Rush Hits It Out Of The Park Tonight In An Hour Interview With Greta Van Susteren Tonight

Rush Limbaugh joined Greta Van Susteren for the full hour Tuesday night, and Limbaugh spent the first segment of the program bashing President Obama, sharing the "Limbaugh Theorem" (foxnews.com/on-air/on-the-record) for how the president governs, and taking the "slavish media" to task for not holding him accountable. He also had some choice words for Republicans capitulating too much to the Democratic agenda.

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On the "phony scandals" controversy, Limbaugh admitted he was stunned that the president was able to survive 2012 with the bad economy on his back. He came up with the "Limbaugh theorem" to explain why so many people hate Obama's policies yet like him and vote for him: he's "constantly campaigning" and never governing who keeps insisting nothing that ever happens in Washington is his fault.

Limbaugh surmised that Obama could only get away with this because of the "slavish media" that will never call him out on anything. He said that most journalists are "all part of the elitist New York-Washington-Boston media academic corridor and they think they are Obama."

He admitted the 2010 midterms, while it resulted in Republican gains, were not necessarily that good for the party, because no one was "articulating an agenda" and all the Republican votes were "anti-Obama" votes, not votes for a viable alternative. He also slammed Republican leadership for brushing aside the tea party and "its conservative base on a number of issues," saying the big problem with the GOP is too much capitulation to what the Democrats want. Why doesn't the Republican Party embrace them, bring them in and try to grow and have at least come up with a way to reach out and attach themselves to these people, a majority of voters? Instead they're capitulating with what the Democrats want. And not just on this, but on immigration, amnesty, whatever you want to call it. 

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Talk show radio icon Rush Limbaugh goes 'On the Record' with Greta Van Susteren in an exclusive sitdown interview.

The following is a quick transcript and is subject to change for clarifications.

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: In talking about the scandals, President Obama says the scandals are phony.

Why do you think he says they're phony, because he believes it or is there strategy?

RUSH LIMBAUGH:  No, there's a strategy.  I -- I've been troubled by something with the Obama -- you know, I playfully call it the regime (inaudible).  And it is.  Looks like a regime.  I've been troubled.  I've been amazed.  Here is a man (inaudible) has done great damage to this country, policies have done great damage (inaudible), have done great damage to the American culture, the American psyche.

(Inaudible) is a sense of hopelessness and depression out there.  And it's his policies that have done this.  And what has always amazed me is how he's not (inaudible).  He has an agenda; he's been implementing it. 

But the -- what I call the low information voters that voted for him and other Democrats do not associate Obama's policy and agenda with the condition of the country, the economy or whatever.  That's always the (inaudible).  I've never, never known a president to be immune from economic circumstances at an election as he was in 2012.

It all became clear to me.  There was a "New York Times" story -- I think one of their blog posts on the Web back in February, and it basically said he (inaudible) what I just said to you.  It said most people disapprove of the Obama agenda.  They don't like the direction the country's going.  They like him and they think he's great for the country.

But how can that be?  Intellectually, how can a majority of people (inaudible) -- and you know they oppose ObamaCare by 55-60 percent in another poll.  They are worried about jobs.

How in the world can they like him, reelect him and yet disapprove of everything he's doing?  And I came up, well, I call it the Limbaugh theorem.  And you hear other people talking about it in the sense that he's a bystander president or he's outside Washington.

The way he does this, he never appears to be governing.  That's why he's constantly campaigning. 

Why is there a campaign going on for ObamaCare?  It's already the law of the land.

Why is he out campaigning for all this stuff that's already law?  It's already going to happen.

And my theory is that Obama has positioned himself as an outsider not attached to anything that’s happening. What he has made happen – he positions himself as opposed to it and against it and fighting for everybody else to overcome what he has done. And that’s one of the reasons why the constant campaign, so he doesn’t appear to be governing, so he doesn’t appear to be part of Washington, so he appears to have this mysterious powerful bunch of forces that are opposing him and stopping him from doing his job, and stopping him from giving people proper healthcare and stopping him from making their home values go up but he’s constantly out there fighting it and he does that by constantly campaigning and never seems to be governing. So all of these scandals he calls he calls them, they’re not distraction, they’re real. But he likes them because they detract from the absolute reality of what has happened to this country as a result of his policies.

Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/2013/07/30/must-see-interview-tonight-rush-limbaugh-goes-record-greta#ixzz2abFi2IFM

Whole Foods CEO Standing Up For Capitalism And Against Obama's Facist Policies

This is a rush transcript from "On the Record," January 17, 2013. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: Whole Foods CEO John Mackey sparking controversy, comparing ObamaCare to fascism. But does he stand by that statement? He's going to tell you in just a minute. But first, 347 Whole Foods stores worldwide, 73,000 employees -- what is Whole Foods CEO John Mackey's secret to his enormous success? He not only heads a company that has changed the way people eat and shop, but now he's the author of a new book, "Conscious Capitalism." Now, we spoke with Mackey at one of the busiest Whole Foods in New York City.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)  
VAN SUSTEREN: Now, what people may not know, but they will when they read your book, that this started in a very sort of -- almost in a garage, this business, right?

JOHN MACKEY, WHOLE FOODS CEO: Not quite like Apple computer, not that kind of garage. But we did start in an old house that was only a few thousand square feet back in 1978.

VAN SUSTEREN: Except that in one part of the book, it caught my attention that in the beginning, you were actually having to take your showers in the dishwasher?

MACKEY: That was the house. It was called SaferWay. And my girlfriend, who co-founded the company with me, we lived on the third floor. And there was no baths or showers in the store. So we -- when we had to bathe, we'd get into the -- climb into the Hobart dishwasher because it had the thing that would hang down, and we'd shower there.

VAN SUSTEREN: And the business (INAUDIBLE) interesting it -- it had sort of a rocky start. You got a flood.

MACKEY: Yes. When we relocated, Austin had a 100 year flood in 1981. We had eight feet of water in our store and we were completely wiped out, bankrupt.

VAN SUSTEREN: Why do you think the people, you talk about all the people who came in and helped once you had that flood, that it was almost sort of a breaking point the way I read it in your book, that the business could have gone belly up at that point.

MACKEY: It could have. We were bankrupt. No one was more surprised than me when we came up and there were dozens of customers helping us clean up the store. Why did they do it? Because they loved us. Whole Foods was important to them. They didn't want us to die. And if they hadn't helped us there may not be a Whole Foods and we may not be talking right now.

VAN SUSTEREN: Is that part of conscious capitalism? In the 1970's, sort of the left people thought that capitalism was the greedy people, the cheats, the people trying to squeeze every dime out of somebody else. But your book talks about conscious capitalism, which is something different.

MACKEY: Yes. Well, I think the critics of capitalism have hijacked the narrative. They judge business by the worst practitioners, by the Bernie Madoffs and the Enrons, and treat business as basically selfish, greedy, and exploitive. And it doesn't have to be that way. Business is greatest creator of value in the world. It's helped lift humanity out of poverty into prosperity. And we're making tremendous progress due to business and capitalism.

VAN SUSTEREN: Have you always felt that way about capitalism, embraced it and thought it was something inspiring and lifted people up?

MACKEY: No.

VAN SUSTEREN: What happened?

MACKEY: When I was young, I believed in the myth that business was selfish and greedy, and I certainly didn't want to be a business person. It was never my ambition. But once I did -- once we did start whole foods and I did have a meet a payroll, I was having trouble. I mean, we had our team members wanted higher pay and our customers saw our prices were too high and suppliers, we were small and they didn't want to give them discounts. So we lost half of the capital. We had $45,000 to start with and we lost $23,000 of it the first year. Renee and I only got paid $200 a month and people were saying I was, you know, kind of a bad guy now because I was a business person. So, I threw out that philosophy, didn't work, and I began to read widely and I read a number of free market economists like Frederick Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises and I discovered these explanations of the world worked a lot better than the philosophy I had previously. I learned the business is the greatest value creator in the world. We create value for customers, for employees, for suppliers, for investors, the communities we're part of. Business people are heroic. We're not the bad guys. We're the good guys. 

VAN SUSTEREN: Has capitalism specifically been demonized over the years?

MACKEY: Absolutely. It's blamed for all the problems in the world when he in fact capitalism is mostly the solution to most of the problems in the world. What's wrong in the world is not that there's too much capitalism. The problem in the world is there's not enough of it.

VAN SUSTEREN: Where does -- where is the problem then? How come so many people can't seem to make it in business? A lot of people do make it, but a lot of people don't. What's in the way?

MACKEY: Well, we live in a competitive marketplace where customers get to vote. If you don't create value for them, they're going to your competitors. So that's a great thing about business. Competition forces business to improve and get better, and if it doesn't, if you can't, if your competitors do a better job than you, you basically get voted out of existence, voted out of business. That's how we make progress in our society, though.

VAN SUSTEREN: I take it government can be in the way or helpful depending on your viewpoint. Compare for instance, the current decade of business with the prior decades? Have regulations increased and they've made it easier or harder for you to work?

MACKEY: Well, regulations have increased every year since I got in the business. Regulations are something that they don't get rid of them, they just add new ones on. That's one of the things we need to reform. We need to get rid of bad regulation. Instead they just layer on. It's harder to start up a business today than when I started 30, 40 years ago.

VAN SUSTEREN: Do you consider yourself a libertarian? Is that politically fair where you are?

MACKEY: There's so much baggage with that term. I think of myself as conscious capitalist.

VAN SUSTEREN: I know that's the name of the book, but define it for me.

MACKEY: Conscious capitalism recognizes that business has the potential for a higher purpose besides just maximizing profits and making money. It creates value for all of shareholders and not just the investors. It's a different philosophy of leadership where the leader serves the enterprise and is not just trying to line their own pockets. You have to create a culture that empowers people and allows human beings to flourish.

VAN SUSTEREN: In a publicly owned business under conscious capitalism, explain to me if a board or the executives of a company can make a decision to maximize profits or make one that maybe something that they think is something more in tune politically whether it's for the environment or for good health, whatever. Is that part of conscious capitalism you make a decision not to just go for the absolute dollar?

MACKEY: Actually, conscious capitalism rejects the premise behind that question.

VAN SUSTEREN: OK.

MACKEY: The premise is there's trade-offs and you have to negotiate between the trade-offs. If you're doing something for the environment it must come at the expense of the investors. The secret is good conscious leadership is to define win, win, win strategies so that all of these stakeholders simultaneously winning. That's sometimes not easy. It requires imagination and creativity, but that's the secret.

VAN SUSTEREN: Corporate taxes, have you thought about our corporate tax rate?

MACKEY: Of course. We have the highest corporate tax rate in the entire world now. Japan used to be number one and U.S. number two. They cut their rates. And now when you combine state and federal taxes, the highest corporate tax rates in the world.

VAN SUSTEREN: How does that affect your business? You're very successful, you're a rich man and how does it affect you and your employees?

 MACKEY: Every dollar we pay in taxes is a dollar that we can't give back to the customers in lower prices. It's a dollar we can't pay to our team members and higher wages and benefits. It's a dollar that we can't give back to the suppliers with lower prices. It's a dollar that we can't donate philanthropically to other organizations. All the stakeholders lose with higher taxes.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAN SUSTEREN: Up next, more with Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. This could spell trouble for many Americans. Mackey says ObamaCare will lead to less full time jobs. You need to hear this. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VAN SUSTEREN: Yesterday, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey compared ObamaCare to fascism. Now his word choice set some on fire, so today, John Mackey explained.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VAN SUSTEREN: This is a controversy, and I take it you dialed it back. I think you called the ObamaCare, I think the term you used was "fascist." You've now dialed that one back a bit?

MACKEY: That was a very poor choice of words on my part. I asked about the question, the differences do I think it's socialistic, and I gave a definition of socialism and a definition of fascism, and I think it's closer to that.

However, what I didn't realize, there's so much emotional baggage with that term dating back to Germany and Spain and Italy in World War II, that's just a loaded word, very politically incorrect, can't use it.

So, now I just want to say I believe in free enterprise capitalism or conscious capitalism the way we've articulated in the book. My problem with where health care is it's very government controlled and it's becoming more government controlled. So it's the opposite of free enterprise capitalism.

VAN SUSTEREN: What's the problem with that? I take it you're not a fan of ObamaCare and I read your op-ed in the "Wall Street Journal." Why don't you like ObamaCare?

MACKEY: Well, I think it's raising the costs for business. We have a great health care plan that our team members vote on every three years.

VAN SUSTEREN: Meaning your employees at Whole Foods.

MACKEY: Yes.

VAN SUSTEREN: OK.

MACKEY: They like it. It's been a good -- we've been able to customize it, keep it very affordable and we can include everybody in it, so it's a really good plan.

And now, with the health care reforms, they're adding additional costs onto it, like we have to cover free checkups, checkups have to be free for physical, things like that, and cover people that are up to age 26, even though they're just dependents that have grown up. Those aren't free. Those cost things.
And now there's going to be with lobbying and crony capitalism with the health care act you're going to see lots of new mandates on and determine what we can do. So our freedom to customize our health care plan to the best for our team members has been compromised.

VAN SUSTEREN: And this health care is a growing nightmare for a lot of businesses because of the costs.

MACKEY: Yes.

VAN SUSTEREN: And people really are unsure of what it's going to do to business. Do you have a sense how it's going to affect your business in two years, three years, or four years?

MACKEY: Yes, I can tell you generally what will happen. As the costs go up, you're not required to provide health care for part-time workers, under 30 hours. So there will be a strong temptation for businesses to keep people under 30 hours, so they don't have to provide health care. And you will have a lot of part-time workers and fewer full-time workers, a lot of people underemployed.
Whole Foods prided itself, we've always had a higher mix of full-time to part-time workers like 80 percent full-time and 20 percent part-time, which is very rare in retail. But as I suspect as our health care costs are driven up by health care reforms then we'll end up gradually lower our full-time ratio to a much lower number.

VAN SUSTEREN: In your book, do you think that your ideas are easily converted to other types of industries?

MACKEY: Absolutely.

VAN SUSTEREN: So your book is not just limited to your business?

MACKEY: Absolutely not. We wrote this book primarily to help businesses become more conscious. I think that capitalism is the greatest thing in the world, but we can make it better. If businesses can become more conscious on their higher purposes and begin to create value for all of their shareholders and stakeholders, the world is going to be transformed.

VAN SUSTEREN: If you could have five minutes with President Obama to talk about what would make it easier to get more jobs in this country, any hints for him?

MACKEY: Cut corporate income tax and dial back on regulations. Let entrepreneurs do their thing. They're creative individuals. We can solve all the problems that are in the world through our own creative entrepreneurship and through nonprofit social entrepreneurship. And we need to liberate the entrepreneurial spirit and the heroic spirit of business.

VAN SUSTEREN: Nice to see you, and good luck with the book.
MACKEY: Thanks, Greta. Good to see you, too.

Source: On The Record With Greta VanSusteren

10-31-12 Catherine Herridge reporting on classified Benghazi cable (VIDEO)

Catherine Herridge on Greta van Susteren 10/31/12

Discussing classified diplomatic cable (dated 8/16/12, almost a month before Benghazi attack) obtained by Fox News.

"I really believe, having read it, that it is the smoking gun warning here... I can't think of anything that would be more specific than if these groups had emailed the state department and said, 'here's the time, here's the place, and here's the method of the attack'... If you couple this with the statements that a videotape was somehow responsible, what you see is that is completely undercut... What I see is a growing body of evidence that the state department has culpability for the death of the Ambassador and those other three Americans."