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April 17, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:15
April 17, 2009, Friday, Hour #3
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Well, once again, ladies and gentlemen, those of you in this audience have blown us all away on our annual curathon today.
Open Line Friday is it.
One hour left.
Here we go.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
And the telephone number, 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the remaining hour of our program, the email address is LRushbo at EIBnet.com.
We go to the phones.
You own the content of the program.
Whatever you wish to discuss is fair game.
The number of donors is up 33%.
Over last year, the dollar amount is, we don't announce the dollar amount until the whole thing is over at the end of the weekend.
Let me again give you the telephone number, 877-379-8888.
877-379-8888, the phone number to donate to our curathon, or you can do so online at rushlimbaugh.com.
I've been trying to figure out how this is happening, given the economic circumstances that obviously in.
I mean, you look at the unemployment numbers and so forth.
One would expect here that discretionary dollars and donation dollars like this, charitable dollars, would be harder to come by in circumstances like this.
But you in this audience are disproving it.
So two observations here.
We live in an era where scam artists are plentiful.
We're living here in the era of Bernie Madoff, supposedly, allegedly the guy in Texas.
We are hearing about the excesses of certain Wall Street executives who bonused themselves out the wazoo when their companies were losing big money.
And we are living also in an era where it seems more and more people are being told, you can't do it yourself.
You need help from somebody else.
Remember the story we had, it might have been last Friday.
It might have been last Open Line Friday.
Some people in Kauai lived near a park that many of them actually used to earn a living, and some it's just recreation.
And the access road to the park damaged somehow.
And the state of Hawaii said, well, this is going to take, what was it, $4 million and two years to fix?
It was four years, four years and millions of dollars to fix this access road so the park could be usable again.
And the people of Kauai, affected by this, just took matters into their own hands and in a matter of days, fixed the road.
Six days, it was less than a week.
It was six days a week, something like they fixed the road.
And obviously for far less than the millions the state told them it would take that the state said they didn't have.
Even after all this porculus money has been dished out to the states.
So we live in an era where I think people suspect scam artists when people come along and offer you money or ask for money from you and say they've got a great deal for you, what have you.
When you look at the Leukemia Lymphoma Society and you listen to the last call we had from Mark in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, you realize that the Leukemia Lymphoma Society, the blood cancers are real, and the progress being made in research to prolonging survivability rates and even cures is substantial and it's real.
And every year, we've been doing this for 19 years, every year we're able to tell you of advances in research, such as new drug this year that has been developed since we were last together on the curathon last year.
The drug is called Velcade and it deals with myeloma, cancer of the plasma cells, Glevec, which the letter carrier from Williamsport, Pennsylvania described as something that would prevent him if he had a recurrence.
He's in remission right now since 1991 or two.
But if he needed a bone marrow transplant, he wouldn't need a bone marrow transplant because of Gleevec.
So there are substantive measures, progress that we can share with you and testimonial phone calls from people and emails from people who have been diagnosed with one of the blood cancers and who have survived longer than people five years ago, 10 years ago, and certainly 20 years ago had these diseases.
So it's real.
It's not a scam.
There's no doubt about something.
And this, I think, also meets the test of people doing things themselves.
This is not, you know, nobody's using the word investment to you today.
Nobody's saying, we're going to invest here and this is going to help you.
And we're not asking for a central clearinghouse.
This is not going anywhere but straight to the Leukemia Lymphoma Society.
And then they distribute it as needed.
And they don't just do research, medical research and so forth.
They provide support services for families of patients who have been diagnosed with one of the blood cancers.
So somebody can put your arms around, you can touch it, it's real, and it works.
And there is a return for, there's a genuine payoff as a result of this.
It's not as though you think you're throwing money away or at something that you'll have no direct knowledge of it working.
With the Leukemia Lymphoma Society, you know that it is.
And I'll just run through some of the statistics, again, just to show you the degree to which research is working.
900,000 patients and their families are living with leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease, myeloma.
100,000 more patients are diagnosed every year, and a lot of them late in life, which if it happens to somebody who notoriety, it always stuns you.
This disease knows nothing from race, gender, sex.
It just attacks.
And these people, these 900,000 and the 100,000 that are going to be diagnosed every year, these people have more than hope going for them because the work that you all are doing here, the money that you are enabling the work to be done for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society is bringing quantifiable change, progress, and especially for kids, like leukemia.
Leukemia, number one cancer killer of children under the age of 20.
The most common form of childhood leukemia now has an overall survival rate today of 88%.
That's up 1% over last year.
That equals progress.
Lymphoma diagnosed in 63,000 Americans every year.
20,000 succumb to it.
The five-year survival rate has risen.
It was 47% in 1974.
It's 65% today, and that is up 2% over last year as well.
Hodgkin's disease is now considered curable.
The five-year survival rate is 86%, and it's even higher for those who get the disease when they're under 20.
Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma has a long-term survival rate of 65%.
Of course, the myeloma, which the new treatment, Velcade, is using.
Your dollar is instrumental in the development of Velcade, by the way, and it's brought the recent gains.
Listen, it's 63,000 Americans live with myeloma, cancer, the plasma cells.
There are 15,000 new patients diagnosed every year.
The disease strikes mostly people over 50.
Five-year survival rate, 32% a couple years ago.
It's 35% now and climbing with the development of a new treatment called Velcade.
So once a year we do this.
Raise money for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society, the world's largest voluntary health organization, dedicated not only to funding blood cancer research, but education and patient services as well.
And I must stress again, the geometric progression here of small donations.
It doesn't take a lot of people giving a lot of money to make a difference with the size of this audience.
With the donor percentage here raised 33%, our number of donors is up 33%.
If everybody just gave a dollar in this audience, it would set a record.
Of course, everybody is not going to, but there's no difference in the size of donation.
There's no donation too small for you to think that it's irrelevant or not important because it's going to be added together with everybody else's.
It's going to end up being a giant end-of-the-weekend figure, which is what we're all after.
And you are exceeding all of our expectations all day long.
From the first reporting period, 15 minutes after the program began, we have been up.
And each reporting period after that has been up over.
It's astounding.
Really is.
And we also have folks, as we always do, high-quality premiums for donations of a certain amount.
$70 donation, you will get the special commemorative Ditto Head t-shirt, one size fits all.
It's big.
It'll fit you.
And it's the original Ditto Head design that heralded the start of this program's growing influence in 1988.
$100 donation entitles you to the Ditto Head t-shirt and a special edition EIB golf cap.
It's black.
It's adjustable.
The EIB logo and my signature on the front in silver.
And if you manage to get up to $325 or higher, you get an EIB golf shirt that does come sized in small to double X. You can specify.
The t-shirt's in black as well.
Get the cap as well.
Both are black to commemorate the Obama economy.
So all of this is explained by the way at rushlimbaugh.com when you check in there.
And again, the phone number, 877-379-8888.
And thank you again already.
This is mind-boggling what is happening here today with this all things considered.
Period.
Mind-boggling regardless.
Brief time out.
We'll continue.
We've got some audio sumbites I want you to hear, plus more of your phone calls coming right up.
All right, I have to think about this.
I have just been informed, for those of you regular listeners, you know that there are a two women, there are sisters that live in the state of Washington who have been regular participants and donors here at the curathon, and they have issued a challenge.
By the way, these two women, they arranged for a carving of a pelican.
Pelican's my all-time favorite bird.
They arranged for the carving of a pelican that's in the, we keep it here in the public lobby of the EIB broadcast complex.
But I, you know, when we start the curathon here at the beginning of the program, I always make a donation myself.
I never ask people to do something I haven't done, things like this.
And I only mention it one time, but now I've got to mention it again.
My donation has started off with $250,000.
Now, our two friends from the state of Washington have issued a really difficult challenge.
And that is that if I will increase my $250,000 to $300,000, they will match it.
So I'm going to think about this.
I've had a tough tax season.
No, of course we'll do that.
I don't have to think about that.
I'll up the $250,000 to $300,000 if our two ladies from the state of Washington are going to match it.
So that's done.
I'm almost speechless here in trying to describe to you, we don't give out the dollar numbers until it's all over.
But I mean, long ago, we passed into seven figures.
That's just, you people are so great.
It's just has me in awe.
It really does.
Here's, let's go back to the phones.
Jan in Billings, Montana.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, Rush.
Hi, Jan.
Thank you for taking my call on the day.
You have lowered standards for caller quality.
And I am a power.
Oh, gosh, I can still nerve.
I'm a proud patriot with a Prius.
Wait a second now.
What did you say that lowered standards for call quality?
Yeah, well, caller quality.
Oh, you're reacting to a couple days ago, last earlier this week.
Well, it was an open line Friday anyway.
Yeah, that was, well, but it was, no, it was Monday.
Oh, it was Monday of this, and everybody thought I was getting your, I tell you what you react to, everybody said, my gosh, Rush, is this the best callers you could do?
They were perfect for what we were trying to do on Sunday.
Okay, I'll give you that.
Anyway, I have a Prius in Montana, and I just kind of got tired of enriching the Middle East and paying for both sides of the war.
So I would like to have the opportunity to refute your claims that they are too small, too dangerous, and too expensive.
Now, have you heard me say they're too small?
Uh-huh.
Oh, yeah.
No, have you heard me say it, or have you heard others say I've said it?
No, no, no.
I listen to you all the time.
I heard you.
I've never said they're too small.
I don't care about dangerous?
I don't know.
If you don't mind the risk of being electrocuted with a battery.
Uh-huh.
Well, yeah, technically they're a mid-sized car.
They got like a four- and five-star safety rating.
And then with your standard business mileage write-off, you can get it to pay for itself.
And they come in black.
And I know I see them all over the place.
In fact, I have fun when I see people in Priuses.
You do what?
I have fun when I see people in Priuses.
Oh, how do you have fun?
Well, you know, I drive a car that could eat one.
Oh, right.
Well, I'm doing it too, you know.
You know, so I give it an enema, you know, when I'm following, and I get real close in there.
And if I'm parked next to one at a stoplight, light turns green, I peel rubber.
Oh, yeah.
Just to show the driver that I don't mind destroying the planet.
Oh, yeah.
See, here's the thing.
Yeah, I'm not worried about destroying the planet.
I just don't want to make the Middle East any richer than they already are.
Well, there's a way.
I mean, I appreciate your drill here, but it's not happening, you know.
I just want you to understand something about your Prius and my reaction.
I'm all for anybody getting the car they want.
If you love that Prius and you really want it, then go get it.
I'm not one to tell anybody what they can and can't do or should and shouldn't have.
But I just, what I cringe at is people getting swept up by the tug of popular sentiment to thinking that purchasing a certain kind of car is going to save the planet.
Oh, of course.
And then these people end up thinking they're better than everybody else.
You know, Prius is no different than one of these colored ribbons that people wear.
All right.
For a lot of people.
Not you, of course.
Oh, no, no.
Most people driving at Prius, they're running around.
You can see them in there.
They're all smug, and they're sitting up there like they're saying, I'm better than you.
That's why I peel off with a little leaver rubber.
Oh, yeah.
You know, and I drive a car that could eat one.
Oh, yeah.
Well, I got a bumper sticker that says, hug a log or you'll never go back to trees.
That's great.
Yeah.
But anyway, Montana is a really good state to buy any car.
I mean, there's no sales tax here.
And in Wyoming, there's no state income tax, you know.
So a lot of people live in northern Wyoming.
They drive into Montana to shop.
And then you've got your Indian reservations right there for your tobacco products.
So they don't call us the left.
I know.
Montana and Wyoming, the way America used to be.
Yeah.
Indian reservations, free tobacco, no sales tax.
You got it.
Guns.
Uh-huh.
Oh, yeah.
So you're a fresh-ruited plane.
Buy whatever car you want.
You bet.
And you even have phone lines to call talk shows.
Pardon me?
You even have telephone lines to call talk shows.
Oh, yeah, we got that.
Yeah.
Yeah, we gave up the smoke signals a while back.
All right.
Well, Jan, look, Jan's been on hold here for about 90 minutes.
I really appreciate your patience.
Oak it oak.
Thanks very much.
Have fun with the Prius.
And by the way, you might call me back when you find out how much it costs to replace the battery.
I didn't say that.
I didn't say I'm torturing myself, slapping myself.
Okay, 877-379-8888 is the phone number to cure the blood cancers today, leukemia and lymphoma.
Or you can go to www.rushlimbaugh.com.
I know.
Thank you.
Welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh.
We're curing leukemia and lymphoma today.
We're trying to our 19th annual curathon.
Again, the telephone number is 877.
This is to donate.
877-379-8888.
Or you can go to rushlimbaugh.com, donate online, either way, and nobody will find out who you are or any of your contact information.
It will not be shared, sold, rented, or given to anybody.
And at rushlimbaugh.com, all of the details of the premiums that we're passing out for certain levels of donation.
I missed this yesterday.
I saw it only last night because it was brought to my attention.
George Will wrote a column in the Washington Post yesterday just excoriating blue jeans.
Just ripping the hell out of denim.
Thinks the country is in serious trouble because you can't tell the parents from the kids that people do not take seriously how they appear to people wearing denim.
And it goes to the history of denim's creation invention by Levi Strauss for the gold rush, you know, with the copper rivets because of the hard work being done.
He says, actually, silly people go out and buy pre-washed, acid-treated jeans to make them look like trash the first time you put them on.
And I read this and I said, whoa, this is so unlike George Will.
And let me just give you one passage from this.
This is not complicated.
For men, sartorial good.
And by the way, for those of you in Rio Linden, Port St. Lucie, it means the clothes, attire.
For men, sartorial good taste can be reduced to one rule.
If Fred Astaire wouldn't have worn it, don't wear it.
For women, substitute Grace Kelly.
If Grace Kelly wouldn't have worn it, don't wear it.
And he's serious about this.
George, well, I'll tell you, I found it fascinating in one in I found it fascinating because I don't like blue jeans either.
Well, I've, there was one time that I had, but they weren't blue jeans.
They didn't look like blue jeans.
They were light blue.
I wore them a couple.
I have never, everybody that talks about blue jeans loves how comfortable they are.
I have never, ever found a pair of those things to be comfortable.
I don't care if they're brand new, pre-washed, acid-treated.
They're just, they aren't comfortable.
I could buy a pair of blue jeans five sizes too big and they'd be too tight.
You know, I just, I just, I, I just, but that, that's not my opposition to them.
My opposition to them, and as I was talking about this story with, there's a biographer doing a biography on my grandfather.
His name is Dennis Bowman, and I spoke to him Monday afternoon and he wanted to know what was my grandfather and my relationship like during the turbulent 60s with all the riots and bank millions.
He said, there was no problem.
I said, the last thing I wanted to do was look like the people that were on the protest march.
You know, when I was 16, 17, I was already targeting the establishment as my place.
I didn't want to be out there protesting it.
I was looking to get in on it.
So the last thing I did was wear t-shirts.
I don't have t-shirts either.
I mean, I've got some colored t-shirts I sometimes, you know, wear under a sport coat, but I don't have a white t-shirt.
You couldn't find one.
Last time I had one, you couldn't find it.
I don't know where it was.
All I know.
So I have power crackling through my shorts exactly right, Snerdley.
But I didn't want to be identified with those in my generation that are bombing buildings and all that.
So I just, plus, they've never been.
So that's why I found his column interesting.
He's got a different take on it than I do.
I just don't like.
He thinks Ethan Country's going to hell because everybody's wearing denim.
Now, let's see.
Wall Street Journal.
This headline offends me to no end.
Ditch the jet.
It's cool to fly commercial.
Brad Pitt does it.
Lloyd Blankfein does it.
Goldman Sachs.
Even Justin Timberlake and Prince William do it.
They've all ditched their private planes and opted to fly commercial, or in some cases, take the train.
Following the General Motors jet fiasco, the private aircraft business has had an image problem.
No one, it seems, wants to be seen or photographed gliding down the steps of their Gulf Stream anymore.
We're hearing stories that people are very concerned about flying to Washington because the potential for being targeted by the media and the politicians.
This was true at Augusta National during the Masters.
People tried to sneak in there on, they didn't want to be seen.
Arriving on the jet, that's how powerful a Democrat Party and Media PR is on this.
And by the way, the guy says we're hearing stories that people are very concerned about flying to Washington because the potential of being targeted by the media and politicians comes from John Meehan as a private jet terminal manager at Dallas.
I don't quite know how to deal with this because I don't think it's uncool.
So, I mean, I have to go to Washington in early May, do a speech for the Heritage Foundation.
And I'm just going to tell you, I will be honored to have my picture taken, getting off my pride and joy.
All right, back to the phones.
Open line Friday, Bob in Bismarck, North Dakota.
Great to have you with us, sir.
Hello.
Rush, thanks for taking my call.
Especially on an important day like this.
You're doing a good thing today, and we are here.
Thank you, thanks very much.
Those that can do should.
And I mean that.
My comment today was, I'm a little confused.
I know you can help me.
Somebody like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has murdered Americans, who has planned the murder of hundreds, if not thousands of Americans, we cannot even muss his hair.
Yet three little Somali pirates that have never hurt anybody, we can shoot them down in cold blood.
And I'm just a little confused about this.
Three black Somali teenage pirates, we can gun down on orders from the Oval Office.
Well, that's because Obama's doing it, and Bush did Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Okay, it's just as simple as that, huh?
Well, when you brought it down to its essence, what you're pointing out is great hypocrisy, tremendous hypocrisy.
But see, I'm sure that you would have some very serious Democrats, liberals would tell you, well, those kids, those pirates, they were pointing a gun at our captain.
When we got Sheikh Mohammed, he's our captive.
He's threatening nobody when he's in prison.
Well, how about all the people he knows that are threatening all of us?
Well, isn't that worth finding out that the money is not?
Of course, the argument, of course, will break down.
You know, this is not the only thing that people are upset about.
This Department of Homeland Security report that targets the military, returning military, and compares them to Timothy McVeigh.
I got an email last night from James Bogus.
I hope I'm pronouncing his name right.
He's a subscriber at rushlimbaugh.com.
Rush, I served eight years in the U.S. Army.
At no time during those eight years did I receive any training on how to rent a truck, load it with fertilizer, soak it with petroleum product, park it next to a federal building, and ignite the mixture, causing destruction to property and killing countless innocent people.
Timothy McVay was a nutcase, pure and simple.
It's a sad thing that the government wants to focus on the fact that he was a veteran.
There are millions of productive men and women in this country right now that are veterans.
They put their lives on hold to serve their country.
Now to find out their country is not only ungrateful, but also prepared to label them terrorists.
I noticed that Janet Napolitano said, to the extent veterans read it as an accusation, an apology is owed, she didn't apologize.
She just said one is owed.
My guess is she will never apologize, and she'll be placed on the shelf next to Jane Fonda, as far as I'm concerned.
As will Obama, since this report is his.
And straight out of a Jeremiah Wright sermon, mega dittos, El Rushbo, you keep me mellow and laughing at the chaos that is now our government.
There are a lot of people upset about this.
I want you to listen to Mike Hayden, the former CIA director.
He was on America Mitchell, and we seen here in Washington yesterday.
She asked in this question, number seven, Mike, what is the harm in being open about our techniques?
I mean, it's certainly what President Obama promised during the campaign.
The release of the memos harms American security, and therefore I think the best course of action would have been to have kept them classified.
After all, this began life as a covert action whose definition is that the hand of the United States government is never acknowledged and the details of the operation are never revealed.
And so I don't think it automatically fits into the class of the American people need to know.
The degree to which we make these techniques public, that we tell our enemies the outer limits of American interrogation techniques, will effectively take these techniques off the table because our enemy will know all of our approaches to him.
So there are a variety of reasons I think it would have been best to keep the technique secret.
Obama has his reasons, and I do think they're couched in the notion that this country's guilty.
This country is guilty as it exists and as it was founded, and our guilt was confirmed in the way we conducted the war on terror, so we've got to spank ourselves.
And he thinks this will show the rest of the world what a decent guy he is, what a decent country we are.
One more thing on this.
This is so convoluted, even I, possessed with profound logical abilities, have trouble with this one.
This AP, Republican politicians, backed by conservative American media personalities, i.e. me, are using a new tool to attack President Obama's administration, a Homeland Security report warning that military veterans could fall victim to extremist recruiters or lone acts of violence.
So now, can I lay this out for you?
Obama has Napolitano, this era's Janet Reno, issue a report from the Department of Homeland Security saying that right-wing extremism is defined by conservative media people, pro-lifers, people who are against gun control, people who are religious, and returning veterans.
And so those of us targeted as right-wing extremists upon whom law enforcement must now keep a sharp eye, we react to it and we are attacking Obama.
We have found a new way to attack Obama in defending ourselves and calling out the absurdity this we are conducting an attack.
Whoa.
This is A.P. Obama.
I'd say the media is a joke.
It is an embarrassing joke.
All right, we've got to take a brief time out again.
Phone number four, and this number is going to be active all weekend, as will the website address, rushlimbaugh.com.
Phone number to donate to our Leukemia Lymphoma curathon is 877-379-8888.
We'll be right back.
Stay with us.
And we're back on the cutting edge of societal evolution.
Even without tabulating my donation of $300,000 matched by the sisters from the state of Washington.
We are so far ahead of last year that is to be unbelievable.
And again, I want to stress, folks, I was telling the leukemia and lymphoma society people before we started this.
And it's going to be, it's a down economy.
A lot of people are uncertain about their own economic future.
And I don't know what to expect this year.
We'll do our best.
And once again, you have just blown everybody's socks off.
You have, I mean, so far surpassed last year in terms of number of donors and the dollar amount raised that it's just incredible.
And there's no amount of thanks that anybody could offer you verbally here that would suffice.
But take solace and take joy in knowing that every dollar you donate is leading to significant advances toward the cure of these diseases.
And before the cures are reached, survivability rates for all of the blood cancers are increasing at rapid rates.
A new treatment for myeloma, Velcade, since we were last with you at last year's curathon.
But the survival rate for lymphomia, Hodgkin's disease, myeloma, leukemia, all on the increase.
And this is something that you can grasp.
It's real.
It's something that you can say that you've had a significant role in.
And I know that we've been talking to the folks at the Leukemia Lymphoma Society who are not here in Florida, they're in New York.
I've been talking to them on the IFB during the commercial breaks, and they're as excited and stunned as I've ever seen them in 19 years.
And it's all because of you.
One person called here and said, thanks for all the work you do.
And of course, most hosts would say, well, you're welcome.
But, you know, really, this is not hard here to sing the praises of a great organization and ask you to continue those progress, the great works that they're doing.
All of the thanks and all of the Ada Boys, Add of Girls are aimed at you.
You've come through, once again, demonstrating what we all know, that true compassion and true hands-on take care of something, try to fix it ourselves attitudes are found in the best of the American people.
Still there.
And I could not be more honored to have people like you make up this audience.
I cannot thank you enough.
Now, again, the phone number and the website both open all weekend to take your donations.
Some people will not hear this until their podcasts later tonight or through the weekend.
And you might want to go later than this weekend than today if you want to think about it.
So it's 877-379-8888.
The phone number.
The website is rushlimblog.com.
Back to wrap it up.
Once again, folks, thank you from the bottom of our hearts from me, all of us here at the EIB Network, and those at the Leukemia Lymphoma Society.
Have a wonderful weekend.
You deserve it.
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