in their own country and themselves, You'd be amazed at the overnight change that you would see in people, your neighborhood, when you go to work, when you go to the mall, you would see an overwhelming transformation.
Now, you still have ticked-off, angry, fatalistic libs.
They're always going to be there.
But it was amazing.
Now, let me not forget two things: there was a recession to come.
1982 recession was absolutely horrible, Wyatt.
And it was an extension of the Carter years.
And I remember specifically at this time, I'm 32 years old, and I'm talking to a friend of mine in the movie advertising business.
And the prevailing opinion was at that time: look, let's just let it all collapse, whatever we were talking about.
This bank, this industry, let it collapse.
That's what the message is.
It can't be propped up.
Whatever it is, let it collapse and let's rebuild it.
And in fact, that's what happened in many industries, individual companies and industries at large.
Domestic oil business took a big hit in that recession because of plummeting domestic prices.
It wasn't profitable to bring it out of the ground.
But we came out of that recession.
There were two of them.
And we had 500,000 jobs a month being created, Wyatt.
Inflation was reducing as employment increased.
People's income taxes were lowered.
They had more money in their back pockets.
Now, I don't mean to make this sound like its own utopia, because while this is going on, the Democrat Party of the day hated Reagan like they hated Bush in your lifetime.
There was venom.
There was anger.
They absolutely despised him all through the media.
There was resentment that this was working.
There was resentment that people were happy.
It was vicious.
It was vitriolic.
But Reagan had a unique ability to make speeches and press conferences and reach people in their hearts without having to go through the media.
The media tried to tell people Reagan wasn't what they felt and thought he was, but he proved them wrong every time he spoke.
It was a unique, you know, but Reagan really was the unique politician, not Obama.
Reagan was a man of specifics.
He had three things that he was going to do, and he did them.
And people loved it.
I know, I got to take a break here.
But, Wyatt, that's pretty much it.
I mean, I could spend all day on your question, but that's pretty much it.
The Obama press conference.
I've forgotten all about it because it hasn't happened.
It's happening after the program here, folks.
Imagine that.
Have a good weekend.
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