Posted on 12/22/2009 3:30:28 PM PST by GOP_Lady
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On Today's Show... |
December 22, 2009
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Continually repeat ... It's not about me. I'm the President. |
Past editions of "RUSH IN A HURRY"
Rush Hudson Limbaugh. Mmm, Mmm, Mmm!
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BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Last night on the Senate floor, New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez.
MENENDEZ: It is our solemn duty to put aside our ideology, to turn off Rush Limbaugh and leave politics in the cloakroom. Our vote on this groundbreaking legislation, comparable to Social Security and Medicare --
RUSH: Stop it, that's all we need to hear from the guy, he's just a buffoon, but here we are, they're rolling, they're on track now for their Christmas Eve at nine p.m. vote and still Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey has to tell the Republicans, stop listening to me, stop being ideological, which is all the Democrats are being here, pure 100% ideology. I got an e-mail note from a friend today, "Is it hopeless? Is it over? What do we do? I'd like to go out and raise some money but everybody is tapped out." I said raising money is not what's necessary right now. We have had two rallies in Washington. It's obvious that members of the Democrat Party in both the House and Senate don't care one way or another about what the public opinion of this is. That's been obvious for a long time. I still think, folks, what you ought to do is just pound these people with e-mails, phone calls, faxes, whatever, pound every damn one of them at their offices from now until hell freezes over, before, during, and after all of this, just keep pounding them. It'll make you feel better, and who knows, it may have some effect at some point down the road.
But this is just outrageous what is all happening. What we are learning, there are unrepealable aspects of the bill, particularly a medical exchange plan that really sets the stage for the government takeover of health care. It cannot be repealed. A rule has been violated, the Constitution has been violated. There is so much of this that is illegal, and somebody's going to have to bring the charge, and I expect that if it's done, if somebody does challenge this, it's going to have to come from some of these states that are being left out of all the goodies. In New York, Bloomberg is fit to be tied, Paterson is fit to be tied, and in Georgia, I mean they're being left out, a lot of states are being left out of this. So a lot more detail on this as the program unfolds, but ideology, the reason Menendez goes to the floor of the Senate and says, "Do not listen to Rush Limbaugh," is because ideology is the only way we're gonna beat this. Ideology is the only way people in mass numbers are going to be made to understand just what this is and what it's about.
Now, we can go through individual aspects of the bill which we will do today but that's been done ad infinitum, and it ends up sounding like mishmash, people hear it, it all runs together. The ideological approach: this is liberals, this is what liberalism is, liberalism means the loss of economic prosperity and individual freedom and so forth. That's the message, Menendez knows it, and that's why he is asking people to not listen to me. Dingy Harry invoked Rodney King on the Senate floor this morning.
REID: There's a lot of tension in the Senate. I would hope that everyone would go back to their gentlemanly ways and I would hope that -- I was trying to figure out how to say this, gentlemanly ways, I've said it to a number of people, Rodney King, let's just all try to get along, that's the way we need to do it, this is a very difficult time the next day or so, and let's try to work through this.
RUSH: Which is a laugh. We're dealing with some of the most hard-handed ideologues, mean-spirited extremists to come down the pike. And this is what they always do. When the going gets tough, can't we all just get along? Can't we just stop all this partisanship? I thought Obama was going to handle that. Mitch McConnell agreed with him.
MCCONNELL: Let me just add to my good friend the majority leader, he and I have an excellent relationship, we speak a number of times in the course of every day and have no animosity whatsoever, and we are working on an agreement that will give certainty to the way to end this session and hopefully the two of us together can be recommending something that makes sense for both sides in the not-to-distant future.
RUSH: All right, there's the Republican leader in the Senate. (interruption) What, Mr. Snerdley? What? Well, I played that not just to infuriate you, I played it to inform you. Let me go back to this e-mail I got. In fact, I ought to print out the reply. I'm trying to remember the reply. The e-mail I got was somebody who's really been invested financially in trying to stop this, has been raising a lot of money and was asking me if all is lost, and I'll find the reply to the e-mail after the break and share it with you. Now, let's go ahead and stick with this, let's go to sound bites four, five, and six. This is yesterday on this program. This is me.
RUSH ARCHIVE: Now, Snerdley just said to me, "It violates the rules." Violate the rules? They've just stood the Constitution upside down. You think they give a rat's rear end about violating a Senate rule on when reconciliation can and can't be used? RUSH: Here's Senator Jim DeMint, Republican, South Carolina, last night on the Senate floor. DEMINT: There's one provision that I found particularly troubling, and it's under Section C titled, "Limitation on changes to this subsection." And I quote: "It shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection." This is not legislation, it's not law. This is a rule change. It's a pretty big deal. We will be passing a new law and at the same time creating a Senate rule that makes it out of order to amend or even repeal the law.
RUSH: And this is not how Senate rules are made. Now, the language is tough, but this is how dictators operate. This is how people who know that nobody wants what they're offering operate. People who have power and who do not and who are very well aware that they're running against the wishes and against the grain of the people they supposedly govern make it impossible for those people to do anything about it, in an illegal way. This is not how you change the rules of the Senate. DeMint continued.
DEMINT: I'm not even sure that it's constitutional, but if it is, it most certainly is a Senate rule. I don't see why the majority part wouldn't put this in every bill. If you like your law, you most certainly would want it to have force for future Senates. I mean we want to bind future Congresses. This goes to the fundamental purpose of Senate rules, to prevent a tyrannical majority from trampling the rights of the minority or of future Congresses.
RUSH: Okay, that's Jim DeMint on the floor of the Senate last night. Now, why are they making this provision unrepealable? What we're talking about here is the Independent Medicare Advisory Council making it impossible or difficult for future Congresses to legislate in that area, to change this. Bill Kristol points out: "Because the heart of the bill is the attempt to get control of our health care permanently in the hands of federal bureaucrats, who would allegedly know better than doctors and patients what’s good for them, and who would cut access to care and the quality of care so there’s more money left over for various big government liberal social programs." This is just outrageous what is happening.
I was telling Snerdley this morning, usually on our last day of the last show of the year, we're not dealing with this kind of stuff, the Congress has gone home, nobody's messing around with liberty or freedom, they're not passing new laws, and we yuk it up and we have some jollies, and it just doesn't seem a whole jolly time here given what is at stake, but nevertheless we're going to try to combine both elements in the program today. But Jim DeMint is upset, but of course this doesn't get carried much outside the Senate floor by the State-Controlled Media, so aside from people like you in this audience and readers of various conservative blogs and so forth the vast majority of the American people have no clue about this yet.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: It's very simple, folks. When Barack Obama and the Democrats win, America loses. Big time. Now, here's the e-mail that I received: "Dear Rush. I still think with sufficient public outrage we could stop the vote in the House, but it's proving incredibly hard to raise the money we need to reach and mobilize the people who are not in your audience. Everybody's tapped out and resigned. Do you still think we'll prevail?" Here's what I wrote back -- and it was a stream-of-consciousness reply. I said, "Dear Such-and-Such. I said yesterday that no amount of public outrage would matter, and I believe that. We've never seen this before. We've never been involved in anything like this before. The main reason public outrage won't work is not the public's fault. It's a combination of mainly a dictatorial frame of mind the Democrats all have now, and the Republican Party just refuses to get emotionally engaged here, or outraged by it.
"Their responses are barely above a flat line -- and I could point you to Mitch McConnell's very gentlemanly remark and reply to Harry Reid who asked if we can all just be like Rodney King and 'just get along.' In the midst of the destruction of the US health care system, we're obsessed with being polite, and I know why. It's because we don't want to anger the moderates. The moderates are afraid that if we start criticizing Democrats or Obama, that they'll run away to the Democrats -- when they're fleeing Democrats in droves now! Now, there have been two attempts to rally people at the Capitol in opposition to this. And the reason was that e-mails, phone calls, and faxes were not having any impact. It was theorized that bodies on the ground, boots on the ground, people in the faces of members of the House and Senate was what it would take to make a difference. But those two rallies failed because they essentially didn't happen.
"Who knew about 'em? The mainstream media didn't report them. Nancy Pelosi made sure that the vast majority of people that showed up at these rallies never got anywhere near the Capitol. The Democrats knew that all these protesters were being asked and cajoled to show up so they were able to tell themselves it wasn't genuine -- and the numbers reported were not all that repressive. I mean, the peasants didn't show up with any pitchforks. And so the Democrats, they listen to all this and they hear all this hubbub and they listen to all this opposition and they know they're getting it. But they didn't see a whole lot of it in Washington because it wasn't permitted to get close to them. Do not misunderstand me. The people that showed up did a great thing.
"I'm just saying that the game was rigged before they even got there. I told this person that sent the me the e-mail, "I'm going to urge people today to continue to flood members' offices especially their local ones when they go home for the Christmas break." But we're dealing here, essentially, with people who have a dictatorial frame of mind. The public opinion is irrelevant. It doesn't matter. The election to them is still a year away. If this were next September or October and all this was happening, you'd have a entirely different dynamic going on. The inside-the-Beltway commentariat still doesn't see this as anything other than just another day at the political office. I was watching the Fox News All Stars last night during the roundtable discussion. You had Steve Hayes from the Weekly Standard, Charles Krauthammer and Mara Liasson.
Hayes and Krauthammer were involved in the guts and the gory details and the ideology, and they were spelling out exactly how atrocious all this deal-making was, all this whoring, all the bribery, all the prostitution that was going on, all the buying of votes, all the buying off states, all the buying of governors and so forth. They are scoring big time points. There's Mara Liasson, who I like. I like her. I've met her a couple times, but she's typical of the inside-the-Beltway media crowd. There's nothing special about this, other than it's a huge piece of legislation for Obama. But there's nothing going on here that doesn't always happen. This is what legislation is. Senators buy votes. They trade votes. It was perfectly understandable to her that legislation had nothing to do with constituents. It was perfectly understandable to her that legislation had nothing to do with the substance of it. Legislation was all about process and the people studying this and reporting on this and the State-Controlled Media, that's their obsession: The process of it.
"Will Obama win? Can Obama secure a victory? Can Obama reform health care?" They haven't dug into the guts of this, and they ignore people who have. This will destroy the country, as you and I know it. This will destroy the greatest health care system in the world, as you and I are aware. This will forever change the relationship that you and I have with our doctors because the government's going to be a very powerful middleman. There are death panels back in this bill. This is what Harry Reid says cannot be repealed. We are going to ration care. We're gonna make sure that only the approved people get the kind of care that might prolong life. It's all in there. None of this matters! It's all about the process. It's all about the political victory. "Can Obama bring it home?" Meanwhile, the country is undergoing one of the most major transformations since its founding.
I went and looked up a number of things that the Founding Fathers found outrageous and that were the tipping point for them, the things that caused them to rebel and found this country -- and they were nothing compared to what is happening in this piece of legislation alone. I know people think money, fundraising so important, and it always is. But if you have to raise money and spend right now, if you have to raise and spend money to raise temperatures on this -- after all this time and all this effort, it seems unnecessary -- it seems like money would not be necessary. If you look at all the polling data, don't need to make more people aware. There's not one poll that shows a majority anywhere in favor of this. I've always thought pounding the individual provisions in the bill is okay but it's the wrong way to go, because it all becomes a blur.
I hit this ideologically at all times, and what Harry Reid has done in limiting CEO salaries of insurance company execs, limiting shareholder profits and operating expenses -- if you're just joining us and you missed that yesterday -- David Axelrod assuring the left that are upset that they're going to be forced to buy insurance from a private sector insurance company, "Don't worry about it, he said. "We have run in there and we've limited CEO salaries in this legislation." Oh, really? They didn't take TARP money. What gives you the right to do that? They're just doing it. They are going to limit shareholder profits and police operating expenses. Eventually that will drive them out of business, which is the ultimate aim here. Now, there's no other definition for this than pure fascism, which is ideological, and it needs to be called as such. Harry Reid has written language saying many of the provisions in the bill cannot be repealed.
This whole thing is un-American. It is unconstitutional, and it's not time to be polite with this. It's not time to be gentlemanly and let the Democrats have their sway on this. There would have been people with pitchforks at the Capitol if elected officials had felt and expressed the same degree of outrage and anger that their constituents feel and are expressing. In the end, however, I still think there's a chance for defectors somewhere along the line, and I think at some point they're going to have to resort to a mechanism whereby they get 51 votes instead of 60. Because I think at some point in the Senate they're not going to be able to get 60, and the House is a whole 'nother ballgame. But the fight is not over even if it does pass. Our guys ought to be leading the protests, carrying the pitchforks. Instead they're saying things like they're concerned, they're disappointed, surprised. That doesn't cut it because that doesn't provide leadership and leadership is necessary. People need an outlet and a vessel for their anger in their own party.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Not one Democrat Senator with integrity or courage, not one. It would only take one Democrat Senator out of 60 to object to all this, this horrendous piece of legislation, and it would die, just one Democrat Senator out of 60 to show some integrity, show some courage. And nobody anywhere thinks it will happen. It's not even being discussed. Now, what does that tell you about Democrats? And yet it is always the Republicans who are portrayed as closed-minded, walking in lockstep. What a laugh. We now see what walking in lockstep is really all about and we see what actually is important, and it's not the country.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This takes me into yet another fear that I have about all this. There are a lot of things that worry me about the transformation of the country with the health care, the relationship between us and our doctors and the relationship between us and our government. But there's also another aspect of this, and that is the relationship between us and us, between citizens. We will from now on be rivals. We will be competitors for federal money for health care for our children, permission from federal powers that be for each medical visit and procedure. This is gonna destroy, folks, the traditional American live and let live attitude toward everybody because it will inevitably become me against you. When services are fewer, when costs go higher and it's your kid, you're gonna become competitive with your neighbor when you have to go in and negotiate with some federal bureaucrat to see that it's your kid that gets treated, and that's where we're headed.
This massive new entitlement is going to obliterate tolerance. This whole notion of live and let live, the way to summarize that is tolerance, and there isn't going to be any more of that. Every American is going to be looking at neighbors with jealousy, resentment, and anger at whatever medical care he or she receives because not everybody's gonna get the same. That's the way socialism works. It never ends up that way. There is never equality of outcome; there is never sameness even though that's the objective; there are going to be differences, and it's going to lead to big, big problems. Every American is gonna end up being extremely judgmental about the behavior of fellow citizens that would in any way be considered risky because the attitude will be you're taking money from my family's future medical care.
So whereas now we have a bunch of nanny special interest groups who run around and say: "We gotta do something about obesity," we're going to have citizen on citizen confrontation. "You better lose weight, you're costing me money, you're getting health care that I should --" it's going to be a mess, folks, and it's by design. It is pure, 100% chaos. Do you know that in this health care bill, I think by 2016, which is just seven years from now, families with an income of $96,000 will get subsidized medical care and insurance. Ninety-six thousand dollars you will get subsidized insurance and medical care. That tells me that the objective here is to get everybody on the dole, to make everybody as dependent on government, with Democrats in charge in perpetuity, as possible.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: There are still people who say I don't know what I'm talking about. "Come on, Rush! What do you mean delay the taxes? They're going to have to delay the taxes!" No, not necessarily. The taxes can easily go up. They could just bury 'em. You know, withholding is a great trick. When you never see your gross, and when you never write the check, you really don't know all the taxes you're paying. This is why people get upset about their property taxes, 'cause they know it.
Many people have to pay them, independent of the mortgage payment. Not he everybody, but enough do to get upset about it. They're going to go up. They'll be buried. Nobody will see where they're going, and to tell you, "This money is for the military. It's money to fund the war on terror! We're paying the deficit down." Expect that to be a big theme, too, after this passes: Deficit reduction. We're going to have to do that. Trying to find out why where our tax money goes is really bad. If you think, "Rush, Republicans are going to easily repeal this. People are so fit to be tied." Look, I hope you're right about that, but look at Social Security. Look at what the Democrats do and have done historically every election. They have accused Republicans of trying to cut your Social Security. They've accused Republicans of trying to take it away and kick you out of your home.
They accuse Republicans of Medicare cuts. Now, imagine health care gets passed -- and imagine the Democrats saying, "Republicans want to take your health insurance away from you. The Republicans want to kill everybody, not just the seniors!" I mean, you can see how this all sets up, and you see why they're not really concerned if they lose their majority. Not that they want to but they're not concerned about it. This level of commitment... I just got a note: "Hey, you're wrong. We're committed. We were so committed we didn't vote for McCain last year because we were loyal." I said, "Okay, fine. I did. I did vote for McCain," and I'll tell you something else. (sigh) Well, how do I do this in a diplomatic way? I know that a lot of people were fed up with the Republicans in 2006. There was scandal. They weren't listen to constituents. They were spending like crazy -- although nothing compared to now.
And so we were pure, and we got rid of them. We didn't vote. We allowed the Democrats and the independents to elect Democrats. We allowed people like Mark Foley to shape our opinion of all Republicans, and now there aren't the Republicans to stop the Democrats anywhere. We don't have the votes to stop 'em in the House. We don't have the votes to stop 'em in the Senate. So -- and I'm even guilty of this -- it is a little disingenuous to complain about the Republicans, 'cause they can't stop it with votes. I do wish they had a little bit more energy. I do wish they had a little bit more verve and ideological fire in rallying troops because there are ways to stop this outside of their votes. If they don't have the votes, then there are other ways to do it. At any rate, I'm a broken record on that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Look, folks, I'm not trying to dispirit you, but reality is reality. There's no question that these rallies, tea party movement -- do not get spirited -- those worked. Those were spontaneous uprisings this happen they did slow this down. They wanted to get this down did you know in August. They had tremendous exact and tremendous power, but those are spontaneous things. Those are not the long view. The long view here is replacing current Republican leadership. There is a conservative ascendancy, and it requires the election of genuine conservatives next November to retake the party and then roll this stuff back, because Congress cannot make itself un-repealable. It just won't stand. We'll fix that.
END TRANSCRIPT
| Read the Background Material... |
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| • Kristol: It Could Still Go Down |
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, folks, let me address this dispiriting you, because I got an e-mail, I mentioned it briefly at the conclusion of the previous hour. I'm not trying to dispirit anybody but I must be honest with you about how I think the Democrats are going to play this, and I have to be honest when I tell you I don't think they care about losing their majority. That's how committed to this they are, and I don't doubt for a minute that health care and health insurance will become the new third rail, just like Social Security. Every election they're going to accuse Republicans who want to take away your health insurance, just like they traditionally accuse Republicans who want to take away Social Security. It's the way they play the game.
Now, I think you all should keep calling offices, flooding offices with faxes, e-mails, and so forth, and do the rallies. They have helped. They have made a huge difference, they've delayed this. This was going to happen in August. Remember, they wanted all this to happen in August. And the protests did matter. But honestly, this isn't the long view. This is a spontaneous grassroots uprising that is happening, tea party movement and so forth that, as I say, did in fact slow this down, and it will make a difference in November. Movements take time to develop and the conservative movement, this one, after decades of neglect, is on the march. Conservatism is on the ascendancy. Now, when we face the kind of despotism that we're facing in today's Democrat Party, it takes all kinds of people doing all kinds of things. The public is energized. There are people who are willing to go to jail rather than be forced to buy health insurance. They are willing to do it. I got a guy waiting to talk to me who is a small business guy in St. Louis -- well, let's grab him now. Jim in St. Louis, I'm glad you called, tell everybody what it is that you are suggesting.
CALLER: Well, Rush it's very, very great to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Longtime listener. Listen, I think even though I'd love to talk to you, I want to talk to small business in this country. I think small business could stop this health care dead in its tracks. All we have to do as small business for a short term pain for a long term gain is just shed your payrolls down 50%. Let's overrun the unemployment offices to where they cannot deal with this crisis and let them know that we as small businesses in this country are the ones in charge and without our money they can't do any of this. We are the ones that allow them to do to us what they are doing. If we quit sending our money to these people, they cannot implement these programs. They work for us. We do not work for them. I'm tired. I've run a company for almost 30 years. I'm in the housing market and I manufacture window products. And I can tell you this. I know that everybody in this time is hurting, but you know what? For about two weeks we could bring Washington to their knees.
RUSH: Okay, Snerdley, Dawn, Brian, you're fired. Do not come back. You are going on the unemployment line next year. We're going to flood -- (laughing) well this is what it's going to take. Would you do it? If you were an employee would you accept being fired on this principle?
CALLER: Yes. I'm looking at my family and what's going to affect me the next 30 years of my life. What if you don't take a stand for two or three weeks to what's going to affect you for the next 30 years of your life while you're alive? What are you going to do about your parents when this passes?
RUSH: Well, now, wait a minute, what's to say it's just two or three weeks that people are going to be unemployed?
CALLER: Rush, we pay payroll taxes every week to the coffers of the federal government, every week. You start drying that up, the only way that they can do anything is with our money. And the only way they get our money is we have employment, and the time you start taking away the withholding, you quit paying them the Social Security, you quit matching unemployment benefits, you quit doing that, they do not have the money in the state of Illinois right now where I have my business to even keep unemployment checks current.
RUSH: I know. Chicago has had to shut down for budgetary reasons.
CALLER: That's right.
RUSH: The city of Chicago. Now, here's the thing. When you're dealing with rational people in government this makes great theoretical sense, but this bunch will just turn on the printing presses which is what they're doing now.
CALLER: They will not be able to sustain. They need unemployment numbers not to be at 500,000. They need them to be at 1.5 million for a week and then panic is going to have set in to let them know, "Look, business in this country runs this nation. You don't. And either you come back down to the table and talk to us --" we as business people across this country have to make them come to us and then maybe we can get a dialogue. The way we're going about it now, there will be no dialogue. And the only way there's no dialogue now is we keep sending them our money.
RUSH: Well, that's because people have to eat. Look, philosophically I admire what you're saying, and it would be great to be able to some way deny them this money, but at the same time people have to eat, they have to feed their kids. So you're suggesting go on unemployment, get by with just what you get on unemployment for a while just to make the case, run real unemployment numbers way, way up like triple 'em, to send a message.
CALLER: That's correct, because there's one thing for sure. When this takes effect, the unemployment numbers are gonna go up because the employers aren't going to go along with it when it does go into effect. So it's either now or later.
RUSH: That's the design. That's the design, to get 'em going to government for their health insurance and for their health coverage.
CALLER: We have to reverse the design. We have to give them the design before they get it passed.
RUSH: I'm sitting here thinking. Snerdley is sending me a note, Jim, suggesting the AP lead headline tonight will be: "Limbaugh calls for one million to be fired before Christmas Day." New York Times: "Limbaugh fires millions," Washington Post: "Women and children hardest hit."
CALLER: Well, I can understand that, but I think the American people have gone through a lot of pain right now, and I don't think the pain is as great as it's going to be here in the future.
RUSH: Well, now, that is a point. It is going to get worse. There's no question. This is a tough call. But what I want to emphasize about what Jim said here is that we still do run this country. We still do run the country. This kind of action is not unprecedented. We've had the Boston Tea Party and any number of other things. I want to find for you in my stack -- let me take a break and find it -- I gotta find the tipping point for the Founding Fathers to say, "Enough!" and rebel against the crown to found this country. Jim, thanks very much for the call.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay, small business caller from St. Louis, Jim was his name. Without realizing it, what Jim was advocating was a leftist strategy to destroy the country and it's called Cloward-Piven, and these are people, Saul Alinsky bought into them, they go way, way back. They predate Alinsky and Obama is a big believer. I think -- now, allow me the opportunity to be wrong on this -- I think they were Columbia University types, Cloward-Piven. The idea was to flood the welfare system, flood the welfare state to make it collapse, to bring on a revolution. Now, the kind of revolution Cloward-Piven want is a revolution not where the people run the show, but where the people have nothing to say about anything, just flood the system to prove it doesn't work and then get everybody worthless, powerless, with nothing, with only the government to come in and save the day. That's their theory on it. Jim's theory of the outcome is different, that government would have to cave. It's like France, when the people in France go on strike, when they get ticked off they just go on strike. There are any number of ways of pulling this off. Just don't go to work. You gotta make sure that you don't get paid when you don't go to work and you gotta be willing not to get paid if you're going to do this. It will require a huge commitment.
Here's Tanya in Marion, Illinois, who wants to weigh in on it. Great to have you here. Hello.
CALLER: Oh, my God, Rush, what a privilege. I am so thankful I am calling after Jim.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I am a caseworker in southern Illinois. I'm probably going to lose my job over this --
RUSH: What kind of caseworker?
CALLER: I am a welfare caseworker.
RUSH: Welfare.
CALLER: I hand out food stamps.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: I hand out food stamps and medical cards. You follow Jim. You lower those tax rolls by 50%. They all hit the food stamps, the department of public aid, they come in, they get food stamps, they get free medical, state of Illinois, you get free medical if you got kids in the home and you make less than, you know, X-amount of dollars and if you're on unemployment you get it automatically. And it will destroy the food stamp which is of course everybody knows the Department of Agriculture, which is yours and my tax dollars. Our state's close to bankruptcy as it is. It is a joke. But if they follow Jim and then they all hit the public aid offices to make a point about what they're doing in Congress, Rush, I've listened to you for 15 years, I worked at Boatmen's Trust company in St. Louis, prior to that I was at Citicorp in St. Louis, I have followed you, I have personally had lunch with your cousin in Cape Girardeau when he was running the bank at Boatmen's down there. Due to a seizure disorder, I have had to go to the state where I am a union employee. Though I pay the nonunion dues, they hate me because of that, but I am now protected, they cannot fire me. Now, of course my salary's dropped in half but that's beside the point. I have a job, they can't fire me, and I've taught my kids the best I can, I've listened to you forever. A thousand times I have called you. And this could not have been the -- it was the most opportune, opportunity for Snerdley to take my call.
RUSH: Opportune time for you to get through. You know, yesterday we had a story about food stamps and how more Americans than ever are on them and the poverty level is at an all-time high, and the story was about how businesses are adjusting to the first of the month and the end of the month when the government dumps the food stamp benefits on these people's debit cards.
CALLER: Oh, you bet, the grocery stores, absolutely. Rush, okay, just for your listeners, I am college educated, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, bachelors, MBA, okay? And I'm making $50 grand a year, okay? That's it. But that's okay. That's okay. I'm doing just fine. I have taken a second job at a little convenience store called Huck's. I work 20 to 26 hours a week to put groceries on my table. But, Rush, what eats me up more than anything in this world is when they talk about the obesity problem, they talk about how everybody is obese, guess who comes in to the little grocery stores and the little Huck's and the convenience stores across this nation and they buy the candy and they buy the Red Bull? I've never in my life tried Red Bull because I can't afford a $3.50 energy drink.
RUSH: You ought to try it with vodka.
CALLER: We don't sell liquor at the little store I work at. I work 40 hours a week at my real job and 20 to 26 hours a week on my second job, and I barely have food for my two kids, it is a joke. And they come in there, and they go crazy because they've never had to pay for themselves ever.
RUSH: Now, this is the point about all this. The point about all this is that this is the greatest country with the greatest economy in the history of humanity, and yet the poverty level is at an all-time high under whose tutelage? The Democrats have been running all the spending since 2007. Obama is the president. And now we've got a record poverty rate, we have a record number of people on food stamps, and we have the federal government working with business to timely dump these food stamp and other benefits on their debit cards, and then they head to the stores to stock up when that happens. See, my theory is that this is all by design. My theory is that this is by design to make sure as many people in this country dependent as possible.
I maintain to you that if your strategery were implemented, that if we added to the unemployment rolls one million people next week rather than the 500,000 that are going to show up, that there are people in the Democrat Party who would rub their hands together and go, "All right, all right." They may not understand what's going on, that it was part of a movement, but believe me, this is the hideous nature of this. The chaos that we're seeing has been created, the chaos is on purpose. The employment situation is on purpose. Everything that Obama has done since he took office has been contraindicative of what to do to create jobs. He is doing just the opposite of what's necessary to create jobs. He is stifling investment; he is offering no incentive whatsoever; he's got these health care plans and cap and trade lurking in the future; people who are going to be responsible for investing in business or lending money to people have no idea what the rules are going to be, this is by design.
This economy is coming to a slowdown, and the difference is that it's on purpose. A lot of people don't want to believe this because they can't understand why anybody would want to do it. All you have to do is look at what they're doing with health care to understand it. It's power. It's control. And it's power in perpetuity for them. The more people who have these debit cards every month waiting for the government to load 'em up with benefits so they can go to the Huck's and pick up some Red Bull and candy, the happier people like Obama are. I mean it's hideous. These people are anathema to the traditions, institutions that have made this country great. It's not just people are going to be looking at what they're eating, you wait 'til people have a big screen TV next door for you when you're illegal and they call the government on you. Citizens are going to be pitted against citizens once this health care thing passes, it's disastrous.
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RUSH: Cloward-Piven was indeed from Columbia University. "The Cloward–Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined by Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, then both sociologists and political activists at the Columbia University School of Social Work, in a 1966 article in The Nation. The two argued that many Americans who were eligible for welfare were not receiving benefits, and that a welfare enrollment drive would create a political crisis that would force U.S. politicians, particularly the Democratic Party, to enact legislation 'establishing a guaranteed national income.'" These people were anti-free market, they were anti-capitalist, they were pro-statist, doing everything they could with their strategy here to blow up the country as it existed and exists, same thing with Saul Alinsky.
Now, I don't think you would even need to layoff workers to do this. Just don't send the tax payments to Washington. That would be one way of doing this. Because Jim in St. Louis was right, I mean the feds rely on all those payroll taxes from all these businesses, sales tax and all this. If every business just banded together and said we're not sending the money, just stop sending it, put it in an escrow account, the feds do not have the personnel to even to attempt to collect those taxes. (interruption) Well, that's the thing, they'll just print the money, but, no, that would be unrest they would have to deal with. Here's the next AP headline: "After calling for mass firings, Limbaugh calls for mass tax evasion two days before Christmas." (laughing) Probably right. That's probably what's going to happen.
I'm thinking about Tom Friedman. This little punk who goes over to Copenhagen talks about how wonderful Copenhagen is comes back here and describes what a rotten place we are, it's like leaving the Jetsons and returning to the Flintstones. Friedman is the perfect example, folks, of a statist. He's wealthy -- he married into his wealth, by the way, he married into it -- he lives on several acres on an estate. He travels the world on an expense account. He eats the finest foods. But he doesn't produce anything. It's like Obama. He produces nothing but words. He appreciates nothing. He acts like he's leading some kind of revolution against the very society that enables a person like him to succeed, totally ungrateful for what this country has made possible for him. He hasn't produced diddly-squat. He's out there thinking he's leading a revolution, one of the smartest guys walking the planet. Copenhagen, yeah. That's the Jetsons. Flies back to Newark, why, that's the Flintstones.
The straw that broke the Founding Fathers' backs. The Intolerable Acts of 1974. When you listen to this stuff, these intolerable acts, this is the stuff that broke the camel's back for the founders. This makes what's happening today seem like child's play. "The British government responded by passing several Acts which came to be known as the Intolerable Acts, which further darkened colonial opinion towards the British. They consisted of four laws enacted by the British parliament. The first was the Massachusetts Government Act, which altered the Massachusetts charter and restricted town meetings." That ticked them off. That's why freedom to associate is in the Constitution, because it was restricted. "The second Act, the Administration of Justice Act, ordered that all British soldiers to be tried were to be arraigned in Britain, not in the colonies." That ticked 'em off. "The third Act was the Boston Port Act, which closed the port of Boston until the British had been compensated for the tea lost in the Boston Tea Party (the British never received such a payment)." That ticked them off. "The fourth Act was the Quartering Act of 1774, which allowed royal governors to house British troops in the homes of citizens without requiring permission of the owner."
Those were the four things that sent Founding Fathers over the edge. They already escaped for freedom of religion. So that was already in the deck. Now, these things seem like child's play compared to what is happening today. And people ask me all the time, "Rush, do you think that there would ever be a revolution?" Let me just tell you this. Here's the third AP headline, Snerdley. I do think the American citizens and their anger is going to translate into some sort of citizen action. You can feel it percolating in every one of these phone calls that we've taken for the past six months here. Rebel, maybe, I don't know how it would massive itself. Firing people, laying people off, not paying taxes, it could be any of these things but it's going to be something huge. I don't pretend to know what it is. But with all of the millions of Americans out there asking, "What can I do?" Snerdley, tell me the truth, every call, if you chose to, you could have put up there for the past two months, "What can I do?" Every single call could have been, "What can I do?" Everybody out there wants to know what they can do, and at some point this is going to translate into action.
Fourth AP headline tonight: "Limbaugh calls for Obama overthrow amidst economic recovery." They'll throw that in there. Everybody asking, "What can I do?" The fact that so many people are asking the question will produce the perfect response, and it's going to be some sort of refusal to obey. It's going to be rooted in some sort of refusal to obey some of these un-American dictates that are being called health care legislation, Senate health care legislation, cap and trade, whatever it is. You know, we had the Rock the Vote video, the audio yesterday. Let these little young socialist youth out there, let them go ahead and withhold sex from people who oppose health care. The adults will withhold consent of the governed. That's what we're going to do. You know, let 'em go around there with Susan Sarandon's daughter playing games with withholding sex and so forth. (interruption) No, no, no, that's what she did. She and some stupid hare-brained actor have cut a video for Rock the Vote and they basically tell people who don't support them on health care they're going to be frozen out of the bathroom and they're advocating everybody do that. Fine, you go play those games. We will withhold the consent of being governed.
There is going to be some sort of refusal to obey the, quote, unquote, the crown, refusal to obey the government here. That's where this is headed, that's how un-American this is. And every time Tom Friedman comes back from some far-away eastern European capital where cell phone coverage gets shut down with a little snowfall and starts comparing this country to the Flintstones and that place to Jetstones, fine, stay there, Tom. If they've got it down pat, they live the way you think we ought to live, go where they live that way, but we are not them, this is the United States of America.
I just got a note here, a press release: "Today, U.S. Senators Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) and John Ensign (R-Nevada), raised a Constitutional Point of Order on the Senate floor against the Democrat health care takeover bill on behalf of the Steering Committee, a caucus of conservative senators. The Senate will vote tomorrow on the bill’s constitutionality. 'I am incredibly concerned that the Democrats’ proposed individual mandate provision takes away too much freedom and choice from Americans across the country,' said Senator Ensign. 'As an American, I felt the obligation to stand up for the individual freedom of every citizen to make their own decision on this issue. I don’t believe Congress has the legal authority to force this mandate on its citizens.' 'Forcing every American to purchase a product is absolutely inconsistent with our Constitution and the freedoms our Founding Fathers hoped to protect,' said Senator DeMint."
So now it will naturally lose. But it still is a good idea because they're standing up and they're getting it out there. Well, let's see just how much coverage this gets. Mr. Snerdley, let's just see how many of the State-Controlled Media actually spend time reporting a vote on the constitutionality of the bill. I expect what will happen is, they will report it after the fact and after the Senate has voted that it is constitutional.
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RUSH: Back to the phones, to Cecil, Amarillo, Texas. Welcome, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Good morning, Mr. Limbaugh, or I should say good afternoon. I'm a former progressive Democrat forced into conversion by being required to watch your television show, and I agree with you most of the time. In my position I'm just going to refuse to purchase health care. I'm going to make them put in jail and take me the court. It violates due process. My money is my property. They can't take my property without due process, and they can't put me in jail for a fine. If I owe a traffic fine they can't put me in jail for that, it's unconstitutional. So I would suggest if people are really upset about it, just force 'em to put you in jail and take you in front of the courts. Jury nullification works, and that's basically when the jury says, "Yeah, you committed the offense, but it was all right to do so," in a nutshell.
RUSH: Like the O.J. jury.
CALLER: Well, no, because there was evidence on both sides of that, you know, I mean you could argue --
RUSH: No, no, no, I was being lighthearted, but jury nullification, that jury was going to find him not guilty because of things that had nothing to do with the case.
CALLER: Right. Well, in this case jury nullification, I'll give you an example. There was a Navy SEAL down in south Texas, some kids shot his dog, he chased them through several counties before they were finally apprehended. He had the opportunity to shoot 'em and kill them and if he'd have went in front of a jury, the jury would have found him not guilty, but he didn't, you know, he restrained himself, he's a Navy SEAL and he used his training, and he restrained himself, but had he killed them, no jury in Texas would have found him guilty even though he had actually committed the offense of murder. So the same thing here. If you refuse to purchase health care insurance, people in the jury of similar mind just turn around and say you're not guilty irrespective of whatever the state presented as evidence.
RUSH: Wait a second. Along these lines, I have read some of the bill now. There are exemptions. There are religious exemptions for American native Indians. There are exemptions for people experiencing financial hardship. I kid you not. Now, I have a question because I have a naturally inquisitive mind. If people who are experiencing financial hardship are exempt from having to buy insurance, then how does this bill cover the uninsured? Aren't we told that most people are uninsured 'cause they can't afford it, and doesn't this bill really only make people buy insurance? That's what this is all about. So if we except the very people we're trying to force into insurance, what exactly is being accomplished here?
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RUSH: Here's Ernie in Chico, California. Ernie, it's great to have you with us. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, thank you very much. Conservative, conservative here in Northern California, and I just wanted to say a couple things and then ask you a quick question -- and, by the way, thank you for commenting on the reason for the season. I appreciate that.
RUSH: You bet, sir.
CALLER: I have been in business for 20 years, and I'm just starting to get into politics. Well, I've always been in politics, but just starting to get heavily into it here in the state. And just a couple quick comments on Jim who called earlier. You know, we're already in Northern California here I'm seeing lots of and lots of, businesses going out of business, cutting back. You know, it's a state that has its own problems. It's in bankruptcy, and we're seeing that throughout numerous cities in California.
RUSH: Mmm-hmm.
CALLER: And we're dealing with the medical community and in health care. You know, I know a lot of the doctors, this is the business that I'm in, in their own practices -- especially when they're dealing with Medi-Cal, that is a joke any way the fact that for the last three years these guys, these business owners -- which are doctors -- not getting paid for two, three, four months at a time from the State of California because of Medi-Cal.
RUSH: And it's going to get worse.
CALLER: Can you imagine if the federal government decides to do it? The state can't even get their budget under control and they go for two or three months and they don't pay?
RUSH: It's going to happen. That's what bundling is all about. That's exactly what bundling is all about, and the reimbursements are going to be less. Doctors are going to be earning less. This is an utter disaster. But that stuff's not going to start for four years.
CALLER: One of the comments that was made to me from one of the local doctors up here is basically that, you know, when you deal with the Blue Crosses -- the health care industry or the insurance agencies right now -- they can get something through within a week when they ask for it. On Medi-Cal, it takes a month or two to get an answer back on some kind of a procedure. So how in the world can government think that it's going to be able to do anything better? It can't. We have a pretty good health care system right now. I'm sure it needs to be taken care of in dealing with lawyers and some other things and being able to go across state lines.
RUSH: The question that you ask... The correct question is not, "When is the government going to realize it can't do it?" The correct question is: "When are the people who support this going to wake up and understand?" I'm not talking about the elected officials, because they support it for a whole different reason. They don't care how it turns out. They don't care how it functions. Do you think they care how bureaucracies function at all? They don't! There isn't one that functions smoothly. The real question is: Average Americans, Democrats who are for this, when are they going to realize that what you describe is headed their way as a matter of daily life?
CALLER: Well, yeah.
RUSH: You would hate to think that it's going to take the implementation of the program to make that happen. Look, Ernie, thanks for the call. I appreciate it. I've got just a minute and a half here. I want to say something. I went through all of these bribes. I looked at what Ben Nelson got and all these states got. All these bribes are exemptions. The state of Nebraska will be exempted from having to pay the new mandated Medicaid costs for new Medicaid patients. In Louisiana, more money will be sent there to help the state pay for it. The very act of bribing these Senators, to me, is a tantamount admission to what a lousy piece of legislation it is. If in order to get Senators to vote for it you have to exempt their states from the provisions, then you are saying, "We have here a punitive bill. We are going to wreak havoc on everybody. We are going to punish everybody. That's the only way we can make health care equal," and in the process, some people don't want to be punished or they won't vote for it so they're exempted. I mean, the very fact that these deals were made is the proof of how rotten this is and how it is not -- in any way, shape, manner, or form -- the way it is being promoted.
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RUSH: To New Orleans and Eileen, thank you for waiting. Great to have you with us.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, Merry Christmas. We love you down here.
RUSH: Thank you. I love you, too.
CALLER: I was just thinking, these Democrats are centralizing this massive amount of power and now this looks like they're willing to give up their majority. Do they ever consider that conservatives could get it back and appoint Dick Cheney to administer the death panels? Does it ever cross their mind?
RUSH: (laughing) I'll tell you, they do not think that we will do anything to roll back any of what they've passed if we do take power back, because they don't think the Republicans as currently constituted have the guts. Now, what you're saying is, with a new conservative leadership running the House and Senate, new conservative leadership running the Republican Party, the Democrats won't know what hit them. And that conservative movement is in an ascendancy here. The current House leadership, Senate leadership, they're probably right, because they would fall prey to the allegation that Republicans want to take people's health insurance away from them.
CALLER: But, Rush, they're not smart. You wanted to know the definition of smart the other day. Smart is knowing what you don't know. And that is their Achilles heel, and they have no idea what's going on out here, and Dick Cheney is our fantasy. Dick Cheney running the death panels would bring peace on earth.
RUSH: (laughing) It's a toss-up as to whether or not they know what's going on. You're probably right. They do not know the degree. But even if they did, I'm telling you, they wouldn't care. They don't care. This is not a representative republic anymore. These are dictatorial people. I'm glad you called, Eileen. Great to have you with us. Roland in Sarasota, Florida. Hello, you're next on the EIB Network. Welcome.
CALLER: Mr. Limbaugh.
RUSH: Sir.
CALLER: It's an honor to talk to you. And I want to thank you for all that you do.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: You had an earlier caller, Jim, and he was speaking about what business, small business people could do to withhold money from the feds. As a worker that pays federal withholding tax, I've considered what a lot of people could do but it would have to be a lot of people to do it to make it work. Take nine exemptions on your W2. And if you do that in January you don't have to ante up 'til April 15th of 2011. And if 20 or 30 million people did that, I think it would be the equivalent of a bloodless revolution.
RUSH: Well, that's interesting. I don't know that you'd be affecting enough money doing that. You could be. But it's clear that there is sentiment out there. You're the, I don't know, fifth or sixth caller we've had today who has signed on to some sort of plan to withhold tax revenue from the federal and state governments simply because they haven't the manpower to police it and collect it. People have said we're willing to go to jail to do it. This goes to back to what Eileen was saying earlier, she doesn't think the Democrats have the slightest idea the degree of protest, rage, anger over the fruited plain, and they may not, but I also don't think they care, and I also think that they don't think this would work. When you think like they do, as dictators, not as small D Democrats, then there's any number of ways to punish people for all of these acts of disobedience. This is the way they would look at it. They'd be looking to find ways to punish them, even after the fact, even if it worked. I want to grab one more here before we go. Thanks, Roland. This is Sally in South Lake Tahoe. Nice to have you with us. Hello.
CALLER: Thank you. This is really awesome. My civil obedience suggestion is everyone use paper to file their taxes, download forms if necessary, and use their paper, and then mail them on April 15th. Do not mail anything early. Mail it all on the 15th of April, and that would get the point across.
RUSH: Well, here's the problem with that, and I hate to be negative here. But you've just highlighted one of the problems that we have. Most people have their taxes withheld throughout the year and you get your W-2 and that gets forwarded and the government's got your money all year.
CALLER: Yes, but if you have more taken out or you don't pay quite enough, you still have to file a tax form. And there's plenty of us that are -- I'm probably technically called poor, but I generally file early, but I think I'm going to file on the 15th this year.
RUSH: Well, good!
CALLER: And use as many forms as I can.
RUSH: You know, I grew up around people who loved getting a huge refund every April or May, whenever they got the refunds. They went around and bragged about how they shafted the government, "Look at the refund I got!" and I thought, "Well, how do I get in on this?" and I found they were having more withheld. They were giving the government the use of their money all in exchange for a big lump sum refund every year. And I finally figured out, well, that's silly. You're giving the government money, and they're not giving you any interest on it. And so I have advised people, "You should try, if you can, to go so that you get no refund." But people are so conditioned to have that lump sum, they can go out and spend it on whatever they need or want at the time that it's tough discipline. What I've learned about this, my objective is to spend everything I've got before I pass away. And my last check will be written to the IRS, and it will bounce. I have no desire whatsoever to give the government, states -- and I get audited every year by the state of New York, and I have been since 1997. I don't even live there and I haven't even been there this year.
But I'm getting away from your point. This is two calls in a row, and maybe, what is it, six or seven today that people have suggested withholding tax revenue from federal and state governments as a way of shutting them down and causing chaos in their lives. And I like the way people are thinking about this, this is an interesting way to think about it because it illustrates that people are not going to just sit here and take it anymore, that they really are fed up and more energized about this than ever before. Folks, I can't tell you what it's going to be, I don't know how, but people are going to rebel over this. AP headline number five: "Limbaugh urges rebellion against President Obama two days before Christmas."
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| Read the Background Material... |
| • Bill Kristol in the Weekly Standard: It Could Still Go Down |
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Have you heard about Parker Griffith, the Democrat in Alabama?
RUSH: Oh, yeah. Yeah. He's changing parties. He's in an increasingly Republican district. He voted against the stimulus. This is northern Alabama, I think the Huntsville area, and he is switching to the Republican Party. His office said this today, as AP says, "another blow to Democrats facing a potentially tough midterm election. Griffith, 67, was narrowly elected last year from a region of northern Alabama that includes Huntsville and Decatur. President Barack Obama lost the district badly." But this guy has been voting pretty conservative all along, and in the past, these kinds of party switches have been indications of huge, important trends.
CALLER: Do you think this could be an opportunity for the good Democrats who want to save their political careers to jump ship and switch over to the GOP?
RUSH: Well, it depends on the context when you look at this or how you look at this. What's really going on in the House now with Democrats is not saving their career by switching parties. They see what's happening in the Senate, and they want their goodies. They want Pelosi to give them some dollars for their districts so that they can get reelected as Democrats and have some insurance against their vote for this. That's what's really happening. The Senate has set the stage now for the House members to start acting the same way and say, "Hey, where's mine?" This is effectively the fifth resignation. We have four Democrats that have resigned, saying they won't run in the House and Parker Griffith now makes it the fifth given he's going to stay but switch parties. It's a huge positive. It indicates a tremendous trend, and I think the internal polling the Democrats have must be horrible and indicative. But right now that doesn't matter to them.
Let me try to explain something to you. It took me awhile to figure this out. The Democrat Party, ideologically, the radical left that runs it, is so much more committed to what they believe in than our party is. They are willing to lose their majority to get this passed. They are willing to lose their majority in the House; they are willing to lose their majority in the Senate. They have wanted this for 100 years. For 100 years the American people have opposed it. The American people oppose it by great percentages even now. They don't care. They will lose elections. They will lose their majority to get this. This is why Dingy Harry is flouting the Senate rules by writing in the legislation something he cannot by rule do, and that is say none of this is repealable. They are fully prepared to lose their majorities. They're fully prepared to lose a lot of seats to get this done. That's their commitment.
I'll tell you something else they believe. They believe that even if they lose the majority, that the Republican majority that would replace them doesn't have the guts to repeal this after it's been passed because what will happen in the next year, after Obama signs this, folks, you gotta get ready here, if this gets signed into law and Obama starts touting it during the State of the Union show, you are going to get a nine to ten-month onslaught on how never has anyone in government done so much for you. Never before has so much been done for you, never before has Washington, have politicians cared and accomplished so much for you. It is going to be a propaganda onslaught, and you're going to have the full-fledged support of the repeaters in the State-Controlled Media repeating how wonderful it is, what a great achievement, why, it took a great man like Barack Obama to finally make this happen. It's going to be make you want to puke. It's gonna all be lies.
The reason that they will do this is obvious. I mean the first one is the propaganda reason. The second is to set up reelection in November by making it difficult for the Republicans, if they do win, to repeal it because by that time people will have been lied to for so long and told what a great thing it is. How are they going to explain away the taxes, Mr. Snerdley asks? Let's wait and see on those taxes. Everybody says that the taxes get implemented immediately. I wouldn't be surprised if the taxes get delayed until the second half of next year or maybe a little bit after 2010. If they're willing to delay the so-called benefits in this until 2014, well after Obama theoretically has been reelected, I can see them putting -- look, if they get this, this is a hundred-year quest.
I mean, this is like Karl Marx converting the world to communism. This is such an achievement you cannot believe. This is how committed they are to it. I have no doubt that they might delay the tax increases for a while to avoid those hitting prior to the election or do it in such a way that only the rich get hit, the so-called rich get hit and then they go out and tout that and say we're setting the stage here for your future insurance premiums to be lower and your health care coverage to be better. Why should they stop lying? Why do we expect them to change who they are? This is why I say the opposition to this, if it's ultimately to be successful, it's going to have to be ideological. People are going to have to understand what liberalism is and why.
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| Read the Background Material... |
| • USA Today: Alabama Democratic Rep. Parker Griffith to join Republican Party • Politico: Exclusive: Rep. Parker Griffith switches to GOP |
"While those reindeer sweaters and charming dress socks you put under the tree are good for the retail business, Joel Waldfogel, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, has been spending recent weeks railing against Christmas gift-giving, arguing that it's an inefficient way to spend money that costs the country $25 billion a year. In his book, 'Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn't Buy Presents for the Holidays,' Waldfogel says gifts generate less satisfaction than things we buy ourselves. We don't really know what other people want, he says, but we do know what we want. Because of this, in his view, Christmas shopping is 'an orgy of wealth destruction' as we spend on things people don't value as much as the money we pay for them. 'I'm not against spending, just sloppy spending,' Waldfogel said on NPR's Tell Me More. In one experiment, Waldfogel asked his students to rate the level of satisfaction they had with gifts they were given.
"From this survey, he determined that gifts generate an average of 20 percent less satisfaction than things we buy for ourselves," which, my friends, is totally missing the point of giving a gift at Christmas. If you're a secularist, you'll never get it. If you're a pointy-headed academic elite, you'll never get it. Gift giving at Christmas is to remind us of the gift that God gave us with the birth of Jesus and the story surrounding that. "He says this is not true of gifts we buy for our closest family members and friends, who we know well enough to gift accurately." I would also point out: Is it any of this guy's business who we give what to and how much we spend on it? The theory behind this should not be surprising to economists who know well that consumers are best equipped to make decisions about purchasing for themselves.
"'That's frankly the basis of many economists' disdain for government. Because after all, when government chooses for us, they get us the wrong health care program, the wrong color shirt, the bridge to nowhere. And so this notion that we're best situated to choose for ourselves is a pretty basic notion and fairly a common-sense one,' Waldfogel said." Except the government's not giving us "gifts." It's just the exact opposite: The government is trying to imprison us. "While the theory may bear up to microeconomic scrutiny, others say Waldfogel is missing the point altogether: Giving gifts is good for society." Then they move on to something else they approve of at The Nation. That is "The War on Santa's Gut," and that is new this year. That is that Santa Claus is too fat. There's no such thing as this jolly roly-poly guy. People don't dress like that anyway when we're big and fat because it emphasis how big they are.
It sends the wrong message to kids. Kids were counseled this year that when they went to see Santa Claus wherever he was, they should tell Santa to lose weight. "Last week, Australian public health expert Dr. Nathan Grills of Monash University..." All this stuff comes from these pointy-headed elites in academia which is one of the Four Corners of Deceit in our country today. Government, Media, Acedemia, and Science are the Four Corners of Deceit. "Last week, Australian public health expert Dr. Nathan Grills of Monash University was called a 'killjoy' and a 'scrooge' in the media for an article he wrote suggesting Santa Claus was promoting bad health habits. The article, called 'Santa Claus: A public health pariah?' was published at bmj.com, a British medical journal, and suggested that Santa was sending the wrong message with his obesity, drunk sleigh-driving, speeding and generally bad lifestyle choices."
Oh, I guess then we could take the kids to an average holiday movie, or let 'em watch an average television show for a while and let 'em being exposed to really good role models instead of this dreaded Santa Claus! The other thing The Nation approved of was the war on your neighbors' light display. "As Christmas trees went up and light displays started flashing around the world, some people cringed at the thought of the electricity required to light the season. One environmental group, the Energy Justice Network, is providing tickets on their Web site for people to hand out to egregious offenders of Christmas light waste." Remember when I was telling you earlier in the show that once this health care stuff happens, that we're going to be pitting ourselves against each other for government services, and we're going to be ratting each other out and telling the government on each other in order to perhaps put ourselves in better shape of getting government service like health care?
I really mean it. You are going to see your neighbor with a bunch of flat-screen TVs maybe more than you "should have" or too big, and you're going to call the pollution control police, and they'll come to your house. This stuff is not without the realm of possibility. "Many of these light detractors suggest swapping out traditional Christmas lights with LED (light-emitting diodes) strings, which can be 90 percent more efficient. LED lights are used in the five miles of lights on Rockefeller Center's Christmas tree and in the 32,256 lights in the New Year's Eve ball in Times Square." Now, this story is date lined today from The Nation, a liberal journal of publication, and I think it's perfect. It's about the war on Christmas and how excited they are about it. Because, my friends, I am not going to participate in this killing of Christmas. They can try but they can't take it away from us. It's beyond what they know.
These secularists have no clue what it is. They are threatened by it. They can't leave well-enough alone, because it is other people's faith in God that scares them to death. I, for one -- and I hope you're one, too -- refuse to let these people succeed year after year, wearing away the joy and the wonder and the true meaning of this time of year and this marvelous holiday. We have to hold fast on many fronts, and this is one. So as we go into this weekend of celebration of the gift God gave us all, I will set aside the socialist scrooges who refuse to let the rest of us live the lives so many fought to give us. We'll get back to battle next week, but as of today and the rest of this week I'm going to enjoy life and my family and my faith, and I'm going to try and relax. But when you are a powerful, influential member of the media like me in constant demand, relaxation is a true luxury. But I'm still going to pursue it. And I bought a ton of presents. Well, I sent somebody out to buy a ton of presents. We bought a ton of presents. I can't tell you how many.
I bought presents for the mice that live in my brother's basement. I bought presents... I can't tell you! I've had more fun this year sending people out to do it. I don't have time to do it. I did some on my own on the Internet, but I have loaded up on the presents. The people at The Nation would despise me be the stupid professor, Mr. Waldfogel, would highly disapprove of my behavior. And we're going to wrap a lot of them tonight. We've got more wrapping to do tonight than I can tell you -- and I'm going to throw all that wrapping away on Christmas Day! We're going to throw it in the trash and we're going to start a fire, we're going to create an ecological disaster with it just like we do every Christmas. We're going to go out and bake food. We're going to get all kinds of the worst food you can eat. Santa Claus is gonna look like a marathon runner compared to our family by the time we finish on Friday, and then I am getting in the airplane, and I'm going to Hawaii, and I'm going to get there before Obama does, 'cause he's gotta sit around and wait for Harry Reid to vote on the health care bill. I am going to enjoy myself -- and damn it, folks, I want you to, too.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
(playing Silent Night)
RUSH: I first discovered Mannheim Steamroller in 1985 while in Sacramento, interesting enough, watching NFL playoff games. They played it as bump music. I fell in love with it very quickly, and it had a lot of emotional connections to me when my father died, the time of year and a number of other things. This song particularly. It's on their first Christmas album. The first time I heard it to the end, the crescendo of strings -- or not strings, but the replication of strings -- it actually brought tears to my eyes. We always close out our Christmas show with this version with as little chatter from me as possible so you can listen to it. I just want to thank you again. It's been another great year for all of us here at EIB. It wouldn't have been possible without with you. We love you more than we can ever express. We can never repay the thanks that we all owe you. You've meant more to me than you'll ever know. Happy New Year, Merry Christmas, and see you back next year -- with a bright, shiny face full of optimism. See you then.
(Silent Night plays out the show)
END TRANSCRIPT
| Read the Background Material... |
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| • The Nation: New Wars on Christmas Target Gifts, Santa, Lights |
FRIEDMAN: You know, it's -- it's scary, but it's a sign of the times. So I was staying at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Copenhagen, which is near the -- the conference center. They had a monorail running back and forth all day. If you wanted to go into Copenhagen, it came every ten minutes. My cell phone, I could call home, call my office, call my wife; any time, anywhere, from Copenhagen. I come home, I landed in Newark airport. It's like flying from the Jetsons to the Flintstones. You know, ummm, your cell phone, you know, goes out half the time on the Acela from Newark to -- to -- to Washington, DC. We need nation-building at home now.
RUSH: What the hell...? These elitist snobs just hate this country so much they want to turn us into Denmark? Look... Nation-building? We need to nation-build at home now? What the hell was the stimulus package to be about? What was Porkulus? What's Obama's whole agenda supposedly about?
END TRANSCRIPT
| Read the Background Material... |
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| • Green Ink: Copenhagen's Autopsy, Greens versus Greens, and Solar IPOs |
SEBELIUS: The Senate language, which was negotiated by Senators Barbara Boxer and Patty Murray, who are very strong defenders of women's health services and choices for women, take a big step forward from where the House left it with the Stupak amendment. Everybody in the exchange would do the same thing, whether you're male or female, whether you're 75 or 25, you would all set aside a portion of your premium that would go into a fund, and it will not be earmarked for anything, it would be a separate account that everyone in the exchange would pay. It's really an accounting measure that would apply across the board and not just to women and certainly not just to women who want to choose abortion coverage.
RUSH: So you are going to forced to make a contribution to the exchange, whether you're 75 or 25, a portion of your premium would go into that fund and it would cover abortions. She's making it very clear. An accounting gimmick -- you can call it an accounting gimmick, it sounds more like a policy to me, but if you had any doubts, okay, you had Nelson all worried about the language in the Senate, you got Stupak all worried about his language over there in the House, and here's Kathleen Sebelius spelling out how it's going to happen regardless what the language in the legislation is.
END TRANSCRIPT
| Read the Background Material... |
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| • Sebelius: Everyone will pay into abortion-coverage fund |
HARKIN: I am a strong supporter of a public option, remain so, and I believe that sometime in the near future we will revisit that issue again and we will adopt a public option. It's not gonna probably happen on this bill because we need the votes to get the big things through, Maggie. It's -- we have to keep our eye on what we're trying to do here. We're trying to cross a demarcation line, this is the way I put it. On one side is health care as a privilege, on the other side is health care as a right. With these votes, with the vote that we'll take before Christmas, we will cross that line finally and say that health care is a right of all Americans.
RUSH: He actually continued later on, held a press conference and added this to it.
HARKIN: I know a lot of my progressive friends have been upset that certain things weren't in it. What we're building here is not a mansion. It's starter home. But it's got a great foundation. We're expanding health care coverage to 31 million Americans. It's got a great protective roof, and it has room for expansion and additions in the future. But if we don't start the starter home, we'll never get there. So this is not the end of health care reform. This is the beginning of health care reform.
RUSH: They couldn't be any more precisely clear about what they're doing here. They're headed to single payer but they gotta cross the line of demarcation. They're being very honest in their confidence.
END TRANSCRIPT
| Read the Background Material... |
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| • Examiner: Tom Harkin talks about the road to single-payer health care • WSJ: Candidate Harkin Stretches the Truth |
| Read the Background Material... |
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| • Adweek: Best of the 2000's: Rush Limbaugh, "Radio Personality of the Decade" • Newsmax: Limbaugh Personality of the Decade |
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Glad to see Steyn will be behind the golden EIB mike tomorrow. He’s my favorite. I like him better than Limbaugh even.
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