All Episodes
Previous Next
Nov. 9, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:09
November 9, 2007, Friday, Hour #2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
I I did not I did not know that Johnny Carson used to say I did not know that.
Ted Kennedy last month that you may have read had a uh a blockage in an artery in his neck and head and had it removed.
I didn't know the rest of the story.
Yeah, the rest is apparently when they removed the blockage in his neck and head, they took an MRI of the inside of his skull and found absolutely nothing there.
So I'm just I didn't know the rest of that story.
Yeah, welcome back, everybody.
Second hour now up and running.
Jason Lewis filling in for rush.
It's always nice when somebody has the temerity to challenge conventional wisdom.
And amongst the meteorological society, if you will, uh there is much more skepticism of global warming and and Al Gore's obsession than you would think.
Now, granted, there are a few people out there trying to pander this or pander to this movement on your eleven PM news, but not our guest to start off this first hour, John Coleman has many weathermen since I don't want to date John.
I don't even want to have coffee with him.
I I don't want to date his age, I mean, excuse me, since nineteen fifty-three.
He was also spent six years founding the Weather Channel.
The fo one of the founders of the Weather Channel.
He's now a weatherman in San Diego, California, one of my favorite spots, and he has some guts.
John Coleman, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program with Jason Lewis.
Well, Jason, I guess everybody in Minneapolis would probably vote in favor of a little global warming at this point.
You would of winter spreads across the Northland.
I love that kind of talk, by the way.
You would be shocked.
We have a a local anchor in the Twin Cities who has taken it upon himself, he and the weather guy to to pitch this adjutant prop has news every other night, it seems.
The local print scribes are all over this.
You see, it's just not cold enough in the Great Northwoods for these people.
Now you you wrote on your blog this week, and Rush talked about it yesterday, calling global warming the greatest scam in history.
I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it.
It is a scam.
John Coleman.
Look at the gazillions of people, including all of the uh mainstream media that has piled on to the global warming frenzy, from uh Hollywood to uh the New York uh corporate suites of media to all of the studios and bureaus and throughout all of the cable networks,
the clamor to be the most sensitive to the global warming crisis is uh insistent uh uh uh uh is dominates every day.
And uh no, the earth is in peril according to CNN.
Uh according to uh NBC, we must all turn green or the planet will be lost.
And uh And don't forget and don't forget your baby Your baby is gone green, the Weather Channel with Heidi Cullen talk about propaganda.
Uh well you talk about a position.
Uh no, they're they're aboard.
Now here's the deal.
When this whole global warming talk started uh seven, eight years ago, I've been a TV weatherman forever and ever.
Uh know a whole lot about what I'm talking about.
Well very well versed, and uh I figured I'd better really understand what was going on.
So I dug into the basic research behind it.
And the basic research was flawed.
I couldn't under I couldn't understand how is it flawed, John had been accepted.
And I I I looked more and deeper and I began to to really probe.
I mean, I'm not talking about looking at news stories or accounts.
I'm talking about getting down to the science behind it.
Well, are you talking about the fundamental greenhouse model that says uh car the rise in carbon dioxide will inevitably produce warmer temperatures?
You're saying that's fundamentally flawed?
Yes.
And before that, there was the hockey stick draft.
That's where it all started.
Right.
That's where it all started.
And that was absolutely flawed science.
Only because I think all of the people uh at the research institutions and universities are of a similar mindset that almost they'll accept almost anything to further the green purpose.
They're not gonna be able to do that.
So I accepted that, and it was just dead wrong.
The m science had been massaged in such a way that it was totally invalid.
Then came next came the step that said, and this warm-up is the result of carbon dioxide CO2.
And that research.
I dug and dug and dug, and that was flawed.
So then I started going to people I really trust.
And my mentor is a man named Joe DeLeo.
Joe is a uh certified meteorologist, college professor, knows his stuff.
And by the way, he currently runs a website called IceCap.us, which which my post was on that caused all this media fury.
So I went to Joe.
He had been my director of meteorology at the Weather Channel.
He had worked for me when I was on Good Morning America.
He helped me with my forecasting.
And then he was the director of meteorology of the Weather Channel for six years.
He's a brilliant meteorologist, great man.
And I said, Joe, what's what's the story?
And the story, Joe said, is very clear.
It's wrong.
Uh we have been scammed, uh duped, confused.
The science is bad.
And uh we dug and researched more, and and the more I looked, the more I realized that there were a lot of people out there, scientist uh wonderful scientists, who agreed that this science was bad, but they were afraid to speak up because their life livelihood depends on it.
This is the corruption of science John, let me interject.
Jason This is the corruption of science as much as anything else.
Let's say let's say you're a person who spent ten years getting a PhD in meteorology.
You've been on the college campus for ten years, and now you got a research project, and you're going to study long-term climate temperatures and the influence of pollution on those temperatures.
And let's say you did that study and you came out and said, Well, that there's been a slight effect on temperatures.
They may have gone up a little bit, but it doesn't appear to be significant.
Well, you wouldn't get any more funding.
You wouldn't be noticed.
Your research would go on the shelf and you'd be unimportant and relegated to the back room.
Right.
So the scientist wants to find alarming results, wants to come up with a conclusion that makes him important, his research important, and gets him more funding.
And that tends to distort science, this great pressure on the scientist.
Well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, John.
Are you telling me are you telling me you're not funded by big oil?
We got a news story here.
Oh, of course I'm not.
Well, I mean, that's the that's the retort.
Every single time a number of these peer-reviewed scientists, whether it's Richard Lindzen or Fred Singer or Patrick Michaels or any of these guys come out well, it must be big oil money tied to it, when nobody looks at what you're talking about, and that is the endless array of grants going to NASA, uh going to everybody else in the higher education that these people are beholden to.
You see, I'm I'm in a lucky position in my life.
I am in my retirement job now, and my retirement is set.
So I don't have to worry about these financial pressures.
But you take uh the television weatherman uh and most of the markets in the country, the they couldn't step forward and speak up, though a good many of them have listed themselves on ICECAP as supporters of the uh uh global warming contrarian point of view, but many of them they can't speak up.
And you take the researchers at the universities and in the research laboratories, they can't speak up.
Their li their livelihood, they gotta pay the mortgage, they gotta raise the kids.
They they gotta have a career.
It is deafening the the self-censorship uh uh from this I mean it's like a a juggernaut that can't be stopped, and you don't dare you know there was a survey of state climatologists done by the Citizens for a Sound Economy this week, and it found that fifty-eight percent of the state climatologists said they disagree with President Clinton's claim that the balance of evidence and scientific opinion uh is no longer a theory, global warming is here.
You're quite right.
There are there are plethora of scientists and climatologists and meteorologists who disagree with that, but you've got this overwhelming political correctness put forth by the media, uh by NBC, by the Weather Channel, by academia, even by James Hansen at NASA, John.
Well, uh J James Hansen uh is is well the one of the leaders of the cult.
There's no question about it.
And uh he has uh profited greatly off of his position.
And by the way, he's admitted he's exaggerated exaggerated the forecast in order to get people interested, I believe it was in Scientific American a few years ago.
Which is well, I mean he's trying to get people interested and concerned, you got to exaggerate a little bit.
Why these people have any more credibility than the man in the moon at this point.
Well, give me before I gotta let you go, but give me a I think the ship has left the dock, Jason.
I mean, after all, the the former vice president got the Emmy, got the Oscar, and got the Nobel Prize.
Isn't it all over?
Well, as you point out in your piece, though, in twenty years, here's the here's what I fear.
You say in your piece, in twenty years the game will be up because we won't have this horrible warming.
Some say it hasn't warmed since nineteen ninety-eight right now, but then they will say, Well, that's because we took action, John.
Well, I understand.
In twenty years it will be obvious that we were all duped.
But uh in the next twenty years, uh those who have perpetrated this incredible scam are going to have a field day.
And there are great life.
And the economic costs of which I'm going to talk about in the next segment are going to be immense.
But I mean you take a look at all of the inconsistencies that you know so much about.
For instance, the fact that at the advent of the so-called greenhouse gas era around 1940, we actually cooled from 1940 to 1976.
There's no correlation.
They're confusing correlation with causation, aren't they?
Yes, they are, and I think it's clear you're well versed that and the climate has shifted, and and when we talk about the uh the polar ice caps and uh the and the loss of the polar bears and so on.
Right.
There's a lot going on here where they're pulling the wool over your eyes.
Uh the Arctic ice cap is at a minimum in the last thirty years.
And it's only thirty years that we've really had good surveillance on it from satellites.
And Antarctica is actually expanding.
There was probably a minimum uh that was uh more significant than this back around 1900, but we don't have good proof of it.
The Antarctic ice cap, of course, is at a maximum right now.
Right, exactly.
The Earth goes through its natural ebb and flow.
If the Earth has warmed up one degree in the last hundred years, and it may have, uh the best we can account for is that maybe a quarter of that one degree is the result of the activities of man and seventy-five percent is the result of the natural ebb and flow.
Don't forget that we have very significant sun cycles.
Right.
And that those are probably, since all our energy on Earth comes from the sun, those are probably the overall overwhelming force.
Well, some even say that the carbon dioxide increase is following the warming, not the other other way around.
Any words for the Weather Channel?
I want to see a study, Jason.
I'd like to see a study that would determine if perhaps warm air can hold more carbon dioxide than cold air.
Because if you look at the chart, indeed the carbon dioxide increases followed the warming of the air.
Excellent point.
I gotta let you go, John.
Any final words for the weather channel, the station you helped to found.
I was very proud of being the founder.
I didn't help found it.
I founded it.
It's my baby.
I went out, raised the money, I ran it, I put it together, I made it tick.
And I'm very, very proud of having created that.
That was the work of my life.
I'm very sorry that it was taken away from me.
And I would say the sec it was going fine for about the first eighteen years or so.
The second generation that's taken over has made a horrible mess of it.
God help us all.
Do you think it's been politicized?
Um, I'm that's not what's bothering me.
They've lost track of their mission.
Uh they've just totally lost track of what the the the bedrock of the channel, what it was founded to do, and what people depended on it for.
All right.
And uh the they're they're out there never never land.
Well, thanks for your courage on this, because uh you'll get some flack, but it needs to be said.
John Coleman, uh currently working with KUSI in San Diego, co founder of the Weather Channel.
Thanks so much, my friend, and be well.
Jason, my pleasure.
You bet.
Back right after this for more rough rush limbaugh with me, Jason Lewis sitting in for the king.
Don't go away.
And we are back on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Open line Friday is always with me today, Jason Lewis in for the uh self-imposed exiled Rush Limbaugh.
Self-censorship yesterday.
Rush fell prey to a hoax, and so he punishes himself.
That's the sort of integrity you expect from EIB.
The contact line is always one eight hundred, two eight two, two eight eight two.
You know, I'm so glad that John Coleman had the uh quite frankly, the political courage to do what he's done with regard to this.
Because this is what's going to take.
It's gonna be a debate of ideas.
And right now, there's no opposition.
The opposition has been silenced as John was talking about when it comes to this environmental extremism.
And the other thing that people don't realize is the the the plethora of evidence that cast doubt on global warming.
I mean, I read this story the other day.
Melting glacier reveals ancient tree stumps.
Melting glaciers in western Canada revealing tree stumps up to 7,000 years old, where the region's rivers of ice have retreated to an historic minimum.
Now, the first reaction by, of course, the mainstream media is aha, melting ice is revealing tree stumps.
What were the trees doing there 7,000 years ago?
How did they get trees that we now are discovering if it wasn't warmer then than it is today?
We know there are these 1500 year cycles.
Dennis Avery wrote a book about it.
We know there's there's inconsistency.
I'll give you a perfect example.
During the Great Depression, when when uh carbon dioxide emissions kept going up, even though because of our economic malaise during the Great Depression, our carbon dioxide emissions went down.
How is that possible?
You know, when you have economic growth, and this is why they want to attack economic growth as part of the environmental movement.
A carbon tax, a gas tax, uh removing the mortgage interest deduction, basing your insurance on the number of miles you drive, forcing you into public transit.
Maybe they'll force you into a Soviet-style condo, high density condo next to uh a mass transit station.
They call that smart growth, new urbanism, you know.
All of this is a result of this obsession.
And if we don't get a handle on it, uh your your economic livelihood is going to be quite different.
It's going to be in fact, there's a Minnesota climate change advisory group that was convened by our governor.
Way to stick your neck out, Gov. And they're coming out with their preliminary findings or discussing their priva preliminary findings on how to combat global warming in Minnesota.
See, we can we can uh solve the global warming problem right up here in the Twin Cities, but you didn't know that.
That's why we have our own climate change advisory group, like California number of states.
They want people that people are going to be, I love this euphemism, encouraged, as they have a gun to your head, encouraged to drive less, bicycle more, only live in green buildings.
We're going to pay a tax on carbon dioxide emissions by taxing utilities and refiners.
They've already said that will raise the price of energy.
Your mortgage interest deduction may be a thing of the past because we don't want urban sprawl out in the uh suburbs.
Takes too much gas to drive out there, I guess.
Lowering the maximum speed limit to 55 miles per hour, and transit and ride sharing inducements coupled with higher registration fees for low mileage mileage vehicles.
That breeze you're feeling right now is your freedom blowing right by.
All thanks to Al Gore, the Sierra Club, and a bunch of weak need politicians and the business community isn't much better.
They're getting on board because they're already investing in these things and they want their tax credits.
They want their cap and trade.
So they've sold out.
It really is a time of choosing right now.
We're at a crossroads here.
We're either going to stand up to this grotesque assault on freedom, or we're all going to live entirely different lifestyles.
And isn't it amazing?
Isn't it amazing all of the so-called solutions for global warming just happen to be the same solutions that liberal Democrats have been pushing for a hundred years, long before the advent of global warming?
Wow, what a coincidence.
I tell you, it's a mystery.
1800-282-2882.
Let's go to Morgan County, Ohio, and Kenny, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Jason Lewis.
Hi, Jason.
Uh I will have to concur with uh with uh Mr. Coleman.
Uh there's times where we have black clouds coming down on us, and I turn on a weather channel to see what's going on.
And they have storm stories or they have something like that on.
They don't have any weather on her anymore.
I mean, it's not the weather channel anymore.
It's uh an agenda.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And and it's global warming uh stuff.
I mean what I tell people is is fifty thousand years ago, the northern half of the northern hemisphere was covered with a m a mile thick sheet of ice and it started melting.
Uh was it because the caves and them were driving SUVs or was it because they're cold fire power Plants or I mean what happened here?
Why do why do you think they called it Greenland without being too facetious?
Of course it's been warmer.
You know, the week if you can politicize changes in the weather, you've got it made.
I mean, think how absurd this is.
The liberal left, thanks to Mr. Gore and the mainstream media, have now figured out the the greatest cause of all, the greatest political angle of all.
Well, every time the weather changes, it's a talking point.
They've politicized the weather to increase taxes, to reduce lifestyles.
Well, guess what, folks?
The weather is going to change, so they've got a talking point every day.
And that's the problem here.
There's no rationality involved in any of this whatsoever.
We are the frog in the boiling water.
1 800 282 2882, open line Friday as always.
Rush will be back on Monday.
In the meantime, you can always check out Rush Limbaugh.com.
I am Jason Lewis, and this is Liz in Columbus, Ohio.
You're on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Hi, Liz.
Um, I'm calling because I watched the testimony of the Yahoo executives in front of the House of Representatives this week.
And the reason why I'm so excited to get through is because I think the national um audience that Rush has got to see how these guys acted in front of their interrogators, i.e.
the Congress.
When they were uh Did you see that at all?
I I missed that.
Tell us what happened.
Oh my gosh.
They were absolutely snockered from the Congress.
And and the CEO Snockered or Snookered?
Both.
Snockered would be a member of Congress.
Snookered would be somebody testifying in front of Congress.
Snookered.
Yes, right.
Okay, so they were they were um inept.
They Congress treated them like three-year-old boys, and you know what?
They acted like three-year-old boys.
Well, what was the the the thrust of of this was the thrust was basically the bottom line was what is your social responsibility to have your company work in China.
Now, this is what happened.
Um Yahoo is working in China.
The the um the KGB of China came to Yahoo and said, We need to know who these individuals are, because they are writing stuff on Yahoo that we don't agree with.
So Yahoo turned in their names, and now at least one man is in prison for ten years, and three others are on the block to go to prison.
And so this whole thing was about what sort of social responsibility do these men have in these communist countries.
So this is why this is why well-meaning people, and sometimes they're wrong, but this is why well-meaning people are are uh skeptical of globalism.
Oh my god.
I I I I sat here with my mouth open half the time, because let me just say that if any of your listeners have stock in Yahoo, advertise on Yahoo.
Well, I don't want to look, I don't want to get into a crusade like that, but I I will say this.
Uh I mean, Google did the same thing as I recall when they agreed to self-censor their search engine to get into the Chinese market.
Uh we remember the Clinton scandals and how that was connected to, you know, Indonesian bankers and the Chinese and the ChICOMs and all the rest.
There there is a problem here where you've got to at at the final analysis realize the last best hope of mankind on earth is still the United States and our national security comes first.
And if you're aiding and abetting in this way, it's not a good thing.
And I think that's what you're saying.
It's a very slippery slope.
Very slippery slope.
And how ironic is it, Liz?
How ironic that, okay, they can give up the names of courageous dissidents and the dissidents end up in jail, according to your your story here.
Uh but yet here in America, we refuse to give immunity, or the liberals in Congress refuse to give immunity to those telecommunications companies that allowed our government to do their job and spy on inter on uh telecommunication calls between terrorists.
Yeah.
I know.
I know.
It's nuts.
It's nuts.
Liz, great story.
I'm glad you called.
Glad we got it out there.
I appreciate it.
Let's go to Schwartz Creek, Michigan.
Dave, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
How are you doing, Jason?
I appreciate your efforts to get out the truth.
You do a stand up job uh filling in for Rush.
Uh I do my best.
They are big shoes indeed.
Yes, they are.
Um I just wanted to make a uh comment on this global warming situation.
Rush made a comment some time ago.
He said if you want to know what's driving the agenda, just follow the money.
And it's kind of strange that the only people that are really pushing this agenda are the ones with money.
And they stand to make more money off of it.
Yes.
Right.
The government is through government regulations, we're going to create a market for products and things that wouldn't otherwise come to market because it's going to cost everybody more except the people that own the stock in those companies.
Exactly.
And they're going to stand to make more money, and the whole hypocrisy of the whole thing here that I wish people could see it, is that these people that are driving this thing are the they're the ones who consider themselves the elite of society and they will push it on us, but I can guarantee my bottom dollar that they are not going to adhere to it themselves.
Well, you know, the carbon credit scandal or the or the joke that is a carbon credit as though it's like buying an indulgence for Mother Earth.
You know, I've I'm Al Gore and if I buy a carbon credit, then I can keep living this lavish lifestyle.
Well, the earth would be better if you not only bought the carbon credit, but you quit your lavish well, I'm not gonna do that.
So it is an absolute it's it's a it's an Elmy Elmer Gantry style move, if you will.
But we gotta remember this about rich liberals, learjet liberals.
They can afford liberalism.
So I think, you know, if you inherited uh twenty billion dollars and maybe not that much, but a hundred million, we'll keep it realistic.
You gotta give away six or seven.
Now what's the big deal?
The rest of us poor fools out here trying to climb up the economic ladder, those are the people that get hurt.
And he and and uh Al Gore is uh you know, he's one that will look you in the face to say, I want you to live in Soviet style condominium living, and then he goes home to his twenty seven thousand square foot mansion.
I mean, this is this it's absolute garbage.
Connect like you say democracy.
Like you say, connect the dots.
Why do you think the mass transit crowd is so ecstatic over global warming?
They can employ more government officials to get more mass transit lines up.
Thank God for Seattle when they voted down proposition one this week and said, No way.
We're not gonna we're not going to raise a sales tax to nine and a half percent so we can have somebody's idea of a choo-choo train running that doesn't carry as many people as one freeway lane mile and cost two or three times as much.
But yet the mass transit crowd is pushing the global warming hysteria because they know then they can justify these outrageous expenditures on antiquated trains that don't work anywhere west of the Ohio River.
Exactly.
So it's it's it's all one great big mosaic as you point out, with people who have a vested interest in pushing this, and the media will not tell you.
Matt Lauer will not tell you.
They couldn't even muster the courage to tell you that the Antarctic ice sheet was expanding in the clips I saw.
So it does become rather scandalous after a while.
Hey, thanks for checking in, Dave.
I appreciate it.
Let's uh let's check in with Matt in Du Boy, Pennsylvania.
You're up next.
Hi.
Hi, Jason.
Thanks for taking my call.
You bet.
Um, I have a theory on Hillary's proposed um health care.
Um I think there's one big flaw that we're all forgetting, and we may have already brought it up.
I think um right now that everybody I think everybody would agree with me that we all work for our health care.
I mean, I'm twenty-five years old, I I work for a major retailer, um, I still go to college.
And I feel that everything I have I've worked for, and I think this would just be another example of us depending on the government for something that we should.
I'm shocked.
I I I really feel this is something that will make us not want to work, not myself and other people, but I just think that it's a No the Hillary care will make certain you don't go out and do the responsible thing and buy health insurance.
Right.
A bankrupt social security system has for years told people in uh in effect, don't worry about retirement.
We got that covered.
Right.
And now we're gonna and now we're gonna bail out the subprime mortgage market.
If you've got if you're gonna house is about to be foreclosed on you, don't worry about making the payment.
We'll handle it for you.
We send all of the wrong signals for a grown-up society.
It's a remarkable, isn't it?
I just think, yeah, and with me, I'm I'm trying to finish college and I have two classes left and I'll be done.
Um I've I'm paying out of my pocket.
I don't I mean, don't get me wrong, it's nice to have loans er I'm sorry, not loans, grants, and but I've got to the point now where I can just get by with paying out of my pocket.
Um I know some people are not fortunate enough.
But you know, I I just think that we all in America should do things to better ourselves and not expect the government I mean the government is there for us, but I think that this country's gotten away from doing a hard day's work and just getting what see what you can get out of it.
And I I just think that this health care thing, I think she know I I don't really know what to believe because it does say a lot of promise, a lot of things like the the um baby bond thing, I think was a joke.
I think there's a lot of money that I don't know where the she can give everybody five grand, but we can't afford to to uh have private accounts for social security.
I mean, give me a break.
I I want to talk about that when we come back a little bit, be because you you gotta understand what economists call rational man theory is at work here.
We respond to incentives.
That's a great difference between human beings and animals.
We have the ability to reason and we uh we respond to our our self-interest, a healthy self-interest, I would argue.
So when taxes are lower, we work harder.
But when government sits start sits there and starts corrupting people with handout after handout after handout, pretty soon it corrupts society, and we become a bunch of of nanny state liberals queuing up at the trough.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work in perpetuity.
It can't sustain itself.
And we'll talk about that when we return on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Carrick apparently indicted.
He's uh giving a speech or gave a comment, I should say, moments ago.
We'll get to that next hour and compare that with the scandals of the nineties, perhaps, if people want to throw some stones, all that coming up.
Also a vouchers down to defeat in Utah.
We'll try to get that in on an open line Friday and Hillary Care, which is nothing more than the SCHIP plan.
I c I can't emphasize this enough before we get back to the phones.
S chip is Hillary Care.
How else could you explain a plan that says we don't care if we cover all of the indigent?
I mean, the president says I'm not going to expand S Chip, the state children's health insurance program that doesn't cover kids, doesn't cover the poor.
It covers pregnant women, it covers adults, and it covers illegal immigrants, but it doesn't cover the poor.
We're going to expand that before we've got all the poor covered to 300% of the poverty line.
And yet the Democrats are back with this nonsense again for the third time.
Here we go again.
And this is a great lesson how Republicans sometimes snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
As the last caller pointed out, we're winning the war on the health care battle.
People understand that if you think health care can provide you with something that is free or subsidized, you will be rationed, or health care will be rationed.
That's the only way to control their global budget.
Because people will be cueing up at the doctor's office, oh, it's free.
Oh, that's subsidized.
I think I'll use more health care.
I think I'll go to the doctor's office for a hangnail.
And the government will say, Well, gosh, what are we going to do?
Well, first I think we'll deny market payments to the providers, the doctors, that's already happening.
And then it will be rationed as it is in Canada and UK.
In fact, most of health care programs run by the government are in fact rationed in UK.
They won't they're they're threatening not to treat cigarette smokers.
Well, why waste that money?
We need to focus on other people who care about themselves.
They'll start telling you to exercise.
You lose your freedom here.
And in Oregon, it was very, very pleasing to see that the citizens of that state rejected an eighty-four cent uh pack or 84 cent tax on a pack of cigarettes rejected by sixty percent to go for their SCHIP program.
I mean, think about this for a moment, friends.
We're gonna have a uh, you know, what ten dollar cigar tax.
That was the first tax they rolled out.
Sixty-one cent a pack cigarette tax.
Heck in Minnesota the tax on cigarettes is already a buck fifty, buck forty-nine.
You're gonna throw another sixty-one cents on that?
All you're gonna do is create a black market.
You know, the Washington Post reports today that the decades long decline in smoking has stalled now.
Well, I bet the SGIP people are happy because they need smokers to fund these programs.
This is how perverse all of this is.
We know how to get more affordable health care to people.
Change the tax code, have a nationwide pool for health insurance market, and tell people they get to deduct all of their health care expenditures, not the company where they work.
That's true portability.
In Erwinna, Pennsylvania, I think it's Erwinna, Pennsylvania.
Constance, you're on the Rush Limbaugh show with Jason Lewis.
Hi.
Hello, Jason.
Yes, it is Erwina.
Named after Colonel Irwin who served under the original George W. Well, how about that?
Yeah, how about that?
My question for you is how is Hillary going to get trial lawyers on board for Hillary care?
Who are they going to sue?
That is an interesting point, is it not?
Yes, and aren't they like huge backers of the Democrat Party?
Well, what they'll have to do is make certain they leave the medical providers in a um Ursatz private market and then just buy everybody else's health care.
So we'll get the government subsidies to pay these people, but that would that would enable us to also sue them at the behest of the trial lawyers.
But if the doctors are working for the government, aren't they protected by that's what I mean?
Yeah, that's that's right.
That's what I mean.
Which is why there's not much recourse to shoddy health care treatment overseas, isn't there?
Correct.
It's a great point.
There are all sorts of problems with regard to nationalizing health care.
We've had this debate time and time again.
Uh Hillary care failed the first time.
S chip is failing as people find out what it's going to cost them.
They find out how many uh you know, they're going to lose the privacy between themselves and their doctor.
They're going to have r you will have rationing if the government subsidizes or provides free health care.
The government can't afford to provide it without rationing.
Now, the the critics, Constance, say, Well, yeah, but you've got rationing right now through the price mechanism.
And I'll admit to that.
Yeah, we do.
Good.
The more the more the consumer gets involved in health care, you know, you ever notice why dentistry, cosmetic surgery, uh some so some other avenues of medical care that isn't covered so much by third party payers, insurance companies, the government, that the prices of those products go down?
Isn't that amazing?
How does that work?
It's called competition.
It's called consumerism.
And if you if you reinvigorate the consumer in health care by allowing people to deduct their insurance premium, deduct their copays, deduct their other out-of-pocket expenses, and then open up the market nationwide to get out from under these ridiculous state mandates that require every traditional indemnity insurer in Minnesota or California or New York or Florida to cover acupuncture, mental health, AIDS coverage, drug abuse, substance abuse, port win stain removal.
That's one.
I'm not making that up.
So if you want to write a policy in your state and you gotta cover all of the that, what's that do to the policy?
Instead, what's Congress doing?
We need mental health parity, which will raise the cost of insurance.
So again, it's almost like our energy problem.
We are creating the problem, and instead of liberals realizing that market-oriented policies are in order, they are they are compounding the problem.
And it happens each and every time there's a problem, it seems.
Bob in Daytona Beach, Florida, you're on the excellence in broadcasting network.
Hi.
Yeah, I just wanted to uh just mention you know, let's push us a little further about both uh this both this carbon footprint thing and Hillary care.
Carbon footprints, if they create a system that monitors or industry for carbon footprints, they basically control industry because they control their energy usage.
Yes.
They've just created the ultimate system for leverage for towing the party line with corporations.
You got it.
Now you take Hillary care.
She starts that, weans everybody off of public health care onto government health care.
Now they can deny you government health care based on anything they want.
A medical board can convene to say, hey, guns are dangerous.
We are now gonna deny deny health care to anybody who has guns unless they turn them in.
Right.
They've just circumvented the second amendment and they're legal.
What's the latest crisis?
Latest crisis is the obesity epidemic.
How about homeschooling?
You got it.
It's all I gotta let you go, but it's all there, Bob.
You couldn't be more correct.
I don't know what it's gonna take for people to finally realize more government equals less freedom.
I'm Jason Lewis in for Rush Limbaugh today on the EIB.
Open line Friday continues here on the Rush Limbaugh program with me, Jason Lewis, in for El Rushbow today, Maha Rushi.
We'll be back though Monday, so uh fear not Rush would love this story.
Uh this week, a few extra pounds may actually be good for you.
A few extra pounds might help you live longer.
Being overweight might boost the risk of dying from diabetes or kidney disease, but not cancer or heart disease.
And it may protect against a host of other causes of death as well.
▲
Export Selection