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May 15, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:21
May 15, 2009, Friday, Hour #3
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Welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, your guiding light through times of trouble, confusion, murkiness, tumult, despair, depression, and even the good times on Friday.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday.
One big exciting hour remaining, ladies and gentlemen, and looking forward to chatting with you.
Telephone number 800-282-2882.
The email address, lrushbo at eibnet.com, if you would rather go that way.
I do check the email now and then.
We have a pretty good audio sunbite roster.
I haven't dug into it.
A lot of it is Pelosi related.
And there's really not a whole lot to say about it, but we'll other than we've covered it.
I mean, she's lying or the CIA is lying.
And if the CIA is lying, they lied only to her, which makes no sense.
She's not being backed up by Democrats, Stenny Hoyer distancing herself.
But she's on the warpath saying the CIA is lying.
She's emphasizing that point.
So we will discuss it as the program unfolds.
Did you see the story out of myfox.com, the new Fox website?
Thousands of people this week are getting stimulus checks in the mail.
The problem is that a lot of them are dead.
You seen this?
A Long Island woman was shocked when she checked the mail and got a letter from the U.S. Treasury, but it was not for her.
She lives in Valley Stream.
She was expecting the $250 stimulus check.
But when her son finally opened it, they saw the check was made out to her father, who died in Italy 34 years ago.
He had been a U.S. citizen when he left for Italy in 1933, but he only returned to the U.S. for a seven-month visit in 1969.
He got a stimulus check.
The feds are blaming a rushed schedule because all the checks have to be cut by June.
Some of the checks are made out to people who were...
This guy that got a check, by the way, the guy that lived in Italy, never part of a social security system.
And these are the social security checks that are going out.
You know, the stimulus checks for social security recipients.
Millions of dead people are getting checks.
Well, millions of checks are being sent to dead people.
Now, I, for one, see, am not surprised.
Where's Obama from?
Obama is from Chicago.
Dead people do all kinds of things in Chicago all the time.
They vote.
They make campaign contributions.
So Obama's got a sixth sense.
In Obama's world, dead people vote.
They make campaign contributions.
And as such, they get stimulus checks, too.
You got to pay off the voters, even the dead ones.
The Gallup poll has the most interesting result out today.
More Americans are pro-life than pro-choice for the first time.
Also, fewer people think abortion should be legal under any circumstance.
New Gallup poll conducted May 7 through the 10th finds that 51% of Americans call themselves pro-life on the issue of abortion.
42% call themselves pro-choice.
This is the first time a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995.
Now, look at me.
The Republican Party, at this very moment, is in a tug of war between the country club blue-blood Rockefeller types, made up of a bunch of wealthy country club types who want the Republican Party to get abortion out of the party.
They don't want it to be an issue.
They don't like the Christians being in the vote.
I've told you the stories.
I don't need to repeat them, but I've told you the stories how in New York in the 90s, all these well-to-do Republicans come up to me and say, what are you going to do about the Christians?
It's an abortion issue.
It's killing us.
When I was out in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, three weeks ago for a Milken Institute Forum, prior to going out on stage in the green room talking to a bunch of Republican types who said that they had gone to a cocktail reception the night before at the home of a wealthy Republican in Beverly Hills.
And the entire subject matter was devoted to how the party has got to get rid of abortion if it is going to have any chance of coming back and beating Democrats.
So what is the Republican Party going to do now with this news?
And what are these country club blueblooders going to do with this news?
And why do you think this is happening in the first place?
See, I don't think abortion has ever been a 50-50 issue.
Well, no, it always has been.
I'm sorry.
I don't think it was ever an 80-20 pro-choice majority.
It never was.
Just like there were never 3 million homeless.
But the number was out there and the assumption, because the drive-bys and the Democrats dominated news cycles, the assumption was that everybody that was enlightened and everybody that was informed and educated and sophisticated was pro-choice.
And make no mistake about it, pro-choice means pro-abort.
All you have to do is tell a pro-choicer that you're pro-choice too.
I just choose life and they won't let you in.
The label matters.
The label means something.
So now, what are all these wizards of SMART and the Republican Party going to do?
All these people, say, at the Beverly Hills cocktail parties, lamenting and complaining and whining that abortion, the social issues is the code word for that, by the way.
The social issues are killing the Republican Party.
I'll tell you what's happening in America, right?
We watch what's happening to Carrie Prezon.
We watch how a gay judge asks a question to which she answers very unoffensively.
She apologized even before she answered.
She apologized for offending.
She said she believes that marriage is between a man and a woman.
And there was a Gestapo unleashed against her.
The liberal Taliban, essentially, was unleashed against her.
And then they dug deep and tried to come up with photos saying that she did not meet the requirements of a Miss California.
And all she did was state that her beliefs come from the Bible and religion.
It's the way she was raised, that marriage between a man and a woman, which, by the way, it is.
If we get to the point that when you're asked if you're married, yeah, I'm married, opposite-sex married.
If we get to the point where you have to specify that you're opposite-sex married, Well, you're going to get a backlash at a revolution, and it's already happening.
The debauchery in the popular culture.
You remember the 2004 presidential elections, and all the wizards and smart pollsters had gone out, and they were predicting Kerry was going to win and this for this reason or that.
Came about, Kerry didn't get close, and it turned out that there was this big mass of voters that voted on values that they had missed.
It surprised everybody in the exit polls, values.
And the Democrats for the first week after they were like, well, yeah, we're going to have to shore up our relationship to values voters.
They're still there, and they're watching all this, and they're watching what's happening to their schools.
They're watching what's happening in popular culture, and they're watching what's happening to marriage.
They're watching all this.
We've got the most anti-life president you could possibly imagine being elected.
We've got a guy who supports partial birth abortion.
We have a guy who supports the killing of babies who successfully are born, despite being intended to be aborted.
I mean, you can argue around the margins.
That's really not what he voted for, but it was the practical outcome.
And yet, here's the Gallup poll, 51%.
The American people, first time ever, a majority in a poll, say they are pro-choice.
So if you want to ask yourself why, it's due to the fact that more people than you know are paying attention to the rot that is happening in their lives, in their towns, communities, states, wherever, cities, in their culture.
There was also news this week that 40% of births in America are to single women.
And in the Washington Post, this was treated as progress.
That is the right number.
40% of births are to single women, and it was treated as progress.
You know why?
Because it showed women were liberated.
They did not have to hitch themselves to a man or get married to have a child.
I'm sorry, we have not gotten to the point where most Americans think this is progress because most Americans are paying taxes to support families where there is no father or where there is only one parent.
And they see that children born into those families have a much bigger obstacle to overcome as they grow up than otherwise.
They see all this.
Now, they don't have any leaders that are out there representing them.
They don't have any leaders that are out there proposing legislation or even talking about this.
But the people are there.
And so when they're asked about it, such as in this poll, American people pop up.
We see, we see single parent out-of-wedlock births.
A lot of Americans now see that they are paying the health care, the home loans, the car loans, and everything else for families comprised this way.
They're paying home loans for people that come out of out-of-wedlock births.
It's just all around them, and people do not want this to happen.
And those who can have left and fled places where this is happening.
And that's how you end up with blue cities.
Because the people who can afford to get out of there get out of there, and what you're left with are solid 95% Democrat voting blue cities.
And the Democrats, at the end of the day, look at that and say, that's great.
Whatever it took to get 95% of the voting bloc in this ex-city for a fine.
Because that's all that matters to them is their power.
So this is an interesting poll result from Gallup.
And I'm going to be watching very carefully to see just exactly how the Republican Party decides to deal with all of the enlightened guys, all the enlightened consultants, all the enlightened media people in our side, all the enlightened political party people in our side.
I'm going to see how they react to this and how they deal with it.
Got to take a brief time out, folks.
We'll come back and we'll get to your phone calls right after this on the EIB network.
Do not go away.
By the way, there's a New York Times story on abortion today, Cheryl Gay Stolberg.
And the headline says, on abortion, Obama is drawn into debate he hoped to avoid the confluence of two events, his commencement speech Sunday at Notre Dame and his forthcoming choice for a candidate to replace David Souter on a Supreme Court threatened to upend Mr. Obama's effort to tamp down some of the anger, quote unquote, over abortion, as he said in a news conference last month, and to distract from his other domestic priorities like health care.
Now, the question, ladies and gentlemen, how can Obama be drawn into a debate on abortion he hoped to avoid?
Because I thought abortion was a surefire winner of a debate for Obama.
If you listen to the moderates in our own party, if you listen to the McCain's, well, not the McKinnes, he's pro-life.
If you listen to the Colin Powells, if you listen to half of the GOP consultants, if you listen to the enlightened GOP media, why abortion's something the Republicans have got to get rid of.
We've got to get rid of it.
It's killing the Republican Party.
And yet, the New York Times on abortion, Obama drawn into a debate he hoped to avoid.
I think he would love a debate on abortion.
He could win it.
It's so popular an issue.
Can we now say with the Gallup poll, 51% of the American people say they oppose abortion?
They're pro-life.
Can we now say that the debate on abortion is over?
That the science is settled?
Just like Al Gore does on global warming.
There is no more discussion.
The debate's over.
There's consensus and the science is settled.
There's a big difference, however, between Al Gore and me.
I'm not afraid to debate what I believe about this issue.
Al Gore will not debate global warning.
Joanne in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, great to have you on Open Line Friday.
Hi.
Hi.
Thanks for taking my call right now.
Yes, ma'am.
I just wanted to, I guess, sound the alarm to anyone out there who may still think that universal health care is going to save this country.
We have, as you know, in Massachusetts, we have no choice.
Everybody has to be on the insurance.
Right, And if they don't have the insurance, then they're fined.
So there's a monthly fine assessed if you do not sign up for the insurance.
State insurance.
For any health insurance.
You can go private.
You can go private, but even if you don't have the private insurance, they send you a form that you have to include with your state taxes now that show that you were covered each month of the year.
And for the months that you weren't covered, you're fined.
And if the fine, if you're expecting any kind of a tax refund from the state, they will seize your refund to cover the fine.
The other thing is, and what really bothers me is that.
Well, now wait just a second.
This is Mitt Romney's idea, right?
He worked on this.
Yes, it was.
Now, what was the thinking behind this?
The thinking behind this was that this was a way to make sure everybody took care of themselves and got insurance, right?
Exactly.
Which I have no problem with that.
The problem is that they're mandating, and I had insurance.
I do not, I work for a small law firm, and he does not have a group health insurance plan.
I have an individual plan like a lot of people on Cape Cod because a lot of people are self-employed here.
So they don't have group plans.
So individual plans were always more expensive anyway.
Right.
So now what they've done is they made it mandatory that everybody have it.
So that's fine.
And now what they've done is certain, the different insurance companies will offer you different plans.
The thing is, and they've made it look as though that the rates have come down, but they really haven't because now what they're doing is they're covering less of a percentage of your co-pays.
So if you're and depending on which plan you pick so that you can try to make it an affordable monthly payment, it varies.
So you may have to pay 35% of if you have an operation, if you pick plan A, but if you pick plan B, they'll pay 80% or whatever.
And it's reflected.
So it's just, it's a crapshoot.
But my problem is with this, too, is that it wasn't, I'm not on any prescription plan.
They have now made it so that it's mandatory.
The first year it wasn't.
You just had to have the insurance.
The second year it kicked in.
I got a notice from my insurance company saying that my insurance did not comport with the new state requirements, which really surprised me.
Well, prescription coverage is now mandatory.
And I don't have any prescriptions.
So I called, I was talking to the manager.
No, this is absurd.
This is now.
You know what?
You know what?
You don't want to try to understand this, folks.
Pardon me for interrupting here, Joanne.
But I want you to pretend she's talking about getting a hotel room.
And co-pay, mandatory, have-to-have insurance, all of these bureaucratic nightmares that Joanne has described.
Imagine she's talking about just renting a hotel room or buying a ticket or a trip on an airplane or a cruise ship.
Why in the world has this, how in the world has this happened to health care?
Copays, mandatory prescription coverage, mandatory insurance.
It's happened because the government has taken us.
Bureaucracy has taken us to this situation, and the same people have goofed it up are now claiming they have the fix by making this system national.
And so basically what Joanne is saying here, what was really good intentions on paper, everybody be insured, is not working.
And guess what else she's lost in all this?
Freedom.
Hot off the presses from the hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper.
And this, I guess it shouldn't surprise me.
It does.
After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's claim that she was lied to by the CIA sparked a firestorm in Washington yesterday, the CIA director Leon Panetta pushed back today, saying, quote, ultimately, it's up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened, unquote.
Pelosi infuriated Republicans this week when she said in a press conference that she was misled by CIA officials during a briefing.
And by the way, Pelosi is also lying about something else.
She is saying that the Jane Harmon letter, Jane Harmon was on the Intel Committee.
This is the second meeting.
This is the February 2003 meeting, our briefing, and Jane Harmon was there and she wrote a letter.
And Pelosi, I didn't have to object to it because Jane Harmon wrote a letter.
Jane Harmon did not object to waterboarding in the letter, as Pelosi is claiming that she did.
Jane Harmon simply asked the CIA, has the Bush administration signed off on this?
But she didn't say.
She didn't object.
Harmon didn't.
So Pelosi is really on thin ice.
Now, I was talking to some people about this yesterday.
And I thought, you know, everybody's talking about how she's got to go.
This is it.
This is it for Pelosi.
They're going to send her out of their CIA is going to destroy her.
Is anybody, by the way, besides me, a little bothered over the cavalier way that everybody's talking about how the CIA will take care of her?
Now, you know, J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI and all these secret pictures on politicians will keep them in line and threatening and so forth.
But just because it's Pelosi, still, I'm a little queasy over the fact that everybody is just so cavalier.
Yeah, CIA, man, you lie about them.
They're going to take care of you.
They'll destroy her.
I thought, told somebody yesterday, that perhaps her last best hope is Panetta because Panetta is a former member of Congress.
He's from California.
He lives in Monterey, Carmel area.
And he runs the CIA.
But now that's off the table because he has fired back today saying it's up to Congress, meaning it's up to Pelosi to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what's going on.
Panetta wrote in a memo to CIA employees today, quote, CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing the enhanced techniques that had been employed.
We are an agency of high integrity, professionalism, and dedication, Panetta said in the memo.
Our task is to tell it like it is, even if that's not what people always want to hear.
Keep it up.
Our national security depends on it.
This is a memo to CIA people who are, we're being told they're demoralized now.
Pelosi's out there lying about them, saying they lied and so forth.
But I thought Panetta would be the last chance she might have to make an end run around this.
But then he's a Clinton guy.
Big time.
He was Bill's chief of staff.
And isn't it interesting now, too, folks, how we're reading everywhere we go.
We're finding out Pelosi is not that popular, even among Democrats.
Excuse me, how long have you reporters known that?
It was somebody else that some scandal happened to, and the Democrats told us that they were not that popular up there.
They've known.
Oh, it was Biden.
Biden.
Biden.
Don't want to get near him.
He won't shut up.
If you don't want to get trampled, don't show him your camera, microphone, so forth.
Big mouth.
Everybody was wondering who they were talking about.
It was Biden.
It's some years ago before he was named vice president.
But regardless, now we're finding out she's not that popular.
That's what they're saying.
Well, we know that Stenny Hoyer is not her bud.
He got number two spot, even though she lobbied for Jack Murthy to get it.
But it looks like everybody's setting the stage for her to, you know, tumble and take a walk on the wild side.
Well, how's this going to happen?
They're going to ask her to resign.
Are they going to go in there and do a Nixon?
Hey, you're hurting the party.
Rahm Emmanuel Obama going to say, hey, you got to get out of there.
We can't handle this.
This is too big a distraction.
Because Pelosi has succeeded in making the issue of torture a Democrat issue when the Democrats have succeeded in tying that one around George Bush's neck.
You think she's going to go, Snerdley?
Okay, Snerdley thinks she will not resign and she won't be forced out.
I kind of agree.
I think the conventional wisdom, you know, I always resist that.
I resist the tug of popular sentiment.
And it was just, it seems like there was everybody yesterday.
Oh, it's just a matter of time.
Pelosi's gone.
She's a Democrat.
And they just don't throw each other overboard.
So it's going to be interesting to watch.
But people go, yeah, she'll be gone 30 days.
Because the Democrats do not want this to become a Valerie Playma thing as that affected Bush.
Just go on and We'll see.
Jeffrey in Marquette, Michigan.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Hello.
Thank you, Rush.
I'm calling about Jennifer Granholm.
Yeah.
Her name has been floated around on the shortlist for the Supreme Court nominee.
She is my governor.
I don't know.
One of two things could happen.
If she gets seated, which could be glorious, could she couldn't campaign or contribute to the Democratic Party?
But I don't think she's qualified.
I don't think she's got the smarts for it.
Well, it depends.
Obama's qualifications are, you don't have to really reach a very high bar.
You just have to have empathy.
You just have to say that you care.
Here's the dilemma for you people in Michigan.
I don't buy this business that Grand Holmes on the shortlist, but she may be.
And let's say, let's just play a game.
Those of you in Michigan, let's say that Jennifer Granholm is actually selected by Obama.
You have a big decision.
Well, it's not really up to you, but it's still a decision.
What is the best of two horrible circumstances?
One circumstance is she takes the gig and goes and gets on the Supreme Court and destroys that, but she's gone from Michigan and so no longer can destroy Michigan.
Or she doesn't take the gig, doesn't get the gig, can't destroy the Supreme Court, but stays in Michigan and continues to wreak havoc on it.
A true, true challenge here for Michiganders here as the name of their governor is floated as a potential shortlist member of the Obama Supreme Court list.
Mike in Cleveland, nice to have you, sir, on the EIB network.
Hello.
Longtime listener, first-time caller.
Thank you, sir.
A week or so ago, you had a bit about Connie Schultz.
Well, she followed up the next day with another column of you, and she said the headline was, Where's the love rush?
Vaguely, Connie Schultz, a Cleveland plane dealer, right?
She wrote a piece that was full of clichés, the typical, never listen to me, just typical allegations about me that are not right, out of context, typically, and I forget what I said about it, but I did get a lot of emails saying that, Rush, Rush, don't you know that she's the wife of Sherrod Brown?
I did not know that she's the wife of Sherrod Brown, and I did not know she wrote a follow-up column.
Nobody told me.
Yeah, she's a Pulitzer Prize winner, but I think she's a member of now.
Well, that would all figure.
Yes.
It would all figure.
So she wrote a piece going, where's the love?
Meaning I criticized her, where's the love?
Yes, yes.
How childish.
Anyway, yeah, that was something I should have mentioned that a lot of people said, you know, she's married to Sherrod Brown.
I had no clue.
I should have known.
I mean, Debbie Dingell is a Democrat consultant of Washington.
She's married to John Dingell.
I mean, you got CNN people married to staffers that work for Jane Harmon and Pelosi.
You have NBC people who are married to Fannie Mae lawyers.
I mean, it's incestuous.
It's incestuous.
So I shouldn't have been surprised that Connie Schultz is married to Sherrod Brown.
What?
Dawn is being insolent, ladies and gentlemen, in my IFB, saying, I've dated a lot of liberal women, not a lot.
But what's that?
I didn't marry them.
What has that got to do with anything?
Here again, I'm presented with female logic.
I'll do the best I can on this, but it's still cloudy.
We had the call from the woman in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, describing the nightmare scenarios that she had to go through to be legal regarding health care coverage, mandated insurance, mandated prescription coverage, and so forth.
And I made the point that whatever the intentions that they had in Massachusetts with the plan, the point is you lose your freedom with all this government-mandated stuff.
See, everything we do in America is connected to freedom.
Right down to being able to choose our doctors and the kind of medical care that we want to receive.
You ask the liberals of this country about the future of health care, and some of them would tell you that having a choice is overrated.
That people will make the wrong choice.
These liberals are so arrogant and condescending that they think everybody makes the wrong choice.
They don't spend their money correctly.
They won't choose their doctor right.
Everything has to be done for them.
Conservatives want to preserve the patient-doctor relationship.
The liberals are out there, they claim they want a public plan that competes with private health insurance.
That's not what they want.
They want to eliminate private health insurance.
The truth is, as many as 120 million Americans could lose private health insurance that you have today with the establishment of a government health care plan.
120 million Americans.
And the way they're going to sell this, well, we win a public option and a private option.
Not going to be a private option.
The whole point is to wipe out the private option.
Heritage Foundation, now we talk about these people.
I love these people.
Great speech I delivered to these people a couple Mondays ago.
Maybe, was it this Monday?
No.
Last Monday.
Anyway, Heritage Foundation.
They have scholars intensely studying the whole debate on socialized medicine.
And you can avail yourself of their research at askheritage.org.
Become a member.
I'm a member.
25 bucks.
Askheritage.org.
And not only healthcare, whatever you want to know, they will have the answer.
Here's Terry in Indiana, Pennsylvania.
Nice to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, Rush, how are you doing?
Excellent, sir.
Thanks.
I'm really happy to talk to you.
Well, same here.
By the way, I wanted to mention: Snerdley sounds a lot younger than what a person by the name of Snerdley should sound like.
Don't be fooled by the sounds of voices.
We in radio learned long ago that, you know, when I was a DJ, top 40 DJ, the groupies would call you, make requests.
And I tell you, I got fooled.
I can't tell you how many times voices don't match faces.
Just trust me.
So he actually looks like he's 82.
That's what Snerdley sounds like.
No, Snerdley sounds 82 to you.
Yeah, Snerley sounds like a guy who's like all decrepit.
No, he's nowhere near 82.
Not even half.
That's what I'm saying.
He just sounds younger than his name, Snerdley.
I think, well, I just think, oh, Limbo Show, you've got to do this 15 hours a week.
I try to tell him to stay enthusiastic and to treat every call like he's never answered the phone before.
Well, he doesn't quite do that, but he does pretty good.
But I'm calling you about your top 40 thing.
You and I have something in common.
We're both KQV radio alumni.
KQV Pittsburgh.
Yes.
1410.
Yes.
You worked at KQV?
Yes, I did.
You were with them when they were top 40, right?
Yes.
Okay.
And then they went news and talk.
Well, they went to Chinese opera first.
That's when I got blown out.
But then they went Chinese opera.
Then they went news talk.
Oh.
I don't even know Chinese opera.
Well, some wackle format.
I don't know what it was, but they were losing to 13Q.
13Q.
I don't even remember that.
WJAS, 1360 a.m. Buzz Bennett.
He was a program director.
Doing all kinds of crazy things with the transmitter.
It had a better signal at night than KQV did.
What I always wondered was, I thought I figured news and talk was coming up.
You're top 40, so you had to leave.
And I figured if that's the case, that would be the greatest irony in radio history.
Yeah.
You didn't just suck around a little bit.
You would have been a Fox Show guy earlier.
That's actually an excellent.
They did go news talk.
That's actually an excellent point that you're making.
You know, I worked at Jim Quinn.
Jim Quinn, who's on our FM Blowtorch in Pittsburgh, who does the morning show, did nights at KQV before I did.
And so, but they, yeah, I'm trying to think.
I've really got blown out at KQV, not because they went Chinese opera.
But they did.
They were changing formats or some such thing.
Your desire for irony is closer than you think.
But everything worked out as it should have.
And I love Pittsburgh.
I loved living there, and I loved working there.
Anyway, thanks for the call out there, Terry.
Brief time out.
We'll be back.
Wrap it up after this.
Okay, folks, thanks for being with us today.
Another exciting excursion into broadcast excellence is in the can.
And remember, Nancy Pelosi has just been dumped on by Leon Panetta, saying CIA doesn't mislead people.
Or in this case, didn't mislead her.
Have a wonderful weekend and be back here Monday at noon Eastern straight up.
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