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Feb. 28, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:40
February 28, 2008, Thursday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Hang on here just a second.
I'm going through the stack.
There's other stuff here in the besides politics out there and a lot of it good.
Okay.
All right, greetings.
Here we're ready to go.
Rush Limbaugh back in action from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
As usual, great to have you with us today.
Fastest week in meeting.
It's already Thursday.
So open line Friday will be tomorrow.
Telephone number if you want to join us is 800-282-2882 and the email address L Rushbow at E.O. uh.
L Rushbow at EIBNet.com.
A drop in wind generation late Tuesday coupled with cold weather triggered an electric emergency that caused the Texas grid operator to cut service to some large customers.
Wow, loss of wind caused a power grid emergency in Texas.
Because we all know we humans can control the wind.
Another example of this liberal feel good stuff on display.
By the way, spe you know speaking of of this uh Howard Dean comment that uh their their their team, that their field Hillary and Obama looks like America, and our field looks like the 1950s and sounds like the 1850s.
Um I kind of skirted past that, but this this deserves some comment.
Uh because there have been countless conservative black candidates, conservative high officials, and they have never been treated with respect.
Uh that is demanded of Obama's supporters in and out of the media.
And I can give a we can start with Clarence Thomas, Dr. Thomas Sowell, Michael Steele in Maryland.
I mean the list Condoleezza Rice has been disrespected and and uh mistreated like nobody on the left ever is by liberals, by Democrats.
Full-fledged hate for these people, because they're considered traitors.
And this hate for everybody that the left has is the basis for their philosophy and their politics.
And as far as I'm concerned, they don't get to lecture us, folks.
They don't get to lecture us on who we are, what year we're from, and what century we're from, and they don't get to lecture us and tell us who what America is and what America looks like and that they're it.
Because when they do, what they're talking about is they're the good people when it comes to race.
Well Lynn Swan, Clarence Thomas, Michael Steele, Ken Blackwell in Ohio, etc., etc., etc.
Conservative black candidates have never been treated with respect from the left.
Certainly not the respect that they're demanding Obama be treated with by the uh by the media and everybody else.
I mean, Howard Dean's out there talking about the 1950s and the 1850s, which is interesting.
Uh in the 1850s, a Democrat Party stood for slavery.
In the 1950s, a Democrat Party stood for segregation.
Did Howard Dean support uh Michael Steele?
Or Ken Blackwell or Lynn Swan?
No.
He and his party defeated them with the whitest of white males.
And did everything they could to defeat them and not just defeat them, but destroy them.
Did Howard Dean and his party support Clarence Thomas?
No, they smeared him with the whitest of white politicians, Biden, Kennedy, and all the rest of them.
This is why I say the hate in this culture is predominantly on the left.
The hypocrisy is predominantly on the left.
The disingenuousness, the sanctimony is on the left.
Obama's being hailed not because he's black, he's being hailed because he's a liberal, pure and simple, and they think that they have a chance with Obama, and they think that I'll tell you really why they're so excited about Obama, and it has nothing to do with him being black.
Except in this regard, they think that Obama being black will shield him and other liberals from being criticized as liberals.
Remember to them the dirtiest word in our culture today is liberal.
We have made it a dirty word.
They resent that.
They've foisted a candidate up here who will be immune from any criticism whatsoever because he will say, I resent being criticized this way.
The Democrats will say he resents being criticized that way, and we resent you criticizing him that way.
And their purpose is to camouflage and mask who they really are, and with Obama to get to do that.
Obama's not even leading a campaign.
He's leading a movement, as I've said.
He's got a bunch of followers who have invested in faith.
Uh not policy matters, as is uh as is traditional.
Speaking of all this, it was a black day yesterday in the Clinton campaign as old guard civil rights leader John Lewis decided to split the scene, made a break for it, joining the Obama camp.
This is last night on NBC's nightly news, Andrea Mitchell had this conversation with John Lewis.
Forty-three years ago I marched across the bridge.
It was much easier.
And a decision that I have to make.
But I had to make it.
You're saying this decision was harder than the Selma March?
It was much tougher.
All I had to do in Selma in 1965.
To put on my trench coat and my suit, my backpack, and walk and look straight ahead.
Congressman, you got your head beaten in.
Your face was covered with blood.
But this is tougher.
I'm dealing with friends, people that uh I love, people that are a my.
Part of my extended family.
When Andrea Andrea Mitchell says, Congressman, you got your head beaten in, and your face was covered with blood.
She's saying, Are you nuts?
That's what she's saying.
It was harder to leave the Clintons than it was to march across the bridge in Selma.
And John Lewis says it was.
Now he may know something that we don't.
I mean, he's making a break for it.
He is abandoning Clinton Inc.
Now I thought whether he's exaggerating a bit here, believe me, the difficulty here in leaving is if she happens to come back and win this thing, or even not.
He knows what happens to people who abandon or cross Clinton Inc.
Why would this be so hard?
I mean, marching across the bridge and Selma was no piece of cake, folks.
He did get beaten up.
He was bloodied real bad.
And he wants us to think this was harder.
I I think part and parcel of this also.
Uh there's a message to the Clintons.
I really have no choice here.
You have to understand what I'm doing.
It's so hard.
I've never had anything harder to do than abandon you.
He's as he's asking for protection.
Uncle Bill's burden.
John Lewis was an Uncle Bill, abandoned the black guy Obama to stay with the white master.
To seek favor with the white master, to seek favor with the white master who has bestowed power on John Lewis and the uh Reverend Dax and others in the civil rights leadership.
So Mrs. Clinton, uh she she conducted a a sad interview with Judy Woodruff on the uh news hour with Jim O'Lara on PBS.
And Judy Woodruff said, We just had it confirmed this afternoon that John Lewis, longtime friend of yours and President Clinton's.
And Uncle Bill has confirmed that he is going to support and will vote for Barack Obama at the convention.
Do you have a comment?
He is a dear friend, and I respect him uh so greatly, and I understand the incredible pressure that he's been under.
So he's my friend today, just like he was yesterday, and he'll be my friend tomorrow.
Uh yeah.
That's that's that's what the Corleone family said to the Hollywood producer before he woke up with the horse's head in the bed.
So Woodruff then says, well, people people look at what's happened to your campaign, Senator Clinton.
They say, What's happened?
All of last year you were the front runner, you were the presumed headed for the nomination, and January comes along, boom, Senator Obama starts winning primaries, he's won eleven in a row.
How do you explain what's happened?
None of this is surprising to me.
You know, last spring when I looked at how the race was shaping up, I knew that it would be a close contest.
And I assumed it would be with Senator Obama.
And at that time, you know, I I said, we've got to start thinking about Texas.
And we've got to start.
I think it's great that this has been a close contest.
I don't have any problem with that.
I don't think I'm entitled to anything.
I hate being a front runner.
I find that sort of burdensome.
She knew last spring it was going to come down to Texas.
This is this is her problem.
None of this is surprising to me.
It's all surprising.
Go back and look at her interview with Katie Courick prior to Super Tuesday.
What do you do if you lose, Katie?
I'm not fucking losing.
This is mine.
I knew this would be a close contest.
I assumed it would be Senator Obama.
At that time last spring, I said we've got to start thinking about Texas.
Last spring, ten months ago.
She wants us to talk to to believe that she knew it was going to be about Texas folks.
The dirty little secret here is that Hillary's campaign had no ground organization set up after suit for Tuesday in February in any of these states.
She didn't.
He had all kinds of campaign offices pockmarking these various states.
She didn't have any always knew it was going to come back to Texas.
I mean, I I thought first the firewall was New Hampshire, then the firewall was South Carolina.
Then what was the next firewall?
All these firewalls, and these firewalls have been blown down.
Now the next firewall is Texas, as she knew that last spring.
Finally, Judy Woodruff says, You're not disagreeing that inspiration is a part of leadership?
I don't disagree, and I think I inspire a lot of people.
I see them coming, they start crying on the rope line, they flood my events, they are contributing to the tune of a million dollars a day on the internet.
I am very proud of the uh incredible support that I have and and the vision I have for America and you know the dreams that I have that I can help to deliver um, you know, a better future for people.
People crying on Hillary's rope line?
Probably the interns unhappy bill didn't show up.
Just saw this story on the Politico.com, and I I'm really curious about this.
Hillary Clinton's campaign set to announce later today that she's on track to raise roughly 35 million dollars in the month of February, a huge month by any standard measure of political fundraising and her best of the campaign.
Now Obama raised 36 million in January, appears to be on track to surpass that figure this month.
So 35 million for Hillary, over 36 million for Obama.
We're we're we're looking here at uh 71 million dollars.
Where in the hell is this money coming from?
We've got a story here that we're uh the economic growth came to a screeching halt in the first quarter.
Uh is it first quarter or four of Justed Fourth?
What did I do?
What did I do with the damn story?
Zero point six percent, whenever it is.
The economy's come to a screeching halt.
It's time to slit our wrists.
We're headed to a recession.
The point is, whether it's true or not, the American people think we're headed to a recession.
We had poll data from Quinnipia yesterday that documents this.
The American people are feeling very pessimistic about the overall economy, even though they're robustly optimistic about themselves.
I know it's a disconnect.
The attitudes, the attitude, now where the hell's this money coming from?
We got gasoline heading to four bucks a gallon.
It's already there in some places.
We got people who can't pay their mortgages and are being foreclosed on.
We got people now can't afford food because of biofuels and the cost of wheat and the cost of corn.
How in the world are people giving $70 million in one month to two Democrats?
Where is this money coming from?
And how come these Democrats out there raising all this money saying, don't give the money to me, keep it for yourself because we're in a recession, and you're gonna need it to buy gasoline and food, and you're gonna need it to pay your mortgage.
Why aren't they saying that?
They're begging people for their money in the midst of all this melee, supposedly, but I still want to know where it's coming from.
Because they say it's being raised on the internet, but this is awfully curious to me.
In the midst, you mean to tell me that in the midst of what people think is a failing economy, that they're still running out to give money to Hillary and Barack.
Well, it may be.
I mean, you might have the janitors, the dishwashers in Chinatown, or they might be flourishing.
I mean, that's that's my point.
Where is this coming from?
New York Times gas prices soar, posing threat to family budget.
Right here, formerly nicotine-stained fingers.
Gas prices, which for months lag behind the big run-up in the price of oil, are suddenly rising again, with some experts saying they could approach four bucks a gallon by the spring, diesel hitting new records daily, oil settled a record high of one hundred dollars eighty-eight cents a barrel on Tuesday.
The increases could not come at a worse time for the economy.
With growth slowing, energy increases that were once easily absorbed by consumers are now more likely to act as a drag on household budgets, and yet they are still sending money in droves to the Democrats.
And leaving people with less money to spend elsewhere, except on politics.
These costs could worsen the nation's economic woes, piling a fresh energy shock on top of the turmoil in credit and housing.
And still people send money to the Democrats.
From the New Republic today, the New Republic blog, Noam Scheiber.
Now I mentioned this earlier in the program, I mentioned this last week.
Headline, John McCain may be screwed.
It has nothing to do with a lobbyist.
It has to do with this campaign loan story.
Basically, McCain secured two loans, totaling about four million dollars last fall, apparently using as collateral the federal matching funds that he'd receive if he opted into the public finance system.
But simply by using potential public money as collateral, McCain effectively did opt into the system.
That means he effectively agreed to cap his campaign spending at $54 million prior to the Republican convention in September.
Alas, McCain had spent $49 million as of January 31st, so we're looking at more or less zero permissible spending between now and September.
He's got about five million bucks he could spend.
And they're thinking zero, because he's probably he surely spent five million dollars since January.
In his defense, McCain's lawyers argue that it wasn't potential public money that they used as collateral.
It was McCain's overall fundraising potential.
Which is how to put this not exactly straight talk.
Says the New Republic, take it away, Washington Post.
McCain lawyer Trevor Potter said the campaign offered his collateral its assets, including McCain's massive fundraising lists, and his willingness to keep raising from them, but that may not satisfy the FEC, which requires that politicians borrow using only terms that assure payment.
If the bank is saying they lend him money on the basis of future receipts, well, in presidential campaigns, their future receipts can be zero or millions, said Mark Elias, an election lawyer.
The idea that this would be a dependable source of collateral is preposterous.
Mr. Schiber at the New Republic blog says agreed.
Losing presidential campaigns aren't exactly known for their fundraising potential.
In fact, there's a bit of a catch-22 here.
If McCain's fundraising lists were worth something, he wouldn't have needed a loan, at least not a big one.
And if they weren't worth anything, he'd have needed the loan, but the lists would have worked, wouldn't have worked as collateral.
I'm not sure how you can square the circle.
Here's the bottom line, according New Republic.
Either McCain used the promise of public campaign funds as collateral for his loan, in which case he's locked himself into the public campaign finance system and its strict spending limits, and is massively screwed until September, or he didn't use potential public funds as collateral, which means he didn't have anything to offer as collateral, which means he received an improper loan.
Neither one of these scenarios is very good for the Straight Talk Express.
Again, this is Gnome Schiber in the New Republic blog, and it happens to be some of what George Will writes about today in his piece.
Just give you the last paragraph from George Will.
Although McCain is run by lobbyists, although his dealings with lobbyists have generated what he, when judging the behavior of others, calls corrupt appearances, and although he has profited from his manipulation of the taxpayer funding system that is celebrated by reformers,
still he probably is innocent of insincerity, Such as his towering moral vanity, he seems sincerely to consider it theoretically impossible for him to commit the offenses of appearances that he incessantly ascribes to others.
Such certitude is, however, not merely an unattractive trait.
It is disturbing righteousness in someone grasping for presidential powers.
McCain taking it from both sides of the aisle today.
Back in just a second.
Half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Cincinnati, as we go back to the phones, this is Tony.
Tony, welcome, sir.
Nice to have you here.
Good afternoon, Rush.
Thank you for honoring uh uh the father of modern-day conservatism, uh, William F. Buckley today.
That was a fitting tribute.
I think you would agree that what Buckley brought to the debate for those of us who followed him at Yale and at other institutions was the distinction between polemics and sarcasm.
And I think that's what all of us, uh all of uh conservatives today want to do is to elevate the level of discourse out of polemics and into true debate.
I'd love to, but it's not up to me.
The polemics are coming at us from the left.
They are, and we just have to grin and bear it.
But I want to say what I want to discuss with you today, Rush, is your position on health care and whether or not it is a right.
And I would like in that spirit of of dialogue rather than polemics, as a fellow conservative, I would like to argue with you.
That if we conservatives dig in and argue that health care is not a right at some basic level, we'll probably lose.
On the other hand, the real term that is missing from the current debate is the word two-tier.
Now, Rush, you probably drive a nice car, so do I, but not everyone can afford to do so.
But everyone does deserve some form of transportation.
No, no.
No.
No, don't they don't deserve it.
That something has to be earned.
Well, it is and paid for.
But Rush, the the fact is that the other side If they deserve transportation, we may as well start giving everybody a car like we're going to give them health care.
Ah, we do give them public transportation.
They pay something for it.
Yeah.
Let me let me give you a.
Well, well, that may be true.
Let me give you an example.
I'm a surgeon.
I travel outside the United States several times a year to teach surgical procedures.
I just came back from a relatively affluent Asian country.
And while I'm in the operating room, about to operate on a patient there, the doctor there does something that I cannot do in this country.
He looked at the patient and said, We have this other procedure I think would be beneficial to you.
However, it's not covered under our national health insurance.
Part of the procedure is, but would you like to pay the extra cost of what I think would be good for you?
Rush, most of the rest of the developed world can have their doctors offer that to the patient as an option, but we can't in this country because we have the misguided notion that one size must fit all.
Well, wait a second.
What did the patient say?
The patient said yes, of course.
Did the patient have the money to pay for it?
The patient was a laborer, and this was probably a rather, you know, r expensive proposition for him.
But the my point is that the dialogue was allowed to take place because the system was two-tiered.
In other words, if you want to spend the money for a better car, for a better house, whatever, that is the free market.
I can't believe what I'm hearing.
We've already lost this debate in this country.
If you had the opposite just your your average laborer, somebody equivalent with this uh Asian that you ran into, and you bring him in a hospital, they've got surgery going, and the doctor says, by the way, for an additional five hundred dollars, I can do what I think you really need.
Our American pay what do you mean?
Who's paying the five hundred?
Well, you would.
No.
They would refute because we've already lost the argument.
The patient thinks somebody else should pay for everything they want.
We don't we already do have uh two-tier.
Uh, I I've you talked about my car.
I I I have health insurance with somebody, I don't even know who.
I whenever I have to go to the hospital or doctor, I pay for it uh out of my pocket.
I don't even mess with insurance and the forms and all this kind of stuff, because I have the ability to.
Rush, when you had your cochlear implant, if that was not covered by your insurance policy, you had the option to go Around the system and pay cash for that.
And perhaps you did.
But if you were middle class or even upper middle class, and they said we're sorry, that doesn't cover.
You have to either go completely out of the system or we'll only pay a portion.
That's the problem.
The problem is that there isn't some basic level of care for everyone to which you can add a la carte.
Well, you know, here you know what I think is happening here with your argument.
I know exactly what you're trying to say, but my my philosophy in all this is that we have accepted too many premises of the left in all of these social problems that we have, and we want to massage their basic solution just enough that we can call it ours.
And we might want to throw in, as you were doing, a little touch of capitalism or free market to it, but it basically is going to stay a socialized citizen uh system.
Going back to your business about health care is not a right.
Uh no less than Mr. Buckley said that to me.
He has said it to a number of people.
Health care isn't a right, it is a privilege.
Now, what are we supposed to do?
Are we supposed to sacrifice language?
Are we supposed to give up on definite concepts in order to win votes and win elections?
It's like I had a column from the American Spectator the other day from a guy that lives in Nebraska, very big on uh ethanol.
Um we're not supposed to criticize ethanol, we're not supposed to criticize this stuff because we'll not get votes.
So we're supposed to go along with something that doesn't work, is more expensive.
We just had a story yesterday that if these ethanol tankers driving around happen to have an accident and they blow up, the foam to put out an ethanol fire is thirty percent more expensive than the foam required to put out a gasoline fire, and communities are having to ramp up for this, the cost of corn's going through the roof, the cost of wheat's going up, a bagel on Long Island a year ago that was sixty cents is now a buck, all of this because of a hoax, and yet to keep a farm vote, we're supposed to not criticize something that doesn't work.
A friend of mine uh in a state on the East Coast sent me a note.
I heard a rather this is yesterday, I heard a rather liberal GOP political consultant here in uh Raleigh say today that health care is too complicated to be a deciding issue in the elections.
It can't be summarized in 30 seconds.
It's just too hard.
So we're not even supposed to talk we're not don't even go there.
Republican, liberal, republican consultants don't even talk about health care, it's a losing issue, just as you are saying, Tony.
I don't accept that it's a losing issue, and I don't accept that we have to accept things about it that like it's a right or that it's too complicated.
In less than 30 seconds, I can explain health care in a nutshell.
No employer, no insurance company, no politician or government bureaucrat knows better than you about your family's health needs.
You should have the right to purchase health care and health insurance as you see fit without governmental restrictions or penalties, and you should not uh be of the mind that your neighbors have to buy it for you.
Less than thirty seconds, I've just explained the concept of fixing health care.
It is not complicated.
It is very simple.
We get liberalism out of it, we get socialism out of it, we disabuse people of the notion that liberals have impressed them with that it is a right.
I'm starting to hear a lot of this.
We can't say that we're gonna lose the election.
We can't say that we can't say his name middle name.
We can't call him a liberal.
We can't be critical of health care as a right.
We can't.
Pretty soon our own people are gonna are gonna succeed in shutting enough of us up that liberalism's gonna win without having to say a damn thing.
All right.
I know this is this is probably going to confound some of you who think or wish I would just drop this, or maybe you hope that I will just drop this and stop being provocative on this healthcare stuff because you think it's a losing issue.
It's not who I am.
I am I am hell-bent on as many people as possible understanding the truth, the greatness of this country, how it works, and how it is going to be sustained.
Health care is not a right.
It is a privilege.
It's a choice.
However, the accumulation of wealth, the accumulation of wealth is a right.
That is you have a right to freely earn an income and dispose of it as you wish.
Purchase Food, purchase shelter, if you want to purchase health care, whatever else.
And that right comes from God, as enunciated in the Declaration of Independence.
You know how it goes, you know the drill, the pursuit of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.
The right to accumulate wealth exists for all of us.
But health care is an expenditure, therefore it is not a right.
Besides that, folks, we have Medicaid for the poor.
We have the SCHIP program for poor children, and the Democrats get their way children up to twenty five who come from wealthy families.
We have Medicare for seasoned citizens.
What we also have in this country is some people who don't want to use their own assets to pay for their own health care.
They want someone else to do it.
And that brings in a very happy and compliant Democrat Party.
It is a matter of individual priorities.
Let me say it to you, as Mr. Buckley might have said it.
Moral obligations, should one choose to assume moral obligations, are actually higher on the list of things than rights.
That's why we set up systems to take care of the indigent, because we are a moral people.
It is why we have Medicare.
It is why we have Medicaid.
It is why we have SCHIP.
At least it's why we started them.
It's why good people support them.
Now we can get into an argument here over whether these programs are really just more the same liberal drivel to create as many dependents as possible.
But I think we are a compassionate country and we are a country that understands our moral obligations to people who can't provide for themselves because of certain things, and those people nobody will argue with, being taken care of and helped.
That is precisely why we've set up systems to take care of the indigent.
It is why we take care of our neighbors.
It is why we have our churches engage in the various community actions that they do, and not to mention church, there's all kinds of other community organizations that exist for the express purpose of bringing things to poor indigent people that they don't have and can't have on their own.
This is a country of high moral obligation, and we meet those moral obligations at all times.
That is why, because we have such a moral obligation, because we are such a compassionate people, and because we are such a generous people, this is why we try to lower costs and increase competition so that more people can be taken care of well, so that people are not left to fall through the cracks.
This doesn't mean that any of this is a right.
It is our moral obligation as a society that has us take care of people who otherwise could not afford this.
But what has happened is that people who very well can afford it, just as they can afford a plasma TV or a car or what have you, can afford health care and choose not to, they choose, in fact, for others, their neighbors, fellow citizens to pay for it.
Precisely because they have been led to believe that it is their right to have health care.
And I would submit to you that the whole notion of having your neighbor pay for what your responsibilities are can be very addictive once it starts.
In a real sense, rights are negative, universal, and cannot be created once we have enough wealth to have some people want something from other things.
Rights are the lowest claim and therefore command universal respect.
We have to bring back the meaning of words.
Privileges and moral obligations are higher than basic human rights, not dragged around by them.
That is something that Mr. Buckley would say to you.
Privileges and moral obligations are higher than basic human rights, they're not dragged around by them.
Human rights do not dictate moral obligations, it's just the exact opposite.
Moral obligations Manifest themselves in the form of human rights.
And so when our moral obligations and our morality is being torn down, and the whole concept of doing things for the right reason becomes doing things for the wrong reason.
And when people opt out of their own personal responsibility to acquire that which they want with their own assets and shove that on all the rest of us, then we're in trouble, and that's where we are in health care.
Precisely because we have allowed enough people to believe that health care is their right, not their responsibility.
And if this is something I shouldn't discuss, because it's only going to inflame people and make them hate Republicans and think that we're cold-hearted and cruel, so be it.
I'll be glad to talk to any of them and explain how the real compassion, the real big-heartedness exists on our side, using the very same argument about moral obligations and the evidence of how we do in this country without complaint, take care of those who cannot help themselves.
And we are eager to do it because we are a compassionate people.
But we also know that no one, no society can sustain itself if everybody in the society is depending on everybody else to pay what they want, or buy what they want.
So we're not supposed to use Obama's middle name.
We're not supposed to call him a liberal.
We are not supposed to talk about health care in the campaign.
According to Republican consultants, it's too complicated.
And we're not supposed to say that health care is not a right.
Pretty soon, as I say, we're not going to be able to say anything, and we won't have to, and the Democrats won't have to either, because we will effectively shut ourselves up.
Homework assignment.
Go to Rush Limbaugh.com and read the transcript of the last monologue on rights and moral obligations.
Learn to understand the difference, and then tell as many of your friends as possible as often as it takes to persuade them.
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