All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 27, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
32:11
August 27, 2009, Thursday, Hour #3
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
And greetings and welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.
They finally got the motorcade going.
We've been waiting for two hours.
They finally got the Kennedy motorcade going.
How long does it take to get a motorcade going?
And by the way, I've been watching this and I have not seen anywhere the last Kennedy brother with the family getting in a motorcade.
That would be President Obama, who was proclaimed yesterday by Chris Matthews, the last brother that Senator Kennedy had passed the family torch to Obama, which doesn't say much for the rest of the Kennedy Klan, if you look at it that way.
Telephone number 800-282-2882 if you want to be on this.
The Rush Limbaugh program, the EIB network, and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
The Eric Holder decision to investigate abuses by interrogators.
I talked to my buddy Andy McCarthy, who's a lawyer, used to be with the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York, the Southern District of Manhattan, and he was on the prosecution team that put behind bars the blind shake.
And he has a theory that at the end of the day, after these special prosecutor investigations, that the Democrats really will not have the nerve to pull the trigger on an actual indictment.
They will investigate.
They'll try to come up with everything they can, but they probably won't file charges.
But what they're really trying to do, according to Andy, is generate evidence through their investigation, Department of Justice, Truth Commission, congressional hearings, all of that, that can then be handed over to foreign and international tribunals by leftist lawyers, and those tribunals will then bring charges against the Bush officials.
Those tribunals will issue international arrest warrants, which will make it impossible for these people who were charged to travel, and they will be convicted in abstention.
That's what McCarthy thinks the game plan here is, to turn it over to the world court, the world tribunals, and let Europe, let Germany, let somebody like that indict our guys, because they really won't have the guts to do it here.
And, you know, there's a story from Berlin here.
Obama should make sure Cheney is brought to justice.
So the international tribunals out there are working hard on this, trying to convince the Democrats and Obama to go all the way.
In the meantime, Abdul Rahim al-Nashiri, according to the 9-11 Commission report, was the mastermind of the October 12, 2000 attack of the USS Cole.
It killed 17 U.S. sailors.
Nashiri was also the target of an unauthorized CIA interrogation technique that had not been legally vetted by the Justice Department.
That is described in a May 7, 2004 CIA Inspector General report that was partially declassified by the Obama administration this week.
Do you know what this technique was?
The unauthorized CIA interrogation technique that was not legally vetted was secondhand smoke.
CIA officers blew smoke in the man's face, according to the report, and they used cigars.
The Inspector General's Office described the smoke blowing as one of several unauthorized or undocumented techniques it discovered had been used in isolated incidents by CIA employees interrogating high-level al-Qaeda terrorists.
An agency redacted phrase interrogator admitted that in December 2002, he and another redacted phrase smoked cigars and blew cigar smoke in al-Nashiri's face during the interrogation.
The Inspector General, however, was unable to clearly establish the smoke blowing was intended to force Nashiri to cough up what he knew about al-Qaeda's pleasure.
You got to be kidding me.
Do they really think that blowing cigar smoke in a terrorist face is going to make him open up?
Blowing smoke in a cigar in a terrorist face is torture?
If it was a good cigar, it's pleasant.
You know how good cigar smoke smells?
This is the theater of the absurd making our guys out to be the villains of the world and these poor old masterminds of terror acts that kill hundreds and thousands of Americans.
Cannot handle a little secondhand smoke.
My God, what is becoming of us?
Los Angeles, the nation's second largest city, cut water use by an overall 17% in July compared to a year early, a year before.
Southern California facing a water shortage because of drought and regulatory restrictions on supplies.
City of Los Angeles has made broad appeals for conservation, imposed restrictions on landscape irrigation, raised rates, and fielded inspectors to look for violators and issue fines.
The Department of Water in Power, which has 680,000 water customers and 1.4 million electric customers, said single-family homes cut water use nearly 21%.
Multifamily properties cut use more than 8%.
Businesses cut usage nearly 22%.
Government properties reduced usage more than 34%.
This all sounds wonderful, doesn't it?
It all sounds wonderful until you realize that tax revenues will be dramatically dropping as well.
And then the city's going to say this conservation stuff isn't working for us.
And so the rates are going to go up.
Everybody obeys the commands.
Cut back.
We got a drought.
Don't use so much.
We got pressure on the electric grid.
Tax revenue will fall precipitously as well.
Betsy McCoy, who is one of the people doing yeoman work deciphering the contents, the details of every Democrat health care plan that's proposed, starting with Hillary Care, has another piece today in the Wall Street Journal entitled Obama's Health Rationer-in-Chief.
White House Health Care Advisor Ezekiel Emmanuel, brother of Rah Emmanuel, blames the Hippocratic Oath for the overuse of medical care.
Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel, Obama's health care advisor, is under scrutiny as a bioethicist.
He has written extensively about who should get medical care and who should decide and whose life is worth saving.
Dr. Emmanuel is part of a school of thought that redefines a physician's duty, insisting that it includes working for the greater good of society instead of focusing only on a patient's needs.
Many physicians find the view dangerous, and most Americans are likely to agree.
The health bills being pushed through Congress put important decisions in the hands of presidential appointees like Dr. Emmanuel.
They will decide what insurance plans cover, how much leeway your doctor will have, and what seniors get under Medicare.
Dr. Emmanuel, brother of Rob Emmanuel, has already been appointed to two key positions.
Health policy advisor at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of the Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research.
He clearly will play a role guiding the White House's health initiative.
Dr. Emmanuel says that health reform will not be pain-free and that the usual recommendations for cutting medical spending are mere window dressing.
He wrote in the February 27, 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association: Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention of wellness, installing electronic medical records, and improving quality of care are merely lipstick cost control.
More for show and public relations than for true change.
True reform, he argues, must include redefining doctors' ethical obligations.
In the June 18th issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel blames the Hippocratic Oath for the overuse of medical care.
He said, medical screw education and postgraduate education emphasize thoroughness.
This culture is further reinforced by a unique understanding of professional obligations, specifically the Hippocratic Oath's admonition to use my power to help the sick to the best of my ability and judgment as an imperative to do anything for the patient, regardless of cost and the effect on others.
In numerous writings, Dr. Emmanuel chastises doctors for thinking only about their patients' needs.
Dr. Emmanuel believes that doctors should serve two masters, the patient and society, and that medical students should be trained to provide socially sustainable, cost-effective care.
One sign of progress, he sees the progression in end-of-life care mentality from do everything to more palliative care shows that change in physician norms and practices is possible.
Here is your death panel head honcho.
He's Obama's lead advisor.
I don't want anybody to ever call here again and tell me there aren't death panels.
We've got a guy who says the problem with health care is the Hippocratic Oath, and doctors need to be retrained.
They need to rethink end-of-life treatment and what's better for society at large rather than what's better for the individual patient.
In the next decade, every country will face very hard choices about how to allocate scarce medical resources.
There is no consensus about what substantive principles should be used to establish priorities for allocations, he wrote.
Yet, Dr. Emmanuel writes at length about who should set the rules, who should get care, and who should be at the back of the line.
You can't avoid these questions, he said.
In an August 16th Washington Post interview, we had a big controversy in the U.S. when there was a limited number of dialysis machines.
In Seattle, they appointed what they call a God committee to choose who should get it.
And that committee was eventually abandoned.
Society ended up paying the whole bill for dialysis instead of having people make those decisions.
So what happened?
Did we get more machines because the market demanded it?
Dr. Emmanuel argues that to make such decisions, the focus cannot only be on the worth of the individual.
He proposes adding a communitarian perspective to ensure that medical resources will be allocated in a way that keeps society going.
Substantively, he says it suggests services that promote the continuation of the polity, those that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations.
An obvious example, he says, is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.
In The Land Set, January 31, 2009, Dr. Emmanuel and co-authors presented a complete lives system for the allocation of very scarce resources like kidneys, vaccines, dialysis machines, intensive care beds, and others.
One maximizing strategy involves saving the most individual lives, and it has motivated policies on allocation of influenza vaccines and responses to bioterrorism.
Other things being equal, we should always save five lives rather than one.
However, other things are rarely equal.
Whether to save one 20-year-old who might live another 60 years if saved, or three 70-year-olds who could only live another 10 years each is unclear.
Unclear.
They're thinking about it.
It is perfectly clear what their thinking is on this.
And this is the guy that's number one health care advisor to Obama.
And they can sit out there and deny death panels all they want, but his number one advisor is saying, we treat too many people.
We got to change the focus.
Now, Emmanuel concedes his plan appears to discriminate against older people, but he explains, unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination.
Treating 65-year-olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist.
Treating them differently because they have already had more life years is not.
The youngest are also put at the back of the line.
Adolescents have received substantial education and parental care, investments that will be wasted without a complete life.
You understand?
We are robots.
He's looking at individual Americans.
Okay, how much has the government invested in them?
How much is the government invested in educating them?
Not their parents, not your family.
How much is Washington, how much has the government invested in getting you born, in providing for you after you were born, in educating you?
And if the government's invested a lot in you, they have a reasonable expectation for a return on the investment, so you might get health care.
If you're young, if you're old, forget it.
That's why people are showing up at the town hall meetings because people know all of this.
Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel has fought for a government takeover of health care for over a decade.
In 93, he urged Clinton to impose a wage and price freeze on health care to force parties to the table.
Now he recommends arm twisting Chicago style.
Every favor to a constituency should be linked to support for the health care reform agenda, he says.
He wrote this last November 16th in the Healthcare Watch blog.
If the automakers want to bail out, then they and their suppliers have to agree to support and lobby for the administration's health reform effort.
This is what he's advocating.
This miniature version of fascism.
This is the man who's the number one advisor to Obama on healthcare, the brother of the chief of staff, Ron Emmanuel.
Make no mistake where this is headed.
Make no mistake with them.
And Obama got cover.
He's got all these other lackeys out saying these things while he's on stage.
No, they're not going to be death panels.
It's outrageous.
Can't believe people are misquoting misinformation, lying, and all these targets of my plan that are being lied about, and they're not being lied about.
And this is not what the American people want.
Go ahead, put Ted Kennedy's name on this bill and make this the most hypocritical decision you've ever made.
And back to the folks who go to Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Hi, Vicki.
Great to have you with us today.
Hi, Rush.
I'm just angry.
I love talking to you.
But let's say they do it.
They force it through against the will of the American people, which is shown overwhelmingly in every poll in the country.
They do it anyway.
I understand that they can and probably will most likely be voted out when they come up for election.
Virtually every one of them, I believe.
And conservatives will be sent in in their place with an overwhelming mandate to get rid of it, get rid of government-run health care.
However, in the meantime, there are people in this country, people with courage, anger, and a brain, who will not partake, who will not cooperate, just like there are people who will not answer the questions in the census.
There are doctors and patients who will not do what they're supposed to do.
What will the government do about these millions of people?
Now, that is an interesting question.
The first thing to stipulate here is that if the bill passes, if it passes as it's planned now, it'll be four years before it's implemented.
And this is one of the reasons people, what the hell is the hurry here?
If this thing doesn't get implemented in 2013, what's the big deal?
Well, they wanted to get it implemented before the rotten economic news and debt and deficit news hit.
That is an interesting proposition.
There will be a number of people who will just refuse to play, and they will become targets of the government.
Now, the empowerment of the IRS here, you remember the IRS, if you don't play, you are going to pay.
They are going to fine you.
They are going to charge you as much as $2,500 to $8,000 a year taxes.
And the IRS is already an agency that is in existence that has a lot of people intimidated.
I mean, people do not want to get audited.
People will pay their tax.
They're scared to death of the IRS that the government's successfully built up this fear of the IRS over the years.
And that's why the IRS is the number one enforcer here.
Except that there are people with courage and anger enough to say, screw you.
I don't do it.
Put me in jail.
And they will put, what, thousands and thousands of people in jail?
What are they going to do?
Have them all fired?
What can they do?
I don't have enough money to pay them anything.
Wait a second.
If this bill passes, I'm glad you asked the question.
They're going to have access to your bank account.
They're going to have digital online access to your bank account.
I mean, there are hideous things in this piece of legislation.
How do they get it?
How do they get it?
How do they get access to the account?
They order the bank, they order every bank to turn over every account number to the IRS, and they're going to be able to go in, and if you don't pay, they're going to debit your account for you.
So you don't have any money.
What do you do?
There are people like my son, who's 30 years old.
He's professional.
He's working.
He's upper-middle class.
They will garnish your wages.
What does the IRS do now when you're in arrears?
Yeah, if you don't, but if you're working for yourself and you don't pay, what are they going to do?
Put thousands of people in jail?
Oh, they're going to fine you.
They're going to make sure that you pay.
Even if you can't pay, they're going to get their money and you're going to be in debt.
They'll say, oh, okay, you owe us, and now we're going to leave you alone?
No.
They're going to take money that you don't have and put you in debt.
Put a lien on your house or any number of things they can do.
Put a lien on your house so they can take away a car, whatever.
But seriously, Rush, are you seriously saying that all of the people who have gone to these town hall meetings who are angry enough, who have been shown to be in the millions, they will all have their cars taken away.
They will all have their jobs taken away.
They will all be aware of that.
No, no, I'm saying that if that effort is made, you're going to have even more angry people and you might end up with a revolution.
So there you go.
That's my answer.
Thank you.
All right.
See, I just had to string you along to a commercial break here.
My friends don't doubt me on this bank business.
Remember, the Obama administration succeeded in destroying Swiss banking.
United Bank of Scotland gave up all those names of private accounts held by Americans so that Obama can collect their taxes.
See if they're evading taxes.
Now, they own all the banks anyway for crying out loud.
How many banks does Obama own?
Now, something else, you know, Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel's plan is already being carried out.
The UAW, United Auto Workers wanted their retirement pension fund bailed out to the tune of $10 billion, and they got it.
It's hidden in the health care reform bill, and they got it in exchange for supporting Obama's health care plan.
The UAW was among a number of unions to meet with Obama at the White House on July 13th.
This is in the Detroit news, by the way, to discuss health care reform and other issues.
The United Auto Workers legislative director Alan Ruther said last week the UAW had already taken an active role in pushing for health care reform.
So Ezekiel Emmanuel's plan.
Well, you want to be treated favorably here, then you've got to support our plan.
The UAW, no-brainer here, I mean, Obama's supporters, but what they got out of it is a $10 billion bailout, essentially, of their pension fund, which is in trouble.
United assists, stories two days ago, three days ago now, the UAW urging its members to back efforts in Congress to reform health care coverage, citing a provision that includes $10 billion to defray the medical costs of union members and others in retiree group health care associations.
So they pledge their support for Obamacare, and now, Mo, they get a provision in the bill.
And this is how Obama's doing it with Big Pharma and a number of others.
It's got even some of the liberals out there a little bit in a Tizzy because they hate corporations.
From Colorado.com.
Representative Betsy Markey told a gathering of constituents in Fort Collins, Colorado yesterday that some people, including Medicare recipients, will have to give up some current benefits to truly reform the nation's health care system.
That's exactly right.
Representative Betsy Markey told a gathering of her constituents in Fort Collins, Colorado.
She's a lib.
That some people, including Medicare recipients, are going to have to give up some current benefits to truly reform the nation's health care system.
Now, the last living Kennedy brother, Barack Obama, says, no, that's not true.
Obama's saying, we're going to cut waste and fraud in Medicare.
Nobody's going to suffer any benefit cuts.
But here are his Democrats running around.
Oh, yeah, you're going to get some better going to be.
Of course, there have to be.
There have to be.
Folks, Medicare didn't have any money.
Social Security didn't have any money.
Everything the Democrats have given us is bankrupt, including the country.
And I can't let this broadcast end without repeating these four soundbites.
David Schuster yesterday afternoon on MSNBC Live.
Ted Kennedy, unlike so many politicians of his day, he didn't dabble in the small stuff, the petty personal attacks.
That was not him.
And again, I think that's why so many people are feeling so sad, not only for the loss of him, but for the loss, perhaps, of a political era.
He didn't dabble in the small stuff, the petty personal attacks.
That wasn't Teddy Kennedy.
This is David Brooks on the news hour with Jim Malara last night.
I would just say he could exercise great anger when he disapproved, but it was not resentment.
And so it never got quite as personal.
And for conservatives who are now in the wilderness, that is a model for them to find the best in your tradition and to follow it the way he followed liberalism during the Reagan years.
During the Reagan years, during the Reagan, it never got personal.
We got to model ourselves after Ted Kennedy during the Reagan years.
Well, let's listen to Ted Kennedy during the Reagan years.
Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back alley abortions.
Blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters.
Rogue police could break down citizens' doors and midnight raids.
And schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution.
Writers and artists would be censured at the whim of government.
And the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is and is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.
Wow, I never got bitter.
He never got personal.
There was a model for us to follow during the Reagan years.
Never got petty, never got personal.
That just wasn't Teddy Kennedy.
Here's more from that same Senate floor speech.
America is a better and freer nation than Robert Bork thinks.
Yet, in the current delicate balance of the Supreme Court, his rigid ideology will tip the scales of justice against the kind of country America is and ought to be.
The damage that President Reagan will do through this nomination, if it is not rejected by the Senate, could live on far beyond the end of his presidential term.
President Reagan is still our president, but he should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate, reach into the muck of Watergate, and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and on the next generation of Americans.
No justice would be better than this injustice.
Ted Kennedy seeking to destroy the career and life's work of Robert Bork, but he never got personal.
No, no, no, never got petty.
He never got petty.
In fact, David Brooks says that we have to model ourselves after Ted Kennedy in the Reagan years.
We also must remember that Mr. Brooks comes from the conservative intelligentsia that tells us the era of Reagan is over.
He and like-minded people, the era of Reagan is over.
We can't go back.
That's antique now.
We have to forget Reagan.
We have to forget Reagan now during the Reagan years, but we've got to remember Kennedy during the Reagan years.
We have so-called conservative journalists telling us this, that we've got to forget Reagan, but we must remember Kennedy during the Reagan years.
You know, there are really, folks, there are a lot of stupid smart people out there.
I don't know how else to describe it.
Philip in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, first-time caller.
I'm a group health insurance broker rush, and what we are experiencing right now, obviously, besides the fight of our absolute lives, we are experiencing out of 111 groups at my small agency services, we're finding that more and more of them are calling, or as we speak to them, they're understanding and appreciating their type of health coverage much better than they did just, say, 12 months ago.
And I really credit this to the fact of these town hall meetings that some of them have said they have attended.
My father, who's also my partner, has attended.
I have not been able to because I do spend a good portion of my time on the road.
But this has been, I'm sorry to say, this has been good for our business at this point.
Now, obviously, should a single payer, a universal health care system go into play.
Yeah, you can kiss your business goodbye.
Yes, sir.
You're right.
And, you know, and I'm, you know, I'm a sole provider in my family with an autistic child.
And my health insurance, though I sell the company in which I have my insurance through, doesn't provide for my son because of state law.
You know, the president.
State law prevents your company from covering autism.
Is that right?
Well.
Well, no, it covers it, but the size of, because my group is not 50 or more, the insurer is not required.
I got you.
No, I'm not complaining about that, Mr. Limbaugh.
No, no, no, I understand that.
No, your point is that a year ago, people thought their health care sucked, that their insurance was a rip-off, and now they see what's going to be done.
Oh, no, no, no.
We like it when they're calling you so much.
They like us.
They're telling you, no, no, no, we don't touch it.
We like it.
Out of 111 groups, Mr. Limbaugh, we have one.
Out of 111, one is hoping for this universal health care.
Now, I suspect that we're going to be able to get a lot of people.
What's the average age of that group?
The average age?
Well, knowing the group leader, group leader is probably about my age, which is 38.
Okay, so he's just brain-dead liberal, then he has to be.
Well, you know, in case he's listening to you, which I would truthfully doubt, I would have, yes, sir.
Okay, granted, that's why you know he's not listening.
He's a brain-dead liberal.
But I'll bet you, I will bet you you'll be surprised.
You know, if he's not listening, he'll hear about it because you obviously have a lot of friends and you've got a lot of associates.
You've got 111 groups out there that you insure.
Yes, sir.
We do.
And there's some 38-year-old numbskull out there in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Somebody will know who he is.
Well, yeah, but out of 111 groups, he's the only one that has expressed interest in wanting that.
And I've had conversations with him, and it came to a point.
I was beating my head up against, well, I can't discuss this with him.
He doesn't hear me.
He doesn't listen.
And so, you know, if I lose one group out of that, I can, you know, we'll continue.
But, you know, if Ms. Pilar has her way and the president, we're already making strategy changes here to go to a property casualty.
I'm opening up a property casualty side of it as well.
What country are you moving to?
I am not leaving.
I am staying here and fight the fire.
I know.
I just kidded.
I love our country.
We have a great country.
I have a great state, and I'm proud of my city.
And I don't like the naysayers, but you know, they're out there.
Well, I'm glad you called.
I appreciate it.
Well, thank you.
And you will hear from that 38-year-old guy.
Oh, I'm sure I will.
If he doesn't hear it himself, he'll hear about it.
You know that Rush Limbaugh was talking about.
Why?
What would I do?
You're a numbskull on national health care.
That's why the whole country knows that.
They just don't know your name.
No, I don't think so.
I'm not going there.
I'm not going to do the shovel-ready thing.
And we're not going to do.
Don't bleep it.
Don't bleep it.
I don't think we're going to do a tribute.
Snerdley says we ought to play some of our funny Kennedy bits.
I just don't think that would be appropriate.
When what?
Yeah, Snerdley has his show.
You can do all that stuff.
But anyway, have the song standing by.
No, Snerdley.
I honestly don't think that they are listening to this show in the Kennedy caravan.
Some of the things you'll come up with in there.
That is white comedian Paul Shanklin, American Lies.
The vocal portrayal there, President Obama.
Well, Gallup is out with a new poll.
I guess they'd have a daily presidential approval tracking poll.
50% approval, 43% disapproval.
It is a brand new low for President Obama in the Gallup poll.
50-43.
It was 51-40 some out yesterday, so continuing to plummet.
The no news vacation not working.
Just like that hope and change.
is not working.
We got Open Line Friday tomorrow, and we'll be right here when it starts.
▲
Export Selection