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Dec. 4, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:13
December 4, 2014, Thursday, Hour #2
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Greetings, my friends.
Welcome back.
Great to have you.
It's Rush Limbaugh, America's real anchorman, America's truth detector, and Doctor of Democracy.
All combined, here's one harmless, lovable little fuzzball bent bundle at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program, 800-282-288-2 at the email address.
Hillrushbow at EIBnet.com.
I had a fascinating headline here in a story at The Hill, TheHill.com.
The headline is Jeb Girds for Battle with Base.
So here is a story about Jeb Bush, and he's contemplating whether or not to seek the presidency of this country in 2016.
And this story is about the battle that he's going to have in getting there.
And the battle that he's going to have is the battle with his own party, not with the Democrats.
Wouldn't you think that in a story about a Republican candidate or potential candidate seeking the White House, the story would be girding for battle with the Democrats?
Here's the opening paragraph.
Jeb Bush is stealing S-T-E-E-L, getting prepared for a fight with the Republican Party conservative base, signaling that he will not bend from his centrist positions on immigration and Common Core education standards in 2016, even if it costs him support with grassroots conservatives.
In what could be read as a swipe at Mitt Romney, Bush told a Washington audience, this is a CEO group that the Wall Street Journal put together, Bush told a Washington audience this week that no one really knows if a presidential candidate can survive the primaries without sacrificing his core principles because it hasn't been tried recently.
He said the former governor of Florida also, no, the quotes end there.
The former governor of Florida also told the CEO council that candidates have to be prepared to lose the primary to win the general.
Now, normally in politics, the way it's always worked, I mean, just to show you how upside down things are, normally the way it's worked is you got candidate A, sits a Republican, and he wants to be president.
So the first thing he's got to do is win over the base.
Because the base is thought to be 40% of the entire presidential vote.
The Democrats have their 40%, their base, and the Republicans have theirs.
So the Republican candidate would have to go out and first win his party's base, while the Democrat candidate does the same, and after doing that, then moderate a bit in directions away from the base to pick up, say, the precious independents and moderates.
Now, as you know, if you've listened to me regularly, you know that I think this is a giant trick or trap that has been played on Republicans for I don't know how long.
Because what it in effect did was create Republican candidacies which were designed to appeal to only 20% of the electorate.
While the Democrats were outrunning candidacies, aiming at everybody, as many people as they could.
And the way the trick manifested itself was political consultants, both parties, actually, because there was money in this, political consultants in both parties would tell candidates, look, you got your base.
You got your base wrapped up.
You don't need me for that.
What you need me for is to get independence.
Remember this old song?
Nobody wins the White House without winning the independence.
And you're going to have your base locked up because every Republican candidate of base is automatically going to vote for him.
Now, you need me, Mr. Candidate.
This is what the consultants would say in their sales pitch to be hired.
You need me because I am uniquely qualified.
I'm uniquely capable.
I'm uniquely talented to show independence while you're the man.
And so a candidate would be presented with a campaign that took the base for granted, and it was aimed at independents, i.e. moderates or even liberals.
It isn't any wonder Republican candidates would lose in that scenario.
Because what happened is the base was taken for granted.
And as is the case in 2012, 4 million of them stayed home and didn't vote for Romney.
And I don't know if it's because they were angry at being taken for granted and decided to teach a lesson or if they just were unenthused by the Romney candidacy.
It could have been a combination of many things.
But the bottom line is 4 million members of the Republican base didn't vote.
Well, it didn't matter.
Romney did win the independence.
Do you remember this?
In 2012, Mitt Romney won the Independence going away.
It wasn't even close.
And that used to be the rubric.
That used to be what you had to do.
And if you did that, if you pulled that off, why you were guaranteed to win?
All of a sudden, Republican candidates are winning the Independence and losing the overall election.
So now, what Jeb is saying is that he's got to go out in order to get his party's nomination.
He's got to figure out a way to win the primaries running against the base.
That's what he told these CEOs.
That's what this means.
Jeb girds for battle with base.
Jeb Bush signaling he will not bend from his centrist positions on immigration and common core education standards in 2016, even if it costs him support with grassroots conservatives.
So he is assuring the CEOs and he is assuring the Chamber of Commerce that he's not going to pander.
He's not going to modify, moderate, change.
He's not going to pander to these Tea Party types.
He's not going to pander.
He's not going to say he's conservative when he is.
And he's not going to go out and do any of that.
And that's going to be courageous.
Don't you know?
This is a courageous stance we are supposed to believe is taking place.
It's now going to be a courageous campaign when one of the Republican candidates openly says that he will need to run against his base in order to get elected.
And that's what this story is all about.
And I just, it's 180 degrees out of face on what everything we've always been told.
And we will see.
Market Watch has a story today that the ChiComs have now surpassed us.
For the first time since Ulysses S. Grant was president, the U.S. is not the world's largest economy.
The world's largest economy now is the ChiComs.
The ChiComs have now, according to MarketWatch, the ChiComs have officially overtaken the United States of America as the world's largest and number one economy for the first time since Ulysses S. Grant was president, drunk and president.
Now, Barry, yeah, it's facts.
He's a great guy.
Don't misunderstand.
But I mean, we're the factual.
I write history books here, folks.
Don't give me any business.
Now, because I know.
Now, buried in this story is one of the reasons why.
One of the reasons why the CHICOMs have overtaken us as the world's largest economy.
It's not the only reason by any stretch.
But one of the factors is our birth rate is so low that our birth rate's not sufficient to maintain our population.
For whatever reason, abortion, people aren't having kids, you name it.
Our birth rate is below replacement levels.
Now, the CHICOMs don't have that problem, even though they've got their one-child system because they've got a billion people.
And population is a key to economic growth.
There's another factor, folks.
While Obama's running around worried about all these civil rights violations, there are now the largest number of Americans ever not working in this country, expressed as the labor force participation rate.
93 million who are capable of working are not.
And that number is growing.
And unstated in all this, these factors that I have, the birth rate being below replacement levels, and that's key, by the way.
Can I share something with you?
I remember back when I worked in Sacramento at KFBK, my adopted hometown, UC Davis was right down the road.
The university that has that professor of economics who says there is no American dream.
I was actually asked to come down and do a lecture for a class.
I forget the class it was at UC Davis.
And I readily agreed.
I thought it would be fun.
I mean, here I am at one of the citadels and institutions of higher learning, just a guy on the radio.
And I chose, you won't believe this.
I chose as one of the key elements of my lecture the American birth rate and the fact that early demographic trends, even this is back in 1985 or 86 now, that we were trending toward a birth rate that would end up in 20, 30 years below replacement levels.
And I tried to warn them what this would mean for the U.S. economy.
I tied it into abortion, which they didn't want to hear.
There's a college students, after all.
I tied it into a number of things.
It's something I had never talked about on the radio, which I wanted to make also a fact.
I just didn't want to take the radio show to the classroom because I figured correctly so they all listened anyway.
So I wanted to talk about something I had not spoken about on the radio that I was researching and preparing to.
And that was just one of the things I discussed.
Now, here we are, 30 some odd years later.
And it's come to pass.
Oh, yeah.
Even then, the accuracy rating was intact.
This is before the Sullivan group even started auditing my opinions.
Now, let's add one other thing to this mix.
It's something that's not talked about.
I don't think, I didn't read the whole story, but it is one of the reasons why there are certain people in this country who are hell-bent on facilitating amnesty and illegal immigration.
The simple fact of the matter is we are a shrinking economy, and there are a lot of reasons for it.
And I would put at the top of the list way too much liberalism, too much of a welfare state, too much of a nanny state.
It has become too easy and comfortable in this country not to work.
Everybody not working is eating.
Most of the people not working have a cell phone.
Almost everybody not working has a television of some kind.
And you simply cannot grow an economy this way.
You cannot grow an economy with more and more people not working and not contributing to the whole concept of economic growth and the nation growth.
You just can't.
Now, I know some of you are shouting, hey, don't forget NAFTA, all these jobs that were shut down and sent over.
I know it all gets thrown in the mix here.
I'm not purposely trying to ignore things, but the primary cause of all this is socialist tendencies in the welfare state, which creates a growing government which grows by taking things out of the private sector.
Obamacare is the latest assault on it.
But there was plenty of it happening before Obamacare.
Then you add abortion into this.
I don't care, folks.
I don't care what you think about abortion politically, but you simply can't retard your birth rate by 1.3 million a year every year since 1973 and have it not mean something.
We had the number the other day that if there the vast majority of abortions in this country occur among minorities, African Americans and Hispanics.
And it was a striking number that I came across.
You know, 78% of all abortions in New York City are African American.
I don't know if that's the case nationwide, but it's pretty close.
If just now, this is not realistic, but it makes the point.
If there weren't any abortions, if there hadn't been, maybe not even all of them, just a great reduction.
The black population today would be 36% of the country instead of 15%.
So it matters.
Well, anyway, all of this is why there are some people hell-bent on illegal immigration, because if we're not going to give birth to replace our declining population, then we've got to find it somewhere.
Somebody's got to pay for this.
We've got to get money from somewhere.
Obamacare is creating part-time workers left and right.
Obamacare and Obama, period, the Democrat Party's created an ever-expanding dependency class.
Somebody's got to come here and work.
And this is the attitude of the Chamber of Commerce.
And they're not alone.
Now, the Democrats, their economics is not their concern.
Votes are their concern.
But all of this stuff is intertwined.
And I'm not, do not misunderstand.
I'm not supporting or I'm not trying to make a case for illegal immigration or amnesty.
I'm telling you why it's happened.
All of this is happening because we've made absolute disastrous mistakes in our leadership.
But at the top of the list, this idea that we have a labor force participation, 92%, I mean, 93, it's 58%, I think it's what?
92, 93 million Americans not working?
You can't chalk it up.
Well, Russia aren't any jobs.
It's the economy.
It's certainly a factor, but we also have to admit that you don't have to work to eat anymore.
You don't have to work to drive a car.
You don't have to work to get health care.
You don't have to work to watch television.
You don't have to work to make a phone call.
And I'm not trying to criticize the recipients, but some of this stuff, if we can't talk about it honestly, even in an abstract way, we're never going to get anywhere near solving this stuff.
I don't mean any of this personal, but it personally to anybody, but it all adds up and it all has meaning.
The CHICOMs, a communist country, has overcome us as the world's largest economy.
This is the exact kind of thing the so-called greatest generation sacrificed everything to prevent World War II, fighting the communists, all of that.
But then again, the World War II generation did play a role in creating all the dependency in a way.
They gave birth to them.
Didn't want their kids to go through the hell they went through.
Natural human desire.
Every parent wants better for their kids than they had for themselves.
So, anyway, it's a mess.
And you can, if somebody wants to know why, there are answers.
I have to take a break.
I just saw the clock.
I'm amazed I haven't been coughed at yet here.
Here we go back to the phones of Dennis in New York City, retired sergeant NYPD.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Hello, Rush, longtime listener.
Thank you, Leslie.
You're a great American.
Thank you very much, sir.
Appreciate that.
Rush, I just want to make a comment about the situation with Michael Gardner in Staten Island.
One of the chief complaints among the many from the Ferguson situation with Officer Wilson was that he did not wait for backup after the initial confrontation with Brown.
So now, look at the situation in Staten Island.
Those cops walked up to Eric Gardner.
They knew right away, probably after the first five minutes, that he was not going to comply and go peaceable.
So what did they do?
They called for backup.
And that's evidenced by the tape.
So with six cops there, he still was not going to comply with the lawful order.
So I hear the president and the mayor talking about how they have to retrain the police.
Well, you can have all the training in the world, but unless people will comply with lawful orders, this is going to be a reoccurring situation.
Exactly.
I don't think there's a.
I know the race industry is trying to create a racial component here, but the sergeant in command on scenes, a black female, was on site watching this.
This was not racial.
The comparisons, I understand people trying to make them.
Well, okay, the gentle giant, so he goes in and robs a convenience store.
Yeah.
Okay, Eric Garner, misdemeanor, selling illegal cigarettes and full force.
And these two guys are dead.
The comparisons don't hold up.
There are reasons beyond what Dennis here just said.
But there's an effort to make this a racial situation in New York.
There's nobody, well, this is not true.
I was going to say, there's nobody can possibly believe these cops in Staten Island went hunting looking for a black.
They were called to the scene by a shop owner for crying out loud.
But it doesn't matter.
Folks, remember, power, not truth, is what's taking place here.
People who think they got power trying to define the truth for the rest of us.
Yes, sir, rebob, already December 4th.
How many of you are starting to get in a Christmas spirit?
We had the Christmas tree go up late yesterday afternoon.
No, no, no, no, it hadn't been decorated yet.
That'll happen later soon.
The little cat's first Christmas tree had no idea what to make of it.
It was funny.
Little kittens and cats are so damn curious.
It's this big tree going up.
It no idea what just looking suspicious, you know, hiding behind a post, thinking of ways to attack it.
It's just hilarious watching these animals react to things that they're seeing for the first time.
Anyway, back to the phones.
It's Mike in Albany.
Mike, I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hi.
Hey, Don.
It's just the third time I'm calling the first time my batteries lasted long enough to get in touch with you.
Well, I'm glad you made it through.
I appreciate your patience out there.
But listen, this is my question.
It's about Ferguson's, about the guy down in Gardener, down in Staten Island.
Most of us citizens out here in this country are living paycheck to paycheck.
We have what we earn, we need to keep.
Like you said before, these governments outstretched themselves and outspent themselves.
Now they're trying to squeeze off the people for everything to pay them back.
It's frustrating.
This is a powder keg that's going to explode.
And that's all I got to say.
Well, that's why I wanted to take your call, because I had enough of an inkling of what you were going to say that it was intriguing to me.
And let me tell you what his point is.
He says, most everybody out there is living paycheck to paycheck.
And it's probably true.
I didn't get to it, but about a week before Thanksgiving, there was another in an endless line of these.
Americans are not saving enough.
And it's almost predictable that as we approach holiday time, the AP or somebody is going to run a story on some economist or a series of economists worrying that the American people are not saving enough.
It's 25 years in a row I've seen this.
It's almost as though it's on some agenda calendar.
And as we get near Thanksgiving, the calendar pops out a to-do list for the media.
And one of the things on the to-do list, run story that says Americans not saving enough.
Because this happens all the time.
And it seems to happen around holiday time.
And there's a purpose for it behind it.
And it's generally used to attack Republican presidents.
And it's usually a sympathetic story.
Well, Americans aren't making enough to save anything because the economy is so bad because only the rich are doing what.
But they can't run that story because that's exactly what's happening with Obama.
So they can't blame it on him.
So this story blamed it on the American people who were spending everything and not saving it and were behaving irresponsibly.
And that's generally the way these stories do run when Democrats are in the way.
When there's a Republican in the White House, the people not saving enough story is always because a Republican president only cares about the rich.
I mean, you can make a book on this.
Now, I didn't get to the story because other things superseded it in terms of my hierarchy and determining what was important that day, but it's out there.
Fact is, when you've got, let me circle back to this, when you have 92, 93 million Americans not even working, what is paycheck to paycheck?
Now, when you talk about the people who are working, a number of people working full-time have been reduced to part-time.
And they've had to either make adjustments and deal with it or go out and get a second and or third job.
But the fact of the matter is, disposable income is dwindling because the cost of satisfying government is going up.
The cost to satisfy government is taxes and regulation.
And what Mike here is referring to, hey, we're all paycheck to paycheck, and the government doesn't care.
They keep demanding more, as in the cigarette tax in New York City.
They keep demanding.
They keep raising taxes, and it doesn't matter whether people can afford them or not.
They just keep raising them.
And when somebody turns around and says, well, we've got to cut government, oh, no, government can't do with one penny less than it ever had last year.
If we're going to have a tax cut, we've got to make it up somewhere by raising somebody else's taxes.
And he thinks, with all of this never-ending effort to raise more and more money and tax people more and more, that a powder keg is being created here.
And I think there are a number of people who might think that these excessive actions by the cops are brought on by people being just totally frustrated.
Here's a guy trying to earn a living selling individual cigarettes.
I don't know about you.
That's still.
That causes me to sit up and kind of cock my head and say, what?
I mean, that's pretty dire coming.
That tells us quite a lot, right?
Single cigarettes?
And he's selling Lucy's, they're called, because many people, that's all they can afford is one cigarette.
All the while the government's done everything they can to addict people to them.
And then you, I mean, yeah, it used to be bumming a cigarette was, hey, man, you got to guy give you a cigarette.
Try that now.
It's like asking somebody to give them 20 bucks.
It doesn't happen.
I think there is.
His point was that there is a bunch of effervescing beneath the surface, economic tension.
And that now and then it's going to boil over.
And I don't doubt that at all.
Because the government, look at Obamacare.
Look at if you don't get insurance, what?
Pay a fine.
Pay a tax.
Whatever they want to call it to make it constitutional.
And they raise taxes to boot, but it just, it never ends.
It never, because you talk about people, don't say, how about the federal government's nuts?
$18 trillion national debt.
They dare run stories blasting the American people for not saving.
Do you think you could get by on $3 trillion a year?
I think I could.
There are people in our government who think, no, that's impossible.
$3 trillion, not possible.
We need at least four.
For what?
The idea, $18 trillion in debt.
This is why the Tea Party came into existence.
There are people who know that this simply can't go on interminably.
There is going to be a day of reckoning on this.
Nobody knows when, and people are afraid of what it will manifest itself as, but it will happen.
Is that right?
Eric Garner was after the arrest.
He was still alive.
He died in the hospital.
Later, and the medical examiner ruled that it was a homicide caused by compression.
You know, he had six kids.
You know, Eric Garner had six kids, and he's out there selling Lucy's.
He's trying to support six kids by selling single cigarettes.
At least he was working.
Here's Jen in Pittsburgh.
Hey, Jen, great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hello.
Hi.
Hi.
I am calling because I'd say a couple weeks ago, I took a picture of my three girls at their Halloween parade at school, and they were dressed up as colonial girls.
And I sent it to your website, and then I got an email saying they wanted my address.
I was expecting a little card saying, you know, thanks for sending us your photo.
Now, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Wait, just a minute here.
So your three daughters dressed up, is it three or four?
I have three little girls.
Three little girls, they dressed up as colonial girls, and they sent that picture to the Rush Revere website.
Yes, sir.
And then people there emailed you back and wanted your address because, and then you thought we were going to send you a card.
Yes.
Did you really think that's all we were going to do is send you a card?
Well, I have four kids, so yes.
Okay, okay.
Well, what did you end up getting?
Well, oh, my goodness.
We got a bear for each kid, a notebook, which I think will be the biggest hit because my girls love writing stories.
They like reading stories.
So they will.
Now, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Who's on the cover of the notebook?
I believe it's Liberty.
That's exactly right.
Liberty, the favorite character of the books.
Oh, absolutely.
It's a Liberty notebook.
Exactly right.
Yes, and they got stickers and a bookmark and the audio version of the new book, which they are going to be just, they're going to jump high.
How old are you?
Oh, you have not let them see this stuff yet?
No, they're not home from school yet.
My son opened his.
Oh, it just came today.
It just came today.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
I wanted to call and say thank you because I am a rush baby, and I'm raising four rush babies, and God bless you.
It'll carry on down the line.
Well, God bless you.
It's great to have people like you in the audience.
Well, it's great to have people like you teaching our kids stuff.
Well, I know.
I know.
My oldest daughter, she had a word search for fourth grade for Thanksgiving.
And she had to find all the Thanksgiving words.
And she's doing this at home.
And she looks at me.
She goes, Mom, they're missing the most important word.
And I said, well, who?
And she says, William Bradford.
She goes, well, what about Squanto?
And she's going down all of these words that she remembers from your first book.
And she's like, she goes, I think that's a little more important than turkey.
And she would have never learned that at school.
She learned that from you.
So I am just so grateful.
Well, I have to, you know, that's an excellent point, too.
When I was taught the original Thanksgiving story, it wasn't as butchered as it is today.
But I still got, I mean, the version I was taught was a variation of the Pilgrims Saved, the Indians saved the Pilgrims.
If it hadn't been for the Indians, there wouldn't have been any Pilgrims, wouldn't have been able to live, and there wouldn't have been any Thanksgiving.
And I was taught that version.
I was not taught it under the rubric of America sucks, as it's sometimes taught today.
I wasn't taught that under the rubric of racism.
And I wasn't taught that the Pilgrims took advantage of and then conquered and mistreated the Indians.
It was a, but I was even, so this is 55 years ago, 53.
I was taught same way you were.
My point is, I didn't learn about William Bradford for years.
William Bradford wasn't taught to me either.
I didn't learn about it until my first book in the 90s when I wanted to do the, for a whole host of reasons, I wanted to do a chapter on the real story of Thanksgiving.
And that's when I first learned about Bradford in detail and actually read the journal and learned what the real lesson was.
So there are a lot of adults.
This is one of the things that I am discovering here with these children's books.
There are a lot of adults who are learning things in these Rush Revere children's books that they weren't taught either.
You should see some of the email we're getting, folks, from adults.
This is the one thing I did not expect, and I don't know why, but I didn't.
I didn't expect a lot of adults to be reading these.
I thought they would read them to their grandkids or kids, but I figured it was all stuff that adults knew.
And I can't tell you the number of adults who are writing, thanking us because they're learning things about American history they didn't know.
And not just the first pilgrim's book, but all three of them, most recent one being Rush Revere and the American Revolution.
And so the whole thing has been really gratifying.
And that's why when we get emails from people like you and your kids and sending us pictures like this, we've got all these TED T Bears that we have and we've send them out.
And we're encouraging all kinds of interactivity at the Rush Revere Facebook page and at the Rush Revere website.
So you're making our day, Jen, with this and having your kids interact with us.
You really are.
And I can't thank you enough.
And I'm so excited that they're going to be excited about a little gift pack that we put together for them.
So thank you much for taking the time to call.
And are you going to give them to them today when they get home from school, or are you going to wait and give them to them for Christmas?
Oh, my goodness.
I have to give them today.
Yeah, yeah.
It's going to kill me knowing that they're here and they can't see them.
So absolutely, they will get them today.
And they will just be absolutely ecstatic.
Well, if I must say so myself, the audio version of the third book, and I did the audio for all three, obviously.
But this one is really good.
This, I have to say.
This one is.
You get better, hopefully, each time you do something.
One of the five St. Louis Rams players who came out of the tunnel, Hands Up, Don't Shoot, this past Sunday, has spoken, had a miniature press appearance in Irf City, Missouri, which is where the Rams training facility is.
Tied in Jared Cook.
And here is a portion of what he had to say.
That was, actually, it was yesterday when he made the pressure.
It was a perfect example of a peaceful protest.
If anything should have been said about it by anybody, it should have been an example of a way to peacefully protest and peacefully get your point across without tearing up your memory.
Why would we come at the police in a disrespectful way when we work with the police in the community all the time?
Why would I disrespect a group of men that we have complete respect for in the community that help us every day?
Okay, so he clearly believes that coming out with hands up, don't shoot has nothing to do with the cops.
He's making a case here that why would we insult the police?
We weren't insulting the police.
We were peacefully protesting.
We were peacefully getting our point across without tearing up the neighborhood.
It had nothing to do with the police.
But the police, we're told that feelings matter.
And the police feel as though they were disrespected.
The police feel offended.
And feelings that we're all supposed to deal with that, right?
Well, I guess not here.
But you walk out, you run out with four of your buddies in uniform.
Hands up, don't shoot.
No, we're not disrespecting the police.
Why would anybody think that?
Let's play a game here.
Let us assume he really means this.
Because I think he really does.
I think Jared Cook really believes that this was in no way intended to disrespect or offend the cops.
So, so what was he?
It was a peaceful protest.
What was he protesting?
If hands up, don't shoot.
So my point is: who is telling these people what happened?
Because that didn't.
Hands up, don't shoot, didn't happen.
But I don't know that these guys know what really happened.
And there we have it.
And there you have truth losing once again to power, you see.
Anyway, I got to take a break here again.
Sorry, folks.
Okay, I know this government shutdown thing is a bit overdone, but there is a related story to this about how inside Washington works, how the two parties work together sabotaging their own bases.
And I am going to try to explain this to you when we get back.
So don't go anywhere, folks.
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