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Jan. 29, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:51
January 29, 2014, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
I really did not want to watch that last night, and it's the first time in the 25 years I've been doing this show, I did not want to watch it.
Honestly, for the first time, I did, I did, out of a sense of duty, but I didn't want to.
And for the first time in 25 years, I never felt more distant from my government than last night, watching that, just practically every aspect of it.
I felt like that's not us.
That's a whole different world there.
That's a whole different mindset.
It's a whole different existence.
It's not us.
I felt a huge disconnect.
And when they switch off from Obama and the cameras, show you the crowd, the Congress sitting there.
Honestly, folks, I thought I was looking at the Star Wars bar scene half the time.
Anyway, greetings and great to have you here.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network, and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Telephone numbers 800-282-2882, the email address ilrushbo at EIBnet.com.
So I did watch it.
I watched it under duress, not really wanting to.
And the reason is I don't believe anything anymore, or very little.
I think everything is PR.
Everything is a game.
Everything is designed to affect a result rooted in emotion.
And that's not good.
I just, I literally didn't feel like I had much in common with what was being discussed.
I mean, I realized I was a target, as all of us are.
That's the thing, too.
I mean, we've got Washington, D.C., it's its own enclave, and it is governing against the will of the people.
The latest polling data, for example, on global warming, it is last on the list of things people care about.
Last.
Immigration, just barely above it.
Immigration reform, amnesty.
Nobody.
Nobody believes the global warming thing anymore.
And amnesty is something nobody in the country, a vast majority, don't want.
And yet, that doesn't matter.
Washington's going to do what it's going to do regardless.
And they're going to insult our intelligence in the process by trying to make us think that we do want it.
Or trying to make those of us that poll in the majority think that we're not really the majority.
Then we're the ones out of touch.
Like campaign finance reform.
I thought that the whole thing was, it bordered on insulting.
Now, as for the speech itself, this was incredible.
This, do you, you people, do you folks, I don't mean you people in an insulting, do you realize the stuff Obama talked about last night, he rejected all of that in the campaign of 2008?
He doesn't believe any of that stuff last night.
The one positive you might want to take out of it, here's you've got a president who's in trouble.
His party is in trouble.
And what do they always do?
Obama tried to sound as in Matters Economic pocketbook.
He tried to sound as unlike he really is as he could pull off.
Now, he's never going to sound like a conservative, but he certainly dialed down the community organizer identity and rhetoric last night.
And it was funny watching, I thought Frank Lunch retired and went to Hollywood, but there he was on Fox after the speech with his focus group.
And it was interesting.
I think there were a lot of Obama voters in that group, the ones that said, I didn't think he was enthusiastic enough.
I looked at him.
What in the world were you watching?
He was enthusiastic as he could be.
It was just all phony.
It was contrived energy.
But the stuff that he was talking about last night are things that he has rejected philosophically that he doesn't really believe in.
So that's the one upper, if you want to stretch and take an upper, try to find one in it.
The overall concern for me is just the disconnect that I feel from just that whole thing.
And I have a sneaking suspicion that many of you are the same way.
It just really isn't anything we feel like we've got in common.
Interests are not joint.
And it seems as though that is of nobody's concern there.
But we will endeavor to forge ahead, ladies and gentlemen.
I'll tell you, without that speech last night, the state of the coup, I would never have known how good things are.
I mean, it really struck me.
Did you hear the president?
Did you listen to it last night?
Did you watch it?
I mean, if you watched it and you were from Mars, you would think that this country has never had a stronger economy.
We have never been positioned better.
We are kicking butt.
We are kicking butt and taking names.
We are just rocking.
We are tearing it down.
We are the envy of the world.
I would have never known how good things are had I not watched the speech.
But this speech is the kind of disconnect that gets people in the private sector fired or sued or committed.
It was so far off from reality.
So here in the middle of talking about how many jobs have been created and how great the job recovery is going, we got a whole segment on the need for job training centers.
Why are 50 million people on food stamps, Mr. President?
20 million more people on food stamps than when you were inaugurated.
Why, if the economy is growing so rapidly and if job creation is so momentous, why do we need emergency unemployment extensions?
Why are 92 million Americans on the sidelines if we've got such a robust, roaring economy and the job market is racing back to normal?
Why are 92 million Americans not in it?
I had to grab soundproof number 20.
This one, the president stood up there and he basically said to Congress, I'm going to do what I'm going to do.
And if you don't want to do it, screw you.
And they stood up and applauded him.
He basically told them, I'm going to screw you if I have to.
If you get in my way of what I want to do when I pretend to be dictator, screw you.
They stood up, the Democrat side, and applauded.
Here's how it sounded.
I'm eager to work with all of you, but America does not stand still and neither will I.
So wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that's what I'm going to do.
Look at this!
And they're standing up and they're applauding this.
Standing ovation on the Democrat side.
But then, why do we need to do anything to expand opportunity for more American families?
Because if you listen to the speech last night, there's nothing else to be done.
We've restored that.
There is endless opportunity for American families, except the ones living paycheck to paycheck.
And there's endless opportunity for people to go out and find careers and jobs, except for the people that can only find a gig with 29 hours a week.
And there's so much burgeoning up.
We're going to have a summit here on tuitions.
We're going to make sure everybody gets to go to college except for those who are indebted for the rest of their lives for student loans and degrees for which there's no work.
It was just, to me, it was, it, it was, I just thought it was rank amateur.
I think this is such a letdown.
I don't know how to describe it, folks.
It's just disappointing.
Bragging about a recovery, which is the worst one since the Great Depression.
Why are 92 million people on the sidelines?
Why are there 20 million more Americans on food stamps than when he was inaugurated?
Why do we need endless emergency unemployment extensions?
The answer is because he has been president since 2009.
That's why.
Why are so many Americans losing their health insurance?
Why are so many Americans now unable to afford health insurance after the implementation of Obamacare?
Because he has been president since 2009.
You know what this was?
This was a campaign speech without an election.
It was pure denial.
The president last night pretending to run for office in the hopes of winning an election so at some point in the future he can govern.
The whole night I kept saying, wait a minute, we're five years into this.
This speech is a speech that should have been given five years ago.
This speech should have been given five years ago.
Now we're five years into his regime and we still got a campaign speech.
And it was aimed right at the low information voter.
It was a distraction from the destruction.
Pure and simple.
Words about pens, words about phones, words without substance that ignored the realities of the last five years.
Speech was written and rehearsed so as to position the president as an energetic man of action, to make you forget that the country is in deep trouble, to make you forget that a tremendous fraud has been perpetrated on the American people.
Because promises made by an energetic and enthusiastic man sound so good.
Snake oil needs a good salesman, and that's what Obama was last night.
The energetic, enthusiastic president says he will slash the bureaucracy, streamline permitting process for key projects.
He's not going to do anything of the sort.
He is the obstacle to all of that.
Climate change is a fact.
Nobody cares.
The highlight of the night was the last thing that happened.
And that was the tribute to the soldier, the Army Ranger Remsburg, who was nearly killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan.
He got the longest, sustained, and genuine applause of the night.
The only genuine applause of the night, and the longest, and the deepest, and the most sincere, and the most appreciative of the night.
It went on and on and on.
I want to read to you a tweet sent out by the senior political editor for NBC News, Mark Murray.
This is an actual tweet from an actual objective professional journalist at NBC News.
Here is the tweet: Obama's ending on Remsburg wasn't just a story about America.
It also was a story about Obama.
Nothing has ever come easy.
Does that bother you or offend you that a member of the press sat through that and saw Obama in that story?
Obama doesn't know the half of what Mr. Remsburg has experienced.
And it really is kind of perverted, convoluted, sick, what have you to try to compare and insert Obama in that story.
And it made me wonder, maybe that was the purpose of it.
Maybe Obama's trying to hijack that poor man's story and insert himself in it.
Because here's this political director, editor for NBC News.
It wasn't just a story about America.
I thought it was a story about the soldier, frankly.
What is this story about America?
But rather than Obama ending on Remsburg wasn't just a story about America, it was also a story about Obama.
Nothing has ever come easy.
Chew on that.
I got a brief timeout.
Paul Shanklin, our white comedian, has put together a three-minute condensed version of the state of the coup speech last night.
For those of you who want to hear the whole thing and what he really said in three minutes, we've got it coming up.
There was so much in this speech last night.
By the way, I'm not going to have a chance.
The time doesn't work out here, so I have to delay the white comedian Paul Shanklin's interpretation of the speech until the next segment.
Broadcast engineer is panicking without telling me so because he wants me to figure out on my own that it's not going to fit here.
And I have just figured that out.
So we'll just delay just a couple of minutes here.
I just give you some more of our observations on amnesty, which again, we don't want.
It is not important.
The American people are not interested in it, which doesn't matter.
We're not interested in climate change.
That doesn't matter.
So, the president in the speech last night praised the job market, praised the economic recovery, highlighted how many jobs have been created and how rapidly it's happening, and they're good jobs, and all of this that wasn't true.
And then he would say, Not enough people are working.
We need to have job training centers open, and we need to retrain people.
And I said, What is school for?
Why do we need all these federal programs to tell people how to work?
You don't want them to work anyway.
There's a state, ladies and gentlemen, that a lot can be learned from.
It's North Carolina.
North Carolina has done away with the extension and the emergency unemployment benefits.
And you know what?
Unemployment rate is plummeting in North Carolina.
Common sense.
Pay people not to work, they're not going to work.
Obama promised he wants to pay people.
He wants to continue to pay people not to work.
Got a standing ovation.
But the contradiction was profound.
On the one hand, we got great job creation.
We got a growing economy.
It's finally taking off.
It's just going gangbusters.
And over here, we've got all these people that can't find a job, and we need to extend their unemployment benefits.
And we need to do it now.
And if we don't do it, if Congress doesn't do it, he's going to do it himself.
And then you go to the real world in North Carolina where they've done away with it, and the unemployment rate is plummeting because when you're not being paid not to work, you've got to find somebody else to pay you.
So people are going out and finding work.
There's no big job boom or oil boom in North Carolina that would explain their unemployment rate coming down.
It's simply they've done away with the benefits.
So the president says, not enough people are working on the one hand, and yet everybody's working.
But because not enough people are working, we want to flood the job market with illegal immigrants because that's the right thing to do.
And it's America's a beacon.
And Obama said women need equal pay.
This 77 cents, you know, women earn 77 cents every dollar a minute.
That is 10, 20-year-old stuff.
It's no longer true.
It was, it basically wasn't even true when it was first used.
But the thing, if you watched it, and it's hard to pick one, but when the president said, I might have this in the sound bites, I don't know.
Probably do, but I have time to find it.
When he said that the American people want us in Washington to work together to find solutions.
No, we don't.
That's the we don't want you doing anymore.
Leave us alone.
We don't need you.
We don't need Congress tampering in the job market with job training centers, job creation programs.
That's not how it happens.
You people don't do that.
You don't even know how to do it.
If you knew how to do it, you would realize it's not your job.
Back after this.
Honestly, I nearly came off the couch when Obama said to the assembled throng in the House chamber, the American people want us to work together to create job opportunities.
They want us to work together.
No, that is not what we want.
The American people don't want any more.
They don't want any more of you tampering and playing around in our private sector.
We can do it ourselves.
Anyway, I'm going to try to find that bite because it's classic.
I also, before we get to white comedian Paul Shanklin's interpretation of the State of the Union speech last night, I need to offer an apology, I think, to independents.
Last week or the week before, we had a caller ask me who the independents were, and I answered in a way that was truthful five years ago and beyond.
I said, independents basically are people who think that they are more open-minded than everyone else.
They are not partisan.
They haven't made up their minds in advance of anything.
They wait for the issues, and they're not tied to any particular party or ideology.
And they also happen to know that political leaders think they are the ones who determine the winner of elections because the independents, whoever wins them, traditionally wins.
And I said, for the most part, independents are just liberals that don't want to admit it.
Democrat, liberals don't want to admit it.
Last night, I'm watching the speech on Fox, and they had this constant display up there.
I guess they had some people with meters that were being used to register their reaction to what they were hearing.
And I noted that the independent and Republican lines tracked identically.
When there was a positive reaction to whatever's being said, the Independents and Republicans were perfectly aligned.
There was not a gap between them.
And when there was anger or disagreement with whatever was being said, the Republican and Independent lines tracked identically with very little space between them.
And I think there's been a fundamental shift in who the independents are.
I think the independents of today are in many cases, and maybe a majority now, former Republicans who are fed up.
They are actually conservatives, former Republicans, who feel disconnected from the Republican Party as it's defined by the establishment.
And they have simply given up the party ID.
They've simply registered as independents.
They don't want to be helpful to Republicans.
They don't give money anymore because those lines were inseparable.
And it used to be in something like that that the independents would track more closely to Democrats.
And I think this is something, I mean, we're going to assume here that that was legit last night.
I don't know whose it was.
I don't know who ran that device and how many people were involved in creating that graph, how many members of the audience were actually participating.
But if it was a sizable number, then that's an interest.
Both parties to take note, particularly the Republican Party should take note.
And what they also ought to take note of is that back in the 2012 election, Mitt Romney won a vast majority of independents and still lost the election, which upset a multi-decade theory that he who wins the independence wins the election.
That doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
Well, yeah, there was Operation Chaos, but that was just a momentary blip in things.
Of course, that was led by me.
And that led to temporary Republican deregistration and then either sign up as an independent or Democrat to vote for Hillary in the primaries in 2008.
But that was just a temporary blip.
This last night was, I thought it was fascinating.
Now here is white comedian Paul Shanklin in our condensed, honest version of last night's state of the coup address.
Now the honest, condensed version of the president's state of the union address.
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, and the rest of you.
Today in America, a teacher spent extra time with a student.
An entrepreneur flicked on the lights.
An auto worker.
tuned a car.
A farmer prepared for the spring.
A doctor prescribed medicine.
A man took the bus home.
Fathers and mothers will tuck in their kids.
It is you, the American citizen, who make the state of our union strong.
Because I told you to.
Three decades before I got here, all this mess started.
It's not my fault.
The cold hard fact is that America does not stand still, but its economy does.
Wherever and whenever I can take steps to ignore all of you here in this room, that's what I'm going to do.
The point is, there are millions of Americans who are tired of stale political arguments.
So here are some new ones.
The best measure of opportunity is access to a good job.
So come on, let's rebuild those roads and upgrade our ports and waterways.
An oldie-but a goodie.
The energy strategy I announced five years ago didn't work, but fracking sure did.
And now, natural gas is a good thing, almost as good as solar.
The debate is settled.
Climate change is a fact.
Just open up a window tonight in New Orleans and find out.
But I can control the weather, if you will just let me.
Someone is here tonight.
She wrote me a letter, the kind of letter I get every day that say, where are the jobs?
Well, more immigrants, more jobs.
Give them the chance.
We will provide them universal pre-K and extended unemployment benefits and limit their student loans to 10% of their income since they will only make $10.10 an hour minimum wage in our new economy.
That reminds me, women still make less than men in my administration, and this is wrong.
Today, most workers don't have a pension.
So I have created my RA.
It's so new, I can't pronounce it.
And I want to let you know we are still in the process of fixing our health care system.
Please stand by if you are sick.
Now, while we put Al-Qaeda's core leadership on a path to defeat, the threat has evolved.
Who would have guessed that would happen?
With the Afghan war ending, we should close Guantanamo.
Like I said, five years ago, the situation in Syria is under control.
I love Israel.
Really?
If this Congress tries to sanction Iran, I'm on the side of Iran because I need to earn that damn peace prize.
We will win in the Olympics.
Our freedom, our democracy has never been easy.
I insist we put our collective shoulders to the wheel to share each other's prosperity.
Believe it.
God help the United States to become something I admire.
Thank you.
White comedian Paul Shanklin in the condensed version of the state of the coup address.
And if you're saying, what?
You got it.
You're saying, what the hell was that?
You got it.
If you're saying, well, I don't understand it.
You got it.
If you're saying, wait a minute, what did I miss?
You didn't miss anything.
If you're scratching your head and say, wait a minute, is that supposed to be funny?
You got it.
If you're saying, wait a minute, is there some sarcasm in that?
You got it.
It was a whole bunch of nothing last night.
And did you know, ladies and gentlemen, did you know that we have officially convinced the Iranians have promised that they stopped their nuclear bomb making process?
Did you know that?
No, he said that last night.
They've stopped it.
They're not doing it.
They're not building centrifuge.
They're not doing it.
Deal's done.
The Iranians are not building a bomb.
I had no idea.
That news somehow has escaped half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Rush Limboy, you're guiding lights.
Here on the EIB network, great to have you.
We start in Chicago.
This is Don.
It's your turn, sir.
You're up first.
Great to have you here.
Hey, Rush, 28-day Dittos.
Thank you.
Listen, last night, the president honored and rightfully so that Army Ranger, and it was very touching and moving.
But at the same time, during the speech, he dishonored that man by telling Congress that if they brought a bill to his desk with sanctions in it against Iran, he would veto it.
And my son just got out of the Marine Corps, and his best buddy was an ordinance disposal guy, and he's been to Afghanistan four times, and 95% of those bombs that blew that poor kid up were from Iran.
This president doesn't know how to punish our enemies.
He wants to embrace them.
It's dishonoring to our men.
Well, you know, this is a tough thing.
You're right.
The Iranians supply the IEDs.
They supply their own side mines.
They did in Iraq as well.
The Iranian situation is really convoluted and strange.
I mean, the president made it sound to me last night like he got them talked into dropping their bomb program.
I wonder how many other people heard it that way.
When he started talking about Iran, he basically said, look, they're not going to make their bombs.
They're not going to do centrifuges.
We took care of that.
And so if anybody comes up with a bill to sanction the Iranians, they're going to have to go through me because I'm going to veto it.
No more sanctions on the area.
He said, well, the Iranians haven't given up on building a nuclear bomb.
What in the world is he telling this for?
Why in the world tell people that?
And of course, then the answer is obvious.
It's one lie after another.
It's just this giant disconnect.
When it comes to the soldier, that was such a touching moment last night.
Every time that young man was on camera, I couldn't take my eyes off of him.
I knew what he'd been through, the nature of his injuries and the rehab process, all the surgeries and everything.
And I don't know, folks.
I probably shouldn't.
So conflicted by this.
I just had a little, I just, I was, don't use the guy, please.
I know he's sitting up there next to the First Lady, and I know that this has been standard since Reagan put the guy that rescued people from the plane crash of the Potomac.
It's become standard operating procedure.
By the way, I think Obama set the record with the number of people that he called out in the gallery up there.
I mean, gee, whiz.
But this tweet from the NBC political editor about this, Mark Murray is his name.
Let me read this to you again.
Obama's ending on Remsburg wasn't just a story about America.
It also was a story about Obama.
Nothing has ever come easy.
Now, I knew that the drive-bys in the media were going to make this all about Obama.
They did leading up to it.
Everything is always about Obama.
Can he save his presidency?
Can he save this?
Can he get his poll numbers back?
Can Obama make us love him again?
Can Obama help us convince the American people he's the greatest thing since life bread?
All of that.
I know that's what it's about.
But to impose himself on this man's story, and well, he didn't actually, unless you want to go that far and maybe think Obama did that for that reason.
But this guy from NBC clearly took the opportunity of Remsburg, the Army Ranger, his story to equate Obama to it was a story about Obama.
Nothing has ever come easy?
What in the this is it, folk?
This is a member of the media.
This is how they see the guy.
This is what this guy's takeaway, he hopes, is on the part of a lot of people.
And it just the uplifting part of it was that that was the genuine applause line all night.
That event, that was the only time there was genuine applause.
It was sustained.
It was sincere.
It was affectionate.
It was real in a chamber where not very much else was real last night.
It was actually uplifting to see it from a national standpoint, from a positive attitude about America standpoint.
Don, I appreciate the call.
This is Tom in Dexter, Michigan.
You're next, sir.
Great to have you here.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
Thanks for having me on.
Thank you, Bett.
I really enjoyed the Hillsdale Econ 101 course, and I like the professor's follow-up book on that.
But I have a technical economics question for you that I wasn't able to answer with these two excellent books or this series.
All right.
I've been out of work long enough that I don't count anymore in the economy.
And I'm about to take a new job, which means I'm going to count back in the economy again.
Do I help or hurt the president's unemployment numbers since he's jiggering around with who exists in the UK?
Unemployment number that's reported anyway is bogus, so I wouldn't worry about it.
But if what was happening here was genuine, if what was happening to me reported honestly, yes, you going back to work would be a small tick on the positive side for employment.
You're going back to work.
You're getting a job.
Which is a good thing.
You know, it's a good thing.
It's a good thing for America.
It's a good thing for you.
And hopefully it's a good thing for the person hiring you.
I think it will be.
Yeah, there's no question that that would.
Are you worried about helping Obama and you might not take the job?
Is that what you're thinking?
Absolutely not.
I have no thought in my mind of doing anything good for Obama.
I've never heard of this.
Guy actually thinking maybe not take the job because you know what?
That's now that is loyalty.
But I know you're not thinking that.
No, I'm thinking about getting a good job and doing a good job for whoever hires.
How long have you been out of work?
Almost three years.
And what do you do?
I'm an architect.
So we're the first ones to die and the last ones to come back when an economy goes bad.
And so you've been hired by an architectural firm?
Yes.
In Dexter, Michigan.
Well, in Michigan, not in Dexter.
Okay, so do you specialize in any particular kind of architecture or just whatever you do?
Very high-technical science and research facilities.
And how have you been supporting yourself these three years?
I write novels.
You write novels.
Have you sold any?
Yeah, I've sold six, and I have a seventh one that's running around, but it's been a couple of years since I've had one, so I haven't generated much money doing it.
Ah, I see.
I see.
What kind of novels?
Thrillers.
Thrillers.
So, yeah, a lot of people end up dead in my books.
Well, let's play What's My Life?
Would we know you if we heard your full name?
You might.
Well, okay, that's cool.
Tom Grace.
Tom Grease.
Grace, like anything.
Oh, Tom Grace.
Tom Grace.
Oh, yeah.
I never heard of him.
I'm just kidding.
Of course I've heard.
Tom, it's great to have you on the program.
It's nice to be on the program.
And, well, congratulations.
And I didn't hear unemployment compensation in his answer about what he did when he was out of work.
He wrote novels.
We'll be back, folks.
Don't go away.
Sit tight.
I just checked my iBooks library.
I have a Tom Grace book.
I've read it.
It's called The Liberty Intrigue, and it was great.
So that's who our last caller was, Tom Grace, a noted thriller author and now going back to work as an architect, worried that he might be helping Obama's unemployment rate.
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