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April 7, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:31
April 7, 2008, Monday, Hour #3
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As I said, folks, there's a lot of stuff still on the table here, and it's good, and I want to get to as much of it as possible in this hour, including your phone calls.
Telephone number here on the Rush Limbaugh program, so thrilled that you're with us, 800-282-2882.
And the email address is lrushbow at EIBnet.com.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're all experiencing higher food prices and higher gasoline prices.
And in some places around the world, food has become a crisis.
Food prices, because of the effect on supply, is causing riots in some parts of the world.
I have, I'm holding here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers, a column from today's New York Times by the ferret-like Paul Krugman.
He does.
He looks like a ferret.
He's a weasel.
But he's huge.
He's an economist, ostensibly.
He's a huge lib, and his whole column today rips the hell out of biofuels and ethanol.
Now, what does liberalism do to people?
Liberalism creates a crisis, in this case, global warming, and says we need energy independence, and we need to conserve because oil is destroying the planet.
And people who pay attention to this get sucked into it and they believe it and they get depressed and they lose their own free will.
They become prisoners to the negative non-stop doom and gloom reported by drive-by media day in and day out.
They hear about magic cure-alls, in this case an alternative fuel, ethanol.
And they matter.
They want to matter.
They want their lives to have meaning because liberalism has stripped their lives of any meaning.
They place all of their meaning in government, all their hope in government, all their hope in politicians.
And they buy into all this because they want to help.
They want to save the planet.
They think that we can achieve perfection on earth in the form of utopia.
And they sit around, all depressed and dispirited, waiting for it to happen, buying in to all of these crises and hoaxes.
Mr. Krugman writes, these days you hear a lot about the world's financial crisis, but there's another world crisis underway.
It's hurting a lot more people.
I'm talking about the food crisis.
Over the past few years, the prices of wheat, corn, rice, and other basic foodstuffs have doubled or tripled, much of the increase taking place just in the last few months.
High food prices dismay even relatively well-off Americans, but they're truly devastating to poor countries where often food accounts for more than half of a family's spending.
There have already been food riots around the world.
Food-supplying countries from Ukraine to Argentina have been limiting exports in an attempt to protect domestic consumers, their own citizens, which has led to angry protests from farmers and making things even worse in countries that need to import food.
How did it happen?
Well, the answer is a combination of long-term trends, bad luck, and bad policy.
Where the effects of bad policy are clearest, however, is in the rise of demon ethanol and other biofuels.
The subsidized conversion.
The subsidized conversion of crops into fuel was supposed to promote energy independence, help limit global warming.
But this promise was, as Time magazine bluntly put it, a scam.
Time magazine did call biofuels a scam.
We called it a scam long before Time magazine did, but Time Magazine, in an otherwise very puff piece on global warming and the hoax, nevertheless referred to the subsidized conversion of crops into fuel as a scam.
Krugman writes, this is especially true of corn ethanol, even on optimistic estimates.
Producing a gallon of ethanol from corn uses most of the energy the gallon contains.
But it turns out that even seemingly good biofuel policies like Brazil's use of ethanol from sugarcane accelerate the pace of climate change by promoting deforestation.
What should be done?
Mr. Krugman asks near the end, wringing his hands.
What should be done?
The most immediate need is more aid to people in distress.
The UN's World Food Program put out a desperate appeal for more money.
This is where Mr. Krugman's liberalism surfaces.
What should be done?
More aid to people in distress.
The UN's World Food Program put out a desperate appeal for more money.
We also need a pushback against biofuels, which turned out to have been a terrible mistake.
But it's not clear how much can be done.
Cheap food, like cheap oil, may be a thing of the past.
Mr. Krugman and the rest of you liberals, it doesn't have to be this way.
It does not have to be a disaster.
Just stop the stupid policy.
It doesn't have to be a disaster.
This is just the tip of the iceberg if more and more people start buying into this global warming hoax and then start creating policies to deal with it.
Let biofuels be your lesson.
You think global warming and its fix is going to lead to everything being cheaper and everything being just kumba?
It's just the opposite.
A Clinton insider who served as ex-campaign manager Patty Solis Doyle's, Solis Doyle's executive assistant for several years, set up a new website, www.voteboth.com.
Plans to register with the Federal Election Commission today.
Vote Both urges Democrats to support a joint Clinton-Obama ticket.
The creator, Adam Parkamenko, resigned from the campaign three weeks ago to set up his own website to end Operation Chaos.
Vote for both of them.
Decide right now that Hillary's the nominee.
Put her to the top of the ticket and vote for Obama as vice president and just end it.
Operation Chaos, ladies and gentlemen, rolls on.
Audio soundbite time now.
This next two bites, these next two bites, illustrate, beyond a shadow of a doubt, liberals blame me for Operation Chaos on two different fronts.
Thursday night, CNN's Election Center, the guests are Joan Walsh of Salon.com and a radio host by the name of Roland Martin.
Joan Walsh, salon.com, no friend of this program, by the way, no fan of mine, said this about the Democrat primary.
I think that Senator Hillary Clinton has faced much more overt sexism than Barack Obama has faced over racism in this campaign.
She was greeted with jeers, iron my shirts in New Hampshire.
She's asked by debate moderators, why are you not likable?
Rush Limbaugh ran pictures of her looking old and said, you know, the country isn't ready to look at an old woman.
And when you go back to that very seminal moment where a woman asked John McCain, how do we beat the B-word?
And John McCain laughed.
I mean, you cannot imagine that happening.
How do we beat Barack Obama and somebody using the N-word and laughter?
So, you know, a kind of genial sexism is so much more okay in our society than that kind of racism.
It's just true.
Well, she does have a point.
Everybody's excusing Jeremiah Wright and his racism, but this just proves the point.
The women are frustrated.
Women are mad that Hillary's being rejected.
So bottom line is, she's blaming me for Hillary's loss or her trailing in the race because I asked if America wanted to see a woman age in office.
However, I'm also the reason that Obama hasn't won yet.
Roland Martin, the radio guy, was asked by the host Campbell Brown, the last word, Roland, you get it.
How do you explain that, though?
The language of nothing else certainly is different.
Well, of course it is.
And that is, there are things that have been defined as being acceptable.
But also, I think what you will hear is you hear those critics.
Look, Rush Limbaugh did a whole huge skip on the magic negro talking about Senator Barack Obama off the L.A. Times piece.
And so the bottom line is you've had folks with characters back and forth, but there's no doubt a lot of the venom towards Clinton is also because she's been on the national landscape, those eight years in the White House as well.
That plays a part.
I think if that was a woman running who did not have, in essence, that baggage or that history that we've had, we might see a different kind of campaign, I believe.
But again, clearly sexism is there based upon some of the comments that you hear.
Right.
So there you have it from these two lib experts.
I am the reason that Hillary is losing, and I'm also the reason that Barack has not nailed it down yet.
By the way, speaking of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Obama, there's a story today in the Wall Street journal, sorry.
Obama may not have fully contained damage from ex-pastor.
Senator Obama's Philadelphia speech on race last month seemed to put the remarks of his pastor behind him, but three weeks later, there's evidence of lingering damage and not being mentioned by the drive-bys.
The drive-by is doing just the opposite.
The drive-bys are running stories saying, hey, that didn't hurt.
Look at his poll numbers have risen here since his Philadelphia speech, since the Wright sermons hit.
David Parker, North Carolina Democrat Party official, unpledged superdelegate, says the right business has not been diffused.
He says his worries about Republicans questioning Obama's patriotism prompted him to raise the issue of Jeremiah Wright Jr.'s remarks in conversations with both the Obama and Clinton campaigns.
I'll tell you what, when the Democrat frontrunner's patriotism is being questioned, and it is, and it's being questioned by Democrats as well as Republicans, then the Democrat Party has some problems.
Mr. Parker said, yeah, I'm concerned about seeing Willie Horton ads again during the general election.
Anyway, this is, we'll link to it at rushlimbo.com.
The story goes on and on and on.
The drive-bys obeyed Obama and let this story drop.
They let the Jeremiah Wright story drop, and they started running stories suggesting that Obama's poll numbers went sky high.
But it's an issue that's still out there.
And if any of you people in the Obama campaign, I want you to listen to me on this, trying to help you.
I want Operation Chaos to keep going.
If you think the Jeremiah Wright issue is behind you in places in this country where the people who work make the country work, it may be behind you in the Northeast.
It may be behind you in some areas of the left coast.
But you go to flyover country, Senator Obama, and Jeremiah Wright has by no means become passe.
Back in a second.
During the last five weeks, Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Rowdham Clinton has been lying through her teeth, telling a story about a poor woman who was indigent, who had no health care, basically homeless, who was pregnant, went to the hospital.
They said, sorry, we need $100 from you.
A woman didn't have $100.
She was turned away.
She went home.
She gave birth to the baby.
The baby died.
She died.
Mrs. Clinton says we need health care insurance.
Now, the woman involved here, Trina Bachtell, did die last August, two weeks after her baby boy was still born at a hospital in Athens, Ohio.
But hospital administrators said last Friday that Ms. Bachtel was under the care of an stretch practice affiliated with the hospital, that she was never refused treatment.
She was, in fact, insured.
Linda Weiss, a spokeswoman for the hospital, said the Clinton campaign had never contacted the hospital to check the accuracy of the story, which Mrs. Clinton had first heard from a Miggs County, Ohio sheriff's deputy late February.
The family of this woman, Trina Bachtell, is outraged that Mrs. Clinton is lying about them.
They're not poor.
They did have health insurance, and they are fed up, as is the hospital.
This is Bosnia all over again, but it's typical.
This is disgusting.
Even for Hillary, she is so eager to make everybody a victim.
She smears a dead woman and her family, claiming they were poor and didn't have insurance when they did.
Friday in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
This is Mrs. Clinton.
We're at Cut Five, Ed.
We're staying here in order.
Do we have Cut Five ready to go?
Okay, it's Hillary Clinton again in North Dakota campaign event, a portion of her remarks.
I was campaigning in Ohio a few weeks ago, and I was in southern Ohio, down on the Ohio River.
It's part of Appalachia, and it was a poor part of the state.
And I was meeting with a group of people in a mobile home.
And a deputy sheriff told me about a young woman from that town who had worked at the local pizza parlor.
She worked for minimum wage.
She sure didn't have health insurance.
She got pregnant.
She started having trouble.
She went to the nearest hospital.
There wasn't one in her county.
And the hospital, whom I do not blame, said we can't take any more charity care, particularly from out of the county.
So before we examine you, we've got to have $100.
Well, you might as well have asked this young woman for a million dollars.
She went back home.
She then, ladies and gentlemen, continued providing details of this lie to make America look like a cold, heartless place.
She came back a little while later, still having trouble.
They told her the same thing.
Next time she went to that hospital was in an ambulance.
She came in through the emergency room.
The doctors and the nurses tried very hard, but they weren't able to save her baby.
And she was so bad off that they had to have her airlifted to the nearest big city, Columbus, and taken to the medical center.
And for 15 days in the intensive care unit, doctors and nurses worked heroically, but she died.
As I was listening to this story being told, I was just aching inside.
It is so wrong in this, such a good, great, and rich country that a young woman and her baby would die because she didn't have health insurance or $100 to get examined.
None of it's true, other than the woman the baby died, but the rest of it is all 100% BS.
Not a shred of it's true.
Lying through her teeth repeatedly, this is just last Friday, for the express purpose of making America look like a cold, heartless place.
Mrs. Clinton can't tell an uplifting, positive story representing American exceptionalism if it would save her campaign.
She cannot do it.
It doesn't fit the Democrat template.
This morning, Andrea Mitchell tried to defend Mrs. Clinton on MSNBC.
Mikob Jaszinski said, this is one of these things that happens on a campaign trail, right?
These kinds of stories is bad timing, though, right?
Bad timing, bad staffing.
And it's the kind of thing where if a story is too good to be true, it probably isn't true.
And we're candidates, we're presidents, we're politicians have to be very, very careful about the way these stories become embroidered.
You know, I covered Ronald Reagan for eight years, and he used to tell a story and retell a story, and before long he thought it was true, and he had persuaded himself at one point that he had helped liberate people from concentration camps.
And, you know, it's something that he had seen in a movie, and it had become part of his narrative.
And people kind of overlooked that.
Well, now isn't it sometimes?
Thank you, Andrea.
Isn't this clever to now compare Hillary Clinton to Ronald Reagan and his stories?
Ronald Reagan's stories sought to uplift people, Andrea, not turn them into helpless victims.
This is all part of the Tim.
Reagan lied.
He made things up.
He told things that weren't true and so forth.
Which is more liberal template BS in an attempt here to cover what Hillary Clinton did.
Happy to turn up the volume, ladies and gentlemen.
So should you be, so you do not miss a single syllable uttered and articulated by me.
You all knowing, all caring, all sensing, all concerned, all everything, maha-rushi.
As you know, universal medical coverage, universal health coverage is the law in Massachusetts.
And as is the case with practically every liberal do-gooder idea.
And I know, I know Nitt Romney did this, but and this is something that, you know, this is what happens when you accept the premise of the left.
We need universal health coverage, say the left.
And the conservatives go, well, yes, but we don't need it your way.
We're going to tweak it.
We're going to make this happen.
Still, when you accept the premise and just tweak it, you end up with unintended consequences, like the destruction of the black family in the great society and the war on poverty.
Countless other examples of unintended consequences, ethanol and biofuels to save the planet.
Now people are starving and rioting because of the price of food.
In Massachusetts, the requirement that everybody have health insurance and that everybody go to the doctor has had an unintended consequence.
Since late last year when the landmark law took effect, about 340,000 of Massachusetts' estimated 600,000 uninsured have gained coverage.
Many are now searching for doctors and scheduling appointments for long-deferred care.
In western Massachusetts, in Amherst, a doctor by the name of Catherine Atkinson, family physician doctor, is a 3,000-patient practice, which was closed to new patients for several years, has taken on 50 newcomers since she retired.
I'm sorry, since she hired a part-time nurse practitioner in November, about a third of these new patients were newly insured.
Just north of her office in another town, the doctors at North Quaban family or Quabbin family physicians are now seeing four to six new patients a day, up from one or two a year ago.
But the problem is that there aren't enough doctors to handle all of these people who were required to go get health insurance and are now going to the doctor.
For example, Dr. Catherine Atkinson, her next opening for a physical is not until May of 2009, a year from now.
For a standard physical, she is booked through 2009.
A doctor says, this is a recipe for disaster.
It's great that people have access to health care, but now we've got to find a way to give them access to preventive services.
The point of this legislation was not to get people episodic care.
Meaning, the point of this was not to make sure that everybody, when they have an episode of illness, goes to the doctor.
It was to get them preventative care so they wouldn't get episodic illness, which, of course, is absurd.
You cannot prevent people getting a cold or the flu.
You can't.
You can take steps, but people are going to get sick.
Well, when you, here's the thing, when you insure everybody in the country, you just take a look at what's happening in Massachusetts, and this is in the New York Times today, by the way.
This is a New York Times story.
The unintended consequences of universal coverage.
It's straining the ability of patients, citizens in Massachusetts to get coverage, because you know what?
There aren't enough family practitioners.
People have gone into specialties.
Most of the people going into family practice are Asians and Indians who are immigrating to the United States and going to med school for that purpose.
So there aren't enough doctors in Massachusetts to handle this.
This woman has taken on an additional 45 to 50 cases, and her next physical, she's scheduling her next physical.
The last one she scheduled was in May of 2009.
It's happening in a lot of places over Massachusetts.
So the unintended consequence is a doctor shortage.
Now, I know what you're thinking, but rush, but rush.
I mean, people, they get sick and they have to go to the doctor.
They do.
They do.
What were they doing when they didn't have health insurance?
They were still getting sick.
Were they not going to the doctor?
Maybe not.
And were they dying?
Wasn't in the news if they were.
I mean, folks, I'm talking economics here.
I'm not talking health.
I'm talking economics.
If there were 600,000 uninsured and they've now insured over 380,000 of that 600,000, and those 380,000 are now taking advantage.
These are the people that couldn't afford it, so the state bought it for them in one regard or one way or another or a percentage of it.
Now they're going to the doctor left and right.
But the market for health care did not account for this many new patients.
There aren't enough doctors.
These people all of a sudden taking advantage of having insurance and going to the doctor.
But now they got sick before this.
What happened to them?
Apparently they got well.
Apparently they recovered.
We didn't hear about deaths unless Mrs. Clinton starts telling lies about deaths again, like in Ohio.
So let's imagine this happens nationally, universal coverage.
And by the way, the John Edwards plan, the Obama plan, not just requires you to get insurance, it requires you to go to damn doctor.
Stay healthy.
Go get checked up and so forth.
You give preventative care so you don't put as much strain on the system.
Do you realize?
Let me get to the nut of this story at the end of it.
This doctor, Dr. Catherine Atkinson, said, let me finally say, she's 45.
She's paid herself a salary of $110,000 last year.
Her insurance reimbursements often don't cover her costs.
Quote, I calculated that every time I have a Medicare patient, it's like handing them a $20 bill when they leave.
I never went into medicine to get rich, but I never expected to feel as disrespected as I feel.
Where's the incentive for a practice like ours, a family practice?
She is so busy, she has to, people walk, you call in a one physical, you're going to be booked in May of 2009.
She's making $110,000 a year.
So imagine this happening in the whole nation, universal health coverage.
You got to get insurance and you've got to go to the doctor.
What happens if there aren't enough doctors in family practice to handle the kind of medicine we're talking about here?
Well, just bright as you ask, folks.
It's very simple.
What you do is you simply go to the med schools and you tell students there, sorry, you're not going into anesthesia.
And you're not going to go into any of these other.
You're going to be general interest.
You're going to be practitioner, family practitioner.
You're going to be a family doctor if you want to go into medicine because we have a shortage.
Rush, they can't do that.
They can't tell doctors they've just taken over the healthcare business.
Don't forget the premise.
They've just taken it over, universal coverage.
You want to bet that they won't tell doctors where they have.
That was part of the original Clinton plan.
By the way, do you think doctors reading this story are going to want to stream into Massachusetts?
You think family practice doctors are going to want to go in there?
Yeah, Rush, because there's a glut.
Not if you're so busy that you're scheduling patients a year out and you're paying yourself a salary, you're grossing yourself $110,000 out of your corporation.
Ain't going to happen.
Unintended consequence of universal coverage in Massachusetts in the New York Times today.
Liberalism.
It just bites you every time it gets a chance and people bend over forward and let it.
It just frustrates the hell out of me.
Hey, folks, yes, I've heard about Condoleezza Rice.
Stan Senor, a Republican strategerist and husband of Campbell Brown of CNN, is suggesting that Condoleezza Rice is quietly advocating to be McCain's vice presidential nominee.
And George Will, apparently on the ABC yesterday, confirmed that he's heard the same thing, which kind of surprises me because her public statements consistently have been that she did not want any part of it.
Now she's asking for it or lobbying for it, apparently.
I have no thought on it yet, folks.
No thought whatsoever.
Frankly, I'm focused on a whole lot of things other than that that are somewhat related.
All right.
I don't think it's going to matter.
I mean, it might help win, but I don't think it's going to matter.
I mean, we're in a circumstance.
It doesn't matter who wins, but just a little.
I need to reserve this.
I need to think about this in a more organized way because I don't want to send you out of here depressed today because I'm not depressed.
As you know, I'm constantly optimistic.
A friend of mine asked me last night after I said this, Democrats are probably going to have 60 seats in the Senate next year.
If they don't have 60 seats, they're certainly going to get 60 votes with these rhino Republicans we've got in there, Collins and Snow and take your pick, Lindsey Gramnesty.
Well, how do you remain so optimistic?
Well, my optimism is based long term.
You're always going to lose elections.
You're always going to have disappointments.
We're always in cycles.
We're always going to end up with ding bats like Jimmy Carter.
It's going to happen.
But I believe, and I think with plenty of evidence, that the American people have the clear ability to recognize doom and gloom in who they elect or who they have elected at some point.
They might be fooled by Obama or Hillary this time around, but four years of Obama presidency doing what he says he wants to do.
I have faith the American people are not going to fall for it and think that's the new America.
The history is just the opposite.
So, I mean, long term, your kids and grandkids, I know the challenges look bad, and I know, my God, they're growing up into a country that more and more people are just entitled, thinking they're entitled.
And tax rates, these kids of ours are going to face.
We're not facing this problem.
We're not getting rid of Social Security.
We're not getting rid of it, reforming it.
We're not reforming welfare enough and so forth.
All my life, 57.
This is two, yeah, 57.
I remember my dad talking this way.
My dad told me, my brother and my friends, junior high and high school, you boys are going to be slaves and we don't do something about the communists.
We laughed.
We couldn't imagine it.
We're just junior high school kids.
We laughed.
Well, we didn't laugh openly, but I mean, we never thought we were going to become slaves.
He did.
He was concerned.
We were his kids.
He knew the threat.
Well, lo and behold, we came along and we wiped out the communists in the Soviet Union.
We haven't gotten rid of them.
Communists have just resurfaced in the global warming movement in a number of places.
And they call themselves different things now, but they're essentially leftists and communists, and they're still out there, and they still have to be defeated.
But we always seem to do it.
But my whole point is that throughout my life, I can remember thinking, I've heard people, adults, and then my peers as I grew older.
Oh, God, this is horrible.
I don't see how we recover it.
I remember the economic melees after Watergate in 73 to 75.
It was in Kansas City, 76, 77.
During the Carter years, I remember people in business in Kansas City saying, it's over.
This country cannot come back from this rush.
It cannot.
It just can't.
It's never been worse than this, and there's no way we can come back.
The government's going to come in and take over all these businesses or regulate them to the point we're never going to come.
We always do.
So my optimism is based on histoi.
But not saying it isn't going to be uncomfortable.
There aren't going to be rough pay.
I mean, anytime liberals run the show, folks, you're going to get screwed.
Ask the people of Michigan.
Ask the people in certain parts of Ohio.
Ask the people in New Orleans, not only post-Katrina, but pre.
And who's fixing it in New Orleans?
A conservative.
Bobby Jindal.
Ask the people in California.
Ask the people of New York.
I mean, it's just, when you've got liberalism running a show unchecked, life's hard.
But even in those places, people plod away.
They keep doing what it takes to overcome it as best they can.
In some of these places, they keep voting for these liberals.
San Francisco's gone in that sense.
You ought to see what they're doing.
San Francisco and immigration.
I got the story.
San Francisco reaching out to immigrants.
This is in the New York Times from yesterday.
The city of San Francisco started an advertising push with a very specific target market, illegal immigrants.
And while the advertisements will come in a bundle of languages, English, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Vietnamese, They all carry the same message, you're safe here.
In what may be the first such campaign of its kind, San Francisco plans to publish multi-language brochures and fill the airwaves with advertisements, relaying assurance that San Francisco will not report them to federal immigration authorities.
The television and radio campaign will tell immigrants they have safe access to public services, including screws, health clinics, perhaps most importantly, the police.
Something local law enforcement officials say is a chronic problem in immigrant communities.
Now, tell you what's going to happen here.
I can predict this, as soon as I can predict this program is going to be over in seven minutes.
These good citizens of San Francisco opening their town up to every illegal in the country.
Come here, you're a sanctuary.
You're safe.
When they find out what the result is, they're going to say, well, we need to move them to Marin.
Or we need to move them to Tiburon.
Or we need to move them somewhere.
They don't want them around here.
We don't want them amongst us, but we want them somewhere in the state.
I don't know.
It's classic, ladies and gentlemen, to watch these things, their unintended consequences, and these people who think that life and America can be perfected.
And that anything short of perfection is failure.
And the only thing that matters is our desire to make it perfect.
Our intentions.
If we have good intentions, it doesn't matter how much we screw up.
If we have good intentions, it doesn't matter how much people get hurt because we're trying.
With more than you're doing, Mr. Limbaugh.
You don't even think perfection is worth the thieving.
That's right, sir, because it isn't.
We need a little realism.
There's no such thing as perfection.
It is not there.
And certainly not in a population of close to 300 million people.
Anyway, quick timeout.
We'll be back.
Wrap it up after this.
No, I have nothing against Condoleezza Rice.
She's fine.
She one of the most, you want to talk perfection.
Almost perfectly educated people in this country.
Qualified, no question about it.
But it isn't going to matter.
You vote for the top of the ticket.
Well, it might matter a little.
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