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April 15, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:37
April 15, 2014, Tuesday, Hour #2
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And greetings to your music lovers, thrill seekers, conversationalists of across the fruited plane, Rush Limbaugh and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
Great to have you with us.
The telephone number, if you want to be on the program, is 800-282-2882, and the email address, lrushbo at EIBNet.com.
Thanks for the hot coffee.
You know, I had somebody came in and actually poured me a brand new cup of hot coffee.
I was focused on something at the computer, and I felt somebody stretching and doing something around me.
I had no idea what it was.
I see steam coming out of the cup here.
Very, very nice.
Very thoughtful.
Okay, Bubba Watson.
Teachable moments here.
I wish they weren't necessary, but they are.
Bubba Watson.
Let me just read this to you from ESPN.com.
Bubba Watson might have made $1.62 million from his second Masters victory on Sunday, but the golfer went low budget on his post-championship meal, tweeting a picture in the early morning hours Monday of his table at the Waffle House.
The tweet by Watson, who has more than 1 million followers on Twitter, was retweeted 10,817 times in eight hours.
He is shown sitting at the table with his wife Angie and best friend Judas Smith, a pastor from Seattle.
Well, that didn't help either.
He was a man from the, was a man from the cloth.
Not supposed to do that.
An athlete with a preacher?
That's not supposed to happen.
We are very fortunate to call Bubba Watson one of our regulars, Pat Warner, the Waffle House Vice President of Culture, the Vice President of Culture at Waffle House, said, After growing up in Florida and going to school in Georgia, we were glad to be there for him as he came up the ranks in golf.
It's a testament to Bubba's character that even though he has two green jackets, he still comes to us at the Waffle House for his grilled cheese and hash browns.
All of the Waffle House nation is proud today.
It's not the first time Watson has given the Southern Breakfast Institution a nod after winning at the Masters in 2012.
He said he was considering serving Waffle House at the champions dinner at Augusta the next year.
However, Watson did not follow through.
Had he wanted to, I'm sure that the chairman at Augusta National would have stepped in.
It's also not the first time the Masters champ has given an unexpected plug to a food business.
In 2010, a picture taken by an Augusta Krispy Cream manager of Phil Mickelson at the drive-thru wearing his green jacket on the day of his victory went viral.
Now, yesterday afternoon, Neil Cavuto, maybe you guys doing the audio today, maybe you can find, I'm sure we're rolling on Cavuto yesterday afternoon.
Apparently, there was a real nutso, don't know who, that was on with Cavuto, a female who was just livid that Bubba Watson had taken his kids to Waffle House.
Whoever this woman on Cavuto was said it was irresponsible for an athlete like Bubba Watson not to set her a better example for our obese nation than taking his family to Waffle House after his masters win.
Again, why is this important?
Why is it important?
Why does it matter where Bubba Watson takes his family after he wins the Masters or any other day?
Why is it anybody's business?
You realize what they're trying to stigmatize here?
Folk, look, this is not insignificant stuff.
I'm going to tell you, you hear this, and if this kind of stuff is new to you, you're doing what I was doing 25 and 20 years ago.
You're laughing about it.
Oh, I do too, still.
You're laughing about, oh man, what kind of a kook would they?
They're not, well, they're kooks, but they are the base of the Democrat Party.
They are not a kooky small minority.
They're the base of the Democrat Party.
And they're out there actively stigmatizing.
If you don't think the right thing about gay marriage, gone.
You don't think the right thing about Colbert?
They're going to try to humiliate you and insult you and tell people you have no business listening to this guy.
And if you think that Hillary Clinton staged a shoe-throwing incident, if you even breathe something like that, if you don't conform, and apparently the left thinks that eating any food other than what they say is bad for your kids.
And so Bubba Watson, who probably couldn't care less about any of this, he loves the place, but they're trying to stigmatize it and stigmatize him.
Folks, it's not an insignificant thing.
You might think a story like this is a throwaway.
And 20 years ago, we would have done a big, funny bit about it and laughed about it.
And we still could.
I mean, that hasn't changed.
But what I didn't realize then was that a lot of people think this.
The left has really done a bang-up job of creating an army of like-minded, genuine idiots to whom this stuff matters.
And they are willing to act like a bunch of little junior fascist brown shirts running around trying to interrupt people's freedom, freedom of choice.
What have you?
And you've got Michelle Obama basically doing the same thing.
And when you've got the first lady of the country setting this example and you've got people following it, it's just it's it don't make the mistake I made 20 years ago and think it's fringe and never going to amount to anything because now it has come to amount things that if this keeps up somebody someday is going to be able to punish Bubba Watts or they're going to be able to close down Waffle House or something.
They laugh about it.
The kooks, and they are.
They're dangerous junior little fascists.
But the thing is, they have a political party that represents and advances that kind of thinking.
It's called the Democrat Party.
Okay, from the Wall Street Journal, the jump in federal tax rates that kicked in last year is causing sticker shock for many higher earners this tax season.
That in turn is rekindling a debate over a question likely to smolder for a long time.
How much more could or should taxes go up on the well-to-do?
What debate?
There isn't any debate about this.
What are they talking about?
Rekindle a debate over questions smoldering for a long time.
There's no debate in the media over this.
There's no question.
The rich need to pay more and more and more.
We've got income inequality.
And why do we have income inequality?
Because the rich have too much in the eyes of Obama and the Democrats.
We don't have income inequality because some people have too little.
And it's an important distinction in terms of illustrating the left's thinking.
We don't have income inequality.
By the way, we're always going to have income inequality and every other kind of inequality because sameness is impossible and equality, particularly of outcome, is also impossible.
It's simple common sense.
I feel like an idiot having to say it.
But it's news to some people.
You mean we all aren't going to earn the same someday?
No, sorry.
Sorry, Stephen, but it ain't going to happen.
I feel like an absolute idiot pointing out some of the most obvious things and realizing that it's news to some people.
But the point is, you have income inequality, and the left never says that the poor have too little because that's just fine with them.
The least and less you have, the more you need.
Democrats, they always focus on who has too much.
And they are perfectly happy to be the arbiters in what is too much.
They're perfectly fine defining when anybody has enough and more than they need.
If they really need to debate on this, there's no debate taking place.
All there is is a further stigmatization of achievement, a further stigmatizing of accomplishment.
Turning people that achieve great things into suspects.
And then suggesting that those people are benefiting from greed or winning life's lottery.
They simply have got too much.
And so the focus becomes how do we take that money away from them?
They've got more than they need.
It's never how do we end up raising the people at the bottom?
That's what conservatism is all about.
Conservatism is actually all about improving everybody's lot in life.
Conservatism is all about teaching and educating people to learn what they're capable of.
Conservatism is all about showing people how good they can be, about learning how good they can be.
Conservatism is all about having people discover that they're capable of doing much more than they think they are.
Every conservative going today has somebody in his or her past who got more out of them at some point in their life than they thought they could do.
It may be a coach in athletics.
It may be a history teacher.
It might be a friend.
But everybody who cares about something like this realizes that at some point in their life, somebody showed them or somebody made it possible for them to demonstrate to themselves that they were capable of much more than they thought they were.
And therefore, they should shoot high.
Their ambition should be limitless to follow their dreams.
Conservatism is all about everybody having the tools necessary to improve themselves.
Liberalism is based on an assumption that most people can't improve themselves because most people aren't capable of it.
Most people are victims.
Most people have been victimized by the rich or by Republicans, whoever the enemies of the Democrats are that day.
That's who's victimizing people.
And so the poor, it can't do any better than what they're doing unless Democrats come along and punish somebody else and take it from them and supposedly give it to the poor.
Conservatism is all about rugged individuality, self-reliance, helping people be better than they ever knew they could be, helping people discover that they were capable of accomplishing more than they ever thought they could accomplish.
And when that happens, you love yourself, you have self-satisfaction, purpose, happiness.
And that's what's missing in liberalism.
There isn't any happiness.
Achievement's denigrated.
Achievement is suspected.
Achievement's not really rewarded.
It's suspect.
And all of this is done because the Democrats know the numbers.
There are far fewer rich people than there are poor people.
And so they're just using a shotgun approach policies or stated policies designed to reach the most people and get votes.
But in terms of actually helping people, that's the last thing liberalism does.
Liberalism, while it's said that it's all about compassion and helping people, it actually does the opposite.
Conservatism is about genuine help, genuine achievement, genuine accomplishment, and instructing and telling people and helping people how to do it.
It's all about optimism.
It's all about can-do spirit.
It's all about improvement.
That's what conservatism is.
Conservatism is the individual is going to do much better acting in his own self-interest than he will allowing government to do something for him.
Self-interest is not selfishness.
Self-interest is a far, far different thing than selfishness.
The Democrats, the left, they are selfish.
And they use people and they denigrate people and they characterize people and they diminish people and they destroy.
And it's left to us to try to fix and repair.
So here you've got this great income inequality.
And the left looks at it as a problem as some people have too much.
And of course, that plays in low-information America.
Yeah, yeah, they got more than they need.
Take it away from them.
Yeah, yeah.
Except don't take it away from your favorite athlete because they're don't take it away from your favorite actor.
No, no, we love those actors living lit rich lifestyles and we can pretend that we're doing it too.
We love those athletes running around nightclubbing and partying.
But the CEO of Big Oil, you take his money.
The CEO of Big Pharma, you go get his money.
The CEO of Walmart, you bet, go get his money.
CEO of anybody on Wall Street, damn right, take his money.
Leave my athlete alone, leave my favorite actor alone.
They can earn whatever they want to earn.
Because they love me.
They understand me.
It's just sick.
So now we've gotten to the point, ladies and gentlemen, where the top 1% now pay nearly 30% of all federal tax revenue, not just income tax.
All 30% of all federal tax revenue is now collected from the top 1%.
The bottom 50%, it's next to nothing that they pay.
And the share of all federal tax revenue paid by the 1% has doubled since the 1980s.
And likewise, the top 20% of income earners have gone from paying 65% of all federal taxes in 1980 to 90% in 2010.
So top 1% are paying 30% of all tax revenue.
If you expand it to the top 20%, they are paying 90% of all collected tax revenue.
And the 20% number includes couples with two kids making more than $150,000.
So if you make $150,000 or more, you are in the top 20% of wage earners.
And you are in the group that's paying 90% of all tax revenue.
And still, it's not enough.
If you listen to Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, it's still not enough.
You are still not paying your fair share.
In fact, the left is mocking them for even complaining.
That was a snarky piece from the Atlantic.
Rich people are mad they have to pay so many taxes on their ballooming, ballooning incomes.
I got to take a break.
I'll give you details here.
And your phone calls, of course, coming up right when we get back.
And this is how the stigmatization takes place.
No group of Americans is less happy about the taxes they pay than the wealthy.
And Wall Street Journal is reported as glossing over the fact that they are paying more in taxes in large part because they are seeing most of the increases in incomes.
This is like being mad that you paid more in sales tax on your Bentley than your doorman paid in taxes for a Ford.
That is not true.
I can tell you from personal experience, that is not true.
I can tell you I could point to you people whose income isn't changing, whose taxes are going up dramatically.
Obamacare alone is responsible for a huge increase.
There have been something like 452 tax increases that have occurred since Barack Obama was emaculated.
And many of them have targeted the so-called wealthiest of Americans.
And of course, how dare those rich 20%, which again is couples with two children making more than $150,000.
Remember, Jim Moran or some Democrat in Congress said last week, we can't afford to live here.
Well, what we earn, they earn $175,000 that we can't afford to live in Washington.
We need to earn what we simply can't afford to live here.
Well, I have to tell you, you who earn $150,000 and have two kids, you are in the top 20%.
And you got a member of Congress and he can't live on what you earn.
And yet you are being targeted.
You are a part of the group that's not paying enough yet, according to the Democrat Party and Barack Obama.
And if you make $150,000 or more and I don't care what number of kids, there's any number of kids.
If you make that much money, you're in the top 20% and your group is paying 90% of all tax revenue.
And the people at the Atlantic mock you if you complain about it.
Meanwhile, we keep income inequality.
How about income tax inequality?
Mr. President, be back, folks.
Your phone calls coming next.
It really wasn't that long ago that if the winner of the Masters went anywhere, it would be a big deal for the anywhere he went.
And it would be a joyous moment.
It would be something noteworthy, and it would become something that it's identifiable about the perspective.
If Arnold Palmer, for example, had gone to Waffle House earlier in his career when he was Arnie's Army and was golf, it would have been a great thing.
You wouldn't have had people coming out of the woodwork demanding that Palmer apologize or chastising him for taking his family to a place that serves maple syrup and it contributes to obesity.
Or Chick-fil-A, same thing.
If somebody goes to Chick-fil-A, it's the same thing because they support right-wing causes.
When I moved to Sacramento in 1984, I was cautioned by the local news director, do not be seen in this town at Carls Jr.
I said, what's Carl's Jr.?
He says, a hamburger joint.
I said, why?
Contribute to right-wing causes.
So what?
You just don't want to be seen there as a Democrat town.
Well, why do they even have him here then?
I was.
I was told to stay away from Carl's Jr.
So, no, I'm not making it up.
It was one of the first things I was told.
When I got to KFBK Sacramento, do not be seen in Carl's Jr. after you become known.
What?
They contribute to right-wing causes.
Back that was what I was saying.
They contribute to Reagan.
This is 1984, Dorothy.
This is in the middle of the, not even had Reagan's second-term election yet.
This is October.
At any rate, Bubba Watson, he's a self-made golfer.
You know, he's never had a lesson.
And he has an unorthodox swing, and none of the experts would teach it the way he plays.
And yet it works for him, and he wins.
He goes to Waffle House, and all of a sudden, it's a controversy today.
And I guarantee, if you didn't have a supportive media promoting these kind of fruitcake nutcases, it wouldn't, nobody'd ever hear about it anyway.
Well, I know when I'm Cavuto, but Cavuto just, I mean, probably had this person on because he knows he's a lunatic and it would be good TV to see the fruitcake.
But the fact of the matter is, they're not a fringe group of people that think this way nor act this way.
Here is, speaking of Sacramento, my adopted hometown, here's Al from there.
Great to have you on the program.
Al, hello.
Hey, Rush.
What an honor.
How are we doing?
Thank you.
I'm great.
Thank you very much.
I'm on a cell phone.
Hopefully you can hear me okay.
Yes, you're quality pretty good.
You're got a good connection here.
Wow, good.
Well, I'll share a story.
You got me going earlier today talking about the Social Security IRS tax return confiscation type stuff.
My wife and I have been married for 33 years, and her father died after the Korean War in a VA hospital when she was nine years old.
Her mother apparently collected Social Security on her behalf, and she's been deceased now for over 20 years.
Well, last year, we didn't get our tax return.
And I retired from the military.
We filed tax returns every year since we've been married and have had passports we've never heard anything from anybody.
And then all of a sudden, boom, they came after us for overpayments to somebody 40 years ago.
So it's happening, even though it is.
But here's the thing.
They have shut the program down now.
Bell, for anything past 10 years, they have shut down for any so-called debt.
The point is, your family members didn't owe anything.
It's not that they had shortchanged the government.
There was just a mistake.
Government had overpaid.
But who knew?
Who knows?
This is just what happens when governments have no money.
They just have to go get it wherever they can.
And it's a cheap, cheap, cheap trick.
And the fact that they've pulled back on this so quickly after having been called on it, I don't know, it means something, but it must have really, somebody must have really caught hell over this.
Pulled back on this, because this is the kind of thing normally wouldn't bother.
What are we going to do?
They take our tax refund.
Where are we going to go to get it back?
There's nowhere we can go.
But yet they've pulled this back for debts, so-called debts past 10 years.
Al thanks.
Barney in Tucson, your next EIB network.
Hello, sir.
Hello, Rush.
You were discussing staged events involving the Clintons about consider that Hillary's most famous outburst during her testimony at the Menghazi hearings was carefully written and rehearsed.
Which would that be?
The what difference does it make?
Exactly.
But that's not the way she said it.
That's the way normal people would say it.
The way she said it, it was very strangely constructed.
Normal people, especially under stressful circumstances, would just say it exactly the way you did.
Or if she wanted to add, at this point, she would say, at this point, what difference does it make?
Or what difference does it make at this point?
But the way she did it, her outburst not only had the desired effect of putting the committee members back on their heels, but equally important, she prevents the what difference does it make part from being used as a separate and heartless-looking soundbite.
Wow, you have really dissected this.
Yeah, her accents on the words is just all wrong.
Well, give me the way she said it.
Tell me how she said it.
What difference at this point does it make?
By inserting that clause in the middle, it is abnormally, it's an abnormally spoken construction.
What difference at this point does it make?
What difference does it make?
Even adding at this point at the beginning or the end, if she did it that way, which is the way normal people would do it, you could take the what difference at this point, what difference does it make, and it would be a devastating political commercial against her.
Well, I'll tell you something else.
That's an excellent point.
And I'm a student of the use of language and words, phraseology.
And you've got a, that's really a good point and a good observation as well.
But Mrs. Clinton, if I'm not mistaken, I think has, there have been planted questions at Mrs. Clinton press conferences.
There was a, it was CNN, it was back in 2007.
Student claims she was fed questions for Clinton.
And this is from Grinnell, Iowa.
A college student who was told what question to ask at one of New York Senator Hillary Rodham's campaign events says that voters have the right to know what happened.
She wasn't the only one who was planted.
In an exclusive on-camera interview with CNN, Muriel Gallo-Chasinov, a 19-year-old sophomore, Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa, said that giving anyone specific questions to ask is dishonest, and the whole incident's given her a negative outlook on politics.
Gallo Chasinoff, whose story was first reported in a campus newspaper, said that what happened was really pretty simple.
She said a senior Clinton staffer asked if she'd like to ask the senator a question after an energy speech that she was giving in Newton, Iowa on November 6th.
And then he opened a binder to a page that had about eight questions on it.
The top one was planned specifically for a college student.
It said college student in brackets, and then it had the question.
And topping that sheet of paper was the following.
As a young person, I'm worried about the long-term effects of global warming.
How does your plan combat climate change?
So apparently, Mrs. Clinton planted questions and found students to ask them in press conferences.
And there's another one, November 10th, 2007.
This is Major Garrett.
He was at Fox News then.
Clinton campaign accused for the second time of planting a question at a public appearance.
This was in Sioux City, Iowa.
For the second time in as many days, Hillary Clinton's presidential campaigns had to deal with accusations of planting questions during public appearances.
A telephone interview Saturday with Fox News, Jeffrey Mitchell, 32, said he was approached by Clinton campaign worker Chris Haler to ask a question about how she was standing up to President Bush on the question of funding the Iraq war and troop withdrawal timelines.
The encounter happened before an event hosted by some state senator on a farm outside Fort Madison, Iowa.
So I think we've established here that when it comes to staging events, the Clintons are capable and have done it.
And I don't think it's just the Clintons.
I think, hell, look at all the times the Democrats parade victims up in the middle of their press conferences.
Those are staged events as well, all designed to have, to evoke an emotional reaction among people watching on TV.
Barney, thanks for the call.
We've got to take another brief obscene profit break here at the Rush Limbaugh program.
We're back right after this.
How about this, folks?
How about all of those people that fainted at Barack Obama's speeches?
How many of those do you think were staged?
Because they don't happen anymore.
And he still goes out there and speaks where there's crowds and where it's hot, but nobody seems to faint anymore.
But it used to be routine when he went out there.
The point is, how much of what is liberalism is genuine anyway?
And the point is, very little of it is the reality of it is something they can't ever let you see in Down the Brass Tags.
Here's Brett and Cheyenne, Wisconsin.
Wow.
Great to have you on the program.
Hello.
Or Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Cheyenne, Wyoming.
I thought it had to be Wyoming anymore.
Wanted to call, and I'm 27 years old, and I just wanted to let you know and let everyone know that the American dream is well and alive.
I'm proof of it.
I started out from absolutely nothing with faith, drive, and determination.
I have built my own business from working part-time, waiting tables, to saving up all my own money to buy supplies, to educate myself in what my passion is.
I found out what my passion was.
I've had it since I was just a teenager, and I have been able to make it work.
Let me ask you a question then, Brett.
Why do you think so many recent college graduates say it isn't possible?
Because they don't have it.
Because they don't think it is.
They think the American Dream's dead.
They think the days of them having a chance to do better than their parents are over.
They don't think it's better.
They're mad.
They got worthless degrees in many cases to have to live at home.
Here you call, hey, no, I went out.
I followed my passion.
I stayed dedicated to my desires.
I saved my money.
I pulled it off.
They think they can't.
Why is that?
The reason being is because there's a sense of entitlement, and also they don't have the drive.
People can say, well, there's not opportunities.
There's not this.
There's not that.
There's not education opportunities.
Education, in the process of myself growing and making the sacrifices and downsizing to a studio apartment and the building process, people nowadays that are remotely my age, I don't even associate myself with them anymore because the negativity, because of the lack of self-esteem, the lack of drive.
You're 27.
What the cause of that is, it goes back to what you said a few segments ago.
Conservatism does work, but it also goes into low information.
And that's what I see on the ground level as far as what I see every day around me.
Let me throw all of that's correct, by the way.
I appreciate it.
You said you're 27.
Is that right?
Yes, sir.
And I decided to do this when I was still 26.
And I had other jobs.
I worked in radio.
You know, I've done other things.
But instead of me complaining about, man, I can't find a job.
Man, it's only part-time work.
Literally from last year, I started my business in September, and now I'm already able to pay my own bills and also have money to put back and save.
You know, what you're illustrating, you are the American dream.
You're illustrating it.
And you're from nothing.
Most of us, most of the majority of people are from nothing.
In other words, we may have prominent families, some cases, but very few of us have the way paved for us.
Many people come from nothing or very little.
You simply had a desire that you remain dedicated to me.
You mentioned education, too.
And I want to answer my own question that I ask you.
Why there's so many of them who coming out of college think, oh, they're down on the country.
They're not down on Obama.
They're just down in the country.
Opportunity is not there.
I think that for a lot of people, education has been over-emphasized, and they think just having one is the ticket, that there isn't any work attached to it, that the education is the work.
And then after you come out, you've got the degree.
That's the ticket.
And from there, everything flows.
And it's, you know, people, education is crucially important.
I don't ever want to be thought to think otherwise, but the way it has been formally preached and emphasized as though it's the end of things, that it is what you need, and it alone is what is required and is the guarantee.
And having an education is a guarantee you did at least squat.
Right.
Unless you do come from a prominent family and you're simply going through the right steps so that you can say you've qualified to move up to the next level because somebody's guiding you.
But if you're like you, you come from nothing.
Your education is what you need to know to do what you want to do the best you can, right?
Right.
And I've been to college.
I went to college.
I didn't graduate.
You know, I've had great jobs and whatnot.
But again, it wasn't just everything built on top of one another, but it was still up to me as a person, as an individual, to say, okay, just like today, I'm getting up.
I'm going to push.
I'm going to work.
I'm going to make this work.
And I think that's a miss now.
I think a lot of people are missing that.
Sadly, you're right.
And I dare say that there probably are some people listening.
Ah, yeah, well, maybe for him, but it's not possible anymore.
I mean, I hate to reduce everything, folks, to these terms, but the truth is the truth.
And there is An ideological political movement that does its best to convince people that what you have accomplished isn't possible anymore because America just isn't what it was.
America just, you know, it's immoral, unjust.
It's just, it's just, it's so much unfairness, and there's so much inequality, and there's so much racism, and there's so much prejudice, and there's so much sexism, and there's so much bias, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
There's so many excuses for not getting anything done.
And when that happens, here comes your savior, the Democrat Party.
There are, there's a whole political movement.
How, well, if you disagree, who in the world comes up with this thinking that losing your job is a good thing for health care?
Job locked pelosi.
What kind of people actually think that way?
Okay, I think I've got the sound by some cavuto yesterday with this fruitcake.
Yeah, okay.
Well, I haven't read the transcript yet.
It's what I mean.
I can't find it, but we'll get to it.
That's what I'm going to use the break here top of the hour for.
Upset that Bubba went to Waffle House.
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