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Dec. 29, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:37
December 29, 2016, Thursday, Hour #2
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Yes, it is the season of guest hosts.
There are guest hosts everywhere.
There are guest hosts across the land.
You cannot find a non-guest host.
I am honored, honored to be with you today.
Buck Sexton is going to be here tomorrow.
Rush returns live.
I think it's March 16th, April 27th, July 19th.
We're going to try and pin it down and get a firm date on when Rush will be back.
But the guest hosts are a ponus.
There are as many guest hosts across the fruited plain as there are acres of land owned by the federal government of the United States.
Now, I was talking about in the previous hour these initiatives, this one-man legislating, these royal decrees that King Barak is making from Barackingham Palace in his last days before the new guy comes in.
Apparently, that's all perfectly legit.
You're allowed to change America's foreign policy in the so-called lame duck period, in the transition period.
You're allowed to have a big federal land grab of millions of acres in the transition period.
What you're not allowed to do, that's fine, for the outgoing government to make major shifts in foreign policy, domestic policy, by one man and his pen.
That's all fine in the transition period.
What is completely unacceptable in the transition period, according to Labor Secretary Tom Perez, is to ask questions of federal bureaucrats.
Labor Secretary Tom Perez has called presidential transition questions sent to government agencies like the Energy Department, seeking to identify employees who worked on climate change as against the law.
Those questions have no place in a transition, Perez said.
That is illegal.
Last week, President-elect Trump's transition team sent the State Department a memo requesting information on its gender-related staffing, programming, and funding.
And Tom Perez says that's illegal.
It's apparently not illegal when the federal government asks the same questions, asks questions about gender-related matters of some rinky-dink little grade school in Maine or Idaho.
But apparently, if you ask these questions of federal bureaucrats, according to Labor Secretary Tom Perez, it's illegal.
Will dedicated career people be targeted because they were doing the right work, Perez said.
And that's an interesting phrase.
They're doing the right work, these career bureaucrats.
What he means by that is the way it works in this country and in most other Western countries is that governments come and go, here today, gone tomorrow.
You've got a secretary of this, a secretary of that.
They come, they go.
The permanent bureaucracy and the left-wing ratchet effect remains and does not alter no matter who's in power.
And as I said, I think in my book, After America, you don't need a president for life if you've got a bureaucracy for life.
And at the Department of Education, the education unions, which have turned American education into one of the most pitiful embarrassments for any developed nation anywhere and most expensive, know that they have a bureaucracy for life in the Federal Bureau, in the Federal Department of Education.
The environmentalists know they have a federal bureaucracy for life in the Department of Energy.
The Department of Energy was set up in the 1970s by Jimmy Carter because a bunch of stupid people believed we were running out of fossil fuels.
There's more oil anywhere.
There's oil everywhere now.
And so the entire purpose of a federal Department of Energy is obsolete in 1970s terms.
So the purpose for which it was created no longer exists, but nevertheless, it's still there.
And the pick that Trump made for the Environmental Protection Agency, where he's picked a guy to head the Environmental Protection Agency, who's best known for suing the Environmental Protection Agency multiple times, is brilliant.
Is brilliant.
But it only works if that guy is able to get control of that agency.
These things are killing.
These things are killing America, literally killing the country, draining the life out of the country.
And I use that phrase deliberately.
If it rains, you can't drain your field because it's suddenly a wetland.
So, okay, let's not bother draining the field.
Let's instead drain, as Trump says, drain the swamp of these federal bureaucracies.
And I would love to see him actually begin the process of eliminating some of these departments, reducing the number of cabinet positions, eliminating federal bureaucracies, which Republicans have been committed to abolishing the Department of Energy and Department of Education ever since they were created and have done nothing about it.
And I would like very much for Trump actually to impose his will.
Because when Tom Perez says, will dedicated career people be targeted because they were doing the right work, what he means by that is elections don't matter.
Because these bureaucrats, career bureaucrats, quote, doing the right work, unquote, by which they mean inventing new bureaucratic regulations that have been passed by no legislature anyway, anywhere,
and then dragging you and fining you for being in violation of these regulations without due process, without it being approved by a court anyway, or being found guilty by 12 good men and true anywhere, what he means is that this permanent bureaucracy should be allowed to render elections irrelevant, to render the will of the people irrelevant.
So I hope Trump sticks it to Tom Perez and people who say that you should not be a government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not, in effect, be governed in perpetuity by a bureaucracy that is none of those things.
This remark by Tom Perez on CBS News is extremely revealing.
From our friends in the French Republic, France is introducing a terror tax to support the victims of terrorism.
French citizens will contribute an extra $1.67 on their property insurance policies to help finance a fund for victims of terrorism attacks that have recently hit the country.
As you know, 86 people died in Nice, killed by a truck on France's national holiday, Bastille Day, over the summer.
They had the priest who was decapitated during mass.
I went to near Rouen.
I went to that guy's funeral in Rouen Cathedral.
It was very moving, but also illustrative of the passivity of the French state.
The Prime Minister, Manuel Valles, has basically said that the French government's position on terrorism is that you should get used to it.
And it's not just that you have to get used to it, but that you have to have tax increases now to pay for terrorism, to pay for terrorism.
This is the same French government that was deliriously ecstatic by the passage of that UN resolution on Israeli settlements.
They thought it was a great landmark, this first great vote on the iniquity and evil of Israeli settlements since 1980, the one that Barack Obama and John Kerry enabled to happen.
And that's true.
If it hadn't been for America's abstention, that UN resolution would not have passed because America is one of the five, big five at the UN.
And if they veto something, it can't be passed.
So all you need is America, Britain, France, Russia, China to veto something, and it can't happen.
And America, that vote was, that abstention was a disgraceful act by the Obama administration.
But it should not let off the hook the other 14 members of the Security Council who actively voted to support It and then went cheerleading for it.
And none more so than the French government.
And when you actually try to unpack what's what I mentioned earlier that we all know the reason why there is no two-state solution in Palestine, it's because wherever you go in the Palestinian territories, and I'm talking here about the same part, I'm not talking about the Gaza Strip, which is all Hamas all the time now.
I'm talking about the supposed civilized part where it's all the guys that you see on CNN, like spokesman Sayab Arakat and all these fellas.
It's Mahmoud Abbas, who's now in whatever it is, the 12th year of his five-year term of office.
I don't know how that works, but he's the big Democrat, and we should all support him.
When you look at the Palestinian territories, if you ever go anywhere where there's, I mentioned Slovakia earlier, if you were in Czechoslovakia in the early 90s, it was pretty obvious that Slovakia did not want to be part of Czechoslovakia and they wanted to put in place the systems by which they could run their own country.
I was in Slovenia at the end of its time as a Yugoslav province, and it was perfectly obvious there that the Slovenes wanted to run their own country.
I'm just going through the nations that all, the new nations that almost rhyme.
Slovenia, Slovakia, I don't think Slavonia is a country yet, but it'll be one any minute.
But you know that the Irish Free State in the early 1920s, they had had certain things imposed on them by Britain that chafed, but you began to understand, you could see as you were going around, they wanted to run post offices, they wanted to run schools, they wanted to build a country.
There's no evidence of that.
Whenever you go anywhere in the Palestinian territories, what they want to do is kill Jews.
That's their priority.
Mahmoud Abbas said the other day: when we get a two-state solution, there will not be a single Israeli living on Palestinian land.
There are any number of Palestinians living in Israel.
It's actually easier for a Palestinian, so-called, to become an Israeli citizen than it is to become a Saudi citizen or an Egyptian citizen or a Jordanian citizen because nobody wants them.
Those Arab countries won't take them.
The United Arab Emirates won't take them.
But nevertheless, for some reason, the rest of the Western world and the Obama administration is united in regarding the Israelis at Faltair.
And it's fascinating to me when you then tie it to these stories about terrorism in Europe.
When you look at France introducing a terrorism, they can't do anything about terrorism.
They can't stop terrorism.
All they can do is introduce a new tax so they can pay for the victims of terrorism.
And what is going on in Europe is exactly the same as what is going on in Israel.
The Western world is trading land for peace.
And if you look at some of these fast Islamifying parts of the West, if you look at the Parisian suburbs, including the suburb where Charles Martel, the hammer, who held back the Islamic advance at the Battle of Poitiers in the 8th century, the church in which he is buried is surrounded now by a Muslim ghetto.
If you look at the Muslim ghettos in Malmo, Sweden, if you look at the Muslim ghettos in Germany, the Europeans don't know it yet, but they're trading land for peace, just like the Israelis are.
And they face the same situation because as the old line has it, first they come for the Saturday people, the Jews, and then they come for the Sunday people, the Christians.
And if you think it's good to support resolutions that enable Mahmoud Abbas to pledge a Jew-free Palestinian state, you better get used to trading your own land in Sweden, in France, in Germany, in Belgium, the Netherlands.
Because when you say that it's unreasonable to expect Jews to live side by side with Muslims in these so-called Palestinian territories, Muslims take the same view of living side by side with Christians in Germany, Sweden, France, the Netherlands, Belgium.
Europe is basically the Europeans don't realize it, but on the continent that's coming, they're going to be the new Jews.
Mark Stein in Farush, we'll take your calls straight ahead.
Mark Stein, Farush, behind the golden EIB microphone.
Let's go to Victoria in Kingford, Michigan.
Victoria, you're live on America's number one radio show.
Great to have you with us.
Hi.
Well, hi, Mark.
Hi, Victoria.
Thank you, my call.
And the initial reason why I wanted to call was, for one, to thank Rush.
And I guess I would like to thank you too, just as a contributor to this show.
I am a liberal, and my dad is a conservative.
And we used to have a really hard time getting along.
And as I've been listening to this show more, I think it's made me a lot more able to understand where my dad is coming from as far as, you know, we're as human beings,
when someone disagrees with us, we're really quick to apply our understanding of the world to their conclusions.
So I have to understand that my dad looks at the world differently.
So his conclusions are based on the way that he looks at the world.
You know, so of course, if he saw things the same way that I did, he would be wrong in his conclusions, but he sees things differently.
And this show has helped me understand more the way that my dad sees things.
And another thing that I really wanted to say was that when Trump first got elected, I was terrified.
I felt like it was going to be like the apocalypse, and I was just absolutely devastated.
And since he's gotten elected and the things that he's been saying have made me really, really hopeful that he's going to be the type of leader that brings our country together because he's just the language that he uses to describe Democrats and people that his former language towards like Obama and Hillary Clinton and other Democrats and
stuff was really vitriolic and, you know, just basically all Democrats.
But now that he's won, he's been really conciliatory and he just seems like he wants to do what's best for everyone.
Well, he has to be.
He has to be.
That's the difference between November the 7th and November the 9th, Victoria, in that on November the 7th, he was the candidate of one political party.
48 hours later, he was the incoming president of everybody in this country.
And so he governs for you as he governs for me, as he governs for 300 million other people.
And Victoria, I'll just say something.
I take you at your word when you say that you were genuinely scared.
But that is not a healthy reaction.
You have no reason to be scared.
And somewhere deep down, you know that.
He's the nominee of a long-standing party in a stable two-party nation of representative government.
People who are really scared of their leaders, you know, we heard all this in the Bush era.
Bush scares me.
Bush scares me.
People drove around with bumper stickers saying Bush scares me.
Nobody in Germany drove around with a bumper sticker saying Hitler scares me.
Nobody in Russia drove around with a bumper sticker saying Stalin scares me.
Nobody in North Korea drives around with a bumper sticker saying Kim Jong-un scares me.
That's because Kim Jong-un has the car, by the way, so they can't get a bumper.
It's like a three-year waiting list for a bumper sticker.
But we know that everybody somewhere, when we use, when we devalue the meaning of words like that, we're actually insulting the democracy and the republic because we're putting ourselves in emotionally overwrought territory that is unbecoming to freeborn citizens.
But I am glad, Victoria, that you and your father get on better because that's actually one of the purposes of conservatism.
One reason why conservatives believe in small government is because they want to allow enough space in life for everything else.
When you politicize everything the way the left wants to, so that you politicize even Steve Martin's tweets about Carrie Fisher, you suck up all the space with politics.
Politics squashes and crushes everything else.
And conservatives believe in small government to leave space for all the good things that make life worth living.
Yeah, the guest hosts are dropping off the trees right into the chair in front of the microphone.
Guest hosts everywhere.
You need never have to worry about sinister foreign guest hosts ever again if you go to rushlimbaugh.com and you take out a subscription to the Limbaugh letter.
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It's not just Rush's thoughts, they're worth the cost of admission alone.
But Rush also interviews all kinds of other figures to get their take on the big questions affecting the world today.
He's been kind enough to interview me in there a couple of times.
He's got a lot of other worthwhile interviews too.
A few weeks back, he actually interviewed himself, and that was one of the most fascinating interviews that has been conducted.
But if you just go to rushlimbo.com and you'll see the little limbo letter banner there and you click on that, there's never been a better time to subscribe.
You will assure yourself amidst the deluge of fake news in which you are drowning, that there will be a little piece of flotsam and jetson to cling to that is pure non-fake news all year round.
All you have to do is go to rushlimbaugh.com.
I mentioned this thing about Tom Perez, who said that it's illegal for the incoming Trump administration to ask all these questions about what the federal bureaucrats have actually been working on.
I mean, which is basic.
If you take over a business, which is how Trump's looking at this, he's basically staged a hostile takeover of the federal government.
And he's moving into this business and he sees they've got this huge bloated payroll of employees and he'd like to know what all of them do because he wants to start streamlining things.
He'd like to know which people are putting in a full week's work and which people aren't.
And Perez says, will dedicated career people be targeted because they were doing the right work?
And as I said, what he means by the right work is that the permanent bureaucracy should be allowed to pursue its ideological objectives regardless of the people's will, regardless of the election result.
And that has absolutely corrupted the integrity of government, not only in the United States, but across the rest of the Western world too.
The permanent bureaucracy.
A Canadian cabinet minister told me a couple of years ago when I was complaining, as one does, about why a so-called conservative government hasn't done this, hasn't done that.
And he made the point that he's nominally in charge of these various federal bureaucracies and agencies, and that it's actually very hard finding any conservative people to put in to run these things.
Most of the people who want to work in these bureaucracies are by definition to the left.
And I will add one other reason why I do not want to be ruled by bureaucrats.
Not only because these are not laws passed in any legislature.
You can't go to a polling booth and vote these people out.
They never have to actually run on their platforms.
It can all be done in the dead of night, like many of these regulations are.
But also because they're corrupt.
And that's true at all levels of government.
There is a story out of California that I think deserves actually more publicity than it's got, because every time I get a new detail on this, it gets worse.
A guy called Joseph Schwab, 36 years old, was pulled over on August the 5th, 2015.
So that's a year and a half ago by an agent.
By the way, don't you like the way bureaucrats like to call themselves agents?
Like they're James Bond, right?
Except James Bond is 007 because there's a very small number of them.
Whereas there are millions of these kinds of agents by a California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control agent in an unmarked car.
See, they really are James Bond.
They get to drive around in unmarked cars.
I'll tell you what, I was pulled over by an unmarked car a couple of years ago in Montpelier, Vermont.
And I said to the lady police officer in her unmarked car, have you got a dash cam in there?
Because I'd like to see what it shows on the dash cam.
And she says, no, there's no dash cam.
We have unmarked cars with no dash cams.
I don't even get how that works.
If you're going to pretend to be James Bond and you've got the big super spy car, you could at least have the super spy camera fitted in the super spy car.
So, anyway, this California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control agent in the unmarked car with no dash cam pulls over 36-year-old Joseph Schwab because he'd supposedly committed a crime.
Who had he committed a crime against?
Some other citizen of California she'd happened to witness?
No, he pulled her in front of her and she claimed he'd cut her off.
So the crime he committed was demonstrating less majesty towards the alcoholic beverage control agent.
And she administered a breathalyzer test.
So she's accused him of being under the influence of alcohol.
She administers a breathalyzer test, which displayed a 0.00% blood alcohol level.
That's 0.00% blood alcohol level.
And at that point, that should have been the end of it.
It was way past the end of it, actually, because she had no reason to pull him over or to administer the test.
But she administered the test and it showed a 0.00% blood alcohol level.
But nevertheless, she thought that if you went to three digits after the decimal point, it might show 0.001% blood alcohol level.
So she arrested him, tossed the guy in the county jail, and had his blood taken for an additional toxicology test, which concluded that the guy had no illegal drugs in his system.
So he's now had two tests, two tests showing no alcohol in the system.
At that point, they send samples to some outside testing facility in Pennsylvania.
And by the way, if you're a Californian and you're wondering why the Golden State is screwed, that's because they're now so determined to nail this guy, this alcoholic beverage control agent in the super secret spy car is so determined to nail this guy who's aced two toxicology tests that she sends them across the country to Pennsylvania to an outside testing facility in which something shows up.
Is it alcohol?
Because after all, this is an alcoholic beverage control agency.
No, it's caffeine.
Caffeine, last time I checked, wasn't an alcohol.
I have no idea why it comes under the jurisdiction of the alcoholic beverage control agency.
But caffeine showed up.
That's to say coffee.
That's to say the guy had been to Starbucks and he'd got a double espresso or whatever.
But caffeine showed up in his system.
No charges were filed in part because there was no crime.
He had no alcohol in his system.
He was falsely arrested and falsely detained.
And this agent shouldn't have this agent, super secret agent in the super secret spy car, driving around looking to nail people who've stopped for a hazelnut macchiato in Starbucks on the way home.
This agent actually should be out of a job.
No charges were actually filed because no crime had been committed.
Ten months later, they charge him with having caffeine in his system on the grounds that caffeine qualifies as a drug because it's any substance that might impair to an appreciable degree a driver's capability behind the wheel.
This they, how they are going to demonstrate this, I have no idea because most people, if you're driving home late at night, in this part of the world, for example, the interstates in Vermont offer free coffee because it improves your driving.
So the state of Vermont takes the position that it's so important for you to be alert on the road at night that they provide at their rest areas free cups of coffee so that you can put caffeine in your system to improve your driving.
But the state of California, being bonkers and insane, has now decided that they're so determined to nail this guy, they're going to introduce the novel legal theory that caffeine impairs your ability to drive.
All because this guy demonstrated less majesté towards an agent, a secret agent, driving around in her secret super spy car from the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.
As I say, what polling station do you go to to vote out an alcoholic beverage control agent?
They're beyond the control of the voter.
They're beyond exposure to the will of the voters.
And what this woman did is what all bureaucracies do.
Whatever they were intended to combat, they eventually metastasize and insert their tentacles into all kinds of other areas.
So we have a situation where in the United States, a man can be stopped, forced to take a breathalyzer test, ace the breathalyzer test, be arrested, forced to take another test,
ace that test, then have it shipped across the country, and when they find caffeine in it, 10 months later, that guy can be plunged into a legal nightmare by a sick, vengeful, and evil state bureaucracy.
As I always say on these occasions, George III wouldn't have done that to you.
George III allowed you to have a cup of coffee in pre-revolutionary times.
Now the state of California wants to make having a cup of coffee before you drive late at night a potentially arrestable offense.
What next is it going to be?
What's going to be the next thing?
Having a cup of Mountain Dew?
Hasn't that got caffeine in it?
That can get you all hopped up.
What about having a donut?
Oh, no, no, donuts.
I don't know how it is at the alcoholic beverage control, but they probably won't go.
What is it going to be next?
What is it going to be next?
All bureaucracies eventually expand and enlarge, metastasize like cancer, until they insert themselves into areas of life that are nothing to do with them.
This case is a disgrace, and that's what happens when, as Tom Perez says, you just allow career bureaucrats to carry on doing the right work.
There is no end to what a well-remunerated bureaucracy considers the right work.
Mark Stein for Rush will take your call straight ahead.
Mark Stein for Rush.
We have Friday, and Mr. Snerdly keeping an eye on things from down in New York, and we are here at Ice Station EIB's new backup facility.
If you're fleeing the country, do swing by.
If you're Cher or Lena Dunham or Amy Schumer and you're fleeing the country, do swing by and say hello.
So you can't miss this big sign on the highway saying last rush guest host before the border.
Speaking of the border, let us plunge across the northern wall and speak to Peter.
And Peter is calling from the call screener has just put Ontario, Canada.
Well, it would be, Mr. Stein, complete honour.
I've heard you off and on for many years.
And, again, it's an honour, but I'll get right to it.
Oh, Peter, Peter, first thing, which part of Ontario are you calling from?
Whitby, Ontario.
Oh, Whitby.
Oh, yeah.
I had a great editor at McLean's who came from Whitby.
Oh, yeah.
Nice part of the line.
It's beautiful here.
Of course, we're up against a cap-and-trade in about four days, four cents on a leader.
Right.
Incredible.
I won't even get into that.
That steams me even more.
But down south, I spent many years in the city of Philadelphia living down there and always felt very close to the Constitutional Hall and always had a great sense of patriotism for the greatest country in the world.
Now, Mr. Stein, we know at this point that these people, if not stopped, are always, always, they don't mind lying to get what they want.
They'll do anything they want.
Like Rush said, you know, we have to expose progressive liberalism and the sickness of liberalism.
So what I want to ask you, you know, now we finally have the daily press briefing, the bully pulpit, all these things we have now that on a national level, it won't be just people that are turning into Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity or whatever, or Fox News, and there's stuff that we need to do right away.
Matt, for instance, the day Mr. Trump takes over, I think, and I want to hear what you think of this, to go to a real unemployment rate, 9.9.
So 94 million, you know, off the worker participation rate, maybe 30 million of those are old people that are on retirement, whatever.
And we come up with a brand new, of course, it'll be 9% or 12%, and then it may not look good at the end of his four-year term, because Obama could say I was at 4.9, and now Mr. Trump, he's only at 6.8.
but it'll be the truth we do that from the very beginning i think that this will be such a pivotal turn in american history that it will spread like wildfire even up to here and and a little trudeau will be gone and we'll have a great great Yeah, Trump fever spreading across the Western Hemisphere.
That is something, Peter.
I think, listen, I think you're right that, and this gets back to Tom Perez's point about the bureaucracy.
When basically you have a politicized bureaucracy, so that even something, as you say, like the employment rate is fake and everybody knows it's fake because they all know millions and millions of people have actually stopped looking for jobs, then actually restoring the integrity of institutions is critically important.
I mentioned the corruption in this alcoholic beverage control agent in California.
But there's more important agencies.
The IRS was corrupted in the Obama years to target the president's political enemies.
The Justice Department was corrupted under two successive attorneys general.
I hope one thing Jeff Sessions does is actually restore the integrity of the Justice Department.
Those are actually important things.
The bureaucracy shouldn't actually be the paramilitary wing of the ruling party.
It should serve all the people in the state equally dispassionately.
And if Trump were to demand that, and if Jeff Sessions were to demand that at justice, and we were to see that all the way through, that would actually be a huge, great cleanup of what has become an ever sleazier and corrupt federal government in recent years.
That would be actually very important to do, and it would make a huge difference.
Thanks for your call, Peter.
I love it whenever I'm on the 401 and passing through Whitby, Ontario.
He lives in a nice part of the world.
We'll take more of your calls straight ahead on the Rush Limbaugh.
Mark Stein in Farush, interesting to see that California is now prosecuting people for having caffeine in their systems.
When I was in Orange County a couple of years ago, they were planning to introduce a law making it illegal to have non-fitted sheets.
You know, these things with the elasticated sheets, you could tuck them under the bed, and they were going to make it illegal to have a non-elasticated sheet.
And so you were going to have California sheet police that would be actually kicking the door down to see whether you got a non-fitted sheet in there.
California, as we know, in Mexico, if you ask any illegal immigrants in California, they will say that California is a byword for sheet government.
They really will.
And so we have a government that, on the one hand, says that, in the famous words of Pierre Trudeau in Canada, the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation, and then California comes along and says, oh, yes, it does.
If whatever you're doing, you're doing on a non-elasticated sheet.
It's always more, more, more, more, more.
until, to go back to the point I made to Victoria, it consumes all the space in life, everything.
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