Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Okay, now this is more like it.
This is more like it.
Greetings, my friends.
No, no, no.
Greetings.
Welcome to the EIB network.
It's the Rush Limbaugh program in the EIB network at 800 28282.
And the email address, Ilrushbo at EIB net.com.
Folks, let me tell you one thing we're not going to do today.
We are not going to sit here and be totally taken off our game by speculating what may happen at the state of the coup address tonight.
I mean, I it it's it's predictable.
I'm going to show you, I'm going to go back, I'm going to play some sound bites of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in previous states of the coup addresses.
Well, though, those are State of the Union addresses.
Tonight's the state of the coup.
And you'll see how things don't change.
And but more than that, this is uh it's all driven by the media.
It's all to set up expectations, and it's all to counter the absolutely disastrous plummeting poll numbers that Obama is experiencing, no matter where you look.
I mean, it is really, really bottom is falling out of there.
And they're doing everything they can to cover that up and mask it.
But it's it's hard to miss it, even if you don't know where to look.
And I will explain all this as we have some fun with this.
For example, another Republican Tom see uh Republicans.
I have a suggestion for Republicans tonight.
I know it'll never happen, but you know what I would love to see?
I love to see two things.
I this will never happen.
I just love I'd love to see John Boehner show up in a white lab coat, sitting behind Obama as a doctor that has lost his practice.
Do you know Tom Coburn, Senator Oklahoma has lost his doctor?
He's a senator.
He's lost his doctor.
Now he's he's got cancer, and he's he's gonna he'll obviously he's a senator, he's gonna get a replacement doctor to be treated, but in Obamacare, even he lost his doctor.
So we know that Boehner will never show up as a wearing a white lab coat.
Nobody has a sense of humor.
This is too much prestige and tradition here.
I understand that.
However, wouldn't it be great if now and then, you know, the camera will pan and show the audience, members of the House and the Senate watching the State of the Union.
Wouldn't it be great?
And I think a very timely gesture that Republicans could make tonight would be to demonstrate support of Obama the way Obama demonstrated support for Nelson Mandela at the week-long memorial service.
I think what the male Republicans ought to do is find an attractive woman, not his wife, and put his arm around her and start taking some selfies while Obama is delivering the state of the coup address.
Would that not be hilarious?
Wouldn't that not be eye-catching?
Would that not I mean that would go along.
I had some some really brilliant ideas yesterday for the uh White House Correspondence Center, and I'm just gonna add to it today.
We know it'll never happen because the Republicans they would never do it.
But it would just, it would be Obama did do it.
This is the point, folks.
Obama did do it at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela.
He was seated next to a blonde prime minister, president, whatever Denmark, Norway, uh one of those countries up there near the North Pole.
And he was putting his arm around her and taking selfies.
And Michelle was sitting there like the ice queen, noticing but not looking at it.
I I just I think these Republicans take selfies all during the speech, try to work in another man's wife whenever possible, uh, as Obama did uh at the Nelson Memillas Memorial.
I'm just Here it is.
Tom Coburn.
This is a political story.
Cancer stricken Tom Coburn revealed Tuesday that his health insurance under Obamacare does not cover his oncologist.
But he said he's still receiving excellent care.
Now he's a doctor.
He is a United States Senator.
99% of us do not have that resume.
And even he could not keep his doctor.
Obama promised him he could keep his doctor if he liked his doctor, but not even Senator Tom Coburn.
He says, I'm doing, I'm doing well from a health standpoint.
I got great doctors, Coburn said on MSNBC this morning.
Fortunately, even though my new coverage won't cover my specialist, I'm going to have great care, and I have a great prognosis.
My new coverage won't cover my specialist is the United States Senator.
Where do you think that puts us in the big scheme of things?
Now, folks, this is the way it was meant to be.
Now we're talking.
You remember the famous middle linebacker for both the Denver Broncos and Oakland Raiders, Bill Romanowski.
Well, Bill Romanowski, in talking about the Super Bowl, said, I think Seattle has to lay someone out if they're going to win this game.
They're going to have to put somebody on a stretcher in order to win.
Now that's more like it.
That is more like it.
Can you they hate Romanowski anyway?
They think he took all kinds of PEDs.
And you know, he spit on players.
Do you know that?
He actually spit on his opponents.
He didn't just tell a reporter what he thought about.
He spit on him on Monday night football.
Oh, yeah.
He was a bad.
Well, he he was a football player.
And he took no prisoners.
And he just turned into a madman during game time.
And he's out there, he said.
Um, I think Seattle has to lay somebody out in this game.
I think they need to bring that card out or that stretcher.
When those kind of bad things happen to your team and you're wheeling a guy out on a cart, there's a certain energy that a team takes on it to hit you.
So what he's saying is when a team puts somebody on a stretcher, that fires up the team.
And the team seeing a teammate on the stretcher being carted off suffers a similar depression.
Particularly if it's a star player.
So in the midst of all of this liberal touchy feely attempt to take the violence and the masculinity out of the game, here comes old Bill Romanowski talking the way they're they still talk in the locker room today.
Not in public.
You will never hear a player, active player, talk this way, and you would never hear an active player admit that this kind of conversation goes on in a locker room, but it does.
Oh, yeah.
The only chance Seattle has is to is uh is to put somebody on a stretcher.
Preferably Peyton Manning.
He didn't say that, but I mean they take out the quarterback.
Nothing's changed in the game.
That's what you do.
I'll catch, I'll catch heat now for even.
Well, I don't mean that I'm just adding a name here to what Romanowski said.
He didn't name anybody, and he probably didn't intend to name anybody, but you people of the play, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
You try to take the quarterback out of the game.
Not illegally.
You just, it's, it's, it's been always part of the um structure of the game.
Let's look at some of the headlines.
Peyton Manning, I'm not sure this is right, by the way.
There's a Forbes has a story, and uh the Washington Post has a story.
They both say that Peyton Manning will owe New Jersey $57,000 in taxes after the Super Bowl.
Now, what did I do with the uh Forbes story?
Well, here's the here's the the Washington Post version.
Seahawks Broncos will pay New Jersey taxes.
And what what this is, it's called the Jock Tax, and believe me, it's real.
And all visiting teams, Major League Baseball, NBA, football teams are in town on the road playing, they pay the taxes of the state and perhaps even the city where they're playing.
So if uh Dodgers are in New York for three games, they pay taxes to New York for those three days, and then they are exempted from those three days being taxed in California, where they live.
And that's not really new.
It's been it's been standard operating tax procedure for a long time.
Now the way this works is the players will owe New Jersey part of their salaries because the game is being played in New Jersey, and because they're here for a full week.
New Jersey is one of a handful of states that levies a so-called jock tax, a tax on any out-of-state athlete who plays a game in the Garden State, the tax hits every member of a professional sports team's roster, regardless of whether they actually take the field.
It affects the broadcasters.
It affects the equipment, it affects everybody in the traveling party.
Players will be taxed the New Jersey rate of 8.97% of their salaries that they earn for each day in the state.
Bonuses for winning championships are subject.
Now what they've calculated here is that Peyton Manning and every other member of the Broncos.
Well, that's a fixed with Manning because they calculated it in his uh his income.
Peyton Manning, who stands to earn $15 million next year, and will make either 92,000 or 46,000, depending on if the Broncos win or lose, will owe New Jersey somewhere around $57,000.
Now the the only I may be wrong about this, but the players' salaried paydays end with the end of the regular season, and the salaried paydays begin the first week of the regular season.
These players during the playoffs are not making any salary.
They've been paid.
They are paid 16 times during the year, once or 17 times the budget, 17 times during the year, once per week of the regular season.
It's unknown whether a team's going to make the playoffs, so you can't calculate and prorate a salary for any longer than 17 weeks.
So every team that makes the playoffs, the players are playing only for whatever they earn by qualifying for the playoffs.
The Super Bowl numbers by themselves.
This does not include any playoff games prior.
$46,000 if you lose the Super Bowl, $92,000 if you win the Super Bowl.
Now, what this article is saying is you got Peyton Manning who stands to earn $15 million this year, calendar 2014, which is when he will earn either $92,000 or $46,000 from New Jersey.
And they're calculating that these guys are going to oh, though Peyton, because of his salary, will owe New Jersey somewhere around $57,000 next.
I'm not sure that that's right.
He may only owe 8.97% of what he earns playing in the Super Bowl.
And then if the Broncos return to New York, if they're on the Jets or Giants regular season schedule this year, this coming season.
Now I'm I'm not totally sure about this.
But I don't I don't know how New Jersey gets a cut of everything Peyton earns in 2014 simply because he was here for a week.
What he'll get, what New Jersey will get, is a week's worth of earnings that add up to $92,000 if they win.
Regardless, it's still obscene.
That's The point is he doesn't even live here.
These players don't even live here.
They're going to be paying state taxes in New Jersey.
And if this story is right, and it could well be he's gonna owe $57,000 even if he's in the losing team and earns 46,000, if the story is accurate.
This is this is why I don't go to New York anymore.
I'm subject to the jock tax.
I'm not a jock, but but anybody who is not a resident of New York but has lived there before, as I have, obviously has a record of living in New York.
And New York tends to not believe you when you move.
Particularly when you move to a no-income tax state and they follow you, and they I get audited every year since 1997.
Every year.
You would not believe the process.
Takes three years.
I've proven negative, I've had to prove I haven't been there.
Three years for the last audit.
And I was not there.
And I had to prove every it's it's just it's it's ridiculous.
It's it's uh it's harassment.
But once you've lived there, they've got a record of you living there, and any time they claim you come back, even if you're just there to work a day, they find you and they audit you and they want their money for it.
So that's that's just how obscene and ridiculous this has gotten.
And I talk to people that leave New York finally fed up and they're moving to Florida.
Yeah, yeah, all I gotta do is be in Florida for like a hundred and eighty three days.
I don't have to pay New York taxes.
That is not right, and whoever's telling you that that you only have to be a Florida resident by living there or a little over six months, wrong open.
I explain the jock tax to him.
Because if they find you, you're gonna pay tax on every day you are in New York if you're working.
And if you go up on a Saturday and Sunday, you're still gonna have to prove to them you didn't do any work.
Even if all you did was go play golf.
A lot of people don't understand how this works, but they're beginning to because they're beginning to be ensnared by it.
So this I think it's fascinating story even.
In the midst of the Super Bowl, maybe winning the highest championship in the world of professional football, the story on how much they're gonna owe tax-wise.
That's progress.
Except, of course, class envy.
Maybe there are people out there who think they deserve it and should pay more.
Super Bowl ticket demand is down, it's way down.
Did you hear about this?
Yeah, what happens is the league gives tickets, sells tickets to certain partners of the teams in the NFL and so forth, and after that there develops the secondary and tertiary market.
And those markets generally end up selling tickets for um sometimes up to three times face value.
They're having trouble maintaining face value.
And they're certainly not getting anywhere near double face value.
And so the analysts are trying to figure out why.
And they've got two conclusions.
Now, that's one of them, it's gonna be cold.
It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be cold, and it's not just cold, it's five hours cold.
And you're outside five hours, and these people that are attending this game are not the kind of people that attend regular season games outside.
They're in suites.
These people being forced to sit outside, they don't normally do that.
Five hours cold, that's one of the factors.
The other thing being said is that the teams aren't sexy.
The secondary market scalpers, uh, ticket sellers, and there's really not a whole lot of interest in Seattle or Denver.
I mean, let's be honest about it.
That's what they're saying.
Not only the manager, Richard Sherman and Richard Sherman said he had as his latest column at Monday Morning Quarterback.com, and Richard Sherman says he's through attacking people.
Somebody sent him a tweet that said, you never make yourself bigger by attacking somebody and making them smaller.
He said, That's right, he's through attacking people.
And all the media is through with him.
I'm gonna tell you something, folks.
I don't care.
I don't care how unsexy the Super Bowl teams are.
I will make you the following bet.
I will bet you that the Super Bowl ratings trounce the ratings for the state of the coup speech tonight.
Anyone have any doubt that that will happen?
So they can sit out there and they can say, well, we can't maintain our ticket prices.
These teams aren't sexy, and it's cold out there.
Nevertheless, the state of the coup ratings will bury.
I mean, it will be buried by the Super Bowl ratings.
And what does that mean?
It means that people would rather watch war, sanctioned brutality, and maiming, injurious war, than watch a man of peace and bipartisanship.
Now, what must that say to the left about our country?
That the people's country'd rather rush war and probably agree with Romanowski that the only way the Seahawks wins if somebody goes out on a stretcher than would rather watch a man of peace and bipartisanship speak on class warfare, inequality, oh, and raising a minimum wage, like the fifth time in State of the Union speeches since Bill Clinton, by the way.
Don't go away, folks.
State of the coup address tonight, uh, USA Today reporting that for the second straight year, undocumented immigrants will be in the chamber when President Obama makes the state of the coup speech tonight as Congress struggles to reach an agreement on a way to overhaul the nation's.
You know, this is dead.
Except for the Republicans, this is dead.
Everybody acknowledges it's dead for 2014.
The Democrats could not get it done on their own.
And Obama could not get it done.
I mean, the time passed.
Now the Republicans are planning on reviving it.
It just, it just goes to illustrate that, you know, the game that's played inside the beltway with the establishment of both parties.
They are hellbent on getting this done, and no matter how.
There is no party difference on this issue.
Never mind the fact that it only pulls at 3% of the American people would rank it as an important issue.
So this is again the establishment forcing it on us.
The Chamber of Commerce forcing it on the Republicans, and the continuing parade of victims.
People that break the law being portrayed as victims worthy of our sympathy.
People who are breaking the law being presented as worthy of our sympathy and being presented as examples of what a mean country this is.
You're gonna bring in a parade of undocumented immigrants to the state of the coup speech for the express purpose of having them portrayed as victims, victims of what?
They have to be victims of America.
Victims of our laws, which are punitive, unfeeling, harsh, mean-spirited, and extreme, and that is the message.
And that's why I'm calling this the state of the coup.
Because the people in charge of this speech tonight are people who have nothing but problems with this country as founded.
They don't like it, they resent it, they have been on a mission to change it the past five years, and there's no end in sight to that.
And bringing in for the second year in a row a parade of undocumented immigrants to the House of Representatives.
You can't get in there, folks.
This is a tough, it's a tough ticket.
You can't get in there.
But the establishment wants a parade of undocumented immigrants, as it says here in USA Today, as Congress struggles to reach an agreement on a way to overhaul the nation's immigration system.
And of course, it doesn't need to be overhauled.
You just enforce what's already on the books.
Immigration advocates are increasingly pressuring the president.
He doesn't need to be pressured to act on his own to stop the deportations of some of the 12 million who's being deported.
Maybe here there's no mass deportations taking place.
Several of Those advocates and at least two undocumented immigrants will be able to hear the president firsthand tonight when he is likely to urge the Republican led House of Representatives to get moving on an immigration overhaul.
The group will be hosted by Illinois Democrat Representative Luis Gutierrez, Mike Quigley, Jan Schikowski, Brad Schneider, and Bill Foster, all of whom have been pushing for the House to take up a Senate past immigration bill that would allow most of the nation's 12 million undocumented immigrants to apply for citizenship.
Now, what's the Republican plan?
The latest plan is, hey, well, let's go ahead and have them here, but uh no citizenship.
We'll have green cards that come in, we'll let them work, we'll satisfy the Chamber of Commerce, but no voting.
And I fully expect everybody to sign on to that as a way of getting it done.
And then about four hours after something like that would pass, there'd be a race to the nearest camera, probably won by Chuck Schumer, who would then start practically crying over the injustice and point out the continued flaws of the United States.
How could we have just done what we did, he would say?
We have just granted them legal status.
We have just said, come on in.
We have just said we want you here to do the hard work that most Americans won't do.
We want you to come in here getting filthy, sweaty, dirty, doing hard labor, and we're gonna pay you not much for it.
And then we tell them they can't vote.
Who have we become?
What kind of country are we?
And it'd be a mass move on to grant them citizenship after immigration reform passes, and it's a slam dunk, and it's probably planned that way.
And again, here we go with the massive attempt to guilt trip everybody over this.
Present another group of people as victims of an unfair, unjust, and immoral, racially discriminatory country, led by the president of the United States and his party.
Now that's the real story of tonight.
Uh the media wants you to see this.
Can Obama revive his sagging poll numbers?
Can Obama successfully make an end run around the Congress?
Can Obama use the power of the orifice and executive powers and executive orders to move his agenda forward?
Can Obama thumb the Republicans in the eye?
Can the Republicans finally just tell them to leave?
And that's the interest that the media has in this.
As always, can Obama revive what are considered to be plummeting fortunes?
Can Obama save the liberal agenda?
Can Obama overcome the mean-spirited extremist, racist Republicans in the House of Representatives, and make this the nation we all know it should have been when it was founded.
Let's go back and listen to some audio sound bites.
Let's go back to February 12th, 2013, just a little shy of a year ago.
Last year's stated a coup address.
Here is a portion of what Obama said.
Tonight, let's declare that in the wealthiest nation on earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty and raise the federal minimum wage to nine dollars an hour.
There it is.
The old trusty minimum wage and the old trusty, we are a nation of inequality and unfairness.
And there it is, the false premise that people live in poverty because of the minimum wage.
Another false premise that there is poverty because of inequality.
The minimum wage has nothing to do with poverty.
Inequality is not the reason for poverty.
The government is the reason for poverty.
The welfare state is the reason for poverty.
We began a war on poverty in 1964.
It was led by the president of the day, Lyndon Johnson.
Since that day, we have effectively had redistribution of wealth to the tune of nearly 20 trillion dollars.
Somewhere between 15 and 20 trillion dollars.
And we still have the same percentages of people in poverty and below it, well, the poverty line and below the poverty line that we had when we started.
Expressed as percentages we haven't made a dent.
Now, why could why how can this be?
We have equivalently, folks, we've essentially been giving people $50,000 a year.
Now it hasn't worked out that way because the administrative costs.
But we have effectively been spending that kind of money.
Why haven't we raised people out of poverty?
It's the welfare state.
Do you realize the uh the welfare state?
No, wherever it's been tried, the history of the world has never worked.
If your definition of working is removing people from poverty, making them self-sufficient, making them self-reliant, and uh getting them off of the dependency roles and taking care of themselves.
Do you realize that using that as the definition of working, no welfare state ever has?
What welfare states succeed in doing is keeping in power those who are in charge of them, those who run them.
But the welfare state puts the brakes on human advancement, human ambition, human desire, human education, human self-reliance, human self-sufficiency, human achievement.
The welfare state prevents all of that from happening by becoming or making possible total dependence on the state, which requires no ambition, no education, no desire, no upward mobility, nothing.
All you have to do is be a sponge.
As such, the welfare state is one of the worst things that can happen to a country.
It's one of the meanest things a country can do to its people.
However, in the current iteration, the welfare state's cloaked in compassion.
The welfare state exists because people are in poverty because of Republicans and conservatives.
It's because Republicans and conservatives are so mean, and then the rich, Republicans and conservatives have all the money, and they've taken all the money from the poor, and they continue to exploit them.
And if it weren't for welfare, the poor would have nothing because the rich would take it.
The Republicans would take everything they've got and give it to their rich buddies.
I mean, that's what passes for political explanation today to the low-information voter, when in fact the welfare state is destructive.
Because it assumes that nobody receiving benefits is capable of doing anything.
Mr. Limbaugh, are you saying that this country should never provide for the people who are less fortunate?
No.
We're a compassionate country and people, and we have always provided for people who are genuinely incapable of helping themselves for whatever reason, but we have not supported expanding the opportunities and reasons for self-for the lack of self-reliance.
We count and define compassion by counting a number of people no longer needing welfare.
The Democrats define compassion by adding up all the people who get it and saying, look at us, aren't we great people?
There hasn't been a welfare state that worked as it's been advertised by people trying to sell it to a society ever in world history.
It can't.
It simply cannot work.
Never has.
It never will.
And here comes the president tonight, essentially suggesting we need a bigger one.
And we've got poverty because we need to raise the minimum wage.
We need to raise the minimum wage because we haven't raised the minimum wage enough.
People aren't making enough because of that there's poverty.
That was that was President Obama last year.
Let's go back to 1995.
January 24th, 1995.
Let's listen to Mr. Hope and change of that era.
The goal of building the middle class and shrinking the underclass is also why I believe that you should raise the minimum wage.
It rewards work.
Two and a half million Americans.
Two and a half million Americans, often women with children, are working out there today for four and a quarter an hour.
In terms of real buying power, by next year, that minimum wage will be at a 40-year low.
That's not my idea of how the new economy ought to work.
I play these two sound bites just to illustrate for you that the Democrats are peddling the same tired, worn out, meaningless, worthless idea forever.
Inequality, class warfare, raise the minimum wage, and they've been in power for most of these years and they've done all of this.
Can somebody show me where the people in this country on the welfare state or who earn the minimum wage are any better off because the Democrat Party has been in charge?
Will there be a moment of silence during the state of the coup speech tonight for Pete Seeger?
A well-known communist sympathizing folk singer.
He was there.
He was there when Rules for Radicals was written.
He was singing about it.
Don't be surprised.
I'm not predicting it, but I'm just I wouldn't be surprised if there's a moment of silence for Pete Seeger.
I mean, he means something to these people.
So you heard an equipment last year, Barack Obama demanding to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour to eliminate poverty.
Now he is going to, and I'm I have to ask the question how.
In doing show prep this morning, I noted that Obama just said, screw it.
I'm going to raise the minimum wage for federal workers to ten dollars and ten cents an hour.
What?
Federal contractors, federal contractors, federal.
He's literally just raise it by fiat.
He's just going to announce that he's raising the minimum.
Does the president get to do that?
Contractors.
So the president can just take a certain segment of people that do work for the federal government and arbitrarily determine what they're going to be paid on his own.
Some of the congressmen are saying he can do that.
Yeah, I'm just going to say he doesn't have the power to do it unless nobody stops him.
It's the same old answer.
Well, he could cut their pay, but he's not going to cut federal pay.
But yeah, that's not the point.
The point is he's just going to do it by fiat.
I didn't know that the president single-handedly could determine anybody doing work for the federal government, could have their salaries or their rate of pay changed by him by fiat.
But apparently, he doesn't care.
He just gonna do it anyway.
Wanted nine bucks a year ago.
Now ten dollars and ten cents.
New York Times, get this headline.
Obama's puzzle.
Economy rarely better.
Approval, rarely worse.
This is this is the economy rarely bearer better.
I find myself incredulous so many times during the day now that it's it's it's hard to not spend the whole day in incredulity.
Economy rarely better, approval rarely worse.
Meaning, look at how stupid these people are.
We got the greatest president we've ever had, we got the greatest economic recovery we've ever had.
We've rarely had an economy any better than this, and people don't like the guy.
What's wrong with them?
Is what the New York Times wants to know.
If you're doing a drinking game, watching the state of the coup addressed, and I have a word guaranteed to keep you sober all night.