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July 31, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:49
July 31, 2014, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
My, I was buried.
I was buried in show prep and something, I got an email.
It's an email I get every day 10 minutes before the program.
I said, what?
It's 10 minutes before the...
Holy!
So I've been scrambling for the last 15 minutes.
And here we are, ready and revved and ready to go.
So much making no sense.
I'm sometimes questioning whether I'm sane.
Telephone numbers 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, the email address, Elrushbo at EIBnet.com.
I kid you not.
Nothing is making sense.
Israeli Hamas, nothing.
I'm talking about the Convention of Wisdom coming out of Washington.
Nothing makes sense.
It's all ass backwards.
What the House Republicans are doing, vis-a-vis suing Obama and impeachment, it's all wrong.
It doesn't make any sense.
Nothing makes any sense.
And if nothing makes any sense, maybe I'm the one that's losing my marbles.
Except I know that's not true.
I have never seen a circumstance.
You know, the Republicans on their impeachment bill, the was it the immigration, I'm sorry, the immigration bill.
They're hell-bent.
They're hell-bent.
The Chamber of Commerce, somebody has got them just scared to death.
They are hell-bent on passing a bill that will never see the light of day in the Senate.
Obama will never sign it, and they know it.
And you know why they want to do it?
It's the most, it is so indicative of the post-traumatic stress disorder that they are in.
It is so indicative of the absolute shock and fear and totally defensive position that they feel and therefore are in.
They want to pass an immigration bill that grants amnesty and all that, knowing it's not going to pass, so they'll get the credit for doing it.
And of course, the question, the credit, from whom?
Nobody's going to give them any credit for it.
A, the Hispanics are never going to know about it because the media is never going to report it.
The media is going to report it for exactly what it is, an attempt to bribe a bunch of people.
It's not going to get them what they think it's going to get them.
This whole issue, somebody's got, well, I know who it is.
I mean, it's the Chamber of Commerce and the people that believe in big corporatist liaisons with government and so forth.
But it just doesn't make any sense.
There's no reason on the face of the earth why these people should be in such defensive posture, so scared, so afraid, with a president so on the ropes.
But they are, and there's no, apparently there's no changing it.
There's no words anybody can say to them.
There's no action that can take place.
For crying out loud, did you see Obama has decided, now stop and think of this for a second here, folks.
Obama has decided that his historic legacy as president is going to be his handling of the economy.
Now, when you hear that, I know full well what your reaction is.
Is that really what he thinks his big achievement has been?
What about Obamacare?
What about immigration?
What about foreign policy?
I mean, he'd get the Nobel Peace Prize.
What about all these things that he was elected to do?
I saw somebody on TV saying that maybe I was reading it.
And it was a leftist, and they were proclaiming their disappointment in Obama and their reason why they think he's a failure.
And the reason is he was going to unite everybody.
This is what this guy said.
Might have been a woman.
I don't know.
Everything's jumbled together here because, I mean, I've been in a pressure cooker all morning.
I didn't know it, but I apparently was.
Anyway, this guy was going on and on and on about how, yeah, this is a dismal failure.
He was going to unite us.
He was going to change Washington.
He said, that's what all of us that voted for Obama really thought he was going to do.
He's going to get rid of the partisanship.
He's going to cross the aisles.
Everybody's going to be happy.
Kumbaya.
I could have told him the exact opposite was going to happen as it has.
But nevertheless, in his mind, that's why Obama is a failure.
But anyway, you get to Obamacare, the failure to unite Washington, the failure to change our politics, the failure to make the world love us or what have you.
So it's come down to this.
Obama has decided that the economy is going to be his legacy, his handling of the economy.
And there's an article on this in The Hill.
That's where I found it, thehill.com.
And it's not the onion.
It's a real story.
It's not a satire piece.
Never mind.
Never mind that Obama has given us the worst economic recovery from a recession probably in our history.
And that's assuming that we have even recovered.
I can't believe what I'm holding here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers.
I got an AP story here that I really don't believe that I have.
AP actually has released a report that contrasts the view of a robust, roaring economy and recovery with the fact that there aren't any high-paying jobs to be found.
The U.S. unemployment rate has plunged since the start of last year to a five-year low of 6.1%.
And the July jobs report being released on Friday will likely show a sixth straight month of healthy 200,000-plus gains.
Now, before I go any further, I know, I know it's not really 6.1%.
The only way they get there is because the number of people leaving the workforce, which makes the whole universe of people working smaller, which changes the percentages, we've got the highest, well, the lowest is the right way to say it, labor force participation rate since 1978.
They got nearly 100 million Americans not working.
I don't care what the unemployment rate is.
They could tell me it's 4.7% like it was during Bush, and it wouldn't mean anything now.
It's been like everything that this regime has touched, every institution, tradition has been corrupted to one degree or another.
But let's stick with this just for the sake of the story, because it's what comes next that I don't believe I'm holding here in my nicotine, formerly nicotine-stained fingers, because it's from AP.
Okay, the paragraph.
U.S. unemployment rate plunged since the start of last year to five-year low, 6.1%.
Jobs report Friday, supposedly 200,000 more jobs created, yada, yada, yet.
For Douglas Hunter and millions like him, happy days are not quite here again.
You see, Douglas Hunter earned $14 an hour cleaning oil drums before the Great Recession seized the economy and his job was X'.
At age 53, Douglas Hunter now works three days a week for $9.25 an hour, mopping floors and fixing fryers at two Mickey D's in Chicagoland.
He said, if the economy is getting better, I don't know for whom.
It certainly hasn't trickled down to me.
Whoa!
AP actually correctly portrays trickle down in a piece critical of the status quo, which would be Obama.
And then they say this.
The Gallup organization has found that consumers' view of the economy is the glummest it has been in seven months.
And yet here's Obama saying, hey, he's decided that his historical legacy as president is going to be his handling of the economy.
This AP story is right on the money.
They can give us all the Washington statistics every month they want, how unemployment's coming down and how all these jobs have been created.
But it's not happening in a vacuum.
The way that you hear, you know, 80% of the population growth in this country is now due to immigration.
80, a full 80%.
Do I have to remember?
80% of U.S. population growth is from immigrants now.
Birth rate is below replacement levels in this country.
The immigration in uncontrolled numbers now is accounting for 80% of our population growth.
And you know that the job situation for those people is at best part-time.
It certainly isn't high wage.
That's why the Chamber of Commerce wants them here.
So the AP actually is right on the money, as is Gallup.
As the economic recovery enters its sixth year, a number of factors help explain why many Americans don't feel better off.
Income has not rebounded.
Millions are working part-time, even though they want full-time jobs.
It's taking longer to find a job.
People are still struggling with mortgage debt.
Some feel down about the economy because of their political views.
And most people don't feel free to spend as much as they used to because they don't have the money and their credit cards are maxed out.
And yet they get up every day and now here's Obama saying that his historical legacy is going to be his handling of the economy.
Think about it.
This means the public now views Obama's handling of every other issue as so terrible, as so bad, that he has to turn his handling of the economy into his legacy.
That's the way to look at this, how bad everybody must think everything else is, including the signature issue, Obamacare.
Man, if I had passed, if I was a socialist, a leftist, and I finally got universal health care, if I got government-sponsored health care, that would be, I'd be singing, I'd be crowing, I would be beating my chest.
I don't care what else was going on.
That is so huge.
They have commandeered one-sixth of the U.S. economy.
And he doesn't even want to make that as well.
Now, I understand why.
But he hates it.
And that is my point.
He's got nothing to hang his head on in terms of historical legacy.
So he's going to go to the economy.
And he's going to rely on the media to convince people that while their lives are stagnant, everybody else's must be going through the roof.
It must be cooking out there.
There must be some great recovery going on out there.
And maybe, maybe my day is coming.
That's what he's going to have to create because it isn't chugging along out there.
The economy is not recovering.
More part-time jobs than full-time every month.
Part-time jobs do not pay a lot.
You don't build a career on part-time jobs.
And the fundamental reason why all this is happening is the pie that everybody wants a piece of, that's just the private sector.
When we talk about getting your piece of the pie, this is the name for the economy, the private sector.
Well, when the government comes in and absorbs one-sixth of it in the healthcare takeover called Obamacare, pie gets smaller.
As government grows, how does it grow?
What's government do?
It has to take, it has to take money from other people, allocate it to itself, and then spend it however it wishes called redistribution.
Doesn't produce anything.
The private sector is getting smaller.
The apple, the pie is all getting smaller.
And that's why there's less of it to be had for people.
You want to talk about why the gap between rich and poor is expanding?
Because the pie is getting smaller.
And the pie can only get smaller as government grows.
That's the argument against government expansion.
In its simplest form, the argument against government expansion is that it shrinks opportunity for everybody who doesn't work or have anything to do with government.
So now we've got circumstances here where we've got a president literally on the ropes.
And the modern-day Republican Party is acting like it's on defense, acting like it's to blame for all this, acting like it thinks, they think that everybody's blaming them for all of this.
What other explanation could there be?
They actually are running around thinking that most Americans think they are the reason they can't find a job.
They are the reason their health care screwed up.
They believe that Obama has been inoculated because the media never criticizes Obama.
So they believe the American people give Obama a pass.
They believe that the American people believe everything the media says about them and Obama, and therefore they're constantly on defense.
So now they want to pass an immigration bill that's going to go nowhere, knowing full well it's going to go nowhere, just so the Hispanics will love them, just so they can send a message that they love the Hispanics.
But the message isn't going to get out.
This is not how you convey love and respect anyway.
And I got to take a brief time out here, my friends.
You'll sit tight because there's much more, as there always is, at the first time out of the program each day.
So don't go anywhere.
So I got an email.
I had a bunch of emails from last night.
Say, Rush, when you talked about Lois Lerner yesterday, you didn't report who she was talking about being crazy and insane and lunatics.
And she was talking about you.
And at the time, I didn't know that.
But Lois Lerner in the email talking about terrorists and looney to what, she was talking about talk radio and their callers.
If somebody says that, who do they mean?
Me.
So Lois Lerner claimed she had to go get the Tea Party.
They had to stick the IRS on the Tea Party and make sure to damage them and treat them unfairly because of me.
And you, by the way, because you callers are a bunch of rabid lunatics.
I didn't know that when I was talking about it yesterday, but I did find out about it last night.
But no names, I don't think.
She just said talk radio.
Now, back to all of this business here, the Republicans and their immigration bill, and they've got another bill.
They're suing Obama bill.
That could be a disaster if it ever got anywhere.
You know why?
Are you in favor of that bill?
You in favor of suing Obama?
Well, in the first place, the so-called conservative justices on the Supreme Court have already ruled that Congress cannot sue Obama for not enforcing the law.
It would be a waste of time.
But what are they suing him for?
They're suing him for not enforcing the law.
What is the law that he hasn't enforced?
Well, the big one's Obamacare.
So it could be said that the Republicans are suing so that Obama will fully implement Obamacare.
Is that what we want?
I mean, if you're going to sue a guy for not enforcing the law and the big thing is Obamacare and you want him as a result of your lawsuit to be forced to enforce the law, then I don't even know if they've thought about this.
The result could well be that their lawsuit could force the full implementation of Obamacare.
Well, no, the lawsuit, it's about all the extra, the executive actions, executive orders.
And it could well be that because they may not have thought this through, you're asking me, is the real purpose of this that you're thinking they're once again just trying to do this for show to send a message.
You say, hey, hey, we're tough on Obama.
Hey, we're going to hold him accountable.
Hey, he's not going to get away with me.
Look at it.
We're going to sue the guy.
And just let it end with that.
Again, just like the immigration bill isn't going to succeed, but they can send a message with it and be loved in return.
And so the thinking, you're thinking that the lawsuit bill is the same thing.
Send a message to the teapot.
Hey, we hear you.
Hey, we're going after the guy.
Look at this.
We're suing the guy.
Knowing he ain't going to go anywhere.
But get some love back.
Well, I'm telling you, motivations matter.
And in this case, they're the wrong ones.
As it appears from here, sitting on the sidelines, I must always have the caveat, I don't do their job, so I don't really know what you're doing.
But I take it back, Lois Lerner could not have been talking about me.
Well, I'll tell you why.
Here's her email.
And her email companion started it.
And in all fairness, as best as I can tell here, whoever she was emailing started this, whoever her email companion was wrote, quote, well, you should hear the wacko wing of the GOP.
The U.S. is through.
Too many foreigners sucking the teeth.
Time to hunker down, buy ammo and food, prepare for the end.
Well, I don't advocate any of that.
And I haven't talked about sucking from the teat since 1992.
I revised the terminology.
And I certainly have never urged everybody to go buy food, store food, and hunker down.
I've never urged anybody to go out and buy ammo.
So it turns out that whoever was emailing Lois Lerner was not referring to me.
Well, they might have thought they were, but they can't be.
These right-wing radio shows, they're really scary to listen to, said Lerner's companion.
And Lerner emailed back, great, maybe we are through if there are that many.
And then that's when she used the bodily orifice that is the number two exit point for most people.
And then her companion said, I'm talking about the host of the shows.
The callers are rampant.
Now, I don't know why, but the drive-bys have not reported this exchange.
Whenever they talk about Lerner and reporting that she referred to conservatives as what is an appropriate word for this, because I refuse to say it.
Everybody else may be using it.
I just refuse to say it.
I don't even want to say that.
Yeah, rear end, I guess, has got close enough.
Whether all these emails or calling people rear ends, the drive-bys are not reporting, unbelievably, that Lerner and her companion were referring to talk radio when she said that.
And that is really weird since they normally pounce on any chance to make fun of or ridicule or discredit talk radio.
And there it is right in front of them and they leave that out.
But I think what this proves, ladies and gentlemen, is that Lois Lerner and the IRS were targeting conservatives for political reasons.
Whoever said what, whoever started what, there can be no doubt now, if there ever was, that the IRS, with the full awareness and knowledge of the White House, was targeting conservatives for political reasons.
And the drive-bys have denied that.
The media has denied that ever since this began, as they've attempted to cover and deflect whatever went on there.
Remember, it started out just a couple of rogue employees in the Cincinnati office, and it quickly became, we became aware that it was massive.
It was IRS headquarters in Washington that was giving the orders for all this and actually running the operation against Tea Party groups in denying them their tax exempt status, which would therefore prevent them from fundraising for candidates and issues.
And that ended up being their denial of the First Amendment, denial of free speech rights.
But the idea that they had a clear shot here at blaming talk radio and chose not to.
I mean, the media chose not to highlight that.
There has to be a reason why they didn't.
And maybe, maybe, the reason they didn't is because they wanted the perception to be all of conservatism, not just limited to talk radio and callers.
That would be my best guess.
But look, I'm not quite through here with this business of Obama declaring that his handling of the U.S. economy will be his historic legacy.
Because it means, if he's doing that, doing it publicly, it means the public now views his handling of every other issue as so terrible that he has to turn to the economy as his historic legacy, the thing to hang his head on.
But I have a story here in the Washington Post that dovetails with this.
Immigration is now President Obama's worst issue.
Immigration has emerged as perhaps President Obama's worst issue definitely for today and maybe for his entire presidency when it comes to public perception.
A new poll from APGFK shows more than two-thirds of Americans, the real number, 68%.
The way to say this is almost 70% disapprove of Obama's handling of the immigration issue in general.
Only 31% approve.
That's down from 38% two months ago.
He is, I mean, the bottom is falling out of Obama on immigration.
And the Washington Post says here, we tried to find an issue on which Obama has earned such poor marks at any point in his presidency.
And even on what was long his worst issue, the economy, his disapproval rating rarely peaked over 60%.
But it is 68% on immigration.
Now, stop and think for a moment.
The bottom is falling out.
Obama is nosediving everywhere you look in the polling data.
And for them to report this, it's got to be worse than what they're reporting.
Gallup has him at 39% approval.
It's got to be lower than that.
It just does.
Common sense says it has to be lower than that.
And now they admit that 68% totally disapprove of Obama's handling of immigration.
And number two is the economy.
And that's what he's going to hang his legacy on.
And here come the Republicans in the midst of all that with the President of the United States getting a 68% disapproval on immigration.
Here comes the House leadership trying to pass an immigration bill that mirrors what Obama wants to do.
What in the name of Sam Hill is going on?
Well, we know what's going on.
The Chamber of Commerce is going on, number one.
Number two, the Republican consultant class and the moderate wing, the rhinos, have convinced everybody that the only way the Republicans can ever win again is with Hispanic voters.
And they have further convinced them that the only way they can get Hispanic voters is to basically get rid of the border.
The only way to get Hispanic votes is to make it look like you're not opposed to any Hispanic migrating to the country, no matter when, no matter how.
Any opposition to that, and the Hispanics are going to run right back to the Democrats, and you're never going to get a single Hispanic vote.
That must be what they believe.
And if they believe that, they've got to be, somebody has to be telling them that, people they trust, i.e. their consultants, i.e. their big donors.
But it just, this is one of these things, like I said, top of the program.
Makes me feel like I'm the one going nuts here.
Nothing makes any sense.
We have reality on the ground over here, and we have what's happening in Washington over here.
And what's happening in Washington is totally ass backwards what's happening with reality.
And this is the kind of thing that leads people to start providing really wacko answers to their suspicions.
Because this is so out of whack.
This makes so little sense, either common or political, that the only natural reaction you can have is say, what in the name of Sam Hill is really going on?
The sitting president, somebody supposedly unassailably popular, somebody messianic when he assumed office, somebody who they dared not criticize because everybody will hate their guts if they do, is plummeting in the public opinion polls.
His immigration reform ideas are at 68% disapproval, no doubt flavored largely by this massive assault currently by children at the southern border.
Almost 70%, and here come the Republicans, hell-bent on passing something that people think is amnesty so they can get credit for it, even if it doesn't pass.
Why when you have these numbers?
I've been asking this, by the way, since the early days of Obamacare.
You remember, you realize, Obamacare has never had majority support in a public opinion poll.
It has had within the Democrat Party.
But the American public at large, it has never had majority support.
It's always been opposed by a majority of people.
I've never understood why the Republicans, especially after the 2010 midterms, the emergence of the Tea Party, why didn't the Republicans try to forge an alliance with all those people who crossed the political spectrum?
It wasn't just Tea Party types and conservatives that opposed Obamacare.
It was all demographics.
You can find every demographic represented in those that opposed Obamacare.
Why didn't the Republicans in 2010 try to forge an alliance with a majority body of thought?
And I'm asking the question again: 68, almost 70% disapprove of two things.
They disapprove of what Obama wants to do with immigration, and they disagree with what he is doing.
Why not stand for the opposite then?
Why not contrast yourself and try to form an alliance with all of these people who oppose it rather than getting on board the Obama train?
And I think we know the answer to that too.
They have been, well, there are multiple answers to it, but right in the mix is their, I don't know if it's hatred or what dislike, but they just don't want to have anything to do with their conservative base.
They just don't want to have, they don't want to be identified with it.
They don't want to appear to be aligning or associating with it.
And that leads me to think they really don't even want to win with it.
It's the most convoluted thing.
Except it wouldn't be if somebody told us what was really going on, even though we think we know.
I got to take a break here, folks.
Sit tight.
Back with much more after this.
Don't go away.
Okay, okay.
So you want proof.
You want proof that the Republicans aren't going to get any credit for trying to pass an immigration bill with the Hispanics, even though it fails, even though it has no prayer, they're going to do it anyway to get credit for it, to show the Hispanics they love them and the Republican Party is a great home for them.
Well, how's that working out for them on impeachment?
On impeachment, they are shouting from the rooftops, We are not going to impeach Obama!
And everywhere you look in the media, the Republicans are going to impeach Obama.
The Democrats are lying about it, and they're on TV saying it.
The media is reporting it.
Boehner's, we are not going to impeach Obama.
Turn on the TV.
Republicans impeach Obama.
Republicans want to impeach Obama.
Republicans strategizing on impeaching Obama.
We are not going to impeach Obama.
Please do not hate us.
Republicans plan on impeaching Obama.
Strategy sessions at work.
How to do it.
And then Obama then goes to Kansas City after visiting Arthur Bryant, which is what every Democrat president does.
Every Democrat president.
You got to go to Arthur Bryant's barbecue joint.
You got to go in there.
And it's wrote, Kansas City, it's one of the things you should do.
And he did.
And then he goes up and he says, he says, they just got to stop the hating.
You know, stop the hating.
The president of the United States, there's a G in that word.
If you're going to use this to stop the hating, they got to just stop the hating.
You know what?
Just get, come on, come on.
Now let's get together.
Let's stop the hating.
And of course, who does that appeal to?
The low information crowd.
They think it's cool and hip.
They're out there shouting, we please hear us, please.
We are not.
It's in caps and underlined.
We are not going to impeach Obama.
Obama goes, cancer.
They got to stop the hating.
So how is it going to work that they're going to pass an immigration bill to show the Hispanics who's going to tell the Hispanics they passed it?
And by the way, where is it written that that's what the Hispanics require before they will vote for you?
Stop the hating.
Got to stop the hating.
Let me ask you: was it an act of love when the president turned the IRS loose on the Tea Party?
Have you seen Catherine Engelbrecht?
She's one of the most attractive, nicest, sweetest people, looks like on TV.
She's got this Tea Party group.
She wanted to start it.
She wanted to raise money.
IRS targeted her, made her out to be some sort of a criminal.
You want to talk about Stop the Hating?
Was it an act of love when the president repeatedly lied to the very people sitting behind him in Kansas City yesterday?
Hey, you like your doctor?
Well, that's great.
You keep your doctor.
You like your insurance plan?
Well, fine.
If you like it, you get to keep it.
25 different times over three years, he personally lied.
To the same people sitting behind him.
Was that an act of love?
We just got to, we got to stop the hating.
They, they should stop the hating.
Was it an act of love when the president repeatedly promised you that your premiums for your health insurance would come down $2,500 a year?
Was that an act of love?
Is what Obama is doing the result of loving people?
Or is he lying to them?
Do you lie to the people you love?
Or do you lie to the people you think are suckers?
Do you lie to the people you think are stupid enough to believe you?
Was it an act of love when the president opened the southern border for the purpose of letting in tens of thousands of illegals with criminal records and no skills and then dumped them in states without informing the governors?
Was that an act of the president loving anybody but the illegals?
The president's campaign called Mitt Romney a tax cheat and a murderer.
Was that an act of love?
Or was there maybe some hate behind that?
I don't know about you.
I'm not in any mood to listen to some lawless, angry guy do shtick about hate while he is dismantling the country.
I tell you, if I keep a sharp eye on the president talking about hate because it's all part of his and Holder's efforts to criminalize any criticism of Obama or any hate speech that might be considered criticism, to make no mistake about that.
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