RUSH: I really am, I’m so sad today, which is odd because we’re in the middle of a sitcom here, folks. Every story, every sound bite is just hilarious, and the reason I’m sad is that I can’t laugh at it because if I start laughing, I get into a coughing spasm, and I don’t want to do that. So I’m sad ’cause I’m happy. I want to laugh, but I can’t. What a horrible position to be in.
JOHNNY DONOVAN: Live from the Southern Command in sunny south Florida via New York City, it’s Open Line Friday!
RUSH: And that means when we go to the phones, the content of the program is all yours. Monday through Thursday, this program is about what I care about exclusively, but on Friday, we open it up, and whatever you basically want to say is fair game. Here’s the telephone number: 800-282-2882. The e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com. What was the exact number of jobs that were cut? 253,000? Where did I see this number 500 some odd thousand ’cause I’m getting confused here. Employers axed five hundred thirty — okay, so what were you doing telling me 200 some odd, Snerdley? You were complaining about Barbara Walters’ researcher and you just had me using an unemployment number that was half right. Here’s the point. I wanted to have the number, 533,000, Brian, is that what it is?
I’m gonna wager that some of you who were laid off in November are listening to this program, and so I want to say something to you. I want you all to realize that the vast majority of you, that 533,000, have been laid off not because of current economic circumstances, but because of what the people you work for fear is going to happen starting next year. In other words, you are the first Barack Obama layoffs, those that took place in November. Remember the Drive-Bys said the number was totally unexpected. The experts were shocked at how high the number is. The reason the experts were shocked at how high the number is, is because the economic circumstances really didn’t indicate that many people being laid off or fired. What’s happening here, I hate to tell you this, we warned you people, what’s happening here is that businesses, large and small, are making plans to downsize and get ready for what they fear is coming from an Obama administration and a Democrat-controlled Congress starting next year. This guy has talked about all kinds of massive new spending, and where are we going to get the money for this?
I made a speech last night to Hillsdale College. And, by the way, the audio and the transcript of that speech, if you have signed up for the special service that we offer at RushLimbaugh.com called Rush in a Hurry, the audio of my speech — about 40 minutes, I think — will be sent out in the Rush in the Hurry e-mail that we send out. It goes out anywhere from four to 4:30, sometimes five o’clock in the afternoon, along with the transcript. If you don’t get the Rush in a Hurry e-mail, then it will be when we update the site around six eastern to reflect the contents of today’s program. Anybody can get the Rush in a Hurry e-mail, it’s el freebo. You just have to go to RushLimbaugh.com and sign up for it. But one of the points I made in this speech last night as I talked to Hillsdale College people — Dr. Larry Arnn runs the place — very conservative group, and I said, ‘We conservatives have a big battle ahead of us because there are some people in our movement who have lost their conservative way who think it is the new conservative way. And they think we need to get into a competition with Democrats over compassionate use of government. In other words, we gotta become big spenders, too, we just have to do it nicer, we have to do it smarter, whatever.’ Which, of course, that’s not conservatism.
But the question is, where are we gonna get this money that they want us to spend in the first place? Where are we going to get it? We don’t have any, we’re printing it. In Milwaukee, in two neighborhoods, they’re printing their own currency to use. Nothing illegal about it, apparently. They’re printing up their own currency. I think they’re just doing it because — I don’t know, maybe they’re separatists, who the hell knows. Doesn’t matter. But it’s a good point. Where are we going to get this money? Where’s anybody going to get this money to spend? We’re already into the seven-to-eight trillion figure with all of this bailout stuff. Where are we gonna get it? Well, businesses know that you just can’t go print it. You have to earn it, you have to save it, or you have to lay people off, cut expenses, or what have you. I’m telling you, those of you who have been laid off in November, the vast majority of you are laid off because the places you work are scared to death of what’s coming next year, and they’re paring down and they’re getting ready for it. They’ve heard that there are tax increases coming. They have heard that if you make more than $250 your taxes are going to go up, and they’ve heard Obama say, ‘Well, we may have to delay that for a while,’ but they can’t trust it. So the unexpected rise in the unemployment numbers, I’m convinced, is a direct reflection on the coming Obama administration and what people who have to deal responsibly with their money, unlike Congress, businesses and so forth, what they are doing to prepare for that onslaught.
Everything is a sitcom today. From Montgomery, Alabama: ‘Belching and gaseous cows and hogs could start costing them money if a federal proposal to charge fees for air-polluting animals becomes law.’ You heard right. Democrats are proposing a fee, they call it a fee, it’s a tax on smelly cows and hogs. ‘Farmers so far are turning their noses up at the notion, which is one of several put forward by the Environmental Protection Agency after the US Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that greenhouse gases emitted by belching and flatulence amounts to air pollution.’ The Supreme Court gave the EPA the sole authority to determine this. ”This is one of the most ridiculous things the federal government has tried to do,’ said Alabama Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks, an outspoken opponent of the proposal. It would require farms or ranches with more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle or 200 hogs to pay an annual fee of about $175 for each dairy cow, $87.50 per head of beef cattle and $20 for each hog.’ And all that had to happen was for the United States Supreme Court to bastardize the US Constitution, to give an agency, the EPA, the right to determine what’s air pollution.
Here we have creatures created by God who are now just the normal — it’s absurd, it’s laughable. It is so absurd. So now, given what Harry Reid said about being able to smell the tourists in summertime, maybe they’re gonna think that they can get away with taxing tourists who visit the Capitol for being smelly ’cause Harry Reid identified ’em. He made a point to let us know that we stink. Taxpayers that visit the Capitol stink, said Harry Reid. So could it be that the taxpayer stink tax is not far down the pike? This is not even the Obama administration, but it is the kind of thinking that will populate the Obama administration. You think this is absurd? Wait ’til they get going on some of this other global warming stuff they have planned for you, ladies and gentlemen. When you start getting into cap-and-trade and some of these other ideas it’s gonna take every bit of energy we have to be able to sit around here and laugh.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I’ll tell you, there’s something else that’s going on with these unemployment numbers, folks, and I want to throw this out to you, too. You think that the election of Obama, everybody is hunky-dory and happy and all these cabinet appointments that he’s making, ‘Oh, look at these centrists, look at these moderate faces. Why, we were expecting all these wacko radical leftists and we get all the Clinton people in there, oh, we can rest easy,’ blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The people who have to take their lives seriously — and there are a lot of people in the country that do — sadly there are way too many in this country who don’t have to take their lives seriously because others are looking out for them, but if you own and run a business and you hire people, and you have responsibilities to pay them, and you have regulations requiring you to provide them this benefit or that, then you’ve gotta take your life very seriously, and you have to listen very carefully to what people who say they want to lead your country tell you.
You have to listen and you have to pay very close attention. And I will guarantee you that Barack Obama and his desire to have unions be able to go into any business in the world and organize by eliminating a secret ballot is enough to scare a whole lot of people into firing a lot of employees or laying ’em off before Obama has a chance to come in there and unionize their shop. These unemployment numbers, 533,000, nobody will be able to convince me that a good percentage of that number has everything to do with fear of what’s headed down the pike from an Obama administration starting next January.