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June 25, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:44
June 25, 2014, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Ladies and gentlemen, I, your harmless, lovable little fuzzball host, Rush Limbaugh, am sitting here literally shocked.
Well, yeah, in a way, shocked, but mostly devastated.
Not just about Mississippi.
We'll get to that in just a second.
The fact that the United States economy shrunk, contracted.
For those of you on Rio, Linda, it got smaller by 3% in the first quarter should be the only news anybody is reporting about now.
And you can't find it.
Greetings and welcome.
Great to have you.
Rush Limbaugh here at 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program.
The email address, Lrushbo at EIBnet.com.
The U.S. economy shrank at a rate of 2.9% for the sake of simplicity and rounding off.
I'm just going to call it 3% for the rest of the day.
3% contraction, shrinking.
The original report way back when the first quarter number came out was a retraction of one-tenth of 1%, and they said it was because of the cold weather.
And people stayed indoors in the comfort of their homes rather than work out, get out, and brave the elements to go shopping and engage in commerce.
What is happening, it's exactly as we talked about yesterday, and I want to go through this again.
The natural tendency, because of the design, give you the example of an airplane again.
An airplane properly designed wants to fly.
The airfoil on the wing, if you achieve enough forward speed, it will fly.
That is what it wants to do.
You have to work to keep it from flying.
You have to purposely fight the airplane to keep it from flying.
The U.S. economy is constructed the same way.
Free market capitalism is designed to expand.
Free market capitalism, the entrepreneurial driver of free market capitalism, is designed to grow.
It's designed to lift off.
If it's a pie, it's designed to get bigger.
That's how it works.
That's the brilliance.
That's part of American exceptionalism.
You have to purposely attack the U.S. economy to cause it to contract this way.
And that is what is fundamentally crucial for people to understand.
3% contraction.
The U.S. economy got smaller by 3%.
It should make sense to people by virtue of the fact that the federal government is simply taking so much of it.
In Obamacare alone, the federal government has simply appropriated one-sixth of that economy, just commandeered it and is in the process of taking it.
You add in all of the additional regulations that Washington is inflicting and it's making starting a business all the more difficult.
And that's the direct result of overregulation.
The entrepreneurial spirit is being tamped down.
The U.S. economy's natural tendency is being thwarted.
There are policies, and this is the key, there are policies in place that are designed to shrink the U.S. economy.
They are tax policies, Obamacare, Any number of new regulations on businesses, large and small.
Well, but uncertainty is a derivative of all this, the erasing of the southern border.
95 million Americans working.
Let me, if you have an option, if you come from a place where you've had no inspiration in your life, if you come from a broken family, which there are more and more of those in this country, if you come from a place where there hasn't been a role model in your life, tell you how good you can be.
If you haven't been inspired, if you haven't gone through life learning how good you are, if you haven't gone through life being told that you're capable of much more than you think you are, if you've gone through life thinking that it sucks and that you suck and that there's no hope, then not working for $400 a week is going to be much more attractive than working for $500 a week.
And that's exactly where we are.
We've got 95 or, depending on where you look, 100 million people in this country, capable, able people.
100 million not working.
Well, there's no way you're going to have a growing economy when one-third of the population isn't working, but they are all eating.
And they're all participating in social media or they're using their smartphones somehow.
They're texting, they're calling, they're Skyping.
They're watching the World Cup, and many of them are driving around and then going back home and none of them are working.
Welfare is not welfare.
Welfare does not equal poverty.
It's become a lifestyle.
That's not by accident.
This is all the result of policy.
It is policy that has long been the dream and desire of the Democrat Party.
Sadly, many Republicans, rather than fight this, have sat by idly and let it happen because they're afraid of fighting it.
Then you add in the crony capitalism or crony socialism that we were talking about last week.
American business no longer has to innovate in order to stay ahead of its competition.
Some American businesses only need a sugar daddy relationship with the administration.
And that relationship alone makes it impossible to compete against them.
And so their competitors can't keep up with a company that has a sweetheart relationship with the federal government.
For example, and this is a good one, and I don't mean to harp on them, but it's just an example that was published in a piece about this I saw.
How many of you were shocked, like I was, when you read early on that Walmart was on board for Obamacare?
I mean, instinctively, it doesn't make any sense.
The instinctive traditional understanding is that Walmart is an American major corporation and as such doesn't want anything to do with government.
This is the natural assumption people would make.
And you add to it the Walmart history and tradition.
Arkansas is thought to be Republican conservative.
Free market, free enterprise.
Leave government, get them away from me.
Don't want any part of them.
And then all of a sudden out of the blue, Walmart, and they're not the only one, just a great example, supporting Obamacare.
Well, why?
Very simple.
They can afford the pain.
They can afford whatever new costs.
And because of their relationship with Obama, they've got waivers or exemptions, but their competitors can't afford it and their competitors don't have the waivers.
And so Walmart, without having to innovate, without having to lower, without having to really compete with its competitors, can win.
It would cost cause another example.
Costco, all of a sudden, one day comes out and favored a minimum wage.
It makes no sense.
Minimum wage doesn't do anybody any good.
It causes the loss of jobs.
It does not raise anybody's standard of living.
But Costco's right there supporting the regime and the minimum wage.
Why?
Because they've formed a relationship.
It's easier to be with somebody like Obama than to have him angry at you and targeting you.
Plus, if you can afford a minimum wage increase, arbitrary though it is, your competitors can't.
Therefore, your alliance with the government results in your competitors being harmed, not anything you've done in a competition since.
Well, you have all these kinds of crony socialism, crony capitalism.
All of these things combined are the result of various policies which are literally destroying the United States economy.
3% contraction.
It's unheard of.
I think Stuart Varney at Fox Business News said that this is the worst non-recession shrinkage in 58 years.
What do you mean non-recession?
Simply because we haven't had two quarters of it?
Well, I guess maybe that is a side issue whether it's recession or not.
The fact of the matter is, what people need to understand, it is the result of policy.
The United States economy is not naturally inclined to this kind of horrible performance.
The United States economy, as designed, is designed to grow and expand.
But, and I've mentioned many factors.
I could throw a lot more in.
We've had, there's a social component, the bust up of the family, family values out the window.
A lot of people growing up with no inspiration, no mentoring, nobody telling them how good they can be, nobody telling them that they have an unlimited future, nobody telling them they have a limited possibility because they are growing up in America.
In fact, it's just the opposite.
Way too many people are growing up in this country telling them they don't have a chance because they're growing up in America because this country is racist and sexist and bigoted and homophobic and unjust and immoral.
None of this is accidental.
None of this just happens to be occurring.
It is the result of policy, six years of it.
This is what I meant when I said, I hope he fails.
This is what I hoped would not happen.
And then they add to this in their report, unexpectedly shrank 3% in the first quarter.
Take a look at what some of Obama's policies have been to prevent this.
Billions of dollars thrown down government rat holes in the form of bailouts.
The latest coming bailout, as predicted, by the way, had this in the snack yesterday to get to it.
We're going to bail out the insurance agency, the health insurance business, because they're taking it in the chin right now because things are a little bit slower than Obama intended with Obamacare.
That's another disaster.
We're not ready for the health insurance agency to go out of business yet.
Eventually, Obama's dream is for there to be no private sector health insurance, but not now.
He needs it to happen slowly and gradually.
But he still needs them because the government can't provide health insurance.
The government can't provide health care.
They can't do anything right right now.
So he still needs the private sector.
But there was a story yesterday, how they're going to bail him out.
Everybody's losing money in Obamacare.
Everybody is losing money with it one way or the other.
In a cumulative individual is doing okay.
You might have an end of a hospital here, hospital there, but overall, it's a disaster.
How many stimuluses or stimuli have we had that were designed to prevent all this?
How many summits at the White House on jobs and the economy?
If Barack Obama had been sworn into office during his immaculation in January of 2009 and proceeded to do nothing, we would be better off.
And that's the point.
If he had done nothing, if he just sat there and pretended to be king, we would be better off than we are now.
The economy shrank.
First time in 58 years, many of you, this has never happened in your life.
The drive-by media is, of course, going to ignore this, or as the AP does here, the sent back is expected to be temporary, with growth rebounding solidly since spring.
Really?
Well, every drive-by news report I've read on the economy for the past six years has had the word unexpected or surprised in it, meaning everything they've reported has been a shock.
They haven't expected it.
So it's no big deal.
Yeah, it shrank 3%, but that's just expected to be temporary.
Growth will rebound solidly in the spring.
And so for, I don't know what umpteenth gazillionth time in the last six years, we are being told that prosperity is just around the corner.
How long has AP been spreading this sunshine now?
How long has ABC, NBC, CBS, The Washington Post, The New York Times, how long have they been spreading this BS that prosperity is just around the corner?
Poised for growth, waiting to break out while the day-to-day reality is it's worsening.
In Detroit this week, we found out that half the residents cannot pay their water bills.
And so powers that be in Detroit want the UN to come in, the United Nations.
They're not even going to bother calling Obama.
They want the United Nations to come in and help out with water bills, monthly water bills in Detroit.
And I'll tell you what frustrates me.
Same news media.
Same news media.
When the GDP, the gross domestic product, grew at 3.5% to 3.4% under George W. Bush, every day we were pummeled into submission with the idea that we were entering a recession.
And it might end up being a depression.
The economy's floor was about to collapse underneath us.
We were about to all descend into nothingness and poverty.
Well, the economy was growing at 3.3%.
They called that a recession.
They called that a near depression.
Now we have shrunk in one quarter 3%.
No big deal.
It's just temporary.
Growth is right around the corner.
The Commerce Department says the first quarter contraction was even more severe than the 1% annual decline it estimated a month.
Really?
3%'s worse than 1%.
Progress.
Two-thirds of the downward revision reflected a decline in health care spending.
Are you kidding me?
The U.S. economy shrinks 3% because there is less health care spending?
With less health care spending, this economy ought to be growing 3% because that means disposable income would be available for the pleasures of life, not the necessities.
It's worse than I thought.
They're chalking this up to health care spending, declining.
That should result in massive private sector growth.
But the point for every bit of this is policy driven.
It's the result of, it's not accidental.
It's not fate.
It's not coincidence.
I got to take a break.
An obscene profit timeout.
We'll be right back and continue after this.
Now, the Mississippi, Thad Cochran and the Chris McDaniel runoff election.
It was Operation Chaos in reverse.
The Republican establishment sought victory via Democrat voters in the runoff, and they got them.
It has been analyzed, and it is now practically ontologically certain that without the African-American vote from Democrat-leaning counties, Thad Cochran would have lost by 8 or 9% last night.
But because the Republican establishment was a party to something to me that is reprehensible, I'm holding here my formerly nicotine-stained fingers.
A little pamphlet that was distributed by both the Democrat Party and the Republican establishment.
The Tea Party intends to prevent blacks from voting on Tuesday.
And there's a picture of Thad Cochran and all of his great achievements and a picture of Chris McDaniel Tea Party.
So the Washington establishment, both parties distributed a flyer claiming the Tea Party wanted to prevent blacks from voting on Tuesday.
This, combined with other efforts, secured a turnout of black Democrat voters in a Republican primary that gave Thad Cochran, in my view, a corrupt and undeserved victory.
And we've got more on this, obviously, as the program unfolds.
Oops.
Didn't mean to turn on the ditto cam there, folks.
That was not the right view.
Sandra, I got to show you something.
Rush Limbaugh back executing his signed host duties flawlessly.
Zero mistakes.
So I checked the email during the break, and a couple people said, Rush, what are you so worried about?
I mean, just reverse Operation Chaos in Mississippi.
I mean, you did the same thing.
And for those of you that were not around, the Democrats made a movie about Operation Chaos.
My name was not mentioned in the movie, but Operation Chaos was a George Clooney movie called The Eyes of March.
I didn't know, I happened to watch the movie, nobody had said anything to me about it.
And they're obsessed in the first third of the movie with the, it's a political movie, they're obsessed with this, the Operation Chaos.
Was it?
Well, it was a combination electoral and programming maneuver orchestrated brilliantly, brilliantly conceived, flawlessly executed by me.
It was 2008, and John McCain had the Republican primary wrapped up.
And so there was no drama left in the Republican side, but the Democrat side was undecided.
Mrs. Clinton was still in the running, challenging Barry Obama.
And there were some key primaries coming up in the spring: Indiana, Texas, a couple of other places.
And I, in the eyes of many brazenly, suggested to Republicans to whom it didn't matter who won their primaries because McCain had already won the Republican nomination.
I suggested, if it's possible, cross over and vote for Hillary in these remaining states just to keep this alive, just to keep some drama.
It was a programming thing, just to keep the subject matter from becoming boring.
I didn't want both parties to have chosen their nominees all the way by March.
The conventions weren't until the mid to late summer.
Plus, it was an effort to thwart the steamroller that was the Obama freight train.
And lo and behold, it worked.
In a couple of states, Mrs. Clinton won and delayed the inevitable nomination that Obama won.
But here's the difference.
I said that what happened in Mississippi was reverse Operation Chaos in the sense that Democrats came out and voted for Thad Cochran.
The difference is that during my Operation Chaos, the Democrats did not join me in my effort.
The Obama camp did not join me and encourage Republicans and work with Republicans to come out and vote against, or Hillary's people didn't work with me, or Hillary's people did not work with Republican voters to try to coerce them to come out and vote for her.
What happened in Mississippi was that the most electable Republican candidate was thwarted by the Republican establishment.
The Republican establishment was part of this Operation Chaos in Mississippi.
This election, it has now been statistically proven, turned on Democrat voters from African-American counties.
I think the here is the post from Nate Silver at the 538 blog.
Without an increase in vote from Democrat-leaning African-American counties, Cochran would have lost by 8%.
Now, my Operation Chaos was entirely legal.
And this one was too, actually.
That's not the point.
But again, when I did Operation Chaos, the Hillary Clinton forces did not join me.
They're out there openly talking against it.
They don't want anybody to think that they're in league with me, heaven forbid.
Now, maybe they're secretly hoping that my Operation Chaos worked, but there was no way they were aligning with me or any other Republican organization.
They were just sitting on the sideline waiting for it to happen.
What happened in Mississippi in that Operation Chaos was the Republican establishment joined with the Democrat establishment to impugn the Tea Party candidate, Chris McDaniel.
Now, here I'm going to turn on the ditto cam, and this is the flyer that I referenced mere moments ago.
Now, you may not be able to read that flyer.
as close as I can get to it.
But let me read it to you.
Tea Party intends to prevent blacks from voting on Tuesday.
According to the Clarion ledger, Chris McDaniel and the Tea Party plan to prevent Democrat voting in the Senate runoff on Tuesday between Thad Cochran and Tea Party candidate Chris McDaniel.
We know the Tea Party uses Democrats as code for African Americans.
Don't be intimidated by the Tea Party.
Let's turn out for all Mississippians and vote for Thad Cochran.
Thad Cochran works for Mississippians.
Mississippi cannot and will not return to the bygone era of intimidating black Mississippians from voting.
We must rise up on Tuesday to have our voices heard on who will represent Mississippi in the U.S. Senate vote, Thad Cochran.
This is the flyer that was sent out in Democrat voting districts and counties that told them the purpose of Chris McDaniel and the Tea Party was to prevent them from voting.
Now, it would be one thing if the Democrats did that.
They do it every election cycle anyway.
But for them to be joined, even if from a distance, by the Republican establishment here, simply confirms what we have long said on this program about establishment Washington.
It is ruling class versus country class.
It's elites versus the plebes.
And you and me are the plebes, and they are the elites.
And they are aligning together.
My friend Mark Levin, F. Lee Levin, makes the point that Washington is not going to be fixed from Washington.
This proves it, if there was any proof needed.
Washington is not going to be fixed in Washington.
The establishment is going to align itself every which way it can against any outside challenger like this Tea Party candidate.
But it does look like African Americans, Democrat African Americans really did secure the victory for Thad Cochran in a Republican primary.
So here we have a result that is not representative of the Republican Party thinking in Mississippi.
The technique that was used and the manner in which this was achieved is reprehensible.
I want to go back and let you listen to what I said about all this back on June the 17th, just a little over a week ago, talking about the Tea Party in Washington.
In truth, the only real enemy of Washington today is the Tea Party.
The only real enemy.
The Republican and Democrat establishments.
The Chamber of Commerce, the whole way Washington is working, the only enemy is people who want to reintroduce free markets, get rid of crony capitalism, blow up the relationships that exist between Washington and individual businesses or business at large, Wall Street firms.
You people in the Tea Party, liberty, freedom, free markets, you represent the problem.
To John Boehner, to the Republican establishment, to the Republican consultants, Obama's not the problem.
Anybody opposed to the way Washington does business today is the problem, and that would be you and me.
Essentially, the Republican base, the Tea Party voters, are considered the problem.
And I could easily harken back to the Peter Beinart column in the Atlantic Monthly that I quoted last week, in which he issued a warning to the Republican base: hey, this is a changing country.
You know, we're a country now demographically changing.
We're changing into the triumph of the minorities of social justice and tolerance.
That's what this country is heading to.
It's what we're going to be known as social justice and tolerance.
And your age-old way of doing things is old-fashioned and out of fashion, and you better learn it real fast.
And the more you oppose this new America, the faster you're going to make it happen.
So the gauntlet was sort of thrown down.
This is really reprehensible.
I mean, the Democrats doing this kind of thing, accusing us of racism, fine and dandy, but to have the Republican establishment as part of it is valuable in the sense that there can be no doubt now, if there was any, it's highly instructive.
And Thad Cochran, come on.
I'll tell you something else to indicate that this is something that I have sensed for many, many moons.
And I've sensed this way, way back since the Christine O'Donnell and Sharon Angle campaigns.
Some of the early Tea Party candidates.
You know what?
I think the primary thing that matters to the Republican establishment is the Senate.
More so than winning the White House.
The Senate is what they are all about here.
And I can just tell you this: Thad Cochran's not going to get this same bunch of people that voted for him in the general election that voted for him last night and yesterday.
He's not going to get 9% of the African-American vote from those counties voting for him again.
He's going to have to come up with some other kind of trickery or strategy if he's to win in November.
But it is the Senate and those chairmanships and being in charge of the money that seems to have everybody in the establishment salivating.
But not to change the direction of the country, not to reverse the course we're on, but to simply ascend to the captain's seat of it.
Got to take a break.
Sit tight.
Much more straight ahead when we get back.
Another difference Between my Operation Chaos and the one the Washington establishment ran yesterday in Mississippi, I didn't fund any Operation Chaos effort.
It was just something to do here on the radio.
I just urged people, Republicans, to cross over if they could, one time to vote a Democrat primary, vote for Hillary, keep that race alive.
I didn't spend any money on it.
I didn't vote any money.
I didn't raise any money.
I didn't ask anybody to send any money to Hillary or anybody else.
But in the Operation Chaos that took place in Mississippi, the Washington establishment, including the Republicans, are funneling money into the anti-Tea Party campaign.
And there was, well, it's, it's, when you get into the numbers and you look at some of the turnout in some of these counties, it's just, it's unreal.
The level of black turnout in a Republican primary yesterday.
Anyway, let me grab a call quickly.
We'll start with Joe in Washington.
Great to have you, sir.
Hello.
Of course, I do political war care.
And look, I'm angry about that, too, what happened in Mississippi.
But, you know, that's what power does.
Power preserves power no matter what.
People are talking about breaking away from the Republican Party, and we can't do that right now.
I'm not sure people understand how important this moment is.
Even Scalia, in his opinion yesterday, upheld the EPA's authority to regulate global warming DS.
Obama is going to crash this economy with his climate change rules.
Republicans are talking about shutting down the economy.
Republicans still fear the base.
They still fear the Tea Party because they are part of the Republican Party, a big part of the Republican Party.
You need to keep that fear going.
It's the reason we haven't had immigration reform.
You leave the party, you splinter off right now instead of dusting yourself off, getting back up in front of you.
What are you reacting to in this third party stuff?
Sarah Palin?
Twitter, Sarah Palin, everyone, I mean, everyone here in D.C. talking about it, you cannot split off.
This is an inflection point.
Obama will crash this economy with these climate rules.
We need Republicans to shut the government down until those rules are shut down.
That was, I mean, there are disappointments daily.
And Scalia voting to uphold the constitutionality, the EPA in charge of emissions.
That was depressing.
Look, I have never, and I know you're not complaining to me.
I know that.
I have never advocated for a third party, and I'm not advocating for one now.
It's never been the objective, and it's not, it's just not the way to go.
They don't win.
It's an understandable knee-jerk reaction.
This environmental stuff, you know, there's some things that I think you should know that are taking place within the environmentalist wacko movement and the Democrat Party.
Now, I've mentioned the name Tom Steyer to you.
He is a multi-billionaire environmentalist nutcase from California.
And he has threatened to withhold his money to Obama if Obama authorizes the Keystone XL pipeline, for example.
The guy just is a nut.
He really believes every aspect of this hoax.
But there was a New York City news conference a couple of days ago.
Tom Steyer was joined by Mayor Doomberg, and here's a new member of the group, Hank Paulson.
Do you remember Henry Paulson?
Henry Paulson was the Secretary Treasury during the 2008 financial crisis.
Hank Paulson, former Goldman Sachs, Paulson was the guy that grabbed all the CEOs of all the banks and put them in a room and locked the door and said, you're not getting out of here until you sign a document accepting TARP money, bailout money.
The Wells Fargo CEO for once, we don't need it.
I'm not in trouble.
You're not getting out of here unless you sign.
So he had to sign on for a bailout of $25 billion.
In the last couple of days, Henry Paulson has joined the global warming nuts by claiming that the greatest threat facing the United States economy is climate change.
This is absurd.
So what's really going on?
The U.S. economy, the greatest threat facing the U.S. economy is Barack Obama and the Democrat Party.
But these guys is a new group that want to make the case that the greatest economic threat we face is climate change.
And they're doing this because they have to change the narrative.
The current storyline or narrative of global warming is blowing up in their face.
So they're trying to change it.
I'll have details as the program continues to unfold.
Don't go away.
Fastest three hours in media, ladies and gentlemen.
First one's already in the can and on the way over to Limbaugh Broadcast Museum at rushlimbaugh.com, but much more.
Get ready for it.
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