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Feb. 5, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:09
February 5, 2015, Thursday, Hour #3
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Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have Rush Limbaugh executing a signed host duties flawlessly.
Zero mistakes.
You can hunt, you can search, you can look, you're not gonna find any.
You know why?
Because I assign myself the duties.
Therefore, there can be no mistakes.
It just doesn't happen.
800-282-2882, if you want to be on the program.
So I got an email from a Francis, and I can hear it in your voice.
You just you're having trouble going all in on Brian Williams, and that's that's true, folks.
I'm telling you, I've this is I've always liked Brian.
Brian Williams has always been fair to me.
You know how odd or not odd, rare that is.
I can count on one hand in 27 years the number of people that we would call mainstream journalists who have been consistently fair with me.
He's one of them.
But I don't mean to be holding back.
It's just it's just hard to pile on.
I don't understand it.
I mean, I do understand it.
It's it's clear as a bell what happened here, but I mean I don't I don't understand doing it.
But the point is, it is.
It is what happens in the in the news today.
It is.
What else is are they making up wherever you look?
And this wasn't even about advancing an agenda.
This this was this was about personal aggrandizement.
Saying that you were aboard a helicopter shot down.
I mean, this wasn't even part of the news stories denigrating the war effort.
So you can imagine we know that NBC makes things up.
We know that NBC doctors 9-11 tapes and blows up trucks to make it look like they're happening, it's happening uh without any assistance from NBC.
We know what goes on in the drive by media, but this is just a classic uh bold-faced example of it.
There is no question.
I mean, you look at look at the people at MSNBC has fired for things that are much, much less than this.
They've they fired Oberdork.
They've fired some guy named Sink Yougar.
They fired Martin Bashir because he told a total lie about slaveholders making slaves eat excrement or something when that movie came out.
Twelve years of slave or whatever it was.
He just totally made up some absolute horrendous reprehensible story about.
Oh, that's right.
He suggested Sarah Palin should have to eat the whatever, yeah.
That's what it was.
That's what it was.
I mean, these people are just they're filled with their they're they're overflowing their hatred and their rage and their anger.
And they clearly will make it up if it advances the agenda.
That's why I don't even call what they're doing anymore journalism.
And that's why they're not news readers, they're narrative readers.
Anyway, Dan Rather.
I I told you they're gonna try to circle the wagons to protect the news.
Dan Rather, the political has a story, Dan Rather backs Brian Williams.
If I'm if I'm Brian Williams, the last guy I want speaking up for me is Dan Rather.
Dan Rather of fake documents and George W. Bush and National Guard fame.
That's the last guy I want throwing a party for me.
But anyway, from the article, Dan Rather.
Well, I don't know the particulars about that day in Iraq.
I do know Brian.
He is a longtime friend, and we've been in a number of war zones and on the same battlefields, competing, but together.
Brian is an honest, decent man, an excellent reporter and anchor, and a brave one.
Well, what do you do with that?
Because that to say is not commensurate with any element of this story.
Long time friend, we've been in a number of war zones and on the same battlefields, competing but together.
He's an honest, decent man, excellent reporter and an anchor and a brave one.
Anyway, that's just the first of what I think are going to be many.
They circle the wagons, folks.
They protect, in this case, they're going to be protecting the news.
They're going to be protecting liberalism.
They're going to be protecting the image of liberalism in the drive-by media and all of that.
Just like Jennings and Brokoff through rather his own awards banquet after he made up that story about George W. Bush.
Okay, now to the news, if you will.
On Fox America's newsroom today, Bill Hemmer interviewed the chairman of Gallup, the CEO, Jim Clifton.
He wrote an op-ed a couple of days ago, and for many of you in this audience, it wasn't news.
He simply said he had just discovered the difference in the U3 and the U6 unemployment designations.
And he had just discovered that the 5.7% unemployment rate did not get anywhere near presenting the accurate picture of unemployment in America.
He discovered there was something called U6.
Really think that the CEO of Gallup figured out that there's a whole lot of people that are not working and have given up working who are not counted as unemployed.
And he couldn't believe that.
And so he wrote a piece about how we're being lied to.
That the unemployment picture in this country is far worse.
And he didn't understand why the news media isn't digging deeper to tell the story.
So he wrote the op-ed.
Well, now he's digging even deeper.
He's doubling down on all of this with even more data and stats that he has learned.
Bill Hemmer said to Jim Clifton, tell me about the big lie, which is what he wrote in his op-ed.
That's how he titled it.
What is the big lie, Jim?
If I can do it over again, Bill, we might call it very misleading.
But the point is that number is getting so messy.
It might be the most important metric in the United States of America and the world, how many people are working.
It mixes part-time and full-time.
And of course, what everybody wants, Great American Dream is to have a good job, not a crappy job.
Right.
That's true.
Everybody wants not just jobs, people want careers.
You want a job that is part of a career.
People choose careers.
Objectives in a career.
You want to become something.
Some people don't.
They just they want a job to do something, it's fine.
But his point here is that inclusive in the definition of the American dream is a good job.
Whenever you want one, it's there.
Promise of America.
You want to work, golden opportunity.
You want to set the world on fire, you want to be an entrepreneur.
You want to whatever.
There's an opportunity for that in this country.
And that's where he's going.
The opportunity isn't there.
It clearly isn't there anymore.
The number of people working full-time is dwindling.
The number of people working far-time is part-time is rapidly increasing.
And you don't build careers working part-time.
Bill Hemmer then said, Well, you're right that the big lie, and by the way, he's walking back that term.
He's now calling it the big mislead.
But Hemmer said, You you're right that the big lie has consequences.
What are the consequences of this, Jim?
The number of full-time jobs, and that's what everybody wants, as a percent of the total population, is the lowest it's ever been.
That's what that number doesn't show.
The more people that drop out, the better the number gets.
We might add 250,000 jobs.
What reporters or what the administration at Wall Street doesn't ask next is, well, how many people dropped out?
Well, that number might be 500,000.
It actually makes the unemployment number better when those people drop out.
You'll hear both Wall Street and the administration say that we've had more success with unemployment than we've had in ten years.
That's just absolutely not true.
Right.
Now, I'm I'm grateful for this.
I am happy Jim Clifton has shown up.
But uh, ladies and gentlemen, this is something you and I have been discussing on this program for practically five years.
Maybe even five years.
Obama's starting his seventh year now.
So five years.
We've been talking about the fraudulent reporting of unemployment.
And I remember getting into arguments with people.
I would I would say one of the ways to get the unemployment rate down, that percentage Rate down is to reduce the overall universe of jobs.
And that's what's happened.
The number of jobs that have been lost that just simply don't exist anymore.
Companies have closed down, or companies have eliminated jobs.
The opportunity to get jobs is way down.
The number of jobs down is in the millions.
Well, if there are fewer jobs to have, then by definition, the unemployment rate percentage is going to drop.
And then if you further do not count all the people who've been out of work for four years or more and are now not looking for work, the unemployment rate's going to drop even more.
That's his point.
The worse the news got in reality, the better the unemployment rate got.
And I remember, and those of you who have been lifers, been listening regularly here for the longest time, you know that every month when these numbers were released, we went through them and we made exactly this point time and time again.
I remember getting into arguments.
I had friends in high finance send me emails.
Rush, you're not talking about this right.
Just because you reduce the overall number of jobs has nothing to do with the unemployment rate.
And I would get mad and I'd write it back.
How can it not?
The unemployment rate is an expression of how many jobs there are in the country and how many people don't have them.
Well, if the universe of numbers jobs declines, if there are fewer jobs to have, well, then the people out of work percentage is going to also fall, and it's not going to be representative of the truth.
Now, Mr. Clifton, I don't know how or when, but he has arrived at this.
He's understood it, and I'm happy as heck that he is now writing about it and going on TV talking about it.
Because the more people who understand it the better, because it's it's necessary to put the lie to what Obama's saying.
Obama's out there touting this roaring economy now.
He's out there really highlighting this roaring recovery and this fast growing economy, and we finally put it all back together.
It's worse than ever.
Time you add Obamacare into this, and the number of people who are losing full-time jobs and being converted to part-time and losing Obamacare or health care in the process, or just giving up.
Folks, there's no way the productivity of this country can anyway maintain what it's been, particularly when the government comes in and takes over more and more chunks of the private sector or of the free market economy.
And that's what when government grows, how can it grow?
It has to gobble something.
Government growing is the exact opposite of what we want when we talk about a strong American economy.
The government is not part of that.
Government destroys wealth, government creates debt, government doesn't produce anything.
The bigger the government gets by definition, the smaller the free market economy is getting.
The free market economy is where we live.
The free market economy is where our lifestyles are.
The free market economy is where our standard of living is.
The free market economy is where everybody's opportunity is.
The free market economy is the pie that everybody wants a piece of.
Now, normally, in a growth economy, with as little overregulation as possible, a government getting out of the way, that pie grows and feeds off itself.
The growth contributes to more growth.
And that's how you create even more opportunity for an even greater number of people graduating from school every year and entering the workforce.
But that cannot happen when somebody like Obama's running a show because he's eating up the free market economy.
He's gobbling it up and swallowing it up, and government's getting bigger.
And there's no way your piece of the pie can get bigger, and there's no way the pie itself can get bigger, and therefore there's no way opportunity can expand.
And that's another reason why we're going to have a wealth gap, because in a shrinking pie, you know what else happens?
The real cream of the crop are going to take an even bigger piece of it.
The smartest among us, the hardest working among us, the most creative among us, the luckiest among us in some cases.
When the pie gets smaller, the rich don't get dumber.
When the pie gets smaller, the Really creative, the entrepreneurs, they don't also get smaller and dumber.
They stay the same size, and we're creating more of those as they're born.
And so the smaller the pie gets, the greater percentage of it's going to be gobbled up by the truly competent, the hard working, the industrious.
I don't mean this as an insult to anybody.
It's just human nature.
The bigger the pie, the more is going to be left over for others who don't want to work as hard, who don't invest as much in themselves as others do.
But that's always been the great thing about America.
That pie was always growing.
That free market economy, that place where your security is, where your economic opportunity is, where your lifestyle is, where your standard of living is, that's the U.S. economy.
And as long as it's growing, everybody's got a shot at a bigger piece of pie.
If it's shrinking, the pie is going to be cut up in much different ways.
And an increasing amount of that pie is going to be taken by the quote unquote wealthy, and the gap is going to get bigger.
And then and then when the government gets big by printing money and prints all that money and gives it stock market, the wealth gap's going to expand even more.
And then i in the midst of all this, the regime's coming along and talk about how great the economy is.
It's roaring and growing.
And look at the unemployment.
We got better employment situation we had in ten years.
It's an out and out lie.
We have ninety-three million Americans not working.
That's the labor force participation rate.
It hasn't been this high since World War II.
It's really bad out there.
And this guy finally has shown up on the scene to write about it in his own way.
And he will persuade others who didn't know it or not aware of it.
One more sound by Bill Hemmer with a final question.
We hear this a lot from uh the colleagues over at Fox Bidness and uh Stuart Varney's been talking about this for years now.
It leads to the next question.
That is what are the political leaders doing that have a direct impact on this, Jim?
What are they doing to correct this if the middle class is being hollowed out?
New business startups is the lowest it's been in like 20 years or or ever.
America's not starting businesses anymore.
We need about 500,000 new businesses to start while 400,000 die.
Four years ago, those lines crossed.
So now we're in very dangerous waters.
But those full-time unemployment jobs will never come back until free enterprise and the spirit of entrepreneurship kicks back in.
So we used to be a net creator of businesses.
We'd create 500,000, 400,000 would fail, but still we have 100,000 new ones.
Now it's the opposite.
Create 500,000 and 600,000 are failing.
All the new ones fail, and then the existing ones join them.
And that's this point what's happening now.
Bottom line is the regime is lying through their teeth about this economy.
And that does a disservice as well.
Because it actually can lead to people not being as inspired.
They think they're going to get swept up in it.
It's going to take care of them by inertia or whatever.
It's a mess, folks.
Still it.
Back after this.
Back to the phones we go.
This is uh Bob and Spokan.
Great to have you, sir.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Well, thank you, Rush.
Hi.
Uh 48th Assault Helicopter Company Blue Star Ditos to you.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
Um back in my younger days when I was mortal, I flew helicopters in Vietnam.
And I was shot down.
It'll be 44 years this March, and you do not forget that.
You don't misremember.
It's like it happened yesterday.
I would think so.
Yeah, this is not something that you uh think happened.
This is something you know happened.
And um by the same token, Bob, uh, can you imagine in the fog of war, can you imagine being in a convoy of, say, choppers?
One of them got shot down.
You're in a different chopper not shot down, you eventually land within half hour, hour of the chopper that was shot down.
Can you imagine yourself after a period of time thinking you were on the chopper That was shot down.
Well, I can tell you that I had two helicopters in front of me shot down and one behind me that went down in flames.
And never once did I think I was on any of those helicopters.
Yeah, that sounds reasonable.
Yeah.
Yeah, I saw a couple helicopters shot down, and I never once thought I was on them.
It sounds reasonable, I have to admit.
And I and one other thing that bothers me on this is that the veterans kind of got their hair rubbed and a pat on the bottom when he said, Well, I did this to honor you guys.
Right.
Well, what he did is an insult to every air crew who ever flew in combat.
And you don't insult somebody that you honor.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
How did he just how did he insult him?
By claiming to be on that helicopter that went down.
So he trivialized it.
Exactly.
Or he stolen valor.
You don't do that.
That's an insult to anybody who's ever actually done it.
Yeah.
Um.
But he says that he did this because there was a particular serviceman he wanted to honor a service.
Well, that's what I'm saying.
He's trying to get out of this by talking about, well, he did this to honor us.
He insulted us.
Yeah.
And you don't insult somebody that you're trying to honor or the.
By the way, I should tell I should point out NBC News reported at the time that he was shot down.
This is not something that Brian Williams concocted after a period of time after the incident happened.
NBC reported it the moment they learned of it that Williams was shot down.
So it was not a distant memory.
It was something that happened from the very beginning.
Correct.
And you know, twelve years, it's been 44 for me, and I remember it like yesterday.
Well, I've I've, of course, never been shot down, obviously.
But I would think I would never forget it.
That would be a unique experience.
I would think I would remember every last detail about that.
I have to grant you that.
Back in just a sec.
Well, ISIS has just executed a few imams who spoke out against the burning of the Jordanian pilot.
This is what happens.
This may seem academic to many of you, but that's what happens when you do not have freedom of speech.
This is what happens when you do not have freedom of religion.
And this is what happens when you have regimes such as ours who want to run around and criticize places like Charles Hebdo.
You know, Obama dumped on them today at the prayer breakfast.
Did you know that?
Obama dumped on the French magazine.
He's kind of you gotta you gotta if you're gonna run out and do that kind of thing, you've got to understand what's gonna happen to you.
Well, no, you don't, not if you really have freedom of speech.
You do not have to understand how you're gonna get murdered.
Especially if you're telling jokes.
Freedom of speech does not mean you recognize you might get murdered for it.
Freedom of religion and freedom of speech does not mean that you have to recognize you might get killed for it.
It's precisely the opposite.
But ISIS, and I don't think our drive-by's get that.
There's and it's not just the drive-by.
I have been alarmed at what's what appears to me to be an increasing number of people willing to agree with the premise that, you know, we ought to shut certain people up if they're offending others.
We ought to we ought not offend people.
They ought not have to write to offend people.
That just not right.
That's definitely not somebody who agrees with or even understands the concept of free speech.
But anyway, ISIS has executed.
I don't know how many, I just have a chance to glance at this the break was ending.
But uh ISIS has executed some imams for fellow Islamists for condemning the burning alive of the Jordanian pilot.
And I imagine uh this will cause a lot of people to explain this is why moderate Muslims don't speak up.
Because they too will be executed.
That'll be said.
You wait and see.com.
Headlines, Scott Walker surges ahead in New Hampshire.
Gee, I wonder how this is happening.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker holds a big lead among New Hampshire Republicans in the early primary state, drawing 21% support among likely voters in a poll by news network NH1, which was released yesterday.
Jeb Bush is second with 14%, followed by Rand Paul and Ben Carson each at 8%.
Governor Christie and Mike Huckabee are at 6%.
Marco Rubio at 5%.
And 19% are undecided.
But even with all that, the poll's another piece of good news for Scott Walker, whose stock has been rising since he gave a widely praised speech at the Iowa Freedom Summit in January.
He also led a recent poll in Iowa, which holds the first contest in the primary calendar.
And Walker is also tied with Carson and Bush in a new poll of North Carolina Republican primary voters from public policy polling.
That's this far left wing pub uh polling group.
And the PPP poll showed significant declines for some of the top candidates.
You know, I what's happening with Governor Walker, I think is exactly what the GOP establishment thought was going to happen with Governor Christie.
You know that I really think that's I think back to Republican convention 2012 and Christie was the big star outside of Romney.
Christie, the night he was going to speak, that they had that big film, the video introducing him, but he was the big star.
Remember that?
And he gave kind of a lackluster speech, actually, giving the expectations.
They actually thought I think that I think the Republican establishment thought once Christie was attacking the unions in New Jersey and rolling up sleeves and not taking any guff.
I think they really thought that Christie was going to do in New Jersey what Scott Walker's actually done in Wisconsin.
And I guess one of the reasons why the establishment feels like their apple cart's been a little bit upset here.
But man, this Walker guy, he's really going a long way off one speech, isn't he?
Right, a speech in Iowa last Saturday vaults into the head in both Iowa and New Hampshire.
Isn't that amazing?
I know.
I'm just saying that, uh, James.
I'm just saying I'm trying to be a little facetious here without being arrogant and braggadocious and all that.
No need to say it.
Here's uh oh, speaking of this.
Um we have audio soundvisor from Jeb Bush.
Uh a number of things the former Florida governors said in years past have come to light.
And one of the, and some of them many people think are really odd.
Some people think really strangely.
One of the ideas that uh Jeb has touted, since Detroit is failing, just repopulate it with immigrants.
Just make it Tijuana North.
Or Cabo nor pick a whatever, and just put put the illegal immigrants there and renew Detroit and bring it up out of the ashes.
That the immigrants can do it.
The illegal perfect place to do it.
I don't know what the current town council, city council uh population would think about that.
Probably have a pretty good idea when they hear about it.
First up, this is Jeb yesterday afternoon in Detroit at the Detroit Economic Club.
The moderator is uh Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Sandy Barua, and he's moderating, he's talking to Jeb, and he said, uh, where does this nation need to go in terms of immigration reform and what are its prospects for actual success?
Immigration is not a problem.
The immigrant experience in our country makes us unique and special and different, and it is part of our extraordinary success.
We need young, dynamic people that can make an immediate contribution to our economy.
We shouldn't be fearful of this.
We should say, what an incredible opportunity.
And so I would hope that that mentality of shifting this to an economic issue rather than a political issue will be helpful.
And it starts with regaining confidence that the federal government can enforce the border.
They need to secure the border, first and foremost.
There's no denying that.
Yeah, but it's not the first thing he said.
So anyway, you know there's a theme running all of these open borders guys, and and Jeb has um has done it here too.
We need young, dynamic people that can make an immediate contribution to our economy.
The immigrant experience makes us unique and special and different.
It's part of our extraordinary success.
We need young, dynamic people can make an immediate contribution to our economy.
We shouldn't be fearful, we should say, what an incredible opportunity.
What about the young people already here?
We just got through talking about the fact that there aren't enough jobs for people here already.
There certainly aren't enough jobs in careers for people who are here already.
What is this fascination?
And I think the open borders crowd has it, and I really would like to know what's the fascination.
Why are the immigrants that we want to import better suited to say rebuild a city like Detroit than people who live there now or anybody in America?
What what what's the magic?
What am I missing?
Seriously.
What what?
Yeah, they're Hispanic, but what does that mean?
I mean, what why?
Look.
Okay.
All right, so I know it's all just about votes.
All I know that all of this is about registering these people as voters, and the Republicans want them and the Democrats want them, and everybody knows that Democrats are going to get most of them, but the Republicans think they can get enough of them to be competitive.
But why not just say that instead of this this?
We of course it sounds too political, but why is it not offensive that the only way we can rebuild our cities and the only way we can really re launch our economy is to import young people from outside the country?
What about the young people already here?
What is this a tan-amount admission that that the young people in this country have already thrown in with the worthless?
And they're unsalvageable.
They already got their benefits.
They got no motivation to go out and save a city and have to work.
We need people who want to come in here and work.
Oh.
So this is a tantamount admission.
Our welfare state's gotten so big, we don't actually have enough people willing to work.
That was just import people who want to work, because we have destroyed the work ethic in our country by giving out so much welfare.
So we want people, we want to import people who will work, but what we really want is for them to vote.
And what we really want at that, we want them to also be on the welfare role so they will become further and forever dependent on us in government.
So that after they vote the first time, they will always vote for us.
That would be the cynical view.
The question is, what contribution to our economy do uneducated, unskilled people add?
That's who the un that's who the illegal immigrants are.
Nobody makes nobody makes any bones about that.
They're undereducated.
They're they're in poverty, the vast majority.
That's the reason we're supposed to open the border to them.
We're supposed to open the border to them because they're undereducated and they're poor because the places they're leaving are in such bad shape.
And this is the land of opportunity.
Okay, so I want to know what contribution to the economy do uneducated and unskilled arrivals add.
Meanwhile, only 44% of adults in America have full-time jobs.
What's the youth unemployment number?
20%?
So what is all this?
And by the way, why do we also want or need a new measles outbreak?
Because that's happening too.
Youth unemployment rate for December was uh 12.4%.
Citizens.
I don't know what the illegal immigrant unemployment rate is.
I don't even know if it's if it's uh if it's counted.
Uh one more.
Jeb Bush.
One final comment here at the Detroit Economic Club, at least in the soundbite roster that we have.
How do we create high sustained economic growth?
And that's to shift away from family reunification being almost the sole driver of legal immigration to narrowing that to what every other country has, spouse and minor children, and dramatically expanding immigrants that are coming to work.
A guest worker program to deal in the areas where there are shortages.
Okay, so shortages of certain kinds of workers in America.
And rather than support illegal immigration because we want to reunite parents with their children, no, that's a losing problem.
No, we want to bring in workers.
I wonder how many that would eliminate if you tell them before you come you have to work.
Anyway, that's Jeb Bush.
And then last night on special report with Brett Bear during the all star panel.
Uh A. B. Stoddard from The Hill.com talking about all of this.
Jeb Bayer, uh Brett Baer asked A.P. Stoddard, will Jeb Bush's position on immigration will that fly in Iowa A. B. The immigration issue is what um talk radio is fired up about now and um is already bashing him over.
It's a long way to Iowa.
He doesn't really know today's Republican Party.
It's not popular with the conservative wing of the party.
Very tough issue for Jeb Bush.
Talk radio, there we are again.
See, we have all the power in the world when they think we are standing in the way of what they want.
Talk radio, damn them!
Damn it, talk radio kids about talk radio, standing in the way of what the drive-by media wants.
When the drive-bys are getting what they want, then of course the story is a talk radio is inconsequential, doesn't matter anymore.
It's just a bunch of extremist entertainers anyway.
So I'm watching CNN and they're talking about the Brian Williams thing, and the infobabe is asking one of her guests why didn't the military speak up sooner?
Why didn't the military, the military knew that this story wasn't true?
Why did they wait so long?
And the guest said, I don't know what he said.
Something stupid, like, well, they you know, they may not have really known, they may not have they may not have been listening.
That's not the question.
The military didn't want to blow the whistle, and it just got to be insufferably.
They kept hearing the story over the question is why didn't anybody at NBC come forward and divulge what happened.
If you're gonna start asking, if you're gonna start trying to assign blame to the people that didn't blow the whistle, good grief.
How many people NBC have known this story was not true from the get-go?
Why didn't any of them speak up?
Winston Churchill said, nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.
Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to almost lose your life but not.
Brian Williams, nothing in life is so exhilarating exhilarating as to not be shot at but to say you were.
And we are done.
We are out of here for today, but we're back.
It's open line Friday tomorrow, folks.
Be thinking about it.
Do your own show prep.
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