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Sept. 22, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:33
September 22, 2009, Tuesday, Hour #2
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And once again, greetings to you, music lovers, thrill seekers, and conversationalists all across the fruited plane.
It is the award-winning Thrill Pact, ever exciting and growing by leaps and bounds to this day, even after 21 years.
The growth continues, thanks to all of you.
It's the Rush Limbaugh program.
We are live from Los Angeles today and tomorrow.
Mark Stein on Thursday.
We'll be back in Florida on Friday.
The telephone number, if you want to join us, 800-282-2882, and the email address, lrushbaugh at EIBNet.com.
Memo to President Obama.
It is a tax.
This is from state-controlled AP.
Obama insisted this weekend on national television that requiring people to carry health insurance and fining them if they don't isn't the same thing as a tax increase.
But the language of Democrat bills to revamp the nation's health care system doesn't quibble.
Both the House bill and the Senate Finance Committee proposal clearly state that the fines would be a tax.
And the reason that the fines are in the legislation is to enforce the coverage requirement.
Clint Stretch, head of the tax policy group for Deloitte, a major accounting firm said, look, if you put something in the IRS code and you tell the IRS to collect it, I think that's a tax.
And if you don't pay, the person who's going to come and get it is going to be from the IRS.
And that is authorized, by the way, in the House health care bill.
Now, it's a tax.
Of course, Obama's out there saying, oh, George, it's not a tax.
The man's incapable of telling the truth.
But it's still interesting to me.
If this were Clinton, instead of doing a fact check with the story of being, Mr. President, I'm sorry, but it is a tax, this story would marvel at how clever Clinton is in lying about it.
He lies to our face, and yet we believe him because we love him, because he's such a roguish, fun-loving character.
With Obama, they don't get that.
I'll tell you why.
Even though they're totally in the tank for Obama, Obama's not a fun-loving, warm, cuddly guy.
This is a cold, calculating, and potentially very mean guy.
And so there's not this instinct to cover for him on things like this.
I know it's a fine line because they're in the tank for his agenda anyway.
And this is just a momentary blip.
And somebody at AP is probably going to get suspended or fired, you know, for running the story.
But still, it's important that there is no marveling at how good he is at lying, like there was with Clinton.
Now, I think, ladies and gentlemen, the vice president, the bumbling Joe Biden, has given us perhaps a new battle cry.
Vice President Biden said yesterday that if Democrats were to lose 35 House seats that they currently hold in traditional Republican districts, it would mean doomsday for Obama's agenda.
Biden said Republicans are pinning their political strategy on flipping these seats.
And then he said this: if they take them back, this is the end of the road for what Barack and I are trying to do.
He said this at a fundraiser for Representative Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat from Arizona in Greenville, Delaware.
Well, that's the new battle cry.
It's the end of the road.
This guy is running the end of the road for what Barack and I are trying to do.
Good.
Somebody in this administration acknowledges that there needs to be an end of the road.
Now, this is hilarious, too.
When Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu thinks of the American people, he apparently sees a bunch of unruly teenagers who need to be told how to act.
Asked at a seminar on reconstructing America's electrical grid about the Obama administration's efforts to persuade people to conserve energy, the energy secretary, Stephen Chu, said, quote, the American public, just like your teenage kids, they aren't acting in a way that they should act.
The American public has to really understand in their core how important this issue is, said the Wall Street Journal.
Stop acting like teenagers, says Obama's energy secretary for the American people.
Who do these people think they are?
Stop acting like teenagers.
What?
We're not.
We got people out of work, no hope finding a job.
Obama even says high unemployment for at least another year.
And this administration has told everybody, stop acting like teenagers.
What, we're not putting in these screwball light bulbs fast enough?
We're not buying these cheap little bubble cars fast enough.
What are we doing?
Or what are we not doing?
I'll tell you who this guy is.
The name Stephen Chu, you know, we don't hear much of his cabinet secretaries.
We hear about the czars.
This guy spoke up, and the name rang a bell to me out there.
So I went out there and I did a little check.
And this was from the UK Times back in May 2007.
This is before Stephen Chu ever even had dreams of being an energy secretary.
As a weapon against global warming, it sounds so simple and low-tech, it could not possibly work.
But the idea of using millions of buckets of whitewash to avert climate catastrophe has won the backing of one of the world's most influential scientists, Stephen Chu.
The Nobel Prize-winning physicist appointed by Obama as energy secretary, wants to paint the world white.
A global initiative to change the color of roofs, roads, and pavements.
So that you remember this story so they reflect sunlight and heat could play a big part in containing global warming.
This guy wants to paint everything white.
This is who the energy secretary is.
And he tells us to stop acting like teenagers.
The Club for Growth has highlighted an interview of David Axelrod by Wolf Blitzer, in which the CNN correspondent presses Axelrod on why not to allow health insurance to be sold across state lines.
We have two soundbites on this.
This is from September 9th.
So it's, what is this, the 21st, 12 days or so ago?
Blitzer said the cooperative option, a series of health insurance cooperatives, it wouldn't be the public option, but it would be something in between.
Is he going to get into a detail like that and say he liked the idea?
He will acknowledge the fact that there is that idea.
There's the idea of putting a trigger on the public option so it goes into effect at some date when it's clear that a market is uncompetitive.
There are a number of ideas, but what is very important is that we have the kind of competition and choice that will help consumers.
Okay, that's the key.
That's the money portion of the soundbite.
Very important, we have the kind of competition and choice that will help consumers, because the next bite, he stumbles and bumbles and gets all blown to hell, even though Wolf Blitzer bombed out on celebrity jeopardy.
He came up with a good question here.
Blitzer says, well, then why not break down these state barriers and let all these insurance companies compete nationally without having to simply focus in on a state-by-state basis.
We are trying to do this in a way that advances the interests of consumers without creating such disruption that it makes it difficult to Blue Cross and Blue Shield or United Healthcare or all of these big insurance companies, they don't have to worry about just working in a state and they could just have the opportunity to compete in all 50 states.
But insurance is regulated at this time.
You could change that state.
The president could state by state.
The president could propose a law changing that.
That is not endemic to the kind of reforms that we're proposing or that we're proposing a package that we believe will bring that stability and security to people, will help people get insurance, will lower the cost that can pass the Congress.
And that has to be the test.
We're not into symbolic expedition here.
Now, this is just great.
So Axelrod says, in answer to the first question, what is very important is that we have the kind of competition and choice that'll help consumers.
Okay?
Blitzer, amazingly, stumbles into the truth.
Get rid of the state barriers so people can buy insurance from anywhere in the country they want.
You talk about competition.
Oh, no, no, no, no, I can't do that.
No, we're not going to go that route.
We're going to staminize our watches out there.
We can't, we're not going to do this.
Why?
Blitzer, why?
You want competition?
Well, because it doesn't fit the reform package that we're.
So what this illustrates is they use the language of the experience that reflects the experience of their audience.
They know that Americans respond to the whole concept of competition.
They know that Americans understand that in business, competition lowers price and increases supply of a product or of a service.
So they run around and tell that their health care plans have a lot of competition.
The public option are these health care exchanges.
That's where the competition is going to come.
There is no such competition because these healthcare exchanges or the public option, the government, they don't have to make a profit.
You can't, if you're in a business to make a profit and thus survive, you cannot compete against somebody who doesn't have to make a profit and who also can print their own money.
This is what they know.
They want the government running it.
Axelrod is just disingenuous.
He got caught and he stumbled and bumbled through the answer.
What it illustrates is that you should not listen to what they say in terms of what their plan is going to end up providing you.
There will not be any competition.
You are not going to have anywhere else to go once they fully implement their plan.
But they're telling you it's going to be full of competition because that's what they think you'll buy and that you'll believe.
And that, well, of course, competition.
I know that doofuses on the left, you know, who the amount of their brains that understand economics would not even equal an amoeba, they'll believe any trash the left say, oh, yeah, competition, federal government, yeah, that'll keep the insurance companies honest.
No, it won't put them out of business.
So great bunch of sound bites there because it's an indication.
Just like Obama saying at this climate thing today in New York, that we've reduced carbon emissions in the last eight months more than at any time in our history.
Just happens to coincide with his immaculation.
We have done nothing policy-wise to reduce carbon emissions.
Not one thing.
There is no new piece of legislation limiting carbon emissions.
All there is is a trashed economy, which is lowering carbon output because there's less economic activity going on, almost 10% unemployment.
And that's how you lower carbon emissions.
You wreck people's lives.
You wreck the economy.
You cannot have an economic circumstance where there is growth.
And that's what the experience this country has always been.
The expectation parents have for their kids to live a better life than they did.
That requires economic growth.
That it requires an expansion of prosperity and opportunities for it.
And when that happens, you're going to have more output of everything leading to carbon and so forth.
And it's all woven into this elaborate hoax that carbon dioxide is causing the climate to be destroyed.
That's the big lie that props up all these other lies.
But, I mean, we haven't done one thing to lower carbon emissions.
And yet Obama's taken credit. for something that hasn't happened just to give it to himself, the credit to himself.
And now, oh yeah, we're going to have competition out there, government option, health exchanges, lots of competition.
Keep the insurance companies honest.
The only way you keep them honest is to let them compete with each other.
This will put them out of business.
And that's the objective.
More of your phone calls coming up right after this break.
Don't go away.
Now, one thing here before we get to the phones, because this infuriated me when I heard about this.
Humana has put out, sent out a note, sent out an email, an ad that Medicare Advantage will be cut under the Baucus Senate health reform plan, and the same thing in the House.
And Baucus, read that the United States government sends a threatening note to Humana telling them they can't say that and to stop it.
What gives them the right, what gives Max Baucus or anybody in the U.S. Senate or in the White House the right to tell anybody what they can and can't say?
The First Amendment prohibits that.
But rush, but rush, I hear you saying.
Humana deals with Medicare and they get federal money and so the federal government has a link.
Yes, but in this circumstance, Humana happens to be telling the truth.
Political intimidation, it's the Wall Street Journal today.
Political intimidation has always been part of the current Congress's health care strategy.
If you're not at the table, you're on the menu.
It's tattooed on every lobbyist and industry rep in Washington.
But Max Baucus' latest bullying tactics are hard to believe by even these standards, as the Senate Finance Committee Chairman has sicked federal regulators on the insurer Humana Incorporated for daring to criticize one part of his health bill.
Earlier this month, Humana sent a one-page letter to its customers enrolled in its Medicare Advantage plans, which offer private options to Medicare beneficiaries.
Humana noted that because of spending cuts proposed by Democrats, millions of seniors and disabled individuals could lose many of the benefits and services that make Medicare Advantage health plans so valuable, unquote.
The Kentucky-based company also urges customers to contact their representatives.
Pretty tame stuff, but Baucus took it as a declaration of war.
He complained to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which on Friday duly ordered Humana to cease and desist.
CMS claimed the mailer was misleading and confusing and told the company it has opened an official probe as to whether the mailer violated laws about how the insurers that manage Advantage plans are allowed to communicate with their customers, as well as other federal statutes.
Please be advised that we take this matter very seriously.
And based upon the findings, our investigation will pursue compliance and enforcement actions.
Humana could be fined or booted out of the Medicare Advantage program.
And here are the facts.
The Baucus bill slashes $123 billion over the next decade from Medicare Advantage, which Democrats hate despite the fact that almost one-fourth of beneficiaries have chosen it over traditional fee-for-service Medicare.
And one reason seniors like it is because private insurers focus on quality and preventive care, try to manage benefits as opposed to simply paying the bills.
Now, this episode is another, I mean, clear as a bell illustration of how all U.S. health care will operate if Baucus' bill becomes law or if the House bill becomes law or if Obama's bill becomes law.
What does Humana do?
Well, they do.
They're a private sector insurance company managing Medicare Advantage.
Their customers like it.
They made the mistake of trying to tell their customers the truth about what will happen to their coverage.
And so now the CEO has got to go out and hire a team of lawyers, and they better be good.
They better be fearless.
Because Obama and Baucus are out to make the CEO of Humana an object lesson to the rest of the business class.
And that means they won't stop until Humana cries, uncle, or is ruined.
That's the object.
You do not.
This is, in addition to fascist, this is Stalinist.
And that's who these people are.
And here's how Baucus goes about being a hero.
This is from the Hill, Capitol Hill newspaper.
Senator Max Baucus will redirect about $28 billion in his health care bill to make insurance more affordable for middle-class families, and he will reduce a new tax on insurance companies.
That's it.
That's how you be a hero.
You reduce taxes on things that are not taxed yet.
Baucus lowers his own tax.
Oh, what a great guy.
Proposes a tax.
I'm going to be a good guy.
I'm going to lower my tax.
What?
I'm going to hear it's a tax cut.
And a tax that hasn't even been implemented yet.
And the media cheers.
What a great guy.
He's responsive.
In the meantime, he and the Obama administration have targeted Humana Incorporated now for destruction because they dared tell the truth about what's in this plan to their customers.
All right, to the phones, Elaine in Babylon, New York.
Thanks, and welcome to the EIB network.
Hi, Ross.
How are you?
Just fine.
Thanks.
Good.
I wanted to go back to the leaking problem from the White House, if you might.
Yeah.
Okay.
I think that it's obvious who's doing the leaking.
I think it's the White House itself because they can't come out and say, America, what should we do?
Because he's so indecisive that he has to try to, it's a roundabout way of polling the public to see what the reaction will be.
So you think it's maybe a trial balloon?
Put the leak out to see if the American people even care about Afghanistan.
Well, to see how mad the left is going to get if they'll let him do it or not.
Well, it could be.
That's always a possibility.
But I think, frankly, I think they already know.
I mean, John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi last week and a couple others, some of the California congressional delegation, I think the week before that, warned Obama, if you ramp up troop levels, we may not pay for no more expansion in Afghanistan.
That's what preceded it.
Now the leak comes, and it could be a trial balloon.
Who knows?
It's one of two things.
The leak, either Obama is trying to help his position of not expanding, sitting tight, rethinking the strategy, or the leak is to embarrass Obama and protect the military here.
There are people's lives on the line.
I mean, this is not, we're not playing beanbag here.
You know, we're not leaking about a proposed new piece of legislation on the snail darter.
Hell, even if we did that, we're going to ruin people's lives.
People's lives in California being ruined because of attention to animals.
The water's been shut off.
The farmers in the Central Valley.
I mean, it's crazy.
So The leak, probably purposeful.
Well, no doubt it was purposeful.
The end result of it is still unknown.
But watching the media coverage is still what's laughable.
Oh, Obama forgot, apparently forgot his previous position on Afghanistan that he announced in March.
And maybe Obama's trying to back himself into a corner here by leaking his own indecision on what to do about whether or not we win.
How silly is all this?
Your guiding light, Rush Limbaugh, a household name in all four corners of the world.
Daytona Beach, Florida.
This is Friend.
Great to have you with us.
Hello.
How are you doing, Rush?
Thanks for watching.
Very well.
Thank you.
I just want to make a quick point about this whole who sent the memo, why they sent the memo.
To me, it's a non-issue.
And as a United States Army veteran, it outrages me that people see this situation.
They see we need 40,000 more troops.
We need more supplies.
And it's even a decision to them.
There's no decision.
Our general on the ground has said we may suffer a loss.
We may fail this war effort if we do not get this support.
There's no issue.
There's no decision.
The only decision that needs to be made is what units get a phone call to start the duffel bag drag.
Wait a minute.
In the America you and I grew up in, in the America, your parents, my parents, and grandparents grew up in, of course, but that's not America right now.
This country is being led by people to whom victory in foreign conflict sometimes is a sin.
Sometimes it's imperialism.
And it is what it is.
You know, Bill Parcels used to say of a football team, you are what you are.
Your record, if you're 4 and 12, you're 4 and 12.
And there weren't any moral victories in there.
It is what it is.
Obama has got a request from a general on the ground, 40,000 troops, or I don't think we can win this.
And Obama's, let me reexamine the strategy then.
I got to worry about the left-wing base voting on my domestic.
I mean, he's dialing back our nuke arsenal.
He withdrew the missile shield that was going to be placed in Europe to defend the Czech Republic and Poland.
He's making deals with Russia.
He's propping up dictatorships in Central and South America.
It is what it is, friend.
I agree with you 100%.
It infuriates the heck out of me.
Like, you don't even know, Rush.
Well, I know.
I think it infuriates the heck out of millions of Americans that we don't yet know are infuriated because nobody's covering them.
Nobody's talking about it.
They still get these mythical polls for Obama's 54% approval or 52% approval.
I don't believe it's anywhere near that high.
I think people are shocked.
I think people are outraged.
I think when Biden speaks up and says, if we lose 35 seats in the House in 2010, that's the end of the road for what Barack and I.
They know.
They know exactly what's happening.
And they were counting on ACORN to be the balance in fraudulent elections.
They're counting on ACON to help move it.
And now the ACORD's been exposed.
I mean, this is, they know the problem that they're in, and yet their arrogance is such, it's not going to take them off their game at all.
They're going to ram whatever they want down our throats, whether we want it or not, because that's who they are.
Now, you couldn't have said it.
You couldn't have said it better.
There's no question.
A general says he need 40,000 troops or we lose.
Okay.
But that's not.
Remember, for the first time in my lifetime, and maybe not in the country's history, I don't know.
I haven't been alive for the entire 200-plus years.
But in my lifetime, I have never seen a political party spend years trying to secure defeat in a military conflict like the Democrats did in Iraq.
So it shouldn't surprise you at all that now that they're running the show, that victory is not a big deal to them.
Remember, Obama said in Afghanistan, the whole concept of victory troubles him.
Yeah, but up until now, it was we need to get out of Iraq because Afghanistan is the big issue.
And now it looks like Obama wants to turntal and run from that.
And I'll tell you, I'm red, white, and blue to the bone.
All right.
And we don't run.
And a president that lets us run and secures a defeat in Afghanistan, I feel sorry for his chances coming up in 2012.
Well, we don't have time to wait till 2012.
We got a rebound in 2010 in the midterm congressional elections.
Robert and Staten Island, I'm glad you waited, sir.
You're next on the EIB network.
Hello.
How are you?
Good.
Listen, I've got a dilemma, a parent dilemma.
See, here I am.
My son has joined the military, and as an ex-Marine, well, a former Marine, but never an ex-Marine, I was all for it.
I think it'd be a good friend.
But right now, I feel that it's sort of, I feel like they're going to do to these boys what they did to them in Vietnam.
And the same party that was in charge then is in charge now.
And I just see that there's 55,000 American boys died in vain over there because of their shenanigans that they pulled over there.
And I see this, I see history repeating itself.
And as a father, I don't know what to tell my son.
It's like, you know, I'm proud of him, but I'm like, you know, Rob, are you sure you want to do this at this point in time?
I'm in a dilemma.
I don't know what to do.
And it's like, it's really bothering me inside as a very patriotic person.
I'm sure that there are.
Probably a lot of military families with family members either en route or already in Afghanistan are scratching their heads over this and say, well, if we're not going to have the backing of the commander-in-chief, is it worth it?
I think, frankly, a lot of people are asking that question about Obama on everything.
Is this worth it?
Is the historical relevance of his presidency, the first black president, worth all this?
Clearly, there are designs on the traditions and institutions that have defined this country's greatness, and one of those is the United States military.
So I think this is even worse than Vietnam.
In Vietnam, they were trying to win.
I mean, they're bumbling around and they were incompetent, but they're micromanaging it and everything.
But they were trying to win.
And even when we did win, we let Walter Klondike talk us out of it.
In this situation, I don't think there's even any pretense of trying to win.
In fact, I think Obama ramped up Afghanistan simply to follow through on what he was talking about during the campaign: ripping Bush, ripping the surge, ripping Iraq.
Yeah, it's a bad move.
We need to be focusing on Afghanistan.
That's where we need to go.
We need to capture Obama, Osama, whatever.
And Eric's where we need to go.
Okay, so put some troops in there, announce a big bull policy, appoint a new general, and do it.
I mean, this is the left's dream war.
You got NATO running things.
You've got a few other nations participating.
We've got rules of engagement that penalize our own troops.
Can't hit the enemy if they're in houses and so forth.
That's a perfect war.
And what does it get us?
It gets us on the brink of defeat.
So that's just another in a long line of illustrations of what happens when these people end up in charge.
Stephen in New Orleans, you're next on the EIB network.
Hello, sir.
Rush, what an honor.
What an honor.
I just, I mean, I'm listening to all this, and I can't believe we've got the general on the ground asking for more troops, and they're doing the two-step, the Potomac two-step.
I mean, if they're not going to send them, why don't we get them the hell out of there?
That's pretty much my comment.
But this is a mistake, too.
I know what you're saying.
If we're not going to win, get out of there.
And there are, by the way, there are a lot of people who look at Afghanistan as the place empires die.
A lot of people think Afghanistan is the armpit of the world and is not worth going in there.
Well, look, the Soviet Red Army, the only place they ever lost was in Afghanistan.
We're going to lose.
We need to get out of there rush.
I get emails of people like this all the time.
We're going to get mired in there.
We're going to lose.
They're going to ruin our empire.
We are not the Soviet Union.
Well, to take that, but we may be closer to it than we ever thought we would be.
But traditionally, you know, this is the United States of America.
We don't lose.
But this is certainly not how you engage in war.
If you show up, you don't cut, tail, and run.
That's not who we are.
That's not what we are.
And that's not who we've been.
So it's a little late to say, well, if we're not going to win, let's get out.
That's, to me, not the question.
Unfortunately, it is with this administration, but it's the wrong question.
Can you actually believe that we're discussing whether or not we can win?
I mean, who are the enemy?
Who are we fighting?
Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, 9-11, Ring a Bell.
The people, we just had this big terror bust in New York.
They're still out there.
They're plotting future attacks.
That's who we're fighting.
Oh, we're going to quit.
We're going to say we can't win this.
We're going to pull back so we can do health care and so we can do global warming cap and packs.
So we can do all this other rig-amarole, nonsensical, left-wing, radical crap that is not at all what it pretends to be.
It's just the opposite.
It's a crying shame.
It is a crying shame what is happening to this country under the leadership of these boobs.
I've got to take a brief time out and be right back.
I just glanced at PMS NBC here to my left during the commercial break, and Obama is pushing for the next G20 meeting or a G-20 meeting to be hosted in Africa.
The only African nation that is part of the G-20, the next meetings of Pittsburgh is South Africa.
But I saw something go by, and I'm certain I saw this, but I got to find the details of this.
Obama said that everything that happens in Africa impacts the world.
Or maybe not everything that happens in Africa, but things that happen in Africa impact the world.
It's absurd, but I would love to get the context of that.
Mrs. Clinton has weighed in on General McChrystal's warning, and Hillary Clinton says he doesn't know what he's talking about.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pushed back against the U.S. military's blunt warning that the battle against insurgents in Afghanistan would likely be lost within a year without more troops.
Clinton's comments came in an interview with PBS late Monday.
Amid reports, the Pentagon has asked General Stanley McChrystal to delay a request for more troops.
Clinton expressed respect for McChrystal's assessment that the U.S. would likely lose without more forces, but I can only tell you there are other assessments from very expert military analysts who have worked in counterinsurgencies that are the exact opposite.
Well, okay, that's settled because Hillary Clinton is the smartest woman in the world.
And Hillary Crystal, or Hillary Clinton says the general doesn't know what he's talking about.
Are we comforted?
Are we made to feel better about Mrs. Clinton says the general doesn't know what he's talking about?
In the meantime, Condoleezza Rice has them flipping backwards over at the Huffing and Puffington Post.
She gave an interview in Fortune magazine.
She said this, the last time we left Afghanistan and we abandoned Pakistan, that territory became the very territory on which Al-Qaeda trained and attacked us on September 11th.
So our national security interests are very much tied up in not letting Afghanistan fail again and become a safe haven for terrorists.
It's that simple.
If you want another terrorist attack in the U.S., abandon Afghanistan.
And they are just, they are just beside themselves out there on the lefty blogs.
Buyer, this is Cheney-esque.
He's insane.
He's crazy.
Another attack, abandoned Afghanistan.
This is what Al-Qaeda.
That's why Somalia was important to a certain extent.
A stateless nation, a stateless nation is ripe.
That's where Osama bin Laden moved.
It's why he went to Afghanistan in the first place.
There was no government there.
Civil war strife and so forth took over.
Taliban ran the place.
Now they're trying to get it back.
And we got people saying, well, maybe we ought to pull out of there.
Hell with it.
Back to the phones.
Ernest in Atlanta.
Nice to have you on the EIB network.
Hello, sir.
Pleasure to be here, Russia.
I wanted to refer back to your conversation between Axel Rod and Wilf Blitzer, particularly relative to this question of breaking down the state boundaries on insurance plans and coverage.
It occurred to me in listening to that that I'm on Medicare now, and I have Medicare Supplemental, which, as you know, is designed to cover the gaps that Medicare doesn't provide for.
And the way that works is that there are about five or six different descriptions of insurance coverage.
And once a year, for a period of about three months, these are open for competition.
I receive a description.
The plans is a standard description of each of the five or six plans in terms of what it covers.
And then the insurance companies compete on the basis of a price and service for me to subscribe to their insurance coverage for the next year.
So this occurs nationwide and is uniform, and it serves as an excellent prototype for doing exactly what Axelrod says really doesn't fit or couldn't be done.
It's not that it can't be done.
He knows it can be done.
That's not what they want.
Let's go back and repeat these two soundbites because these are incredible and they're instructive.
And maybe I'm making too big a deal about it.
I don't think so.
Obama saying today that we have done more in the last eight months to lower carbon emissions at any time in our history is so patently, transparently absurd.
There hasn't been one policy, not one carbon emissions reduction policy yet implemented.
And yet, he's out there.
I don't even know how you document that carbon emissions.
The Financial Times has got a story saying worldwide carbon emissions are down.
But you know, that's as silly as that story we got yesterday, 45,000 deaths because people don't have health insurance.
They just make this stuff up.
You know, measuring worldwide carbon emissions, I don't know how precise that can be done.
We can't even precisely measure the temperature everywhere on the planet.
What?
Carbon emissions?
I mean, look how easily we get roped into buying all these false premises.
And too, well, we've done more to lower carbon emissions last eight months at any time in our world.
It's just absurd.
It's a patent lie.
Obama trying to take credit for something that has not happened, and it shows everybody exactly how they're doing it on everything else.
Take credit for it.
The economy's roaring back as unemployment approaches 10%.
We're going to have competition in our new health care plan when they're going to shut down private insurance.
Here's Axelrod.
This is back on September 9th, Wolf Blitzer.
Why don't you just, you know, the cooperative option, the health insurance cooperatives.
You're going to get into detail like that?
He will acknowledge the fact that there is that idea.
There's the idea of putting a trigger on the public option so it goes into effect at some date when it's clear that a market is uncompetitive.
There are a number of ideas, but what is very important is that we have the kind of competition and choice that will help consumers.
Competition, choice to help consumers.
Blitzer says, well, why not let insurance companies sell across state lines?
Because we are trying to do this in a way that advances the interests of consumers without creating such disruption that it makes it difficult to.
Why would that be disruptive if Blue Cross and Blue Shield or United Healthcare or all of these big insurance companies, they don't have to worry about just working in a state and they could just have the opportunity to compete in all 50 states.
But insurance is regulated at this time.
And you could change that.
The president could propose that state by state.
The president could propose a law changing that.
That is not endemic to the kind of reforms that we're proposing or that.
Why not?
We think we're proposing a package that we believe will bring that stability and security to people, will help people get insurance, will lower the cost that can pass the Congress.
And that has to be the test.
We're not into symbolic expedition here.
All right.
So now, competition and choice that'll help consumers.
But no, no, no, no, not that much competition.
Not that kind of choice.
No, no, no.
Because we have to come up with something that can pass the Congress.
That's what matters.
They're building monuments to themselves.
Got to come up with something that'll pass Congress, and that won't pass the Congress.
But we're going to say it's full of competition and choice because that's what we know that you want.
And we're going to tell you we're giving it to you, but we're lying to you.
That's Axelrod.
I have an idea.
I have a way that Obama can maybe pull his out of the fire on this Afghanistan thing.
Rather than call a troop buildup a surge, call it a stimulus.
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