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Sept. 22, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:38
September 22, 2015, Tuesday, Hour #2
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Time Text
The Pope.
Pope Francis took off from Cuba within the last, what was it, a half hour.
He he departed Santiago that Cuba.
He's out there on the eastern side of the island.
And he's arriving at Joint Base Andrews.
Back in the old days, used to be called Andrew's Air Force Base.
But now it's a joint base, Andrews, because there's a whole lot of joint stuff going on there.
It's not just an Air Force base now.
And what's really remarkable is that Obama and Muchell are going to be there to greet the Pope as he descends the stairs.
You know, Reagan didn't even go to joint base Andrews to meet Gorbachev.
This just isn't done.
It is very, very rare that a sitting president heads out to a concrete tarmac to greet an arriving anybody.
He might have done it for Bill Ayers once over at Reagan National.
But aside from that, I'm just kidding.
I gotta be careful because some ding bats actually think I meant it.
I mean, if it happened, I wouldn't be surprised.
But I mean, Obama can barely contain himself here.
We had the news here, he here comes a guy, he's gonna be able to hide behind in order to advance his agenda that nobody voted for.
And he's gonna be hiding behind Pope Francis in order to uh to get this done.
So he and Muchell are driving out there, and they're gonna they're gonna greet the Pope as he gets off.
I know 1986 when Gorbachev came over to save America from Ronald Reagan, if you remember.
In the six years, fifth year of Reagan's term, and everybody's still worried he's gonna hit the nuclear button.
And the uh arrival of Gorbachev was I mean, it was so exciting for the people in Washington State Department, even the media.
But Reagan didn't go out there to greet Gorbachev.
They didn't even see, you know, Gorbachev and his wife Raiza, who basically, you know, this is another thing.
I don't know if you remember this or not.
They're trying to make this Gorbachev wife out to be some fashion leader.
What a joke.
I mean, it was an absolute joke.
Right.
We learned later that she had, as many do, alcohol problems.
But they they landed at Andrews Air Force Base, and they just immediately went to where the Soviet embassy uh and Gorbachev and Raisa repaired to the bedroom and stayed there to adjust the time zone for a while, then finally had their meeting at the White House with Reagan.
In uh in this instance, Obama and Muchell are gonna be out there to greet the Pope when he lands.
It's not a long flight up here from uh from Cuba.
He's on an Alitalia jet, which is uh sorry, it's a capitalist.
It's a capitalist airline.
Well, parts of it are.
I think it's an airbus.
No, is it an airbus or is it is it a seven six?
I think it's an airbus that he's on.
It would matter because one's a capitalist manufacturer, one's a socialist manufacturer.
Thomas Sowell has a column today about the Pope and his arrival, but primarily it's about the Pope's message.
And I have highlighted three things that Sowell has written here because they're brilliant.
And what they again do, they take issue with the the Pope and his belief that the objective for all of humanity is to end poverty.
And of course, the Pope believes that we've all done a rotten, horrible job of it, and that governments need to get bigger, and they need to become populated with more and more compassionate people to find ways to get rid of poverty.
And of course, Thomas Sowell points out that there's one way to get rid of poverty.
But let me read to you what he wrote, because it's really, really good, folks.
Any serious look at the history of human beings over the millennia, let's say from the beginning of time, any serious look at the history of human beings over the millennia shows that the species began in poverty.
And therefore, it's not poverty that needs explaining.
Rather, prosperity is what needs explaining.
Poverty is automatic.
Poverty is the natural state.
This goes, I'll tell you the reason I like this is because it goes right at my definition of American exceptionalism, which is that since the beginning of time, the existence for most of the world's human beings has been bondage, tyranny, poverty, dictatorship.
It certainly has not been liberty.
It has not been freedom, not until the United States came along.
And that's not an exaggeration.
The United States of America, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the The first time, well, Magna Carta.
But really, in terms of forming a government and country, the first time where the concept of human liberty and human freedom came first and was the defining characteristic and was what was to be preserved.
Not the creation of government, not the existence of government, not the growth of government, not the sustenance of government.
No, no.
It was all about acknowledging God's creation of humanity as yearning for freedom.
Endowed with certain inalienable, unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.
Never before that happens.
The soul is right here.
The human species began in poverty.
Nobody had anything.
Prosperity is what needs explaining.
It's like success and failure.
Nobody needs to go read a book to know how to fail.
All right.
Everybody already knows how to do that.
People naturally fail.
They fail all the time.
But success.
Well, you'll find all kinds of people got rich writing books on how to succeed and still do.
Same thing with prosperity.
The point here is that becoming prosperous is not a bad thing.
It's a good thing.
Becoming prosperous is the way out of poverty.
Common sense.
By definition.
So how do you do it?
How do you become prosperous?
That's what Sowell says needs explaining.
And prosperity is directly related to capitalism.
Not poverty.
Poverty is related to natural existence.
There's that word natural again.
You know, the drive-by's in a democratic environmentalist wackos, nature.
Natural this, natural that is by far the way the best.
Natural nature condemns people.
Nature is what needs to be adapted to.
Nature is what needs to be overcome, such as building shelter for ourselves, not just living under trees, adapting to nature and doing so with prosperity.
That's the lesson of life.
That's what everybody wants to know.
That's what everybody wants.
That's how you do it.
It's not the message of this Pope.
The message of this Pope and every other leftist in the world is that prosperity is causing poverty.
Prosperity and success do not cause poverty.
Prosperity and success do not leave people out by definition.
Not everybody's going to be prosperous.
Nobody everybody can be poverty stricken.
It's the way the human species began.
And the thing that has always fascinated people is wealth and how it's acquired and how it's held.
Whether you like the sound of that or not, it happens to be true.
But what's happened over the course of the years, it is the quest for prosperity has become the reason they say people are in poverty.
And that's why liberalism, socialism, communism seeks to punish achievement, because achievement is deemed to be the reason people are in poverty.
Therefore, we need to take from those people who have succeeded because they really are just lucky winners of life's lottery.
So we must take from them what is not fairly theirs and give it to some big entity over here, either the government or now Bono, and let him distribute it and make things fair.
Make things fair.
Another pull quote from the Thomas Sowell piece.
Any serious look at the history of human beings over the millennia shows that the species began in poverty.
And again, it's prosperity that needs explaining.
Poverty is automatic.
As distinguished economic historian David S. Landis put it, the world has never been a level playing field.
Of course, right there, the left would stop me and scream, that's right, that's right.
And that's why nothing has ever been fair.
And that's why we must make sure that everybody has an equal chance of fair playing field.
And that's the excuse.
For liberalism that it somehow is social justice, that it equalizes everybody.
False premise can't be done.
But here's the question, folks.
Which has a better track record of helping the less fortunate?
Fighting for a bigger slice of the economic pie or producing a bigger pie.
Let me ask that question again, because I think it and its answer are profound.
Which has a better track record of helping the poor?
Fighting for a bigger slice of the economic pie, or producing a bigger pie, growing the pie, or keeping a finite size pie and have everybody fighting for a bigger piece of it.
Zero sum game.
Yep, the pie is only so big, it's never gonna be any bigger.
What we need is a referee to make sure that the pieces of the pie are parceled out fairly.
That's why we need a great compassionate person like Obama or the Pope to make sure that the pieces of the pie are not extraordinarily large for the undeserving and microscopically small for the truly deserving.
And this also includes the idea that there is virtue in poverty and sin in success.
And that's dangerous.
That is really, really dangerous, if you ask me.
But that's where we are in the evolution of things today.
Get this.
Some statistics.
In the year 1900, only 3% of American homes had electric lights.
By the end of the century, more than 99% of American homes had electric lights.
What made that possible?
A big government collecting revenue and spreading it around fairly and then calling on people to invent electricity.
How did it happen?
Did it happen because of prosperity?
Who was responsible for the prosperity?
Another stat, infant mortality rates in 1900 were 165 per thousand.
You know what that means?
For those of you in Rio Linda, what that means is for every thousand people born, 165 died.
Infant mortality rates.
In 1997, 97 years later, the infant mortality rate was seven per thousand.
It's quite a reduction from 165 per thousand in 1900 to 7% by 1997.
By 2001, most Americans living below the official poverty line had central air conditioning, had a car, Had cable TV with multiple TV sets and other amenities.
Poverty in the United States isn't even close to what real poverty is around the world.
And remember, poverty is how the species began.
It is not poverty that needs explaining.
We don't need any experts to come along and tell us what poverty is.
What needs to be explained is prosperity.
Poverty's automatic.
Prosperity requires many things.
None of which is equally distributed around the world or even within a given society.
Prosperity does not have equal distribution.
Never has.
And this is why it's such a juicy target.
Prosperity deemed to be ultimately unfair.
Because it isn't for everybody.
But it is part of a growing pie.
You can be prosperous for five years and lose it all, be back in poverty.
It's up to you.
But prosperity requires a lot of things, none of which prosperity does not require equal distribution around the world or even within a given society, because it isn't possible.
And I just wanted to share that with you because for the next five days, you are going to hear nothing anywhere remotely like that.
You're going to be hearing, you're going to be deluged with how unfair your country is.
How unfeeling.
You're going to be told how your country isn't doing enough, hasn't done enough.
You aren't doing enough.
You might hear how your country and you are selfish.
You might even hear how your country has taken things that it does not deserve and are not its own from other parts around the world.
You're going to hear all kinds of things the next four or five days to try to convince you how unjust, socially unjust, your country is.
You have been warned.
Your guiding light, Rush Limbaugh, with half my brain tied behind my back.
Just to be fair.
And here is uh Tracy in Richmond, Virginia.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
It's a pleasure to speak with you.
Thank you very much.
And I have to give a shout out to Mr. Snowdley, because I feel like a young, inexperienced actress that I've passed my first screen test with a great producer.
Oh, there you go.
I just wanted to say, anyone who's listened to you for as long as I have, and I've been listening to you for over 20 years.
You don't show us your opinion.
You try to make us think.
And you did something about six or eight weeks ago that told me a ton.
Now you can correct me if I'm wrong.
You do not have guests.
Well, now wait, wait, well, hold on, hold it just a one.
I do, you're gonna have people scratching their heads out there.
I give my opinion all the time on a lot of now on I I do not endorse during primaries, that's what you're talking about.
Yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
I just wanted to make sure that people don't think that you don't know what you're talking about.
Because I give my opinion here on everything all the time.
Absolutely.
But you also try to make us think for ourselves.
Well, that is more true than you know.
Which I appreciate because I have learned to think because of listening to you.
Thank you.
I analyze things differently because I listened to you.
And you did something, I'm gonna say six or eight weeks ago.
I'm not sure exactly of the timeline.
You had Dick and Liz Cheney on about their book.
You they were invited guests to promote their book.
Okay?
You rarely do those kinds of things.
But about six or eight weeks ago, 10 cruise called out Mitch McConnell as a liar.
And that same day, you had him on the show for 30 minutes.
That told me everything I needed to know.
About what?
About your viewpoint on who is conservative and who's not.
Uh-huh.
It told me your point of view.
It told me you agreed with what he did, which I agree with what he did.
I was already fan before that.
Very shrewd out there, Tracy.
I am a horrible human being, I know.
No, you're very shrewd, I said.
Not a shrew.
I said you're very shrewd in your perceptions here.
Well, I just think that we need that.
We need what Ted Cruz did.
We need calling them out for who they are.
And I took I took issue with Barb.
I never called in before.
I appreciate that.
I know what she She got there.
She got there.
She.
And we stick with the phones.
We're going to go back to uh Mike in St. Louis.
Mike, great to have you on the EIB Network via Kamo X. How are you, sir?
I'm fine, Rush.
Thanks for taking my time.
You bet, you bet.
I wanted to make a comment about Carly Fiorina.
Um I think that the environment from which she comes, which is corporate America, and I worked in corporate America for more than twenty years.
Uh is the most politically correct environment you're gonna find.
I mean, we had diversity training, uh mandatory diversity training.
Uh we were measured, we had to take tests on diversity.
And I'm not saying that's bad.
I'm just saying that it creates an attitude towards political correctness, uh, just to use diversity as a particular example, that she would carry into a position uh like the White House.
Um that's why I like uh uh Ben Carson and Donald Trump because they're standing up against the forces of PC, and I can't see Carly Fiorina really standing up to the forces of PC.
Now, you having said that, um I've had a lot of people and I've read too uh a number of people who watched the last debate, which was universally uh decided in her favor that she mopped the floor with those schlubs.
And some people said that wait a minute now, she threw the gender card down there.
She's she's got this victim chip on her shoulder, and she's not at all restrained in using it and playing it.
Now, given your sensitivity to diversity training and CEO and and corporate uh human resources stuff, did you see that yourself?
Did you did you think that when you watched the debate?
If you if you watched it.
Well, I didn't watch it.
I mean, uh let me just say that I I would prefer her to certainly to Hillary Clinton.
I mean, there's no question about that to any Democrat.
Well, really.
There's a lot of things about her that I really admire.
I don't think it's really uh it wouldn't be a showstopper for me to not vote for her because I think that she'd be soft on political correctness, but I just think that if you have other alternatives to her, like Trump and Carson, I would prefer them uh based on the fact that the R. Well, what what I've got you here, I have these two sound bites.
We can listen to these with you on the other end of the phone here.
She was on the tonight show last night with uh Jimmy Fallon.
And we have two bites.
The first one, Fallon says Ben Carson in a lot of trouble now because he's not in a lot of trouble.
He's in trouble with the screwballs in the media.
He's gaining support.
He's not in trouble.
Anyway, the question Ben Carson's in a lot of trouble now because he's saying he would not advocate a Muslim being president.
I think that's wrong.
You know, it says in our constitution that religion cannot be a test for office.
I actually believe that people of faith make better leaders, whether they're Christians, whether it's a person of Christian faith or Jewish faith or Muslim faith or other faiths.
I think faith gives us humility and empathy and optimism, and I think those are important things.
You would be fine with that if it's Yes, I would be fine with that.
Yeah.
And that's okay.
Your reaction to that, Mike, is that a little uh diversity on parade there, political correctness, or is that okay?
Yeah, I think it's I think it's political correctness.
I think that it's really only a uh half statement.
I was I was reading on the web what she said.
It says in our constitution that religion cannot be a test for office, but she doesn't mention that religion cannot supersede the Constitution, particularly when you take an oath to uphold the Constitution when you take an oath for any office, I suppose.
Yeah, I don't know where it says uh in the Constitution that religion cannot be a test.
I I don't I'm I've not seen that.
I know she's talking about separation church to state, but it seems to me that Ben Carson's right on this.
Hey, look, if you have a religious belief that makes the Constitution secondary or even third rate status to your religious beliefs, sorry, bud, uh you're not wanted.
That's that you if if you nobody the oath of office is to defend and protect the Constitution, not to subordinate it.
Right, right.
And and and Sharia law would subordinate the Constitution.
Subordinate it.
It'd be lucky if it got away with just being subordinated.
It'd be lucky if it still existed in the National Archives.
Right.
And and I think that the fact that she did not say that is an indication of the R. Oh, well, it's politics.
She's trying to capitalize on what she really hopes is something that tripped Carson.
Because remember, in the polls, it's her and Carson who are rising.
Yeah.
And Trump supposedly is falling.
Trump's all ticked off, by the way, at people that report that.
He's got another boycott of Fox News going on now because they reporting a poll that shows him losing ground.
Okay, here's the next here's here's the next Carly soundbite.
Uh question from Jimmy Fallon.
Vladimir Putin is saying he wants to meet with Trump when he comes here, and that he wants to sit down and have a conversation with him.
Have you met Putin?
I have.
Well, the two of them have a lot in common, actually.
But we'll just leave it at that.
I would describe him as a formidable adversary.
He's very confident.
He's very can be quite funny and charming.
But he's a KGB guy.
You know, we should never forget this.
He's also quite buff, and he wants everybody to know it.
Okay, what's your reaction to that one?
Mike, I don't mean to put you on the spot here, but you did make a statement about her and uh diversity in the corporate world and so forth.
How are you reacting to this?
Well, uh let me respond in a more general way.
Let me just say that I was struck by the competence, you know, the ability of the women that I worked with in the carpet world.
I I I thought they were marvelous.
I I think that she'd would make a great president.
I just wanted to make the point that in terms of political correctness I prefer Trump and Carson, and I think that that's kind of a uh uh uh shows a little bit of a weakness uh in her getting support from people that are against P.C. makes her more of an establishment candidate to me, I guess, is is what I'm getting at.
Well, another question here on uh Carly Fiorina and her time in corporate America as you have spent some time.
Are you aware of the I think it's uh was it fortune or Forbes, a really devastating piece on her time at Lucent technologies before ATT spun it off.
Funny you should mention that.
Well, you're it's not like you're hyperventilated out there.
What did I do?
Well, you know, corporate America is is is cold.
There's no there's no doubt about it.
I mean, um if if when your project ends, you get laid off and you have to find another job in the company if you're lucky.
Okay.
I mean, uh I'm not saying that that's bad, that's capitalism.
Uh and I guess that's what's made the country.
Well, but are you aware of what the allegation is against her at Lucent?
I don't know.
Could it be any worse than what politicians have done to America?
Well, you tell me.
I'll tell you what it is.
Okay.
There became a there was a there was a practice uh that evolved in in that particular area of the tech world.
They were laying you did this is back in the days of of WorldCom.
Does that ring a bell?
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
And Global Crossing, does that ring a bell?
Yeah.
Okay, well, you know what Global Crossing is Gary Winnick, who was a Clinton buddy who ran the company in the ground and walked away with a hundred and some odd million dollars for it because of his donations to the Democrat Party.
He's got a sixty-five million dollar house overlooking the Bel Air Country Club, and I have to look at the damn thing every time I go out there and play.
It ticks me off.
It shouldn't, but it does.
And so you had WorldCom, those you know those guys.
Right.
Um, they were laying, they were laying, they were laying uh fiber optic cable all over the country in preparation for massive economic growth, massive internet growth, much more growth than was indicated.
And of course, the dot-com bubble came along and blew up.
What happened was Lucent under Fi Arena, she was and not the only company they start in order to sell the products and services they had, they started loaning customers the money to buy the products.
Yeah.
Well, that's not really selling anything.
That's padding the bottom line.
That is exactly what happened in the subprime mortgage prices.
You you you have customers that cannot afford a mortgage, so you give them the money anyway.
You pad your bottom line if you're the lending institution, and then you sell that debt to some unsuspecting schlub who thinks he's got a steady income stream coming.
Well, according to this magazine story, that's exactly what happened, and Lucent on paper looked great, but the stock price plummeted because of all of this.
And it was said to have been one of the biggest managerial blunders, and Trump referred to this in the debate, but he didn't refer to the specifics.
He said, if you think she was bad at Hewlett Packard, you should look into what happened at Lucent.
And this is what he was talking about.
Okay.
So what was she, the CEO or what?
She was CEO of Lucent, yeah.
Okay.
But I mean, don't you think that the behalf of the board of directors?
I mean, she's not completely culpable for it, is she?
I mean, doesn't it?
Well, but what they what they no, but she was a CEO.
They what they started listing this loaned money as profit.
As revenue.
Yeah.
As profit, profit revenue.
That they were loaning money.
In other words, their customers didn't were not interested in buying the overmanufactured a glut of supply.
Okay.
So they started loaning the money to customers to buy it.
And they padded the sales figures and then reported that loan money as profit.
So is that illegal?
Well, uh, unethical possibly.
I don't want to label it.
I I don't, I'm not of that world.
Okay.
But it doesn't sound I I I all I know if I tr what I try to apply to things like this, what would happen to me if I did it?
And it was found out about.
That's how I think of things like this.
I don't know.
What if every advertiser on this program was being given the money by us to buy the commercials and we were reporting massive profits if we were publicly traded, which we're not, but that's exactly essentially what was going on.
It's exactly what happened in a subprime crisis.
I don't know.
It's it I'm sure that there's somebody out there right now that's yelling at the radio saying, what about this and what about that?
I can't think of anything right now, but it's it sounds like the way they run the government with their budget and everything.
Well, in that case, we may be talking about perfect qualifications soon.
So you just never know.
By the way, there is a name for that practice of loaning money to your customers so that they can buy your product.
It's called vendor financing.
And Carly Fiorina, well, Lucent, uh Lucent said in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, they had no choice because all of their competitors were doing that.
That's the only way they could stay viable.
I mean, their competitors were out doing this kind of stuff, so we had no choice.
Um we're talking about big sums of money here.
Uh from the from the fortune magazine piece, in an SEC document filed just after Fiorina's departure from Lucent, the company revealed that it had seven billion dollars in loan commitments to customers, many of them financially unstable startups.
They essentially were giving they call this stuff loans, but if it's not paid back, what are you doing?
They were giving money away and calling it profit.
They were giving money away to create the illusion of sales.
And they were and and when that was discovered, that's when the stock price naturally plummeted.
That's not a solid foundation.
And so this it was it was loaned money, but it it was it was I'll tell you what it sounds a little bit like Obama and Cylindra.
Except in Obama and Cylindra, you've got uh uh political issue actually taking place.
What you've got is money laundering for money to end up back in the Democrat Party coffers.
It's a way to pay back donors by having the government invest in a totally fraudulent, non-existent, phony business like solar power.
It's got all the goodies, it's got great intentions, it's got clean renewable energy, it's got wonderful people, it's got Obama lowering the seas.
The problem is it's all a scam.
Starts out with people donating to Obama to get him elected.
Here comes the payback, a loan from the Treasury, not from Obama to the guy who d who lent the money, and he has started this company called Sylindra.
And it's ostensibly the wind business, solar business, but of course there's no business there really.
There's a building with a sign on it, but there wasn't any business.
It eventually goes bankrupt, so nobody that it owed money got paid to, but it got some of the money it gave Obama back.
Clean.
And it ended with everybody, oh man, what a great effort.
They've tried, man.
You really tried solar energy trying to clean up this putrid evil planet made filthy by Bush.
So see, it all works out.
It was all political.
It loosened WorldCom.
Well, WorldCom and Global Crossing were were Cylindra type.
The glob worldcom was I mean, the CEO of WorldCom jail, prison.
Terry McAuliffe ended up getting $15 million for I I think that was a Clinton finder's fee on the real estate.
But yeah, he he was.
But but Global Crossing was the fiber optic cable that really never had anything.
That Winnick is the guy that made out like a bandit in that during the during the uh the Clinton years.
And all of this is all about I'm not now Lucent has nothing.
I don't think Lucent has anything like those kinds of political connections.
It's just that the model, whatever Lucent was doing, vendor financing is essentially what the subprime uh loan program was.
Let me grab another quick call here.
Uh this is Teresa in Houston.
Teresa, I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the program.
Hi.
It's an honor, Rush.
Um, because of you have an iPhone, and because of your books to remember American history, and because of you, I just returned from Norman D. Payne tribute to our soldiers.
Oh my God, you have hit the trifecta.
You get you went to Normandy.
Yes, I did.
Oh, isn't that something?
It is.
It's very humbling, bittersweet, and we gave our tribute and our prayers to our soldiers.
Listen, um, because of you also, my mind is clicking.
And you said have often said there's no coincidences.
And a couple days before the last debate, you had heard rumor that Carly Fiorina was sent to take Donald Trump down.
And I thought that some of the questions were just a little too formulaic.
With her answers almost exactly matching the questions.
And then yesterday, and I like Scott Walker, he was one of my four.
But his parting comment concerns me that it's that the donor class and the media are picking our candidate.
Yep.
And I'm even more determined than ever to make sure that Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, or Ben Carson are my candidate.
Whatever it takes.
And I thank you for helping my mind thinking that way.
I wish I could tell you how your call uh is is making me feel all these things you did because of me.
I'm I'm I'm I'm really deeply moved.
And uh I I it's a good thing I seriously believe in everything I tell you about here.
You're gonna go do it.
Um but I I I've just I can't thank you enough.
I really appreciate it, and you're on the right path here in the thinking.
California Native Americans uh not happy with uh Pope Francis because he's gonna make a saint out of Father Unipero Sarah.
The uh Native Americans think that the Father Sarah mistreated him.
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