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Jan. 7, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:39
January 7, 2014, Tuesday, Hour #2
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Time Text
How cold is it out there?
It's so cold.
A prisoner just turned himself an escape prisoner, turned himself in.
So called a Democrats have their hands in their own pockets.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome to you.
This is going to be starting tomorrow.
Hell, even today.
Hate Florida week.
We're going to be the only ones that are not in the icebox.
I mean, even now, while everybody else is below zero on windchills, we're at 55 degrees and going to be back 75 tomorrow.
Be 80 by Thursday and Friday.
And the rest of the country won't be.
So it's going to be Hate Florida week.
Greetings, folks.
Great to have you.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network, and the distinguished and prestigious Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Now, I got a lot of people on hold, as is always the case.
And I really appreciate people's patience.
And I want if you're on hold, stay there.
It means you qualified.
You made it past our stringent screening techniques.
So I want to talk to you.
Just if you can be patient.
I I really appreciate it.
I intended to get some calls the first hour, but I just I had diarrhea of the mouth.
I just was on a roll.
And didn't want to uh destroy the rhythm.
This uh just uh kept going.
Now, folks, you you've heard the old saying Nero fiddled while Rome burned.
That is true.
The Emperor Nero, Rome, was literally burning.
And he could not have cared less.
What people have forgotten about it is that Nero, he didn't just fiddle while Rome burned, he started the fire.
Nero wanted to burn down Rome in order to rebuild it in his own image.
But to cover it up, he blamed the Christians, who were then subsequently thrown to the lions.
Now, I happen on my first trip to Rome.
A tour guide told me that didn't happen.
He was he was interested in in Rome not having a bad impression.
He said, You've heard that the Christians were given to the Lions, it really didn't happen, he said.
But for all intents and purposes, it did.
Now, if you ask me, the story of Nero fiddling while Rome burned and then adding to it, he started the fire, sounds familiar to me.
Barack Obama has for five years had control over the U.S. economy.
His policies, his specific economic policies are the reason this country is in dire economic straits.
It is the reason Obama's policies are the reason why there is no recovery.
And if you want to call it a recovery, go ahead.
If you do, it's the worst recovery in the history of this country.
And so there's an analogy, I think, to Nero here.
Obama has and by his own admission, before he took office during his campaign and after he was immaculated, he bragged about transforming this country.
He was not happy and never has been happy with the way this country was founded.
Barack Obama and many in his party believed that the founding of the United States of America was unjust and unfair and immoral, and exploited minorities and you know all the usual falderole.
And his purpose has been to make amends.
He's going to give this country back to the people to whom it really belongs, who got shafted from the days of the founding fathers.
So in the process, Obama's economic policies are destroying the U.S. economy in order for him to rebuild it in his own socialist image.
And meanwhile, he blames all of this on the Republicans and is throwing them to the Lions.
And Gloria Borger just demonstrated no sunbites how this happens.
Obama destroys the economy, necessitates paying people while they're not working because there aren't any jobs because of his policies.
So Obama's victims surround him in the White House today.
They are portrayed as fortunate beneficiaries.
They are not working because of his policies.
They are portrayed as beneficiaries.
So Obama gets to position himself as the guy who cares and has compassion and will do whatever it takes to help people.
And the only thing the Republicans do can do is to get in on it if they want to have a viable political future.
And in this way, converting the Republicans to agreeing with socialist policies is remaking America in his own image.
And bringing the Republicans along with him, with the assistance of the Republican establishment inside the beltway.
And that is precisely what is happening here.
This country's being remade in Obama's image.
And because of intimidation, pressure, electoral, and otherwise, the Republicans are signing on to it.
Wherever you look, they're agreeing with unemployment extension benefits, they're agreeing, stimulus, they're agreeing with whatever we're going to do with immigration and amnesty.
They're agreeing with all they're not opposing Obama.
The Republican strategy is to be seen as much like the Democrats as they can, so that nobody will say mean things about them.
So the transformation of country is unfolding before our very eyes.
And the pressures of the Washington establishment are converting Republicans, go right along with it.
Now, some Republicans don't need to be persuaded.
The establishment is the establishment, and they're all for a growing omnipresent big government.
Because they think it sometime they're going to get their turn to run it.
Democrats are going to lose sometime, and the Republicans will win sometime, and they'll get to run this big show now and then.
And that's where we are.
Obama's policies are destroying the U.S. economy in order for it to be rebuilt as a socialist welfare state.
His image.
His party benefits, being seen as compassionate.
Republicans, if they don't go along with it, are seen as mean.
Therefore, the pressure of the Republicans to join in, and they do.
And the whole concept of limited government, power to the people, blah, blah, blah, is out the window.
Ergo, hello Tea Party.
And that's why the Tea Party is now under vicious assault, even from inside the Beltway conservatives, such as Michael Gerson in the Washington Post.
Really big hit piece on the Tea Party.
Gerson was Bush's speechwriter.
It's in the Washington Post today.
If I have time, I'll get to it.
Nothing new.
You've heard it all before.
In the midst of all this, the country's broke.
We don't have the money for any of this compassion.
We have the money for any of it.
None of it.
We are 17 trillion dollars in debt.
We have to borrow $3.4 billion from the ChICOMs in order to spend $6.4 billion to extend federal unemployment benefits.
The ChICOMs are paying for this.
We're not.
We don't have the money.
Our tax base is shrinking.
Fewer people working, fewer people paying taxes.
Private sector's shrinking, government's getting bigger.
And the best Obama can offer today, the best he can offer, the thing that we're supposed to applaud, in fact, is some faceless woman getting three more months of unemployment, which would allow her to maybe turn the thermostat up, which might enable a utility company to hire somebody.
And if they don't, maybe the grocery store will, because with what's left after she's turned up the thermostat, she's going to go to grocery store, maybe buy another loaf of bread.
And that might cause the grocery store to hire somebody, maybe even her.
And that's it.
That's what we got today.
That is the solution.
That's what we're supposed to applaud.
That's what the Republicans are afraid of disagreeing with.
It's astounding to me.
If you have any questions about whether Obama's policies are destroying the economy, I would call your attention to Obamacare.
Obamacare is destroying the greatest health care system the world has ever known.
If you doubt me that Obama's policies are destructive, just look at Obamacare.
His signature achievement going so well that he has to distract people's attention away from it with this Rasmataz rigamorole gobbledygook today at the White House on extending unemployment benefits.
Let's go to the audio sound bites.
Just a few more on this, and I'll get to that thing I promised you on immigration and your phone calls.
Dick Turbin.
Senator from Illinois this morning in Washington on the Senate floor, right out of the Democrat Playbook 101.
They don't get it.
They say we should be talking about creating jobs.
What about creating some food in the bellies of children?
This is basic and it's humane.
It used to be bipartisan before the Tea Party takeover of the Republican Party.
I hope there are enough moderates left on the Republican side to join us to make this a bipartisan issue again.
Helping people keep their families together, the lights on, the heat in their homes, and food on the table while they're looking for a job is not a government giveaway.
For goodness sakes, it defines who we are as a nation.
And so what do we have?
We have a leading Democrat senator impugning the notion of job creation.
Impunning the idea of the worth of work, and instead trying to convince people of the value of being paid not to work.
The value being paid not to work is you won't freeze, your kids will eat.
But if it's left up to the job market to provide for people, that isn't that isn't going to work.
And it won't if the Democrats continue to rule the roost.
Stunning.
Stunning.
They don't get it.
They say we should be talking about creating jobs.
And he impugns that in favor of paying people not to work.
Understand something.
The crisis will never go away.
It's not as though after three months of extended unemployment benefits, all of a sudden the job market's going to open up and there'll be boku jobs to get.
That isn't going to happen.
Three more months, and we're going to be right back here where we are asking for it again.
With the Republicans being blamed again.
Meanwhile, you happen to say that the solution to this is creating an expanding economy with jobs that Democrats are going to crucify you as having no heart and no compassion.
Just absolutely astounding.
Here's Major Garrett, CBS this morning, teasing this soap opera, teasing the event that was to unfold later at the White House.
Right now it appears the Senate Democrats and the White House will lose this vote and have to ramp up the rhetoric and negotiate with Republicans to resolve this impasse.
But they didn't lose the vote, did they?
They won the vote.
They didn't lose the vote.
The Democrats didn't lose the vote in the Senate.
Yeah, six Republicans joined them.
They didn't lose the vote.
They were never going to lose the vote.
What is it?
Lose the vote, Billy.
They're never going to lose the vote.
From inside the Washington Beltway and the Republican establishment, Dr. Krauthammer thinks the Republicans should indeed go along with this.
It's still tough times.
Unemployment is relatively high.
And if we were to count the people who quit looking, it would be 11 percent.
So I think what they ought to do is to say, we'll accept the short term, the three months.
But only if you build into the bill an unwinding of this so it has an end date.
So we all understand it isn't an entitlement.
It's a way to help people temporarily.
And that would be a good solution.
Well, yeah, except that we've been doing it for eight years.
This was a one-time thing in two thousand eight, ladies and gentlemen.
We've already done that.
We've already put an end date on it, but the emergency persists.
And when the emergency persists, it's still tough times.
And when the emergency still exists and it's still tough times, unemployment is uh relatively high.
And so we've got to do this in the short term.
And we'll keep doing it in the short term because there isn't anything in place that's going to change the job outlook.
That's right.
This has been going on since 2008.
The extension of unemployment benefits.
Five years, folks.
We've built an end every time.
We've been told it's temporary every time.
Every extension has had an end date.
That's where we are now.
We're at another end date.
And guess what?
We're going to extend again.
Since 2008.
I don't know how many end dates we've had, but it's a lot of them.
Damn it, the economy just stays stubborn.
You know, it just isn't improving out there.
And a lot of people, it's tough times.
We gotta do what we can to help, but we've got to put an end date in this so it doesn't become an entitlement.
I'd say it's an entitlement.
I'd say after 2008 and 99 weeks of being paid while you're not working, I think it's become an entitlement.
This is only for three months, and I'm telling you, at the end of three months, it ain't gonna be any different.
In fact, it's the only thing it's gonna be different, it's gonna be even closer to the election.
So come back and do it again.
What they ought to do is just you know what?
The Republicans ought to just say, let's just, let's just let's just extend them for the rest of the year and and and and put it off the table.
That's the Republicans' usual plan.
Just to agree with the Democrats and then get it off table, and then the Republicans say, we'll come back and we'll nail them on the debt limit, or we'll nail them on the debt ceiling, or we'll nail them on the budget.
So if they were to stay in character, the Republicans would say, in an attempt to steal the compassion issue.
In fact, I'm gonna suggest this right now.
Attention inside the Beltway Republicans.
The way to deal with this is to tell the Democrats, not three months.
You don't want to you want to extend these emergency benefits to the end of the year.
And get it off the table.
Take the issue away from the Democrats so you can't be hurt by it during the campaign.
And I guarantee you, if there are any inside the beltway Republicans who just heard this, they'll think it's brilliant.
And they might actually propose it.
My God, if we got limbo on our side on this, what's to stop us?
Well, what's a de that's what they've been doing with every issue.
Agree with it, get it off table so it doesn't hurt us.
That's why they're doing amnesty.
Let's just get get get it away, get rid of it.
The issue's killing us.
Okay, we'll go to the phones.
Pardon the sigh.
When we get back.
Meeting and surpassing all audience expectations daily.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network, and we start in Hammond, Indiana with Bob.
Thank you for waiting.
Great to have you on the program.
Good afternoon, Russ.
I just wanted to make the observation that even if what the president were to was saying today during this press conference were true, that extending unemployment benefits would allow Kathy to turn up her thermos debt and with a couple extra dollars go to the store and buy that extra dozen of eggs.
Isn't that not anything more than or nothing less than trickle down economics that most Liberals derive.
Well, yes.
Uh it actually is, except the Democrats would say it is trickle up.
The Democrats would say, no, no, no.
Kathy didn't have any money until we came along and gave her some.
And then we gave her some money, and Kathy's poor by definition.
And Kathy would not spent money, and this is how the ri the poor get screwed.
We give them money, and then they go out and by necessities, and then the Republicans call that trickle down, but instead really it really is is trickle up.
It is the poor supporting the wealthy.
That's that's how Obama and the Democrats look at it.
Now you're right, it is classic example of trickle-down.
He just said a citizen is gonna spend some money and it might result in a job being created.
It's trickle down.
You're classically right.
The Democrats would say, no, no, no, no, trickle up.
This is how the poor have made the rich rich.
And this has got stopped.
Talent on loan from God.
Rush Limbaugh phoning it in for the remainder of the program since I have already discussed the big issue of the day.
Only kidding.
I don't know how to phone it in.
I am too self-conscious.
That's not the right.
I'm too conscientious to uh to phone it in.
I'd like to know what that's like, actually.
Some people can do it every day.
Here's uh Bob in Coronado, California as we head back to the phones.
Hi, Bob.
Hi.
Um today Obama changes any aspect of Obamacare by fiat.
My question is, why can't a Republican president when elected in 2016 undo any aspects of the Affordable Care Act by fiat or executive order, just as Obama's doing it now.
Um we could eliminate the IRS involvement with health care, you could rescind union waivers, eliminate any useless bureaucracy, and just do it by fiat.
I mean, it would give the libs a complete conniption.
So you think two wrongs make a right?
Well, I think a I think the threat of doing it right now would maybe at least be a warning to uh to the libs that hey, you want to continue to do this?
Uh we can play the same game.
Well, I, you know, since you mentioned this, um, I wouldn't be surprised if a Republican, I don't know who seeking the presidency in 2016 doesn't say something like this, doesn't promise something like this.
Um, whether the Republican would actually do it after getting elected, that's a whole nother matter.
But I I um you know the the cynic, the cynic in me says that, depending on who the Republican is that would maybe get elected, would be afraid to do that because the people like this stuff.
What do they do and don't?
If the president, Republican president believes what the media says, then he might think he'd be slitting his own throat politically to take these wonderful things away from people that Obama gave them.
Uh there's another aspect that Bob, I want to remind you of something.
This did not get a lot of attention when it was made public.
Shortly before the Christmas break, Obama announced that he was going to continue.
He is going to continue to live in Washington when his term expires.
Most presidents go back to home.
Well it now, Obama's home is Hawaii.
Now, I or Chicago.
Now, I fully expected Obama and Michelle to set up the Barack Obama Library of Social Justice at the University of Hawaii or something and go back there.
And they may in fact do that.
But Obama is going to stay in Washington.
Can you guess why that might be?
Um, only if he was going to appoint himself to some lifetime physician in health care.
I don't know.
No.
He is going to stay in Washington to make sure that what you just suggested doesn't happen.
He's gonna, he's gonna stay in town to make sure that whatever he accomplishes is not unwound.
Let me give you an example.
The next Republican president is take your pick.
I don't know, pick somebody.
And the next Republican president says that we are going to start dismantling certain aspects of Obamacare, like you just said.
Obama is going to call the media and he's going to go on TV as though he's still president.
And the media will treat him that way, by the way.
And he will launch into this Republican president trying to harm people, hurt the American people, trying to unwind the great things.
He is going to stay there to make sure that whatever he's done to remake this country is not changed, is not unwound.
He is going to stay there, and the media is going to, I guarantee you, folks, even after he's out of office, he is going to be treated by the media as though he's still president.
Every Republic, if, and this may be the case even with a Democrat president.
Whatever the next president does, the media is going to go to Obama every day.
Look at folks.
Barack Obama has already, along with Bill Clinton, blown up a number of time-honored traditions involving the presidency.
One of those is when your time's up, you go, and you don't comment on your successor.
Bill Clinton has blown that Smitharines, and Al Gore's blown at Smith Arenes.
George H.W. Bush hasn't, and George W. Bush hasn't.
And neither of them ever will.
Ronald Reagan did not ever, Ronald Reagan didn't say a word about Bill Clinton and what he was doing.
But I'm here to tell you that within days of the next president's inauguration, Obama is going to be calling press conferences or wherever he's hanging out, think tank or whatever, and the media is going to be there.
Well, And what he thinks, what Obama thinks of what the next administration is doing is going to be the news of the day.
There's no other reason to stay there.
There's not one other reason to stay in Washington.
Unless, I mean, it's something financial, but it wouldn't be.
He can make whatever financial arrangements he wants and live anywhere.
When I heard that he's going to stay there, it's exactly why.
And you better prepare yourselves for it.
And you better prepare yourselves for the media continuing to treat him as though he is still president.
He is going to be given the opportunity to pass judgment on everything the next president does daily if he wants to.
And he will do it.
Look at, he's not going to just let these eight years be unwound if the Republicans happen to win.
He's not just going to sit idly by and say, okay, you know, I had my eight years and uh somebody else turned.
He's going to stay there and guard the investment.
He's going to stay there and protect the investment.
He's going to stay there and make sure that whatever he's done stays in place and intact.
And this is going to be a real challenge for the next president.
Particularly if it's a Republican.
It's going to be a real, it's going to be unprecedented.
The ex-president commenting every day on what you're doing and trying to undermine you.
If you're trying to take the country in a different direction from that which Obama took it.
Do not doubt me on this.
The next president, particularly if he is a Republican, is going to immediately be hated and reviled, A, for winning.
And then B for governing.
He is going to be a suspect every day.
He's going to be committing acts against the people.
It's not going to change.
Republican president gets elected, even if it's a landslide.
That's just going to Make them go after him even more.
And Obama will be leading the charge.
And he would right there, Jay Carney, he'll still have his spokesman.
He's going to have a satellite administration in exile in Washington.
I guarantee you, do not doubt.
I know these people.
I know how he thinks.
I know who these people are.
I know that's exactly why he's going to stay there.
Precisely because of what you said.
Republican president comes along and tries to get rid of all these executive orders that Obama did and executive actions and all of these different things he did with Obamacare.
Somebody tries to dismantle that, there's going to be hell to pay.
You know as well as I do that if a Republican happens to win, he's going to be hated anyway.
Even if Obama did go to Hawaii, he's going to be hated.
And in fact, even if Obama went back to Chicago, or if he went to Hawaii, he could still do the same thing by virtue of television.
But being there.
Imagine the press conference that we had today.
Imagine that's a Republican press conference, and he announced a new jobs program and a definite end to unemployment compensation based on economic growth and a tax cut.
Within 30 minutes, certainly enough time to make the nightly news cycle.
Obama is going to call oppressor, and he's going to tell the people and country what's wrong with what the president tends to do, why it's bad, how it's going to hurt people.
Media's going to promote it, media's going to trumpet it.
And we're going to it it's going to appear as though Obama really has never left.
Now, the one thing that it's too soon to predict is to is the effectiveness of it since it hasn't happened before.
Not to the degree it's going to happen.
We don't know what the American people's reaction to it's going to be.
We don't know if it's going to inspire a bunch of opposition towards them.
And we don't know what's going to happen between now and the time he does leave office.
But I know that's why he's staying there.
See, the thing that I don't think people, even as particularly Republicans, don't understand, is this is life and death to these people.
Transforming this country, getting rid of capitalism, making it a socialist welfare state.
They know they can't do it in eight years.
Obama's Obama's moving, no matter what you think, he's moving much slower than his supporters want him to move.
He's moving much slower than he wants to move.
It's a massive bureaucracy, it's a massive country.
You have to make at least a pretense of doing all this in a democratic way.
And so he having to go here at a deliberate pace.
He's making remarkable progress, but it's not nearly as fast as his rabid supporters, his party, and he would like it to be.
After eight years, they're not just going to go away and leave it to chance that this stuff stays rooted.
This is life and death to them.
This is why they live.
This is the why this is why they exist.
He's going to be staying there to protect his legacy and to make sure it is never unwound.
Unless he's run out of town in shame.
Who, I mean, there's anything can happen between now and then.
But I mean, if we just have a normal unfolding of the second term, but believe me, if the Democrats win the House in November, there is no such thing as a lame duck second term.
They're going to be able to do whatever they want, folks.
Congress won't even really be necessary.
It's going to be a rubber stamp.
The Democrats run the Senate, they run the House.
Whatever Obama wants to do, the Democrats in the House and Senate will rubber stamp and it'll happen.
There isn't that's the final two years, if they win the House, that's where they start running at Indy 500 speed, implementing the rest of their agenda.
There will be no way to stop them.
And after that, if that so angers people that the next Republican president wins in a landslide, Obama stays in town to guard what happened to make sure it doesn't change.
And he will have the media and every liberal think tank on his side.
And it'll be just as the Obama presidency is, it'll be an unprecedented post-presidency.
Do not doubt me.
Don't forget, uh, folks, and we've played you these sound bites back in the campaign of 2008.
Obama made it clear that one of his objectives was to overturn the Reagan revolution.
Reagan and his minions.
He hated it.
He despised it.
It's what he's doing.
If uh to whatever degree he succeeds, he's just not going to leave it to chance that it's going to stay intact.
He's going to stay there and guard it, protect his revolution.
And the role of the media, you know damn well, they're gonna love it.
It's gonna be something that's never happened before.
They're just gonna be like pigs in excrement, folks.
They're gonna be so happy that the Republican president, whoever he is, if there is one, his election will be said illegitimate, just like Bush was in 2000.
They'll do everything they can to de-legitimize the next president, and they'll lie, and the lies will be promoted, amplified by the media.
And I'm I'm telling you, that the media is just gonna eat it up.
In fact, they're gonna love Obama even more because this is going to be an undisguised frontal assault on the Republicans, which is what the media and the left is most pleased by.
We are their biggest enemy.
They literally despise us.
Anything that thwarts us and our ideas, they celebrate.
Obama will be a bigger hero in his post-presidency than he was in office.
If what I expect to happen happens.
White House just tweeted, by the way, this is a tweet, give you the exact quote of the tweet.
Fact if Congress fails to renew unemployment benefits.
It could cost our economy 240,000 jobs this year.
That's not organizing for America.
That is the White House website.
If we don't continue to pay people not to work, we could lose 240,000 jobs.
That's a great illustration.
That's absolute falderole.
That's gobbledygoo.
That's absolute nonsense.
Can you imagine ten times that every day during a Republican administration with Obama characterizing whatever the new president's policies are?
How they're going to harm people, how they're going to brace yourselves, folks.
Here's uh nope, don't have enough time.
Ask her if she'll hold on or if you can call her back.
We have, ladies and gentlemen, from Grand Blanc, Michigan.
We have a mother and her seven-year-old daughter, Melissa and Elizabeth.
And they're both on the phone.
Elizabeth, the seven-year-old, listened to the audio version of Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims.
And she has a question for me about it.
But there wasn't enough time.
They've been holding since the program began.
And I've only time I started to explain this to you, had a minute and a half.
An adult could have handled a minute and a half.
But I wouldn't put that pressure on a seven-year-old.
And so we'll take you tell them that we'll open the next hour with uh with their call.
We won't make them wait through the monologue.
I'll delay the monologue and take their call.
Because they have.
They've been on hold.
Well, everybody else has, too.
Since the uh since the program began.
And also in the next hour.
What is really going on in Washington today?
And it's unemployment stuff.
It's just it's a it's a it's a head fake, it's a distraction from Obamacare, and what's going on in the Amnesty policy.
Sit tight.
In short, ladies and gentlemen, a Republicans have an idea on immigration to grant legal status without citizenship for a few years and without being able to vote, which is essentially my idea.
I said I'm all for amnesty if they can't vote for 20 years.
Republicans have made it 10, but it's a little bit more nuanced than that, and it's really designed to please the Chamber of Commerce.
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