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Jan. 20, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
31:58
January 20, 2015, Tuesday, Hour #3
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So Billy Crystal yesterday said, stop shoving gay sex scenes in my face.
I'm tired of it.
I don't need to see it.
Please stop shoving gay sex scenes in my face.
Well, not even Billy Crystal gets a pass when you're talking about the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, whatever else.
Because today Billy Crystal said, I didn't mean just gay sex.
I meant all of it.
I'm sick and tired of seeing all explicit sex scenes on my TV in my face.
I didn't just mean gay sex scenes.
I mean all of it.
I'm sick and tired of the entire flood of explicit sex scenes in my face on TV.
But I'm going to quote right here.
Stop shoving gay sex scenes in my face.
So he had to get his mind right.
And he did inside 24 hours.
Greetings, folks.
Great to have you back.
Rush Limbaugh at EIB Network 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program.
This is a good point here.
It's a story by Alex Pollack at Real Clear Markets.
Why did no one predict the oil price collapse?
This interests me.
He said, we have just had a freefall in one of the most important prices in the world, the price of oil.
Looking back, we're keenly aware that it dropped about 60% from its 2014 high to its recent low, 60% drop.
Although some people thought the price of oil might go down, nobody, at least nobody I can find, publicly predicted anything like this big a drop.
Why?
Oil prices went from $108 a barrel in June of last year to an intraday low on January 13th of 44 bucks.
Some people now say it could go all the way down to 25.
Among those failing to predict this drop were the government's Financial Stability Oversight Council and its Office of Financial Research.
Although they were searching for systemic risk factors, they didn't find this one.
So why not?
Perhaps they were too busy trying to expand their power over insurance companies to think of it.
And as for the Federal Reserve, their current adverse case stress test has oil prices going up to $110.
So they missed this totally at the Federal Reserve.
The Wall Street Journal 2014 Economic Forecasting Survey found that the economists surveyed expected oil to end 2014 about $95 a barrel, up from $92 a barrel at the time they did that survey.
That's a big miss.
But even they were not alone.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration 2014 outlook gave itself a very wide margin for error, projecting oil prices between $159 on the high side to $70 on the low.
Obviously, their range wasn't wide enough for the actual low so far, about 35% under their lowest case.
The IMF, World Economic Outlook of October 2014, forecast that the average price of oil will be $102 a barrel in 2014, $99 a barrel in 2015.
As Wells Fargo analysts said in December, markets anticipated a slight decline in oil prices, but few, if any, expected a rapid 50 to 60% decline.
Or as the investors on last week's Barron's Roundtable reflected, none of us predicted the oil price plunge.
Or as one financial journalist wrote with candor, my recounting hasn't yet made mention of the recent drive or dive in oil prices.
Now, the point here is, we got experts in everything, folks.
We got experts predicting what job numbers are going to be next month, experts predicting how many unemployment claims are going to have.
Experts predicting what the temperature of the climate is going to be 50 years from now.
We've got experts telling us this disaster is going to happen and that good time is going to happen.
We've got experts predicting everything.
We've got experts predicting what's going to happen with the economy.
We have experts predicting what's going to happen with healthcare.
We have experts predicting what's going to happen in the Middle East.
Nobody predicted this.
Nobody got anywhere near close to this.
Especially people whose lives are devoted to the price of oil, whose careers are intertwined with it.
The people whose business it is to track the price of oil hadn't the slightest idea this was coming.
Oil has dropped 60% less than a year.
No one predicted it.
Not one expert.
Now, what is the takeaway from this?
Well, I mean, you can think of a bunch of them, the usual ones, make fun of experts and count them out every time an expert makes a prediction.
We made fun of them for years.
And this is just more evidence than making fun of them is justified.
But strip all that away, let's focus back on the people who are in the oil market.
Maybe they're in the oil markets in the futures markets on Wall Street.
Maybe they're in the derivative side of it.
Maybe they're at ExxonMobil.
Maybe they're wherever they are.
The people who are working in the business of oil and all of its related businesses.
Nobody called this.
And you've got amongst these people, no doubt, consultants hired by various entities to tell them when these kinds of things are going to happen.
And they've set themselves up as experts.
Just like Dr. Kissinger is a consultant on world affairs and foreign policy.
He's got clients.
Minimum is a million dollars a year to get Henry Kissinger's advice.
So what's going to happen wherever you want to know what it is anywhere in the world?
Well, I'm sure the oil business got the same kind of people.
Nobody got it.
Nobody called it.
The open of the program today, I posited that one of the things that people missed in the plunging price of oil was the shrinking demand.
And why'd they miss that?
Do not discount the fact that there are a bunch of idiots everywhere and they'll believe whatever a government agency says about something.
And if a government agency backed up by the media says the economy is roaring when it isn't, and if that's something they want to hear, then they will immediately discount anything that tells them the demand for oil, i.e. gasoline, is down because the economy isn't good.
But more than that, What caused the plummeting price in oil?
If these people who are in the business didn't know it was coming, much less couldn't predict it, then how do you explain it?
Is it the overwhelming, complex, inexplicable power of markets that simply cannot be pigeonholed and tracked and forecast because they're simply way too complex?
You can't control them.
You can't analyze them.
Or is it because, and this is where people fall into a trap, I think, is it because somebody, a very powerful entity or series of them, decided to get involved and artificially start running the price down while nobody saw this was happening.
And if that's the explanation, then how did they get away with it for so long?
Remember, it took a year for this to happen.
How did these people on the sly, I mean, the popular answer to this is the Saudis.
Yeah, the Saudis did it, man.
You should know that.
Rush, the Saudis did it.
I've even heard you explain it, Rush.
The Saudis are trying to wipe out fracking.
They're lowering the price.
They're biting a bullet on it themselves till they lower the fracking price and put the U.S. out of bid because the U.S. reserves are now larger than Saudi Arabia, but they've got to be about 70 bucks a barrel before we can go get it at a profit.
Well, okay, if that's your answer, if the Saudis did it, our friends, the Saudis, how did they do it in the dark, behind closed doors, behind the curtain?
How did they do it unseen for a year?
And if they were doing it and everybody knew they were doing it, why didn't people guess where it was going to end up?
And why weren't people able to predict the plunge, the next plunge, as each one occurred?
I mean, it was at 102, then it was at 90, and then it ended up at 85, and then 80.
It kept going down.
And nobody at any point had any idea where it was going to end up.
And if the Saudis are behind it and they want to destroy fracking, it's, okay, it's going to stop at around 60, wherever they need it to stop, just below the number that the U.S. needs to make it profitable to get it, that's where it'll stop.
Oh, wait a minute.
There's another interesting, yes, sorry, the Chikom economy, which we're told is just growing to beat the band.
Yes, we're told that because the media and leftists love to extol communist economies.
And we are supposed to believe that the Chikoms, a full-fledged economy dripped and steeped in communism, is becoming bigger now.
And we're at it running us, and they're making mincemeat of us, just like the Cuban healthcare system makes mincemeat of our healthcare system, right?
Well, the problem is that Chikom economy is not growing in burning.
The Chikom economy is slowing down.
And the demand that had everybody worried just a year ago that we were going to run out of oil because all these developing nations were starting to develop.
India, the Chikoms, remember all this, if you can, all this paranoid talk that we had to go electric, we had to go hybrid, we had to downsize, we got to go solar, we got to go wind, because the Chikoms have discovered a car and it's now affordable to most of their population.
And India's discovered a car and it's affordable.
We can't compete.
And our enemies, our frenzy Iranians, are going to flood the Chinese market with oil and deny us.
Remember, all these panic stories, every one of them wrong.
Every one of them.
Every aspect of this has been wrong.
It's so wrong, it can't be a conspiracy.
Because if it is, whoever's in charge of this is the biggest idiot that's ever run a conspiracy.
The Russian economy is tanking.
Well, of course the Russians are.
That's about it.
You know, the Russians, that, and Vladimir T-shirt with no, Vladimir Putin with no t-shirt on sweatshirts as licensed merchandise is about all their economy has.
Well, plus the natural gas lines they're running through these nations.
But I'm just stunned.
I'm just faded.
All of these experts and nobody called it.
Now, the lesson is the media is filled with experts everywhere telling you about anything, predicting the future, and nobody knows it.
The lesson is don't think yourself silly.
Do not think yourself stupid.
Do not think all these other people out there are smarter than you are because they aren't.
The only difference is they have access to cameras and microphones and know how to make themselves look like they're smart, and you may not, but that doesn't mean they're smarter than you are.
Do you realize how much if somebody knew that the oil price was going to plunge this much, do you realize what kind of money there was to be made on this on the short side of it in any number of ways?
We haven't heard that that happened.
Maybe somebody has made out big time, but I just, I don't know.
I just, anything that exposes the establishment and these self-proclaimed or media-proclaimed experts as frauds interests me.
And that's what this, well, yeah, I mean, the fall in oil price domestically, great for consumers, but it's bad.
All economic news is good and bad at the same time.
The plunging oil price is great for those of us at the pump, but the people who live and breathe the business in this country, the price plummeting so low is not helpful to them.
So it's always a dual-edged sword.
But the ramifications of it are what they are, the effects of a plunging oil are what they are.
What fascinates me is, and I'm sorry to be redundant, is that nobody, nobody, I mean not a single, not Rex Tillerson at Exxon.
If anybody should know what's going to happen, the price of oil should be Rex Tillerson.
What a great name for a CEO of the oil company, though.
Had no idea.
Are there going to be hearings?
hearings no that's not i don't think it's become a controversy i don't I don't think it's a controversy.
Maybe it's a Ted Baxter, but I don't think it's a controversy anywhere.
It's just it's the market in all of its glory, despite all these leftist efforts to say they can control it and manage it for everybody's benefit.
Bull.
Sorry.
And let me repeat something.
I said at the very beginning of the program today, who was it that said this?
For decades we have known the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered.
Who said that?
For decades, we have known the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered.
Hint, 2010.
Further hint, Oval Office.
Got it?
Obama.
That's right, my friends.
Four or five years ago, Obama said the days of cheap oil are over forever.
And everybody's known it.
Another expert weighing in.
In the meantime, Robert in Norfolk, Virginia, welcome, sir.
Glad you waited.
You're up next on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
Hey.
I've been listening for quite a while today, and I keep hearing you list the hypocrisies throughout the experts and the president.
Last night I heard Megan Kelly interview somebody, and again, the president didn't care about taxes and money revenues going up and down.
He only cared about fairness.
So then I was talking to my son yesterday about the Super Bowl, and he couldn't wait for the commercials because he always remembers the commercials.
And even the next answer, water cooler, because we're always talking about the commercials.
So my question is, other than the golden microphone, how do you get through to the low-information voters?
So tomorrow, or whenever the State of the Union is, you have the Republican response.
And we're going to have a politician sitting there with his hands folded or she trying to sound presidential, and no one listens.
Right.
But fewer and fewer people are watching every year anyway, because it's become formulaic.
All right, but let's say Rush Limbaugh was, my question is, how do you impart the information to the low-information voters and even the high-information voters so that it's memorable so that they can repeat it to the next person with some understanding.
So if Rush Limbaugh, I mean, you took the wind out of my sales when I heard your Are You Gullible? while I was on hold a few minutes ago.
And that's the perfect format for a politician to get in to give something funny and humorous to get people, the low information voters to understand what the real issues are.
I was wondering, if Rush Limbaugh was a politician doing the State of the Union address, not your three-hour show, but if you had that 15 minutes, whatever their window is, what would you say to get the low-information voters?
First thing I'd make sure, the first thing I would do, if I were president and I were going to give a real State of the Union, I'd make sure it was covered on TMZ.
TMZ would have first dibs on my speech, and then the e-entertainment network after that, then Entertainment Tonight, and whatever else those 6.30, 7.30 p.m. entertainment shows, I'd make sure that they are in the gallery with their cameras and microphones, as well as all the drive-by networks.
Don't talk about the response.
If you were giving the response, what would you say?
And how would you deliver it and what would you do?
If I were giving a response.
Right.
What would Rush Limbaugh, the politician, say to the low-information voters are talking about it the next day and remember it like that?
Well, I'm just, I'm telling you.
First thing I'm telling you how I'd reach them.
First thing, you've got to go to where they are.
The low-information voter is not going to be watching Fox or NBC or anybody.
You've got to make sure that TMZ, E-Entertainment Network, Entertainment Tonight, they're all there and covering it as though it's their biggest story of the day.
And then at that point, I don't know, I would probably take advantage of being able to reach these people by explaining what the country was founded as, what it was intended to be, and how off track we've become.
And I would found and root my message in freedom and how we're slowly but surely losing it.
And then I would tell people how I think they could best make good on the opportunities this country presents.
And it would be upbeat and it would be positive and it would be cheerleaderish.
And I would tell people that they're the ones that make this country work.
And I would caution them against sitting around waiting for some transfer of income to make the difference in their life because it's never going to happen.
If I've ever thought about it, I could come up with a decent response to whatever we're going to hear tonight.
But that's the wrong way to do it.
The response is never going to be listened to.
The response is never going to have any credibility.
The response is never going to be given any weight whatsoever, no matter who does it and no matter what they say.
Not in this current formulaic circumstance that has been that's been set up.
But I appreciate the question.
It's an interesting question, a good think-piece question, and I'm sure I could shine.
Ladies and gentlemen, my good friends, I've already done a State of the Union response, although I did it.
It was a pre-response, and it was the shortest State of the Union response ever.
It was four words.
I hope he fails.
And that has been my State of the Union response every year.
I hope he fails.
It is what it is.
You can't get more clear-cut than that.
I mean, that cuts away all the wheat and chaff and gets right down to the nub of it.
Michaela in Hatfield, Pennsylvania.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Thank you so much, Rush.
It's Michelle, but that's okay.
I'm sorry.
You know, I see that name spelled.
Did you say Michelle?
Yes.
Okay.
See, I know somebody spells her name exactly like you pronounces it Michaela.
Yeah, I get that a lot.
And then I have, then I said, no, it's not.
It's Michael.
And they're women.
These are all women.
I'm confused.
I'm going to get that too.
I'm sorry.
That's okay.
I just wanted to call and tell you, yesterday's show, you had two young ladies on that had been, I guess, confronted at school, and they stood up for what was right, and they were really encouraging to me.
I have three Rush babies, and I have one in college.
And so you can imagine what she comes home telling us about her classes, and she gets kind of discouraged.
And yesterday she came home, she has to take a sociology class.
She came home, and she was like, Mom, it's a social justice class.
The teacher already told us that.
That's what the whole class is going to be about.
And I said, you should have heard these two girls on Rush Limbaugh today.
If they can stand up at, I think they were like 11 and 14.
9 and 14.
Were they nine?
Oh, my.
Very impressive.
I said, you can do it.
If they can do it, you can do it.
Because I have brought her up right.
We've always listened to your program.
I homeschooled all the way through.
So your program is like our political science class.
So she's always been ready with answers, but she gets discouraged sometimes too, like everybody does.
And I just wanted to pass that on and thank you for that because she just, it's made a big difference.
So she's really excited to hear that.
Let me tell you something, Michelle.
We all get, I mean, to one degree or another, people get dispirited, sometimes for days, sometimes for a few minutes or whatever.
It happens to all of us.
Yes.
But there's a way around this.
You say that your daughter came home, the college student, and she came home and she didn't take sociology or social studies, but it's actually the professor said social justice.
That's what she said.
She said it's a middle-aged woman and she stood up.
She had one class so far because it's once a week.
And she said, this class is all about social justice, and I want you to write a paper on when you were silenced.
And my daughter just thought, what am I going to do that on?
Wait, wait, wait.
I was just going to ask you, did the teacher, professor, whoever define social justice, or does she just assume the students know what she means by it?
She probably defined it.
She probably defined it.
I mean, she's all about, you know, inequalities in our country and, you know, how it has impacted everybody.
Social justice is grievance politics.
It's victimology one-on-one on steroids, and it's aimed at anybody that somebody thinks is part of the power structure.
Right.
Right.
The victim mentality.
Right.
So it, you know, my daughter just, she came from, she went to a community college for two years on a scholarship.
Obama didn't pay for it.
She earned it.
And now she's at a four-year private college, and it's a religious school, so she didn't think it would be as bad as the community college, but hopefully not.
These people are everywhere.
They are.
They're like roaches.
They're roaches.
They've infested every living institution they're in.
And she was silenced at the community college, so she has a paper to write because she was there for election 2012.
In fact, she had to take a class called Election 2012.
And she was accosted by two professors that wanted to know who she was voting for.
And when she said not Obama, they just went off on her.
So she has a story to write.
I don't think it's going to be the story the teacher is going to be.
I was just going to say, this is not what this little commie pinko professor is expecting to hear.
Not expecting it.
There's a way around all this.
And it seems like it could be hard, but actually, I don't think that it is.
And it's the same principle.
People, and I'm not saying this, that your daughter is nervous.
Don't misunderstand.
I'm just using this as an example.
People who are afraid of public speaking, for example, the real fear is not because they're going to be appearing before a lot of people.
They're afraid they're going to be exposed as not knowing what they're talking about.
Right.
And that's the real fear.
Once you become confident, A, of what you believe, and then B, confident that you can explain it, then you have no fear of confronting anybody about it.
And I would suggest to you that your daughter probably already, in terms of truth and reality, can run rings around this professor because this professor is living in a fantasy world of her and her previous teacher's creation where life is unfair, unjust, and immoral.
All these cockamame examples that are not actually true.
Your daughter already can probably run rings around her.
Yes, she can.
Well, then, there's no reason to be intimidated.
She's going to get frustrated, I can't tell you.
But there's no reason to be intimidated by this.
No.
No.
She knows what's right.
She's been taught what's right, my daughter, so it's just a matter of time.
And if her example of how she has been silenced is going to be a couple liberal professors made her shut up because of her views, I dared, that's one of the greatest opening statements she could make in this class.
That's right.
I hope she gets a chance to actually read her paper to the whole class, but that would probably be hoping for too much.
Well, even if that doesn't happen, this infobabe Professor Ett's going to read it and grade it.
And you can be confident that you're going to cause an earthquake in this professor's office or home whenever she does read this thing.
And this is going to make your daughter a target.
She is, unfortunately, but that's life.
That's life in America these days.
So she's got to be ready because that's what it's like anymore, unfortunately.
But not all millennials are like that.
My daughter did say that.
She is a millennial.
And she said, we're not all watching MTV and smoking pot.
There are a number of them that are conservatives and have conservative values and know how to express them.
Oh, no doubt.
No doubt.
Just wanted to thank you because, as I said, I have three rush babies and you've been a big help.
Well, I'm flattered.
I appreciate that.
I really do.
Thank you.
No problem.
How old are your other two kids?
My other two are 18, and I have an 18-year-old daughter also and a 13-year-old son.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Fun times.
Yes.
All right.
Well, look, Michelle.
Yes.
Thank you very much.
I got it right that time, Ryan.
Yes, you did.
Thank you.
All right.
Quick learner here.
Ella Rushbro.
Thanks for the call.
Good luck.
Thank you very much.
Stay in touch with us here.
Us posted on what, uh?
On what happens in this, this silly social justice class, your daughter has to thank you all right.
Be right back, my friends, with EL Mucho more after this.
And we have yet another caller on the phone who thinks that i've been a little bit too hard, or maybe a little bit off base on Mitt Romney, this John in Chicago.
Thank you for waiting, sir.
Great to have you on rush.
You bet you know I, if that was the main point of Romney's comments, I wouldn't have you, I wouldn't have a problem with you pointing it out, but it was one phrase before.
He said the policies were wrong, which I know you agree with.
Yes, I do, and you know, given that Mitt has nothing that he's in control of right now while, on the other hand, we have a number of you know, people in Congress that are already saying dumb things like doa, rather than being okay, let me ask this and setting out the Republican agenda.
Let me ask this.
I just want to get your take of your thought on this because purely information gathering on my part.
So you got Romney and he wants to announce his version of how to fix income inequality and build up middle-class wealth and so forth.
Why?
Why even mention the good-heartedness of Lbj?
Why even mention Lbj period why?
Why even do that?
What's the mindset?
Okay, a day or two ago you were talking about the, that gap on the on the uh things like me question from the election right or represents my interest?
Yeah yeah, thinks of people like the income inequality thing, I think is something that he perceives as being something that he didn't address enough in the campaign, so that would make perfect sense as to why he would want to address that now.
No no no, that's not my question.
Why mention Lbj at all?
I think he I I, I don't think it was a consultant.
I think he simply uh, that was the way he chose, off the cuff to go into that comment that his policies were wrong.
I think he wanted to point out that.
I'll tell you what it reminded me of.
I want I once had a Republican presidential content or thinking about getting in the race.
This is 2012, by the way, this is an episode.
This has been 2010 or 2011, but uh, there was a some some powwow here in town where I live and a bunch of these potential Republican nominees were in town.
Had it one of them called?
I want to come by and talk to you about presidential race.
I said you want to kiss the ring right yeah yeah, yeah.
So come on by, had some bagels and cream cheese on him.
Guy came in uh, in my library at home he said, rush, rush.
We cannot go after Obama personally.
We have to go after his policy.
The only way we can succeed is by going after Obama policy, but we go after Obama personally ain't going to get us anywhere.
That's what I heard here.
In this case, it was LBJ and it's it's to me.
It just it bothers me in the sense that these are the people that tried to convince voters.
Mitt Romney didn't care that some guy's wife died because of Mitt Romney.
Look, I know manners.
I know good manners.
I know good breeding.
I know how people are raised to be respectful and all that of other people.
I know the Republican Party is obsessed with this.
My fear is that there's a belief in the Republican Party that showing these people respect who don't show you any is somehow going to siphon voters away from them.
And it just isn't.
If we're going to get into this, whoever going to get, they're going to have to be prepared to play hardball.
We're going to need fighters to overcome.
Other side, the aggressor in a conflict always sets the rules anyway.
Anyway, look, John, I understand what you're saying.
And the focal point of his message was policy prescriptions, and I don't disagree with what he said on that score at all.
Anyway, I appreciate it, nevertheless.
Just another exciting, busy broadcast day, folks.
Another example of Sterling broadcast excellence in the can.
So much fun.
Can't wait to do it again tomorrow.
Be right back here in 21 hours, and I know you will be too.
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