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May 29, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:40
May 29, 2015, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
You know what, what Bernie Sanders have been looking here at the Democrat presidential lineup, the field of possibilities there.
I mean, it's just mind-blowing when you look at it the way that I do, which is the way everybody ought to look at it.
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As I was saying, what a field of potential presidential candidates the Democrats have.
We've got Bernie Sanders, a socialist who fantasizes about women fantasizing about being gang raped.
Well, that's what he did.
I mean, he's fantasizing.
He says that men fantasize about whatever while they're, it's a family show here.
This object that can't even talk about what the Democrats do on a day-to-day basis on a family program.
But that's what he says.
He fantasizes about women fantasizing about being gang raped.
You imagine if a Republican said, which I want to get into in a minute on this, because an interesting treatment of this by Charles Cook at National Review, who's saying, come on, he said it 30 years ago.
He's an old codger now.
Let's show the Democrats some class.
And let's not beat him up over this.
Come on, everybody knows who old Bernie is, and he's just a harmless old guy.
We need it.
And maybe in the process, we can maybe get the Democrats to treat us.
Honestly, this is what he says.
I kid you not.
And Cook's a smart guy.
But it's just amazing to me.
So anyway, here we have Bernie Sanders, a potential Democrat presidential candidate, socialist fantasizing about women fantasizing about being gang raped.
We have Elizabeth Warren, a fake Indian socialist who got rich flipping four closed houses and then told everybody else not to do it.
We have Hillary Clinton, a socialist who got rich off of family charity and who knows whatever else.
She has a husband who's been accused of rape.
Did you hit the latest of the Clinton Crime Family Foundation?
Remember the model Petra Nemkova?
Does the name ring a bell?
She was in a tsunami somewhere, and she saved herself by grabbing onto a coconut palm frond, and she hung on for dear life while a tsunami wiped out everything.
And she felt so grateful that she did a fundraiser for something to do with tsunamis.
Maybe more than that.
I'm just off the top of my head.
But the point of it was that she scheduled this gigantic fundraiser tribute at one of the Chipriani restaurants down in Manhattan, Chipriani 42.
And she had all of these A-list celebrities and stars and so forth.
And the coup de grace was Bill Clinton, who showed up.
He was the featured speaker and won a lifetime award for compassion for people trapped in tsunamis or some such thing.
Because you remember, he flew over there with Bush 40.
What?
I guess it was 41 and 43.
He flew over there.
And remember, he got great press because he gave Bush 41 the bed.
He didn't need the bed because there were other people around on the plane.
So all he needed was a seat.
He took 500 grand in payment from the tsunami charity from this model, Petra Namcova, for getting a lifetime achievement or $500,000 for 20-minute speech.
How many homes, wherever the tsunami was, could that 500 grand have rebuilt?
Clinton takes the money and puts it in his charity or in his foundation or in his back pocket or what have you.
And these people get away to this day with the label of compassionate and loving and understanding.
That's the Democrat feel.
Oh, you got Joe Biden who fantasizes about everything.
And then, of course, the dark horse continues to be O'Malley.
And there's a local newspaper column out of the Baltimore Sun really singing his praises today and cutting Hillary down to size in the process, just a local column.
But I'm telling you, you're going to have to keep your eye on O'Malley because at some point, he is going to end up being more preferable to a lot of Democrats and a Democrat in the Hillary camp right now.
And there's something else I have been pointing out, and I illustrated it yesterday with the assistance and aid of many, many soundbites, that there really is some unease with Hillary out there, particularly in the drive-by media.
And many people have thought that I'm wrong about this.
I'm still 26 years, and people think I'm wrong.
What more can I do to prove that I'm not wrong?
Anyway, Andrea Mitchell, NBC News in Washington, was the latest.
Well, along comes Susan Page, writing at USA Today, telling all the other drive-bys and drive-by it's, don't sweat it.
Hillary's not in any trouble.
He's just fine.
You don't need to worry about a thing.
Well, I'm telling you, when O'Malley shows up, he is just the exact opposite from Hillary in practically every way in terms of presentability, looks, attractiveness, and he's got the same ideological resume.
He may be even, well, he's as leftist as Obama is and as the Clintons are.
So there's no loss if they go to O'Malley in that regard.
I'm just telling you, keep it sharp.
I'm not predicting it yet, but I'm just wouldn't be surprised.
You've seen the stories on the U.S. economy the first quarter predicted this, predicted this, predicted there'd be a revision.
What was the original report of the first quarter?
2%, 0.2% growth or something.
And it's not going to be that when they revise it.
They're going to revise it three or four months from now when everybody's forgotten it.
Here it goes.
The U.S. economy fell.
It went backwards.
It slowed down 0.7% growth rate.
That's not growth, folks.
That's a contraction.
U.S. economy shrank at a 0.7% annual rate in the first three months of the year.
You know why?
Yeah, cold weather.
That's what it says right here in the AVs wintertime out there.
Yeah, it's right.
Cold weather and a widening trade deficit.
The government's revised estimate for last quarter was weaker than its initial estimate.
Here it is, 0.2%.
That's what they originally reported, 0.2%.
Obama's out there hailing economic growth at the same time.
Obama's out there lauding it, applauding it, and grieving.
Revivals are great.
The economy is just chugging along, and everybody knows it was BS.
You can see, I mean, we've all, those of us of a certain age, we've been alive long enough to know when an economy is really growing, when it's really percolating, when it's really humming.
There's an associated uptick in mood when that happens.
And of course, there isn't any perception or actual economic growth going on.
It is contracting.
It's shrinking.
And there is a complementary mood, which is down in the dumps, depressed.
And 93 million Americans not working.
I don't know how in the world anybody can talk about economic growth when you've got 93 million Americans not working.
So anyway, we're contracting now, but it's not a big deal.
It's just the weather.
All the drive-bys are saying it's not anything to worry about.
It really, really isn't.
It's just the weather.
It's climate change.
And of course, a little problem with the trade deficit in the first quarter.
But no big deal.
Steady gains in employment are expected to fuel healthy growth for the rest of this year.
That's what it says right here in the third paragraph.
After reporting, we contracted it nearly 1%.
Don't sweat it, gang.
Steady job gains are expected to fuel modestly healthy growth for the rest of the year.
The harsh winter, which kept many consumers home and businesses closed, and a labor dispute that slowed trade at West Coast ports are both over.
Again, they insult our intelligence.
Here's the truth of the matter, and you find it in the Washington Post.
Americans are starting fewer businesses.
New companies are going out of business more quickly than the new firms that do get off the ground are creating fewer jobs.
None of this bodes very well for an economy still trying to find its footing.
In other words, more businesses are closing than starting.
And this, just to remind you, this is not a story from today.
This is a story from September 17th, 2014.
I just wanted to remind you: September 17th, last year, Americans are starting fewer businesses.
New companies are going out of business more quickly.
And the new firms that do get off the ground are creating fewer jobs.
None of that bodes very well for an economy still trying to find its footing.
And lo and behold, about six months later, when we got the report for the first quarter, they told us growth was at 0.2%.
Today they tell us it's down 0.7%.
John Derry, the executive VP of the Financial Services Forum, Trade Group in Washington, said, again, this is the September last year story, America's entrepreneurs need help.
It was all right here than the truthful story back in September.
There isn't any economic growth, and there's no indication that there will be any.
Had a story that arrived in the third hour of the program yesterday, and I decided to save it until today because we were well into other things yesterday.
But this too will help you understand, and a lot of other people understand what's happening with the economy.
So Business Insider, let me set this up with something.
You Steady listeners, those of you who have been around for the duration or at least 20 years, might remember that over the course of this program,
I occasionally have asked, and I did go out and find out the answer to this, by the way, how is it, you know, every generation has people in it who think that times have never been worse than they are when they are alive.
Every generation has a group of people that think that.
No matter how good or bad things are, there's always a percentage of every generation that thinks it's never been worse, and it's never going to get better.
You have an even smaller percentage of people in every generation, some of whom think that these are the last days.
But they've all been wrong.
Everybody in every generation who thought it was never going to get, they've all been wrong.
We've always rebounded.
The country has always rebounded.
And those rebounds have always held my curiosity.
How did they happen?
Be they cultural, be they economic, the country has always rebounded.
And I've been asking myself this question, and I'm a baby boomer, and my perception is that we've had cycles throughout my life, but I'm one of the people who think that the country is in as precarious a position domestically and culturally as it's ever been.
And I've tried to fight that because it was obviously bad during the Civil War.
It was obviously bad during the Great Depression.
I mean, there have been horrible times in this country from which we've always rebounded.
But hubris is a strange thing, and most people's historical perspective begins with the day they were born.
And by that, I mean most people think the most important things that have happened in the world happen when they are alive because they're much more aware of those things than they are things that happened before they were born.
It stands to reason psychologically.
So I've fought this.
I've fought the temptation to be one of those people who think that it's never been worse.
I've intellectually tried to fight it.
And I've tried to remain upbeat.
And I still am and optimistic, and I still am.
But at the same time, I don't think that we've bottomed out here in this current cycle of decline.
But the country always has.
It's these rebounds that have always fascinated me.
What caused them?
Was it simple societal evolution?
Or were there specific reasons?
So I began to research it, and I found some demographers who had actually studied this.
And their answers were somewhat complex, but what I do is make the complex understandable.
So let me just reduce all their complexity to the very essence of their point.
They claim you go back through American history and you will find, and it's usually, if I recall what they said, every third or fourth generation, that there comes a time when young people growing up simply refuse to live the way their parents and grandparents lived.
They refuse to accept the politics.
They refuse to accept the culture.
They refuse to accept the economic do's and don'ts, the conventional wisdom, and they just chuck it all.
And he said, a great example of this was the Victorians.
Victorians were a generation that grew up amongst debauchery, and they wanted no part of it.
And they went so far the other way That prim, proper, perfect, total morality at all times.
At least that's perception of the Victorian age, along with architecture and some other things.
So I'm thinking, okay, where are we in this generation?
Is this, are the millennials a generation that is going to grow up refusing to accept what they have been bequeathed?
And are they going to embark on new ways of doing things?
And is it going to be economics, economics only?
Is it going to be cultural?
Is it going to be political?
And we don't have enough information to know, but we do have a new bit of information to add to everything we know.
And that's what came in in the last hour of the program yesterday.
I'll take a break and give you an idea what it is when we get back.
By the way, wait till you hear, wait until you hear about the guy that brought down FIFA.
His name is Chuck Something or wait till you hear about this guy.
This is the most amazing, amazing story.
I got that coming up.
And by the way, you know, checking these economic stories, I had an AP, I got one from Reuters here, and it says, U.S. housing data and sturdy job market, buoy growth outlook.
You know, it's amazing.
Every damn economic article in the last six years under Obama could just be summed up as prosperity just around the corner.
For six years, this is what we've been told.
Six and a half years.
The economy's been tanking.
There's no doubt the economy's tanking.
They couldn't do anything but tank with all the things that Obama has added to it and taken from it.
The tax burdens and the commandeering of the healthcare industries.
No way this economy can be growing.
And the damn media, every time, every quarter, when the jobs news or the economic growth news is bad, every damn story is prosperity just around the corner.
All the signs are there, all the indicators.
We just sit here waiting for a massive explosion that never happens.
It's all journalistic malpractice.
No, I haven't forgotten.
Here's the headline.
It's Business Insider.
Millennials don't care about owning anything, and it's destroying traditional retail.
And you know, folks, this is something, until I saw the headline, until I read the story, this is something I knew in an associative way, you know, pick up an observation reading a story such as millennials don't want to buy cars.
They're not, the first generation couldn't care less about cars.
All they care about is mass transit.
Okay, you read that, chuck it away, think this bunch of creeps, little idiots, small pocket of the millennials doesn't represent anything.
And then you find out they don't want to own homes.
Now they want to, well, you figure they don't have the money to buy them.
So you just let it turns out there's much more to this than just random examples.
Open line Friday, Rush Schlimbaugh in the afternoon in most of the country, but still in the morning on the left coast and in the mountain time zones.
Wherever you are, great to have you here.
800-282-2882.
Now, look, before I get into this, folks, do not mistake something here.
I'm not falling prey to any media manipulation.
I understand that there's all kinds of reporting about the millennials out there.
And I know why.
I know why there's all kinds of reporting about the millennials.
The millennials happen to be, they have to be fitting the mold that the drive-bys and the Democrats want.
They're depressed.
They're down in a dump.
They're losing faith in the country, but not Obama.
And that's exactly the profile of voter Democrats seek.
People unhappy, hopeless, helpless, no positive things in the future in their minds.
And those people are ripe, it is felt, to be able to turn to government for solutions to problems they have, economic benefits, what have you.
So I understand that.
And I understand that the millennials are coming up on becoming as self-absorbed as my generation is, the baby boomers.
But you can't blame them because everybody's talking about them and everybody's focused on them and everybody's either criticizing or praising them or what have you.
And they've been told they're very important.
They've been told they're the future of the country.
So I get all that.
But nevertheless, to me, it's worth the study.
Because there are some things about this generation that are new and they are pushing things that heretofore have always been things in the minority that have not been thought of as crucial or important or what have you.
And I think in the millennials, we have maybe, I could be wrong about this too, we have maybe the first thoroughly corrupted in terms of education generation in the country's history.
I mean, this generation has been exposed from kindergarten, preschool, to full-fledged liberalism from the time they've been able to talk.
They have seen it on Saturday morning cartoon shows and absorbed it.
They've been taught about climate change, global, all this crap, gay rights, kindergarten.
Their entire lives, they have been propagandized.
They have been indoctrinated.
And so tracking their movements and their attitudes is interesting.
And so when you have a story, millennials don't care about owning anything and it's destroying traditional retail.
Here are the details.
It is a business insider report, but they get much of the news from Reuters.
The tendency of millennials to rent instead of buy is turning the retail industry upside down.
Gillian Mincer of Reuters reports, quote, these behaviors have propelled businesses such as the car rental service Zipcar, taxi service Uber, and the home rental site Airbnb.
And the trend is extending to clothing.
Apparel retailers are threatened by rental startups like Rent the Runway and Bag, Borrow or Steal.
Renting has also spread to the music and hospitality industries with companies like Spotify and Airbnb.
Never mind buying a second home when you can rent a chateau in France on Airbnb for a couple hundred bucks.
Why hire a chauffeur when they don't come with an app that tracks their relative location to yours like Uber?
Even owning the latest album of your favorite band feels a lot less appealing when you can stream it immediately on and offline with a Spotify Pro membership without taking up any space on your hard drive.
It goes on to talk about how the current generation of millennials simply doesn't want to own anything.
They're transit.
They don't want to put down roots anywhere.
They don't want to be tied to anything.
They don't like.
Now, part and parcel of this is, and of course, this story does not go into it in great detail.
The vast majority of the kind of millennials this story is talking about are college grants, and they don't have any money.
They don't have any money to own anything with anyway.
And this story doesn't, and I think that's a hugely relevant factor here that does not get mentioned.
Obviously, you're not going to own it.
If you already have $100,000 in student loan debt, you come out of college and you can't find a job, much less a career.
The best you can do is 25 hours a week or an internship.
We've had the numbers earlier this week about the number of millennials who expect after college to go back home and live with their parents.
It's over half of them.
And I think it's all rooted in the fact they don't have any money.
And their attitude about that is, this is the frustrating thing for me is that they're blaming the country.
They think that they have come of age at that moment in time when America has seen its best days.
For some reason, they do not tie their economic circumstances or plight with any particular policies that have been implemented in Washington or in their states in the last six and a half years.
Instead, they just say, you know, we're it.
We're the first generation that's not going to do as well as our parents.
If you have that attitude going in, that means you're obsessed or consumed with negativism and pessimism.
And when you are negative and pessimistic about economic matters, you're not going to sink a lot of money that you don't have.
You're not going to borrow a lot of money to buy things when you don't have any idea where you're going to be next year and when there's so much uncertainty.
I think millennials don't care about owning anything is not because there has been some massive generational mental emotional shift in their brains as it is a result of practical economic reality.
If they had the money to go buy homes, they would.
If they had a career future, if they were able to plant roots someplace, start a career, start a job, and they'd be doing things that people normally do.
But it's the economics here that are dictating everything, and it's the economics left out of the story.
But the bottom line of it is it is affecting the rest of the economy.
It is affecting retail.
Don't know how much yet.
So the question goes back to, all right, is this the generation then that is going to size things up as they mature and reject it all?
And it's way too soon to say, but it doesn't appear they're prepared to reject the Democrat Party, which is the primary reason they are in these dire economic straits.
But that never occurs to them.
It does to some of them.
They're not monolithic.
No group of people or generation is.
But the ones making news, the ones being written about, they don't see the Democrat Party as the problem.
They see the Republican Party as a problem, but not in the sense that you do.
They think the Republican Party is a bunch of idiots.
It's just a bunch of jerks.
It starts and ends there.
And they think the Democrat Party is filled with people who are trying so hard to make everybody happy and everybody equal.
And so their thing is push for equality.
That is something that I guess in the 60s, my generation, there was a basic service of that concept, service to it, equality.
But it wasn't a dominant thing in the sense that it has become today, where equality equals sameness.
So I do think, folks, it's a different way of thinking.
It's a different generation.
And I think the millennials of today are going to be eclipsed by their own kids faster than they know what hit them.
You disagree with me on that in there?
I do.
I think if things don't change, if they continue to feel sorry for themselves and if they continue to think that the days of the country or best days are behind them, and if they continue to stay deeply loyal to the Democrat Party and the absolutely destructive policies coming out of that organization, their kids are going to eclipse them faster than they know what happened.
The younger generation is increasingly looking for less expensive alternatives to ownership, said Doug Stevens, author of the blog Retail Profit.
Why do retail brands depend so heavily on dispersed outlet locations to unload this season's collections when they could rent them?
Millennials, defined by the way as 18 to 34-year-olds, are increasingly living in small urban apartments rather than sprawling suburban houses.
And as a result, they don't have room for as much stuff.
And on top of that, it says here, younger people have discriminating taste as a result of exposure to online reviews.
And so there's a lot of sharing going on and not much ownership, which, of course, problem to people, for people who sell things.
Okay, quick timeout.
Sit there, folks, very tightly.
We'll be back and continue after this.
Don't go away.
Oh, yeah.
Well, it was just a few months ago that all the news was about how millennials want to buy houses in the suburbs.
U.S. News and Report, News and World report back in April, millennials still want to own a home in the suburbs.
A common misconception in the wake of the Great Recession is that Americans, particularly millennials, hold different preferences regarding homeownership and a desire to live in the suburbs.
This stylized argument claims that the declining homeownership rates of recent years is a reflection of an increased desire to rent, particularly in more urban locations.
However, this assertion is at odds with recent surveyed data that indicate preferences for homeownership and suburban living among millennials remain strong.
And yet, we got the story yesterday, they don't want to own anything, and it's creaming retail.
Anyway, it's a very much written about generation, and they're aware of it, and they're very, very self-focused.
Rivaling my generation, the baby booms.
The baby boomers still think everything's about them.
But their kids and grandkids are going to give them a run for the money.
Okay, Open Line Friday, we always try to get to calls in the first hour.
Today, no exception.
We start in Seattle with Ray.
What's up, sir?
Great to have you here.
Good morning, Rush.
It's a pleasure and an honor to talk to you.
Thank you, sir.
I'm 58 years old, and I have a two-year-old son.
I tried to find the Rush Remove books as far as a noble, but I couldn't find them yet.
But I will.
But my question, sir, is, and I haven't heard anyone talk about this, and I don't know the legalities, but I had a horrible thought the other day.
What if Hillary Clinton, if she can, will she pick her husband as a renting man?
You sound like you're in a barrel, but I need to ask you, are you asking if she could pick Bill to be her running mate?
Yes, sir.
No.
Oh, good.
Thank God.
No, I wish she could.
Oh, really?
No, but he can't serve more than two terms, and he would be in line to serve if something happened to her if she were president.
Now, I was next going to say there's no way that would happen anyway because she's not going to do that.
She is not.
She wants to be eclipsed.
The fastest way to do it would be to put him on the ticket and send him out on the campaign trail, which vice presidents do take the lead in many aspects of a campaign.
And the guy's off the charts.
Nobody can contain him.
This guy might, I mean, ticket could be indicted because of Clinton before they ever got to the election.
Never, ever going to happen.
So I know people have this fear, but I wouldn't sweat it.
Jeffrey in New Orleans, great to have you with us, sir.
Hello, and welcome to Open Line Friday.
Hey, Rush, I just want to let you know I've been listening to you for 20 years, and I've enjoyed every show that you've ever put on, and I'll continue to listen to you as long as you're on the radio.
I appreciate that.
I really do.
Thank you very much.
I just wanted to bring up the point where a lot of times with the, I'm not a millennial, I kind of just on the edge of that, but I recognize the fact that a lot of things that I buy, after six months or a year, they're already outdated.
So I've started down the road of renting things just because I get tired of buying something, and then a year later, something so much better comes out that I've got, you know, just essentially four or five iPhones laying around my house that I never use.
Well, now, wait a minute.
An iPhone, that's not a...
Let's talk about a house.
Or let's talk about your clothes.
Or let's talk about a car.
I mean, cars change every year, too, sometimes dramatically, sometimes just intermittent upgrades.
But it's never been a reason people haven't bought cars.
And, you know, homes get new tech all the time and they get new architecture and people get more money to get a bigger home.
It's never stopped people from wanting their starter home.
Well, in the home front, I've actually owned a home, but I had to get rid of it because I moved quite frequently with my job.
I never make any money on them.
As a matter of fact, I usually lose money because.
Well, you need to talk to Elizabeth Warren.
Elizabeth Warren is an expert in making money flipping homes.
I didn't know that.
Oh, she's made like a quarter of a million dollars flipping homes in Oklahoma.
Her voters don't know this about her either.
She's out publicly condemning the act, saying it's not a good way to go.
It's more problems than not.
Don't try it.
But she has flipped homes.
She's bought homes in depressed areas after storms and so forth or foreclosed homes and spent a little bit of money remodeling them and then flipping them.
And she's earned a total of a quarter million dollars.
She's not like that short little Vietnamese guy on the TV spots 20 years ago that driving around into Bentley after his first flip.
What was his name?
Tom Wu.
Remember those, you remember those ads?
The infomercial guys, they lived in a giant palatial estate in Boca Raton, but you found out it was just a picture of a house in front of a green screen.
And he's driving around on a rented Bentley with champagne and all kinds of naked women after he just flipped his first house.
And he's giving away his secrets.
All this, well, Elizabeth Warren, that's what she's doing.
Quarter of a million dollars.
You are studying from the wrong people out there, Jeffrey.
Possibly so.
Now, look, a homeownership, I can, there are a lot of people, by the way, not just millennials, who are looking at homeownership as not worth the trouble.
But it's not because of technological advance or the rapid rate of change in things.
Some people just look at it as a bad deal and something that limits their mobility.
There's all kinds of reasons that people are choosing not to buy houses today.
But the largest part of it, the biggest part of all of this is the millennials don't have any money.
Neither does much of anybody else.
And so the whole concept of ownership is a strange concept.
It's not even for a lot of young people, ownership of a home particularly, but anything else is not even a practical consideration simply because There isn't sufficient income or job opportunities.
And then you couple that with all the student loan debt that they've got.
And it isn't a pretty picture.
But look, Jeffrey, I'm glad you called.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
You've got a great point about certain things that advance so fast technologically that they're obsolete in six months, like gizmos.
There's no question that's true.
But people still own those.
They're not renting those yet.
Jim about Obama encouraging a five-year-old boy to support gay marriage.
And wait till you hear, wait till you hear about this guy that ended up being the informant for the Justice Department on FIFA.
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