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Nov. 18, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:44
November 18, 2009, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Well, look at this, folks.
Sarah Palin on with the Oprah yesterday gave the Oprah her highest ratings in two years.
And I don't think there was a tear shed in that show, was there?
I didn't see it.
The Oprah's interview with Governor Palin scored its best ratings in two years.
The show hit a 7.2 rating, 18 share.
In a waitered meeting market average for all telecasts on Monday, November 16th, that's up 36% from last year's 5.313 in the same time period average.
The last time the Oprah did as well was when the entire Osman clan appeared on November 9th, 2007.
So I guess it worked out.
Greetings, Rush Limbaugh, back on the fastest three hours in media.
Telephone number 800-282-2882, the email address LRushbo at EIBnet.com.
And just to sum all this up, folks, this Holder guy, this whole administration offends me each and every day.
I try not to give people the power to offend me.
But these people infuriate me, probably more than offend me.
They infuriate me.
Obama's people, including Holder, are fictionalizing the facts.
It was a Democrat president, Bill Clinton, who did nothing about the 93 bombing at the World Trade Center.
It was Bill Clinton, a Democrat president, who did nothing about the buildings being blown up in Kenya or the USS Cole or the Cobar Towers and Iraq and Afghanistan respectively.
Did Zilch Zero Nada.
What Clinton did was bomb Kosovo and the Chinese embassy in the Balkans and a building in Iraq with a custodian.
Remember, he bombed the Chinese embassy by mistake.
Military got that wrong.
Now, the left today cannot be in a very good mood.
President Obama acknowledged for the first time today that his administration would miss a self-imposed deadline to close the detention center at Club Gitmo by mid-January, admitting the difficulties of following through on one of his first pledges as president.
Remember when he went out there and one of his first acts was the executive order?
He was signing the executive order and he was explaining how it was all going to happen, forgot what it was going to happen and said, what are we going to do there, Greg?
Turning to Greg Craig and Greg Craig took over and explained the executive order.
In TV interviews during this week-long trip to Asia, Obama said he hoped to shut down the facility sometime next year, but he did not set a new deadline.
We're on a path at a process where I would anticipate that Guantanamo will be closed next year.
I'm not going to set an exact date because a lot of this is going to depend on cooperation from Congress.
What?
I thought you signed an executive order.
Congress has nothing to say about executive orders.
Obama ordered the closing of Gitmo as one of his first acts as president, but his plans to transfer some of its 200 remaining inmates to other countries or to trial or detention in the U.S. have been stymied by vocal opposition from Democrats and Republicans in Congress, as well as residents who live close to prisons that could house the terrorists.
So either Obama doesn't care that terrorists are using Gitmo to raise more terrorists, to recruit more terrorists, or that was always a lie.
Remember, one of the things about Club Gitmo, we've got to shut it down.
We've got to shut it down because it's just, it's a tool for recruiting more terrorists.
I guess they don't care about that now.
We have, ladies and gentlemen, a timeline montage of Mr. Obama's statements on Closing Gitmo, going all the way back to June 3rd of 2007, that's starting point.
Our legitimacy is reduced when we've got a Guantanamo that is open, when we suspend habeas corpus.
Those kinds of things erode our moral claims that we are acting on behalf of broader universal principles.
We're going to lead by shutting down Guantanamo and restoring habeas corpus in this country so that we offer them an example.
We have to stand for human rights.
It is harder for us to do it when we have situations like Guantanamo, where we've suspended habeas corpus.
To the extent that we are not being true to our values and our ideals, that sends a negative message to the world.
I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that.
I've said repeatedly that America doesn't torture, and I'm going to make sure that we don't torture.
Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world.
This has always frustrated me, too, because we haven't suffered any moral failing here, maybe among some elite leftists in Europe, but who gives a crap?
Who gives a flying crap?
Democrats care about it.
Who cares what Hugo Chavez thinks?
Obama cares what Hugo Chavez thinks.
Anyway, these statements range from June 3rd, 2007, all the way up to November 16, 2008.
They were in debates, 60 minutes, appearances.
So you can hear how important it was.
So we really got to go ahead and reestablish our values and ideals.
And now we can't close it.
We're not going to meet the deadline of January 22nd next year.
And I want to make the point again that it is being said by Obama and his people that one of the reasons for the trial in New York of the terrorists is to show the world that we've got a mojo back.
We've got our human rights back, and we've got our respect for values and our ideals back with a rigged trial.
The Obama administration, Obama himself, has already claimed these guys are going to be guilty.
They're going to be convicted.
They're going to be put to death.
Holder said they're so clearly guilty they're going to get the death penalty.
And if they don't, we're not going to let them go anyway.
And the militant Islamist world is going to look at that as a rigged system.
This is going to clean up our image.
The ACLU is not going to be happy about this.
A lot of people aren't going to be happy about it, particularly out there on the left.
CNN, CNN, it must have killed them to report this.
Six in 10 Americans favor at 60%.
60% sounds much better than 6 in 10.
60% of Americans favor a ban on the use of federal money for abortion, according to a new poll.
CNN Opinion Research Corporation survey released Wednesday morning indicate that today indicates that 61% of the public opposes using public money for abortions for women who cannot afford the procedure, 37% in favor.
And by a 51% to 45% margin, those questioned in the survey think that women who get abortions should pay the full costs out of their own pockets.
Gossi has had to kill them to report that.
Can you imagine?
But of course, it doesn't matter what we think because the final health care bill will fund abortions.
It won't pass if it doesn't.
All it needs is Democrat votes.
And if it doesn't, well, what do you mean it won't pass if it does?
You mean in the Senate?
If it doesn't have federally funded abortions in the House, it doesn't have a prayer.
They got to take out the Stupak language.
You got to take it out.
And they've said they're going to take it out.
And Axelrod said he's going to take it out.
And Stupak said, Whoa, wait, wait a minute.
Wait a minute, Axelrod.
You're not a legislator.
You can't tell us what you're going to do here.
Because Axelrod did go out and say Stupak's going to, well, we're going to have to take that out of there.
Now, if it's in there now, it passed the House.
But the Senate no.
So either way they go, it's not going to pass if it's in there, and it's not going to pass if it is in there.
So they've got how they're going to Chicago their way out of this one.
Reconciliation.
Reconciliation in the Senate is how they will Chicago their way out of this one.
There's a fascinating story of Fortune magazine today about fat cat pay, then and now.
When it comes to public outrage over executive compensation, history does not repeat itself, but it might just rhyme.
I did not know that this has been done before in this country until I read this story, and it didn't work.
And it was during the 30s with FDR.
It's unprecedented for the nation to be outraged about corporate pay, right?
Not exactly.
In the 1930s, as the Depression gripped the nation, furor about compensation rose to fever pitch.
Washington applied shears to salaries.
In an article soon to be published in the University of Richmond Law Review, Harwell Wells, an assistant professor of law at Temple, says, the decade exposed deep tensions about the issue.
Now, a big difference between then and now is that the 1930s fury was directed not at financial institutions, but rather at excessive payers among industrial and consumer companies like Bethlehem Steel, American Tobacco, and GM.
Likewise, when the government moved in 1933 to both provide financial aid to certain industries and put a ceiling on salaries within them, it was railroad, shipping, and air transport companies, which were fledgling then, that got both the help and the hurt.
In 1936, Fortune magazine weighed in on the red-hot pay issue by asking in a national survey, Do you think that in general the officials of large corporations are paid too much or too little for the work they do?
The verdict: 55% of the respondents said the officials were paid too much.
The public's war cry in the 30s, according to this Harwell Wells guy at Temple, was no man can be worth a million dollars a year.
That was the public war cry.
That campaign, along with a sick economy and a few corporate waste lawsuits, seems to have worked.
In 1929, Eugene Grace, the autocratic president of Bethlehem Steel, ruled the nation in pay, earning an amazing $1.62 million, which is $20.5 million today.
In 1936, Grace was just an also-ran, pulling in $180,000, $2.8 million today.
The top earner that year was GM's Alfred Sloan with $561,000, which is $8.5 million today.
After the 1930s, the executive compensation largely dropped out of the news for decades.
By the late 70s, however, the $1 million threshold was again crossed by Henry Ford II, among others.
Since then, executive compensation has never ceased to rise or attract anger.
The latest volley of the rage is aimed at the financial companies that receive government help starting in 2008.
So we have a PASAR now.
And let me ask you something.
After all these people are going to get their compensation slashed to the bare bone, I want to ask you a serious question.
Is your life going to be any better if some Mr. Fat Cat on Wall Street gets his salary cut from $2 million down to $150 or $200,000?
Is that going to make your life better?
Could make it worse.
It's the same thing as asking, okay, when the rich get a tax increase, does that make your life better?
Does that improve your life?
So the Democrats are counting on satisfying you simply by fulfilling your desire for revenge.
So when the PASAR goes out there and starts slashing salaries, does it make your life any better?
Does it find any of you who are unemployed a job?
Probably might make it harder to get a job.
I would venture to guess that the PASAR has not saved a single job.
You see, this didn't work in the 1930s, and it's not going to work now.
The only point of it, well, I don't know.
The point in the 30s was class envy.
Roosevelt trying to keep his polls up and New Deal was destroying everything, in truth.
I think Obama has the same motivation, but another one, and that is the destruction of the U.S. economic system as we have known it.
All right, back to the phones we go to.
No, we just talked to this guy.
He's gone.
Ginger in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
Hi, Ginger.
Welcome to the program.
Rush did ahead since the 1980s.
Question.
Ms. Pelosi came out after the health care bill was signed in the House, and she stated that women would no longer be discriminated against when it comes to health care just because they are women.
Now, is not this mammogram change a discrimination against women?
No, by all accounts, by any measure of the word discrimination, you would have to say yes, it is.
Okay.
Because I have yet to have a mammogram, for example.
I've been a high-risk and been getting mine since I was 35.
I know a lot of guys who look like they need a mammogram.
I'm not going to name any names.
Well, men get it too.
I know they do.
Actually, they do.
But no, this is not only discrimination against women, it's the first sign of rationing health care.
It's the first sign of doing everything related to cost.
It's clear.
We had this two weeks ago, folks.
I tell you, we talked about this two weeks ago when some cancer organization, it might have been the American Cancer Society, first issued a report saying this is coming down the pike.
And they couldn't believe it.
No, they couldn't.
Or no, wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
That wasn't the story.
I may have to do a website search here to find this.
I think the story was that whatever cancer group it was supported the decision.
Wasn't that what it was?
The cancer group?
The cancer group supported the decision because they said mammograms early often find stuff that's not bad that can cause more harm, get treated for things that don't need to be treated, blah, blah.
Yeah, the cancer group was for it.
So it wasn't the American Cancer Society because they've come out against it.
It must have been some other cancer group.
Yeah.
Jillian, I can't remember her last name.
She was a very popular actor in the 80s.
Came on Huckabee and just said, this is foolish.
And she is very much involved with the American Cancer Society.
I don't remember Joanne.
I can't remember her last name.
If she said it on the Huckabee Show, it was stated, obviously.
Yes.
Long conversation about it.
She's had a devil mastectomy and is her survivor for how many years is it now?
And, you know, the Red Cross is not backing, or the American Cancer Society is not backing this.
The oncologist I took my husband to yesterday for Didn't Cancer this year.
This is not backing this.
This is the thing.
This is the thing.
I don't understand why anybody ever backed it substantively.
I understand why certain groups would back it if they think they're going to profit from it.
But I, you know, somebody who really, really is concerned about health care and health insurance and treatment.
There's no way anybody would ever support the government getting any more involved in this than it is.
In fact, they would support getting the government out of it.
But that's just me.
I'm just a conservative, which means I'm an extremist.
Marion in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
You're next in the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
I'm glad to finally speak to you.
I just want to mention, I just returned from China, and it's an amazing place.
I mean, nothing like what I expected.
What'd you see?
We saw we were in Beijing.
We went throughout the country.
How was the food?
I have to ask, how was the food?
Not good.
The hotels, we stayed in two four or five-star hotels.
I don't know if I can mention the names.
They were Westons in Beijing and Shanghai.
The food was excellent.
It was buffet-style.
And we were on a tour.
We had a Peking dinner night at a theater, which I was really looking forward to because I've had Peking Duck in New York.
Is that what you had, Peking Duck?
It was awful.
It was almost inedible.
And I don't know if it was the tour thing or whatever.
Yeah, that was what they served, Peking Duck.
I had Peking Duck in the Simsat Shui area of Hong Kong.
And I'd never seen it before.
I never heard.
But wait a minute.
It wasn't Peking Duck.
The thing I had was duck in a mud path, a mud brick thing.
They had the waiter came and chopped the mud away from it.
The mud served as the oven that it was cooked in.
I forget what it was called, but it wasn't bad.
But I got to tell you something, when I was in Hong Kong, and this was back in the 80s, I rejoiced when I finally found the McDonald's.
I couldn't even find fried rice the way we have it here.
There's no such thing over there.
At any rate, you probably saw a whole lot of economic activity over there, right?
You saw a lot of economic growth.
That's what surprised you.
The building got, well, first of all, most of our group got sick from the pollution.
That was probably the biggest negative.
I mean, the pollution was horrendous.
My throat, and I was congested, and I did come home with a cold.
Well, see, the Chikoms are also disappointed about that.
Because Obama came over there and he's talking about lowering the sea levels and everything.
And what the Chikoms wanted to do is get rid of the smog.
And he's been unable to do it.
So he's a flop.
They're not even allowing any cameras to follow him around.
Local Chinese television.
People won't even know Obama's there.
A woman came back from China with a cold.
She did not listen to me.
She should have taken Zycam with her.
Now, look at this.
This is a story from Reuters from yesterday.
Runny nose, fever, cough, even pneumonia.
The symptoms sound like swine flu, but children hospitalized at one U.S. hospital, in fact, had a rhino virus, better known as a common cold virus.
Hundreds of children treated at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia had a rhino virus.
Federal health investigators are trying to find out if it was a new strain and if this is going on elsewhere in the country.
Yeah, what began to happen in early September is we started seeing more kids come into our emergency room with significant respiratory illness and Dr. Susan Coffin, that's a hell of a name for a medical professional.
Dr. Susan Coffin, the medical director of infection control and prevention at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, doctors and parents assumed it was the new swine flu, but it was not.
It was just a potentially new strain of the common cold.
I remember suggesting that there's a lot of swine flu might be cold.
And there's one way to find out: Zycam.
I'm serious about this.
The first moment you think that you're coming down with a cold or flu, whatever, take Zycam.
And here's how you'll find out which is which.
Zycam, if you take it very soon after you feel symptoms, if it's a cold, it'll knock it out.
Well, it won't knock it out, but it will severely impact the degree to which it affects you.
It'll shorten the duration.
It'll keep the cold from taking complete control of you.
If you take Zycam and it gets worse, then you know you've got the flu.
And that's with the fortuitousness of this news story, a new use for Zycam.
You'll find out whether you have a cold or flu.
Because it does work, but folks, and it comes in a variety of forms, a variety of flavors, and it works.
If you get it early, catch it early.
And you'll be amazed at how great this stuff is at reducing the severity of a cold.
Zycam, Z-I-C-A-M, it's everywhere.
You can't miss it.
We went back.
It was October 21st on this program.
And it was a New York Times story.
In a shift, Cancer Society sees risks in screenings.
It was the American Cancer Society, which has long been a staunch defender of most cancer screening, meaning testing, is now saying that the benefits of detecting many cancers, especially breast and prostate, have been overstated.
And what I said at the time, October 21st on this show, was, you got to be kidding me.
After years of being berated and shamed into getting mammograms, getting PSA tests, it costs a lot of money, they now tell us it's overstated.
The American Cancer Society, says the New York Times, is quietly working on a message to put on its website early next year to emphasize screening for breast and prostate cancer.
Certain other cancers can come with a real risk of over-treating many small cancers while missing cancers that are deadly.
Quietly working on a message to put on its website early next year to emphasize that early screening can come with a real risk of over-treating many small cancers.
Now, that's October 21st.
I translate this for you.
Back in October 21st, the American Cancer Society was all for the notion that you don't need to get all that many tests here.
Prostate, mammograms, you don't need to get all that.
Those early tests, sometimes it's just bad.
Jump fast forward to yesterday where this panel of government experts says we're going to raise the age for mammograms that we're going to pay for from age 40 to 50.
And the American Cancer Society comes out and has a cow about it.
Yet back in October 21st, they were essentially for it.
I mean, when you come out an issue and you're preparing your website to tell people, don't worry about early screening.
Well, early screening is what?
Age 40.
Wouldn't you say age 40 is early screening?
And the government experts said, no, no, no, we're going to move it to 50.
Don't you think the American Cancer Society would be supportive of this?
Because back in October, the New York Times reported that they were all in favor of banning and getting rid of early testing.
Well, now, I'm trying to figure that out myself.
Why did they change their mind?
What was behind this thing on the 21st of October, the New York Times story?
And I figured that was the American Cancer Society getting on board Obamacare.
Because back then, October 21st, in that New York Times story, the whole point was to save money.
We don't need all these early screenings, and it's not going to find that much anyway.
The cancers they're going to find are not worth treating, and we're going to miss the big ones, which I still don't understand how you miss the big ones with early screening.
Now in less than a month, they've done a 180.
I remain open for somebody to explain this to me.
Nerdly.
You know what?
I...
I never cease to amaze.
I'm never ceased to be amazed at the impact Snerdley believed this radio show has.
Snerdley was just shouting at me in the IFB that, well, I'll explain it to you.
The reason they did the switcheroo, the 180, is because you informed all these women back on October 21st that they were against early screening.
He says, do you remember all these angry women that called here?
Don't think they didn't call the American Cancer Society.
So Snerdley believes that I am behind this 180 degrees switcheroo.
And if Snerdley's right, if Snerdley's right, and I have to say he probably is, if Snerdley is right, it means I have saved millions of women's lives.
And the left, the left is not going to like that.
Well, Snerdley, no, no, no, I don't want to take it that far.
Snerdley wants me to say that I have saved many abreasts.
I would simply say it was saved many lives.
Kathy in Milwaukee, you're next in the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hello.
Hi, Rush Limbaugh.
This is an honor.
I have so much to say to you in so little time.
Thank you for keeping us well-informed, well-educated, and being the voices of America.
I appreciate you saying that, Loa, so much.
Thank you.
Two quick things.
The first reason why I was calling is they were saying they wanted to switch the age from 40 to 50 for screening.
Government-paid mammograms, yes.
The reason I think this is an idea, anyways, that they figure by the time you're 50, either it's too late or you are too old to get screened now.
And they have saved lots of money by that.
Wait a second.
This is a serious charge you are making because if I heard you right, Kathy, you're suggesting that at age 50, the government can then say, you know what?
The amount of money this is going to cost, if we find that you do have cancer of the breast, the amount of money it's going to cost us is simply not worth it.
We're denying the mammogram.
Therefore, you are charging that the real objective here is they want women dead.
Possibly.
Well, the older women that maybe understand how things work in society.
Now, we do know from the president's own mouth that he doesn't think a 95-year-old woman or 100-year-old woman should get a pacemaker.
I remember that.
I remember that.
And we do know that in the House versions of health care bills, that magically when you get into the 70 years of age, the decision on major costly treatment probably would be not to do it.
But this is quite a charge you're making that they would implement this philosophy at age 50, deny a mammogram on the basis, if you test positive for it, we don't have the money to treat you.
Yes.
Kathy, thank you for the phone call.
Okay.
I appreciate it.
I really, I want to.
This, folks, infuriates me and brings me close to profanity.
I'll tell you why.
We live in the United States of America.
We just talked to a woman in Milwaukee.
Standard run-of-the-mill, not nutcase, not a conspiracy theorist.
We have, in essence, an American citizen actually considering the possibility that her government doesn't care about saving the lives of women at age 50 and beyond.
Now, whether she's right or wrong is not the point.
The point is, can you, I can understand having this fear if you live in China, or if you live in Venezuela, or if you live in Cuba, or if you live in Russia, I can understand this if you live in totalitarian regimes where they don't care about you.
But for American citizens to be wandering around with that kind of thought, and it's a legitimate thought because we know that the government, Obama himself has said, oh, I don't think we're going to account for will to live or spirit.
Our experts are going to have to use cost as a determining factor here.
Just like, I don't believe we actually have a PASAR.
And this guy's gearing up for a new round.
This guy's gearing up for more cuts in salary.
And he's all excited about it.
Kenny Feinberg out there can't wait to get going on this.
In the United States of America.
Okay, all this healthcare talk reminds me, folks.
If you're waiting for this Congress to reform the health care bill passed in the House a couple weeks ago, there's a better way to go here.
Put some time and interest into your membership to the Heritage Foundation.
The Heritage Foundation is leading the charge in exposing the details of this takeover.
It's worse than you know.
One visit to askheritage.org will give you access to their analysis of how Nancy Pelosi's bill will actually cost this country some $2.4 trillion over the next decade, not the $900 billion that has been widely reported.
Now, folks, if we're going to get this right, we're going to need real patient-based solutions to improve the healthcare system.
For example, this mammogram business.
Can you believe we're even talking about forcing women to wait till age 50 in a free market system?
If you are 30 and you want to go get a mammogram, you could get one if you could pay for it, or if you had an insurance policy that would pay for it, you could get the test if you wanted it at age 30.
And if you want it, you should get it, particularly if you have family history of this.
And competition would keep the price down.
So ultimately, people could pay out of their pocket to have the test if you decided to.
Here's another thing about this age 50 business.
50 or older, you might be less inclined for reconstructive surgery than you would be at age 40, which reconstructive surgery is lots of money, usually covered by insurance with breast cancer.
But at age 50, you may not care about it as much, or the government may say you shouldn't care about it as much.
You don't need, we'll treat it here, but reconstructive surgery.
No, no, no, no.
That's what you're turning over if this thing passes.
And worse.
So if we're going to get this right, we're going to need real patient-based solutions to improve the healthcare system.
And inspecting and scrutinizing liberal health care policy, just one aspect of what the Heritage Foundation does.
And it's an important reason to become a member if you're not already one.
But in addition to that, they have alternative ideas, conservative-rooted and based ideas that work, that are cheaper, and that make, as Sarah Palin is now saying frequently, common sense.
You can start by going online to askheritage.org, sign up to become a member with a contribution that starts at $25 annually, which is chump change for what you're going to learn.
What you're going to get out of askheritage.org would cost you $18,000 a year at some Ivy League school versus $25 a year.
You can't afford not to become a member of the Heritage Foundation.
AskHeritage.org.
Belton, Texas, and Bruce, you're next on the program, sir.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
Hey, great honor to talk to you.
Thank you, sir.
I just wanted to bring up the terrorist Hassan that shot up Fort Hood.
Yeah.
And I believe with all his ties to Al-Qaeda and radical mosques and all the websites he was on, I think he would be the perfect candidate for waterboarding.
And it's too bad that Bush and Cheney aren't around to do that so that maybe we could catch some more bad guys with the information that we could get from him.
Well, we don't do that anymore.
Yeah.
We don't do that anymore.
The National Security Agency monitors every phone call in this country.
Are you aware of that?
Oh, Lord.
Oh, no.
Oh yeah, and they have just heard you, Bruce, in Belton, Texas, advocate torture.
Oh, my God.
Oh, yeah.
And they just heard you wish Bush and Cheney were back.
Oh.
Oh, Bruce, my man.
Besides, this terrorist down there, that was just a tragedy, according to Eric Holder.
But he probably, from what I've heard, probably going to be paralyzed from the waist down as a result of the bullet wounds inflicted on him by the local constabulary down there.
I want to read to you what President Obama said September 9th, joint session of Congress.
And insurance companies will be required to cover with no extra charge routine checkups and preventive care like mammograms and colonoscopies because there's no reason we shouldn't be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse.
That makes sense.
It saves money and it saves lives.
September 9th, Obama said that.
And his experts yesterday say, no, no, no, no.
Mammograms are going to delay screening from age 40 to age 50.
How's that?
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