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Nov. 23, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:28
November 23, 2009, Monday, Hour #3
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Meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
I am your host, your bulwark, the doctor of democracy, and America's truth detector Rush Limbaugh.
From behind the golden EIB microphone at the distinguished Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Great to have you with us.
And happy Thanksgiving.
Yeah, I'm hearing people say happy holidays.
I just got an email from a guy.
Happy holiday.
What?
Has Thanksgiving now become a religious holiday tutor.
We can't say Happy Thanksgiving.
Can't say Merry Christmas?
Too many people.
Get this story.
This is out of Canada.
And it is a um, shall we say, a precursor?
A Canadian woman on sick leave for depression says she lost her insurance, health insurance benefits, after her insurance agent found pictures of her apparently having fun on Facebook.
Nathalie Blanchard said today she was diagnosed with major depression and was receiving monthly sick leave benefits until payments dried up this fall.
When Blanchard called her insurance provider, Manual Life, to find out why she says uh find out why she says she was told the Facebook photo showed that she was able to work.
If you have insurance, be careful.
It's a major battle, it's not gonna go away, said the 29-year-old Blanchard in a phone interview from her home in Quebec.
She said her insurance agent describes uh several pictures that she posted on Facebook, including ones showing her having a good time at a Chippendale's bar show at her birthday party and on a sun holiday.
Her lawyer said that Blanchard was wrongfully dismissed from her benefits and she had the right to go on holiday.
Now what you think of the woman is irrelevant.
That's not the point here.
What are you laughing at in there?
What in the world is funny about this?
Trying to feel better going to chip is trying to try to feel better going and laying out in the sun, uh, feel better going to bars and so forth and so on.
The point here is, she'll always try to get insurance from another company if she wants to.
But just imagine when it's the government looking at your Facebook page or anything else they can find about you after they're running all of our health care.
Who will we be able to turn to when the government decides we violated one of their rules?
This woman can always go try to get another policy from another insurance company.
Der Spiegel.
Der Spiegel.
I never get that first word pronounced right.
Every time I think I say it right, I get emails, no rush, it's der.
Then I say derr.
No rush, it's dare.
Then I say dare him.
It's Dare Spiegel.
Okay.
Dare Spiegel, Obama's nice guy act, gets him nowhere on the world stage.
When he entered office, U.S. President Barack Obama promised to inject U.S. foreign policy with a new tone of respect and diplomacy.
His recent trip to Asia, however, showed that it's not working.
A shift to Bush-style bluntness may be coming.
There were only a few hours left before Air Force One was scheduled to depart for the flight home.
President Obama trip through Asia had already seen him travel 24,000 kilometers, sit through a dozen state banquets, climbed a great wall of China, and shake hands with Korean children.
It was high time to take stock of the trip.
Barack Obama looked tired on Thursday as he stood in the Blue House in Seoul, South Korea, the official residence of the South Korean president.
He also seemed irritable and even slightly forlorn.
The mood in Obama's foreign policy team is tense.
Following an extended Asia trip that produced no palpable results.
The first Pacific president, as Obama called himself, came as a friend and returned as a stranger.
The Asians smiled but made no concessions.
Obama's new foreign policy has also been relatively unsuccessful elsewhere.
They cites Israel And a number of other places.
And then they say, he's a lot like Jimmy Carter.
Dare Spiegel.
There are many indications that the man in charge of the White House will take a tougher stance in the future.
Obama's advisors fear a comparison with former Democrat president Jimmy Carter, even more than with Bush.
Prominent Republicans have already tried to liken Obama to Carter, who lost in his bid to win a second term because voters felt he was too soft.
Carter tried weakness, and the world got tougher and tougher because the predators, the aggressors, the anti-Americans, the dictators, when they sense weakness, they all start pushing ahead.
There's also trouble on the Khalid Sheikh Muhammad trial front.
Have you heard about this?
Germany does not believe in the death penalty.
Germany will not, therefore, probably not cooperate.
They hold a lot of the evidence of these guys who master my remember the Germans Al-Qaeda had a safe house.
And uh since Obama has gone out there, and Holder has gone out there, we're going to seek the death penalty.
Uh the Germans are saying, uh there's a big problem for us.
Well, we may not uh be able to feel comfortable here in uh sharing the evidence that we have with you.
It's uh it's also from Der Spiegel.
The death penalty problem.
9-11 trial puts German U.S. relations under strain.
I'll tell you who's not under any strain right now, ladies and gentlemen.
That would be himself, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Into the recording studio over the weekend lawyer says gonna plead not guilty because he wants to put the U.S. on trial.
Exactly.
As I said, and now the Germans may not cooperate over death penalty issues.
I know, I know, I know.
We're gonna hear about it.
Don't worry, folks, there's an answer.
As there always is for everything done on this program.
Leslie Gelb, the president emeritus of the Council of Foreign Relations, the CFR, wink wink, says Obama's China trip was amateur hour.
Chris Matthews takes a cue from Dick Cheney and said Obama is dithering over Afghanistan.
Yep.
Yep.
Obama, he also said some other things about Obama that uh I think he cut on to this uh uh Jimmy Carter routine, started to look like Jimmy Carter.
Even the New York Times getting a tad troubled by Obama's trillions upon trillions of spending.
And I have to ask, are these people nuts?
They don't get it.
Don't they know why Obama was elected?
Obama was elected to smile, to act cool, which he still does, still smiles, still acts cool.
He can deliver a well-phrased speech on the subject.
That's what the media wanted.
They wanted somebody smart, they wanted somebody elegant, they wanted somebody like them, and that's what they got.
A basic empty suit, well, not quite empty suit.
So what's the fuss?
See, those of us who are honest are not surprised by anything that has happened here.
We said we was going to be a repeat of Carter, only worse because Carter wasn't trying to do this.
He was just inept.
Obama is trying to do this.
It's his objective.
We knew he was going to sell the country out on foreign policy.
We knew it.
What do these guys think?
Did they really buy that drivel that the world hated us because of Bush and was going to love us because of Obama?
If they really bought that, then they're dumber than even I consider them to be.
Dumb has nothing to do with IQ.
Some of the smartest, highest IQ people around us are the most idiotic, stupid, uninformed people you could ever run into because their arrogance and conceit tells them they don't need to learn anything.
They already know it.
Oh, I always love this song, the Ohio players love roller coaster.
That's right, Sterling's right.
There has not been one positive review of Obama's trip anywhere.
Not in Saturday Night Live.
I wonder by the way should have mentioned this earlier, we'll CNN fact check.
The Saturday Night Live skit from last Saturday night.
They did back in early October fact check.
A Saturday night live skit on Obama.
They fact check this if they do, they'll find it the skit was right on the money.
No errors whatsoever.
Uh Ron in Dallas, uh glad you called her you're next on the EIB network.
Hello.
Happy Thanksgiving holiday ditto's from Big where we dominated the Redskins yesterday in a most ripping seven to six victory.
Well sorry about you call that dominating well we waited until the last two minutes so it made it fun.
Hey you guys are seven and three whatever.
And what what did the Steelers do yesterday?
That was a struggle.
That was disappointing.
Oh that was just that was I could see that I uh I that's two that's two weeks in a row Steelers in a bad karma game.
Uh yesterday's a trap game I I in my office tool I predicted the Bengals to lose.
I I thought the Bengals would lose to Oakland in a trap game.
You look past them the Chiefs they're a doormat.
You look past them they got Baltimore next week the Steelers do.
And I just it's a trap game.
Look past them.
Because they uh they lost to um uh Cincinnati the previous week but I mean it just I lost a box of Allen Brothers steaks when the Steelers lost yesterday so what do you think?
Yeah see you could did you did you bet the points?
No no no.
Rush I think you're one of the smartest people that uh in the country and I know you think so too but uh I'll bet you and ninety nine percent of your audiences has never heard of the most aggressive form of breast cancer there is and and this um debate in Congress has really gotten me to think about this and wanted me to call in and and that type of breast cancer is called inflammatory breast cancer.
Have you ever heard of that before?
I have not okay so I imagine most of your audience has not either and so let me quickly tell you what this is.
Wait a minute most women you think most women have not heard of it?
Yes sir.
Because most doctors haven't heard of it or haven't seen it, have never seen it and they misdiagnose it.
Well now my Dawn here uh says she's heard of it.
Okay, one out of two, but you, the smartest man in in the country has not heard of it.
One out of four because the other two had no clue either.
Okay and and so the reason I called is you know these people if we had a rationed health care system this type of breast cancer those people will not have any chance of survival because it's all about speed of starting the treatment for any chance of beating it and if the government were in charge uh these people none of them would be around because it's it's too aggressive you can't wait months to be seen it's too expensive.
One of the shots cost my wife.
She had to have it four times, and it was over $7,000 a shot.
And it's a very low mortality rate.
It's the most rare form of breast cancer, but it's the most aggressive, and it presents over 25% of breast cancer deaths.
And the scary thing is mammograms don't pick it up typically, and it doesn't present as a lump.
And it also hits younger women.
And so, you know, it's misdiagnosed.
It's stage 3 automatically, but most are stage 4, and it's very expensive to treat.
So doctors think it's an infection, and so most people don't know what this is.
And unfortunately, if we had a government health care, care system uh in place and my wife who does not follow politics as much as I do really knew what was going on about this and said you know if if we had that health care system in place I wouldn't be here.
Seven thousand dollars a shot that's just that was just the shot to get her white blood cells up the morning after chemo.
And that one I can guarantee that wouldn't be allowed and she had to do that four times.
And if you saw the sixty minutes deal last night they were talking about a drug called a vastin and if I could recall they were talking about the fact that in high you know aggressive late stage you know breast cancers where a vastin is used that's upwards of forty thousand dollars uh for those shots and there's no way that they're gonna they would allow something like this and it's a very scary disease that most people haven't heard of and How is it diagnosed if a mammogram doesn't pick it up and if it doesn't lump?
Great question.
And so the only the way that my wife was um diagnosed was they had to go in and do a um a core biopsy, not a needobiopsy.
She did that too, but it didn't pick it up.
A core biopsy.
And the only the only way to do that.
Wait, wait, wait, we are still ahead of us.
What's the symptom that caused her to go get that?
Well, uh, late October last year, she thought something was wrong.
She felt like she had a bug bite underneath her right breast.
It looked like and felt like a bug bite.
And she didn't do anything of she went into the doctor and they had her go do a mammogram.
She's 34 at the time.
Went and did a mammogram, mammogram came back clean, and they said, come back and see us when you're forty.
So she was on a trip to Toronto for business, and her mother uh is a teacher, one of her teacher friends sent her mom a video uh from the on the internet said, Hey, you might want Stacy to see this.
Mom sends it to Stacy uh in Toronto, and at three minutes into it, she says, I think that's what I've got.
And it's a video that's been out since 1994 on KOMO Seattle.
Um, if you Google it and go K-O-M-O-I-B-C, you can see what it is.
And she came home early, and in and within the week she was in in chemo, and we went to the right doctors after the first one, kind of screwed things up.
Um, and they and we went to one that had seen this.
Most doctors haven't seen this.
And this guy um uh in Baylor, Dallas gets twenty-five cases a year, and he said, This is what you've got.
And all of a sudden she was in high dose chemo within the week, and she was stage three.
Most people don't get diagnosed in time, and it becomes stage four, and it's all over their body.
So if you have a health care system in place that Obama's talking about, these people simply wouldn't get the treatment in time.
And that's exactly what would happen.
Well, they might not pay for $7,000 shot.
Well, there you go, but then the white blood cell count is too low, and you can't you're not gonna be able to stand the chemo.
Very scary, and most people have not heard of it.
My mom's a nurse, she hadn't heard of it twenty-five years, and she was in ontology, had never heard of it.
The first doctor we went to uh only saw three cases in her life and didn't know what she was looking, she didn't know what it was, or she couldn't figure it out.
Stories like this, and I'm sure that there are other procedures and uh diseases are rare, procedure expensive and so forth, illustrate for me, again, just using common sense, that this health care legislation is not about health care at all.
If it were about health care, it'd be focusing on the actual health care system, not providing insurance to people.
And it wouldn't be talking about cost control and doing this and all of that as though it's a burden of government.
The healthcare system is.
It's all it's all just it's it's a rigged system to raise taxes, to redistribute wealth, to empower Democrats to grow government, all under the guise of being compassionately oriented towards providing insurance to people.
Now, this, my friends, was a smackdown.
Rhode Island's top Roman Catholic leader has asked Representative Patrick Kennedy to stop taking communion over his support for abortion rights, the diocese said on Sunday.
The Roman Catholic Church strongly opposes abortion, which has been legal across the U.S. since 1973.
The bishops have uh they've decided to be Catholic, got some onions out there.
Did you hear about this this funny story out of Pennsylvania?
Spoiled brat little students.
A Pennsylvania University's requirement that overweight undergraduates take a fitness course to receive their degrees has raised the hackles of students and the eyebrows of health and legal experts.
Officials at historically black Lincoln University said Friday that the screw is simply concerned about high rates of obesity and diabetes.
We know we're in the midst of an obesity epidemic, said James L. Du Boy.
How do we know that?
How do we know that there is an obesity?
Uh uh epidemic?
How do we know this?
No, not because there's lots of fat people, because we're told that there's lots of fat people.
I see my share of fat people, but I also see my share of people in shape.
We've been told that there's an obesity epidemic.
And why are we being told there's an obesity epidemic so they can control our lives and what we eat and so forth.
See, when you might say, but Rush, but Rush, it's none of their responsibility what I weigh.
If they are going to be responsible for health care, and if they say that your fatness is causing you to be sick that they have to pay for, guess what?
You're either going to get unfat or they're not going to pay for it.
So we've got an obesity epidemic.
And we had a swine flu epidemic.
And now we've got, get this.
I just saw this blurb.
Uh some I can't remember it.
Something about the swine flu, and something is now immune.
Or what is that?
Mutated as something, yeah, but it's it's I can't.
I think it had something to do with AIDS, what I saw, but I'm not, I'm not sure.
Don't quote me, don't quote me.
It was just a graphic that flew by on uh on television.
At any rate, oh no, here's what it was.
Tama flu.
Tama flu does not work on the swine flu.
The swine flu recognizes Tamaflu and says, oh, buddy, I'm not gonna let you affect me.
That's what I saw.
Tama flu is recommended by a lot of people, just general flu in general.
But the so we've got a swine flu epidemic.
We've got an obesity epidemic.
We have everything is a damn crisis.
No wonder everybody's on edge all the time.
And I am not.
I don't like being on edge.
I don't want to live that way, and so I don't allow people to put me on edge.
Well, I mean, other uh individuals in life can do it to you, but I'm talking about people I don't know at issues that I know something about.
They have enough tension in our lives without letting the media and the Democrat Party add to it.
Sadly they are.
So anyway, James Du Boy, who's chairman of the uh Lincoln University Department of Health, phys ed and recreation, said we have an obligation to address this obesity epidemic head on, knowing full well there's gonna be some fallout.
Now, Lincoln's campus is about 45 minutes or 45 miles southwest of Philadelphia, where uh where seniors, the first class affected by the mandate, began realizing their last chance to take the class would be this spring, and they don't want to be forced to have to do this.
They're claiming it's a violation of freedom and so forth.
Isn't this an amazing thing?
These people probably don't object to any other encroachment on their freedom at all.
They probably don't object to tax increases, they probably but boy, let's some somebody come in and tell them they gotta take a phys ed course to get their degree, and oh my god, the world's coming to an end.
Well, you see, Snerdley thinks I might be sympathetic because uh when I was in college, my my uh my full first year and only year, what finally drove me out of it were two things flunking speech, which was my business, and uh being forced to take ballroom dance, uh, taught by drill sergeant and wax uh as a as a phys ed course.
And I said, wait a minute, they told me when I got here, I mean told me in high school that when I got here, I'm on my own.
We're not gonna be babied up here.
And they don't call a role, they don't do any of that.
You it's up to you to show up.
Hell, they called the role in college more than you didn't more than they did in high school.
And the ballroom, I just didn't go.
I just I just I just couldn't bring myself to go.
I bet I went to the radio station instead.
And of course, the college sent a letter home to my parents.
This is back in the you that can't happen now.
You know, uh Dawn, do you know that you're not allowed to see your daughter's grades?
She has to be the one to tell you.
You can't see them.
So you yeah, that's only because she gave it to you.
If she didn't give you the password, you wouldn't, you wouldn't even know she could flunk out a semester and not tell you and still have you support her up there.
You would never know it unless she told you, because the school can't write you.
But back then, a university wrote my mom and dad a letter saying I had not shown up to ballroom dance.
And of course, this outraged and embarrassed my parents.
I was the first member of my family, and the probably only member of my family not to graduate from college.
You know, they do interviews with people.
Yeah, man, I'm happy to be here.
This is my I'm the first member of my family to ever go to school.
I'm the only member of my family that didn't.
And that bothered them and embarrassed them and so forth.
So my um my mother took away the car I bought and drove me to college class at ballroom dance.
After I had missed it for a month.
I walked in there the first, and of course the drill sergeant from the wax couldn't have cared less.
I didn't know what I was doing in there, so I just stood around while everybody else was dancing.
Maybe faked a couple of moves.
I said, What am I doing here?
There's a radio station mere miles from here where I could be pursuing my life.
And I'm stuck here in a ballroom dance class driven by my mother.
Uh I just got the question, weren't there any good-looking girls in it?
It didn't matter.
I didn't want to find them there.
I wanted uh I didn't I look at it, I was only there two or three times, and then I just called it all off.
I said, hell with this.
You know, this is and I I left for Pittsburgh in February of 1971.
So Snerdley thinks I would have sympathy with these students who um are being told they have to take a PE course to uh to get their degree.
Um it is kind of a dichotomy, a dilemma, maybe a trichotomy.
Uh but this is an entire school erupting, an entire class erupting over it.
See, I if I would have been told that you have to do this in order to keep working at the radio station, then I would have done it.
If I would have been told you have to do this to graduate, I said, screw it.
I don't want to be here another three years.
But if I was told that what I really wanted to do depended on me attending that stupid course, I would have done it.
So if they're serious about graduating, I mean, life's what it is.
You make choices.
If they don't want to do it, quit.
Don't get the degree.
Like I did.
And everything worked out fine for me for the most part.
Snerdley, you know what the uh the nation's first motto was and still is.
No, e.
Pluribus unum.
You know what it means?
That's right.
Although Al Gore once said out of one many.
That was when he was pro-life.
One of the reasons America is so exceptional, and one reason we are thankful to be Americans this week, is that American is something anyone can become.
Anyone can come to America and become an American by taking an oath and swearing allegiance to the principles of freedom, democracy, and the power of individual genius and hard work for which our nation stands.
For a while.
It doesn't work that way in other countries.
You can't become Japanese, for instance, by moving to Japan and taking their oath.
But it works here because America is an ideal more than anything else, a spirit that is unified in love of freedom for a while.
It is that American love of freedom that I promote each day, as well as the Heritage Foundation.
I know you hear me talk of the Heritage Foundation nearly every week.
I do so for a reason.
They are the country's number one organization For preserving freedom in America in the belly of the beast, Washington, D.C., where freedom is at present under assault.
Lots of things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.
But please don't forget to be thankful for our freedoms.
And you can make a commitment to your freedom and your country to preserve your freedom by joining the Heritage Foundation.
Just go to Askheritage.org, become a member today, as I am.
Everybody wants to be like me.
You can do what I do and get close.
Askheritage.org.
A couple of health care audio sound bites.
Ohio Senator Shared Brown on State of the Union on CNN Sunday, John King says if in the end you can't get Lieberman, Lincoln, Landrew, and you can't pass a bill without at least going to a trigger.
Would you make that compromise?
In the end, I don't want four Democratic senators dictating to the other fifty-six of us and to the country when the public option has this much support that it's not going to be in it.
People want every option for it.
We're telling people you have to buy insurance.
We shouldn't tell them they've got to buy insurance from a private insurance company.
But in the end, I think that all four of our colleagues survey the this look at this bill in the end and say I don't think they want to be on the wrong side of history.
Oh, wrong side of history is where you're going to be, Senator Brown.
There is no majority for the public option in an honest poll.
I'm not going to let four senators dictate to the rest of us.
Well, it's going to be a lot more than four, because a lot more than four are going to hold out for something like Landrew got.
Three hundred million.
Mark Udall on the Senate floor.
He's a Democrat from Utah.
Here's a portion of what he said.
My advice to women in listening to this debate is that they should be consulting their doctors when it comes to things like this.
They should be listening to their doctors.
Their doctors are up on the best research.
They're up on the best science.
They're up on the best medicine and get on top of it.
And so I I would just say to the women of America, listen to your doctors, not to Rush Limbaugh.
It's on the floor of the U.S. Senate, and I do not know what he was talking about.
Maybe it was the mammogram thing.
I have no clue what he was talking about.
All I know is that I could probably put my finger on a number of women's lives who have been saved as a result of listening to this show.
Okay to the bones.
We continue now with Kathy in Santa Barbara, California, where Oprah is going to end up after she leaves Chicago.
Nice to have you.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
Thank you so much for your time.
You bet.
Um I I just think it's interesting was it's a senator that just said listen to your doctors, but we won't be able to do that if their plan goes through, will we?
No, you'll have to listen to some doctor will have to listen to some bureaucrat.
Interesting.
Hey, I'm a nurse here in Santa Barbara, and um I see the results of people that uh what happens to people when they don't take care of themselves and their health.
And uh I do know that there are people that take care of themselves that still get sick and still come down with cancer, and I don't I actually don't mind some of my taxes going to support some of that.
But what does frost me is the fact that there are people that just don't care and they don't take care of themselves, and it angers me to think that my taxes are gonna go for their health care.
Well, they already do.
Uh go to their your taxes go to their health care.
The uh they're gonna be required to buy it, or they go to jail under this bill.
Right.
But my taxes are gonna have to go for health care to support people that don't take care of themselves that had get diabetes and heart disease and all that.
Well, the people that don't take care of themselves are among the least fortunate in our society.
They don't take care of themselves because they're so depressed that Bush was in in White House for eight years.
And they're depressed over a lot of things, and it's America's fault.
We owe it to them.
I mean, it sort of it sort of reminds me of me having to pay uh car insurance for somebody that doesn't drive well or has a number of DUIs or something, and it just doesn't make any sense to me.
Well, you don't have to do that yet.
Well, not yet, but you see what I'm saying?
If I'm a good driver, I don't have to pay as much money in car insurance.
But the day that I have to pay more money because somebody else has to have car insurance and they're not a good driver.
Why do I have to pay for that?
Uh well, actually you're not.
Uh with auto insurance, you're actually insuring yourself against something that you might do to somebody else.
Right.
No, I'm just saying that that thinking of health care reminds me of uh I'm just using that as a as an example.
Ah, the old analogy trick.
Right.
Somebody else isn't responsible and I have to pay for it.
Well, that I'm I um look, I totally agree with you, but that's been the rules of the game here in in the basic welfare state for I don't know how long.
That's but Obama's entire agenda is based on everybody doing just that.
Five percent pull a uh pull a cart and a wagon, ninety-five percent are in it.
Sometimes you do have to pay for uninsured motorist coverage.
You do have to pay for that.
But uh at any rate, uh if you're if you're opposed to paying things for other people, you've been doing it a long time before healthcare.
I mean, you're paying for other people to eat.
Food stamps.
Who knows what else you're paying for?
Back in a moment.
An amazing story from the UK Daily Mail.
Guy was in a coma for 23 years.
Well, they thought he was in a coma for 23 years.
New technology allowed doctors to discover that this man they thought was in a coma for 23 years had heard and understood everything around him all the time.
He just could not communicate.
Can you imagine all the ammo this will provide the the right to life movement?
Twenty-three years, they thought he was in a coma, and he was able to hear and understand everything.
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