RUSH: Mark in Albany. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hey thanks, Rush. Just a side point, the whole social media story you just brought up with HBGary, their primary client that they were pitching was Chamber of Commerce, the far right Chamber of Commerce, so I just thought that a little bit of honesty on this show might —
RUSH: No, they might be working with the Chamber of Commerce in other ways as a consulting firm. This job was for the regime. This job was for the administration, fake people. In fact, my brother wrote a book citing the guy Cass Sunstein, well known communist professor of law who has even advocated the infiltration of websites for propaganda purposes to aid administrations. I’m not making it up. HBGary might do other things, too, but this was for the regime.
CALLER: Okay, I’ll look that up. But I want to bring up —
RUSH: You don’t have to look it up. I just told you. I am the source authority.
CALLER: You’re a great entertainer, Rush, you make me laugh.
RUSH: Thank you, and that, too.
CALLER: Hey, listen, I wanted to bring up Wisconsin a little bit because I think I finally found a tax raise that you love.
RUSH: (singing) Oh, Wisconsin, oh, Wisconsin, da da da — you know, I went to Southeast Missouri State U for a semester, and that was the marching band’s theme song, and I never understood it. What were you saying about Wisconsin?
CALLER: I think I found a tax raise you can love, because essentially that’s what’s happening. This governor is staying, ‘I’m gonna raise taxes on these workers, on these people alone.’ The government’s gonna take more money out of their pocket, unilaterally, using, you know, at the long end of a gun or they lose their jobs. And they’re gonna pay more. And what I wanted to know is all those years underneath Bush when the wars were exploding our deficit, you were hugely anti-tax. So I’m wondering, in your world, it’s okay to raise taxes or take more money from the working person, their average salary is about $55,000 a year, of course the compensation number is larger than that and that’s the number you always talk about, but their average salary, their take-home pay, not even their take-home pay, their pretax pay is about $55,000 a year. You’re fine with taking money from those people to balance the budget —
RUSH: Wait a second.
CALLER: — but you’re not fine with taking money from millionaires to balance the budget. What’s the problem?
RUSH: Take a breath. In the first place, there were no tax increases for the war in Iraq. Bush did not raise anybody’s taxes.
CALLER: That’s right.
RUSH: All right.
CALLER: And you didn’t want him to. Instead you wanted to blow up the deficit and have these wars that we couldn’t afford, according to you. I mean if they’re not paid for, we can’t afford ’em, right? But that’s fine to do when it’s your pet project, but you are fine taking money away from people making $55,000 —
RUSH: Hold on a second. This is where I lose you people. I really do. We were attacked on 9/11. There are people who have sworn allegiance to people that want to wipe us out, including you, that want to kill us. They are among us now.
CALLER: I would have paid higher taxes.
RUSH: They killed 3,000 of our citizens, nearly 3,000 in one day, the largest such attack on this country ever. And you want to look at this as a tax and a budget issue and you want to compare this to something going on in Wisconsin, which has a requirement by law that their budget be balanced. They can identify what it is that they need to do to start getting that budget in balance, and it doesn’t involve anything other than making people pay a little bit for what taxpayers are giving them in total now. There’s literally no comparison or common ground to whatever you want to talk about with taxes and the wars, Afghanistan or Iraq. This is a state issue being meddled in by the president of the United States whose business it is not by virtue of the Constitution.
We have people in Wisconsin who are making twice your average private sector salary, 55 grand, being paid by those people making 55 grand. Their retirement’s being paid for in toto, their health care is being paid for, they face being laid off because the state doesn’t have the money, can’t pay them, or paying a little bit more toward their own benefits. Imagine that! You go on vacation and you pay for it. You go buy a quart of milk and you pay for it. I know it’s a strange concept to a lot of freeloading leftists, but that’s what’s on the table here. And you are damn right. I’m the biggest supporter of individual responsibility you’re ever gonna find. If I want it, I pay for it. I don’t accept freebies. I don’t want the obligation. And I think everybody ought to pay for what they want, what they need. Needs and wants are two different things, but why should somebody else pay for what you want? What gives you the right or any of these teachers?
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RUSH: The caller wants to equate what’s going on in Wisconsin with raising somebody’s taxes. We’re not raising anybody’s taxes, but so what if we were? Isn’t that what the left wants to do? They’re raising taxes everywhere in Illinois, like that’s gonna help. He should be happy if he looks at this as a tax increase. Support it. Be consistent. Idiots, I tell you.
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RUSH: The last caller was a seminar caller. You know, practically every leftist caller we get here is a seminar caller. They go somewhere and they’re given talking points or some supposed line of logic to use that has supposedly been tested out there and guaranteed to trip up El Rushbo. It’s not possible. It’s like trying to sink a battleship with BBs, but these people persist. Trying to equate what’s happening in Wisconsin with a tax increase? I mean, even if it were, what’s wrong with it? These people all support tax increases! Anyway this guy, our first caller, Mark from Albany, reminded me of an old joke. A guy asks his friend about his recent sex-change operation. ‘Didn’t it hurt? Didn’t it really hurt?’
‘Yeah, a little bit but what hurt the most was when they stuck the straw up my nose and sucked out a third of my brain.’
Well, if you’re gonna have a sex-change operation they gotta change your brain, too. You know, this is the thing. These people are just… (sigh) They’re predictable, and it’s almost, ladies and gentlemen… What I mean is, it’s like I’m talking to people who have had some of their brain sucked out. It’s vacant. Somebody tells ’em, ‘Here’s how you do it! This is what’s gonna trip ’em up,’ and then they call every talk show they can find thinking they’ve got the excellent trip-up technique. I wonder if people like that, this guy who supposedly wants to compare what’s happening to teachers in Wisconsin with war in Afghanistan and Iraq — I wonder if people like that — are aware of some of the salaries that these union people (not just the rank-and-file, but thug leaders) are pulling down.