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Oct. 1, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:26
October 1, 2010, Friday, Hour #3
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You tell them I'll deal with it when the show is over.
I don't have time to deal with this now.
You tell them I'm ticked off they wouldn't even ask me about it while the show's going.
They know I'm working.
Everybody thinks I can do 25 things at one time.
Well, the problem is I can.
This is my own fault.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line.
Email from someone in the subscriber.
Email inbox.
Why are you so mad at us today?
I'm not mad at you, unless you are running around telling people you're embarrassed of all these Tea Party people.
And I'm mad at you.
I'm not mad at you all.
I'm mad at the phony conservatives.
I'm mad at these phony inside the Belway Media Conservatives.
All embarrassed of Carl Palladino and Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell.
I mean, no need to repeat this, but I'm not mad at you all.
That email came from a Darwinite, by the way.
It's Open Line Friday.
Whenever we go to the phones, the program is all yours.
Telephone number 800-282-2882 and the email address, lrushbaugh at EIBNet.com.
Now, this is classic.
Here's the Washington Post.
Report gives stimulus package high marks.
What report?
Whose report?
Well, let's find out.
The massive economic stimulus package President Obama pushed through Congress last year is coming in on time and under budget.
And with strikingly few claims of fraud or abuse, according to a White House report.
Well, isn't this one the fraudulent stimulus doesn't have any fraud or waste?
Obama says so.
Thank you, Washington Post.
Report gives stimulus package high marks.
This would be like Colonel Sanders coming out telling us the health of the chicken population's just fine.
Don't worry about it.
This is journalistic malpractice.
The Obama administration says the stimulus is cool.
What else are they going to say?
Our stimulus was a fraud?
Wall Street Journal, federal agency flexible on McDonald's plan.
The Obama regime said yesterday that its top health official will, quote, exercise her discretion, end quote, and enforcing a new health law requirement, a move that could help McDonald's Corporation and other employers from disrupting their health care policies for hourly workers.
Now, doesn't this kind of put the lie to all the denials issued yesterday by the White House and McDonald's?
McDonald's even issued a statement calling media reports about its health care coverage speculative and misleading.
And yet, the regime said yesterday its top health official will exercise discretion, her discretion, in enforcing a new health law requirement.
Basically what this is, folks, this is the, what is it called, a mini-med plan, the mini-med plan.
It turns out, to me, this is an example of the health care bill unraveling.
Because apparently now what Kathleen Sebelius, and this is in the law, at the Secretary's discretion, I don't know how many times in the bill it's in there at the Secretary's discretion.
So she can choose to exempt some people from the law and hold others to it.
The announcement Thursday followed a report in the Wall Street Journal that McDonald's warned federal regulators they could drop its health insurance plan for nearly 30,000 restaurant workers unless regulators waive a new requirement of the health overhaul.
On Thursday, administration officials indicated they are hopeful that Kathleen Sebelius will be able to allow certain waivers to Obamacare, but that it was too early to confirm that they will.
She must wait for guidance from state insurance commissioners, and the administration does not expect to release the agency's final guidance until December.
Now, this is funny.
Ms. Sebelius has no problem issuing diktats about health insurance rates, which are in fact approved by state insurance commissioners, but now when she needs somebody to hide behind, she conveniently remembers that they are the ones who actually call the shots.
So everything yesterday was true.
McDonald's was going to cancel.
They can't afford it.
They're the first of many, by the way, who aren't going to be able to afford it.
They're going to keep on because what is supposed to happen, the design here is down the road, not just McDonald's, but a whole lot of companies are going to end their health care plans because they can't afford it.
And down the road, these 30,000 McDonald employees then go on the federal exchange single-payer public option.
This is the design.
It's just not supposed to be happening this fast.
So the thing is unraveling here right before our very eyes.
That's what you have to know about this.
This is the design, just not now.
This is supposed to happen after Obama's election in 2012.
That's when all is supposed to hit the fan, not now.
So now they're running for the tall grass, and Sebelius is going to hide behind state insurance experts, regulators, and let them make the decision here so it doesn't fall on the regime.
But, you know, Allah forbid that any of this would have happened before Obamacare was rammed through Congress.
Allah forbid that this happened before the 2012 election.
But it's happening.
Federal agency flexible on McDonald's plan.
So the denial yesterday, I guess, doesn't mean anything.
John Hood, a little post at the corner on National Review Online.
Well, it's official President Obama has destroyed my health plan and those of two dozen of my employees.
Several media outlets are reporting this morning that Principal Financial, which sells health plans to the John Locke Foundation and nearly a million Americans, will exit the health insurance marketplace.
The company is responding to the new costs and incentives created by Obamacare, which of course favor large firms over smaller competitors, as the New York Times explains.
This is in the Times.
At the Principal Financial Group, the company's decision reflected its assessment of its ability to compete in the environment created by the new law.
Now scale really matters, said Daniel Hilson, senior executive at Principal, which is headquartered in Des Moines.
We don't have a significant concentration anymore.
Can I translate this for you?
At Principal Financial, which had just canceled the health insurance for the John Locke Foundation employees, this decision reflected its own assessment of its ability to compete in the environment created by the new law.
In other words, Principal Financial said, we can't afford to stay in business under Obamacare.
We're canceling these little plans here because we can't afford it.
So the employees of the John Locke Foundation are without health insurance.
Now, United Healthcare is reportedly going to offer health plans to these former subscribers, including John Hood.
But Hood says we have no idea what those plans will look like.
As competition shrinks, these plans are certainly going to be more expensive and less flexible.
At the John Locke Foundation, we had carefully designed two consumer-driven options, one based around health savings accounts, the other around health reimbursement accounts.
And we had experienced excellent results, including several years of nearly level premiums.
Now we'll just have to see what administration ideologues and federal bureaucrats will permit us to buy.
So the McDonald's story in the Wall Street Journal yesterday and today, now John Hood's post at the corner, it's unraveling.
It is on the Obamacare is now unwritten.
I don't mean that it's going away.
I mean that it's promises.
It's promises of lower cost.
You get to keep your insurance.
You get to keep your doctor, lower premium.
It's all unraveling a lot sooner than it was supposed to.
See, this is all supposed to happen in 2012 and after that, actually 2012, 2014, actually, was when the bulk of this was supposed to happen.
But you see, these idiots in the Democrat Party who write these pieces of legislation have no idea about the dynamic aspects of what they do.
They think everything's very static.
Okay, so you pass a law that says in 2012 and 2014, X is going to happen.
Well, companies say, well, I'm not going to wait for 2012 or 2014.
And the insurers are going to say, I'm going to lose money if I do it this way, if it's all going to be canceled on me anyway.
So they're just getting a head start to avoid taking any losses.
And now the Democrats are running, oh, you can't do that.
Kathleen Sebelius running around.
Well, you can't, you can't.
You can't opt out of the program.
Now you're not supposed to do that until 2012 or 2014.
Well, they're not saying that, but that's unwritten.
So once again, the whole premise is unraveling here.
And this is going to happen to more and more people who are going to end up losing their health insurance.
And there isn't a public option right now for them to go to.
The federal exchanges have not been created.
That's supposed to happen down the line.
You see, the original plan is when this kind of thing happens, then the Obama regime is going to have a representative, maybe him president himself.
This is so unfortunate.
We feel so bad.
These rotten companies, we knew, we knew, and we told you that these private sector companies would not continue to provide you health care at an affordable price or insurance.
We knew it.
That's why we did this.
So now we are going to gladly step in and we, the federal government, will insure you.
That was the plan.
Set themselves as knights on the white horse saving the day.
The problem is it's happening two to three years sooner than it was supposed to.
So now you're going to have a lot of people lose their health insurance, don't know where to go to get it because there is no wonderful public option yet.
Federal exchanges are not up and running.
The regime might have to ratch up that, ramp up the speed at which they do this.
But it's just frustrating because all of this was predictable.
Those of us who understand economics, free market, understand liberals and socialism and how they screw up the free market, this is all predictable.
And you couple that with the fact that liberals lie.
So Obama says, yeah, you're going to keep your doctor and your premiums are going to go down.
And if you like your policy, you get to keep it.
Smart Money says it's all a lie.
Why?
Because a Democrat said it.
B, the Democrat was Obama.
And C, everything he said defies economic and market reality.
No matter how much you wish it could be true.
We'll be back.
Here's a story from the Scripps-Howard News Service.
I thought they were out of business.
I thought Scripps-Howard had shut down.
Obviously, they haven't, so I was one of those rare occasions I was wrong.
With suspicious haste, comma, Cuba's communist government abruptly announced it would let private farmers cultivate their crops on government land.
Now we have an inkling why the government wanted to get out while the getting was good.
Last year's coffee harvest in Cuba was the worst in history, and this fall, the island will produce only 6,700 tons.
The government says it can't afford the $40 million a year to make up the shortfall through imports.
A Communist Party newspaper, Granma, is bracing the population for a severe coffee shortage.
Cuba was once a major coffee exporter.
At the time of the revolution, it was producing 60,000 tons annually.
And as recently as the 70s, 28,000 to 30,000 tons a year.
The AP said the Communist Party newspaper cited inefficiency and negligence for the poor production and that to improve output, the government had stopped the communist practice of using ill-trained students to harvest the crop.
The AP notes that super strong shots of espresso, heavily laced with sugar, are a way of life in Cuba.
There's still more bad news on that front.
This year's harvest in a country that once led the world in sugar production was just 1.23 million tons.
It's a worse since 1905.
They have screwed up cigars.
Yes, they have.
I'll tell you how they screwed up cigars in just a second.
Fidel Castro recently told an American journalist the Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore.
Now, this, folks, this is a teachable moment.
It's an abject lesson.
This is what happens eventually when communists take over private enterprise.
There's an old joke.
You've probably heard this old joke.
What would happen if the communists took over the Sahara Desert?
In 50 years, there'd be a shortage of sand.
And it's true.
Look what's happening here in Cuba.
The coffee harvest has been declining steadily and dramatically under the Castro regime since the revolution.
Now there's going to be shortages.
And they don't have the money to buy coffee to import from other countries.
The communist socialist Marist, our Marxist paradise, has shortages of almost everything.
And yet, American intellectuals keep telling us that Cuba should be our model.
I mean, this is sugars down.
That was a big export.
Coffee, rum.
Here's the dirty little secret.
This is what's sad about this.
Cuba just happens to be located in a place where the soil pH, the amount of sunlight, the humidity, average temperature, rainfall produce some of the finest stuff that grows in soil ever.
From sugar to coffee to sugar cane to tobacco.
Cuba, up until the Fuente family figured it out in the Dominican, Cuba was the only place in the world where all three tobacco leaves for a cigar could be grown in one country, the binder, the filler, and the wrapper.
Nowhere else in the world was that possible.
And the fuentes worked as hard as they could for years.
No, the Cubans can't even grow sugar.
I mean, it's bad.
And the Fuentes now, they're Opus X brand, all three elements of the cigar grown on their plantations there in the Dominican.
And it wasn't because the communists didn't even write.
It was just that's where the stuff was the best.
What has been shown is communism, even communism, will destroy the absolute best.
It's like for the longest time, Bordeaux.
I mean, just where it was, the geographic aspects and the meteorological aspects, the best wine grapes without comparison grew there.
Now, Australia is making great strides.
Napa, California, Oregon, Washington, great strides.
People have been working very hard, but I was asked about the tobacco crop.
They've even, there used to be, I'm going to make some enemies when I say this, but if you could get hold of a Cuban cigar, even up to 1985, even up to 1990, but certainly get one from the 50s, 60s that have been kept, there's no finer tasting cigar in the world.
And even domestic manufacturers will tell you that.
But when the cigar fad hit, Marvin Shankin, my buddy, started a magazine, Cigar Aficionado.
Who ever thought that a cigar, a magazine on cigars, would become one of the leading lifestyle magazines in the history of America?
And it has.
Marvin Shankin's Cigar Aficiona, he also published The Wine Spectator.
It caused a demand on cigars.
The manufacturers popped up all over the world, started creating them and marketing them.
And for a while, everybody, it was chic to smoke a cigar everywhere.
And so the Cubans, their secret was they didn't overproduce.
They aged the tobacco.
A Cuban cigar, by the time you bought it, had been rolled three to five years prior.
When the fad hit, the Cubans wanted to take advantage of it.
They were rushing cigars to the market the month they had been rolled.
And it wasn't long before people figured out they're just not as good as they used to be.
And they haven't come back.
They're still nowhere near as good as they were.
Even as recently as 1994, 1991, you get hold of a Cuban cigar in 1994, somebody aficionado will pay you, if you can prove it, a huge amount of money for a box of those things.
Now, I'm told, I haven't had a Cuban cigar in many, many moons.
I'm told that they're starting to come back, but still not anywhere near because the fads dropped off.
Worldwide demand is not as high as it used to be.
And the Feminazis, nobody else have moved in on smoke.
You can't smoke anywhere now.
Sometimes even in your own house, you have to go outside, which is fine, but the demand is less now.
So the quality has come back a little bit.
But all it illustrates is that the communists destroy even the most perfect of creation.
They just destroy it.
By virtue of, I mean, back in the old days, I wish I'd have been alive and smoking cigars, but you could order custom-made cigars, boxes, labels, blends of tobacco all you wanted.
You couldn't get them here.
There's an embargo here, but you get them in London, order from Dunhill or what have you.
But anyway, every crop coming out of Cuba, worthless now.
And it used to be among the world's best, from sugar to tobacco to coffee, you name it.
Serving humanity, executing assigned host duties flawlessly, meeting and surpassing all audience expectations on a daily basis.
It is Open Line Friday, so we go back to the phones to Ford Mojave, Mojobi, Arizona.
Liz, great to have you here.
Yeah.
I admire you greatly.
Thank you very, very much.
And congratulations on your recent wedding.
Thank you.
Hope you have many happy years.
Thank you.
These idiots in Washington that keep insisting this recession is over.
Right.
Are they nuts or what?
Yes.
More and more people are losing their homes.
I'm one of them.
By the way, it was actually, I mean, to be precise, it wasn't idiots in Washington.
It was idiots in Harvard.
It was a group of guys from Harvard who proclaimed the recession ended in June of 2009.
The regime just picked up on us.
Oh, good.
The recession's over.
Well, it's not.
Like I said, more and more people are still losing their homes.
We're one of them.
My household is four disabled people.
And you're losing the house?
And we're losing our home because we can't get any help.
What kind of, you mean financial help?
Yeah.
Are they going to foreclose on you?
Is that what you mean?
Yeah.
I've got a week to get my back payments in.
And if I don't, they're starting the foreclosure paperwork.
And like I said, I take care of four disabled people.
And we have to try and maintain our home on less than $2,000 a month.
That's not the mortgage.
That's just how much it costs you to maintain it.
No, that's just, that's what we have to live on every month.
Less than $2,000 to pay all the bills.
Including my groceries.
Including the mortgage.
And the mortgage.
Now, are the disabled people, are they your family?
Yeah.
It's me, my husband, my mother, and my mother-in-law.
We're also, me and my husband are also disabled veterans.
Our applications for our service-connected benefits continue to be denied.
Yeah.
No wonder you think the recession's not over.
Security application continues to be denied.
Why?
They keep saying he can go to work.
He can't stand on his feet, but he can go to work.
This doesn't make any sense.
Tell me about it.
What are people like us supposed to do?
Well, it doesn't make any sense because the regime would have us believe that people like you are who they're looking out for and taking care of and coming up with all kinds of programs to keep you in your house that are keeping you from being foreclosed on.
For two years.
Modified mortgage relief program or something.
Have you tried to access that?
Yeah.
They can't help us because we're in a mobile home.
They're going to foreclose on your mobile home?
We're in a mobile home.
They're going to foreclose.
We're in a trailer park, a mobile home park.
They're going to foreclose on a mobile home in a trailer park.
Yeah.
Well, this is.
You know, for two years, I've been filling out applications for assistance, writing letters.
I've got over 586 letters I have sent out begging for help from anybody.
Nobody in the house is able to work?
No.
Well, how have you gotten by up till now?
Robin Peter to pay Paul.
Juggling bills every month.
What's your source of income?
My disability, which is it was $1,100.
I found out this month the VA is garnishing my wages for prescriptions because I can't afford to pay for them.
So they're going to just take the money anyway.
Wait a minute.
The VA is garnishing a portion of your wages.
Yeah.
Well, wait a minute.
So you have a job?
No.
What are they garnishing then?
Your disability?
I'm talking about my Social Security disability.
I was getting $1,000, $1,100 a month.
Yeah.
Social Security disability.
And you can't work.
No.
Nobody in the house can work.
No.
When's the last time in the house anybody in the house was able to work?
2001.
So for 10 years almost.
Yeah.
You haven't been able to work.
You've been living on whatever disability and other.
My mother used her life savings to help us up until now.
Now she's wiped out.
Right, that's going.
And there's nothing any of you in the house can do work-related.
No.
My mother's had five strokes.
My mother-in-law has, in the last three months, has spent two of those months in the hospital in and out.
How do you pay for that?
We haven't paid it.
What are you able to pay for with your.
You say you've got $2,000 a month.
What are you able to pay for?
We're barely able to pay the bills.
What kind of bills?
What do you owe?
Just all we have is our mortgage, our space rent, our electric, gas, water.
Car?
No.
Cars paid for.
Cars paid for.
How much do you owe on the domicile?
On the home alone?
Yeah, the trailer.
What, $20,000?
How'd you pay for that?
Is what we owe to pay it off?
And they're demanding all $20,000 or they're going to kick you out?
Well, right now, just the back amount.
What's that?
Oh, God.
Anyway, the point is, recession's not over for you.
Oh, not by a long shot.
And you're sick and tired of hearing the recession's over.
How do you feel when Obama says, hey, you know, be patient.
Took a while to free the slaves.
You know, I've even written him a letter and it got sent back, too.
You sent the Messiah a letter and it was returned unreplied to?
Yep.
Did you vote for the Messiah?
Nope.
Well, that may be why.
They probably know.
No way, I did not vote for him.
All right.
Now, if you are evicted from your mobile home, where will you go?
What will happen?
I don't know.
I haven't any place to go.
I don't have money to pay deposits to go anywhere.
But you do have $2,000 a month.
You say you do have $2,000 a month to do something with.
I still got to pay the rest of the bills.
By the time I get all them paid, I ain't going to have nothing to do nothing.
Well, but I know it's not a lot, but it's still.
$1,500 is what they want right now.
How much do they want?
$1,500.
$1,500.
And how much time would that buy you?
What, another three months?
Are you a veteran yourself?
Yeah.
You know what you could do?
You want to call Velma Hart.
Velma Hart's a CEO of Amvets.
Now, Velma Hart is the woman that went to the Obama town meeting the other day in Ohio.
I think it was in Ohio.
And she said, Is this it?
Is this our new reality?
Frankly, she said, I'm tired of, I'm exhausted defending you and your policies.
I mean, this is Obamaville here, folks.
This is gut-wrenching to have to listen to.
So you've got no options.
You just have to sit around and wait for the time to pass and for the bank to come along and repossess your home.
Yeah.
Now, you look at Liz, you sound a little bit more industrious than that.
Honestly, you don't sound to me.
Now, I'm just hearing you on the phone, but you don't sound like somebody who just sits around and waits for things to happen to you.
I scrounge every day to make ends meet.
I don't doubt that.
Millions of people are.
And if I'm lucky, by the time I get done paying everything, if I have $100 to buy groceries for a month for four people, that's not easy.
Well, have you called the VA?
Have you called any of these organizations?
Am Vets?
I've called all of them.
You've called Amvets.
I've called them.
I've called the American Legion.
I've called two different ones for disabled veterans.
You're not from the recent wars.
I'm from Afghanistan.
Yeah, but your entire family is living with you in your home that you don't have any other family anywhere else?
No.
Not close by.
Church?
Nothing.
Are you a member of a church?
No, not anymore.
I spend all my time taking care of these guys.
That's what I do.
Do you blame George Bush for any of this?
Part of it.
Really?
But it really hit hard about two years ago.
And it's done nothing but deteriorate and get worse for the whole two years.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, they keep raising our space rent.
So why did you get food stamps?
No.
Oh, come on.
Now you know you qualify for food stamps.
Everybody qualifies.
They're trying to give those away.
Nope.
They say we make too much money.
You don't make any money.
That's my point.
Everything you get is Social Security or some form of.
Are you on any kind of welfare?
No.
But you certainly qualify.
They tell us we don't.
Who?
DEF.
I've applied for food stamps.
DF.
The Department of Economic Security.
Well, call the Agriculture Department.
They run the food stamp program.
I mean, the food.
Look, Liz, the food stamp people advertise trying to give away food stamps so as to keep their budget each year up.
There's got to be all you'd have to do to qualify is produce your income tax returns and to show that your income is none of it's derived from work.
There has to be something that you haven't exhausted.
Food stamps at least.
Anyway, Liz, this is heartbreaking.
Obamaville.
Snerdley, Liz, if you don't mind, give Snerdley your phone number and we'll keep in touch here and see what's up with you.
I got to run, take a break.
Back with more right after this.
That's a tough situation.
You've got four disabled people, including veterans, who don't qualify for anything.
Surely she's not exhausted all of the options available to her out there in Arizona.
Anyway, folks, I don't want you to ever be accused of cheating on anything.
Your tax return, your weekend football pool, your college boards, nothing.
So I've gotten permission from Heritage to give you the answers to the six new questions at their website, AskHeritage.org.
There are six brand new questions up there for those of you who've already put your intelligence to the test against the scholars at the Heritage Foundation.
All right, here are the answers to the six brand new true or false quiz questions.
There are five false answers and only one true one.
Five false answers, only one true answer.
Now, given that Open Line Friday hint, find your way to askheritage.org after the show today.
Enlighten yourself.
Those questions aren't going to last long before being replaced with newer ones because the heritage scholars are working 24/7.
When you take the quiz, pass or fail, you are given a book, a little pamphlet, Solutions for America.
It's a blueprint, conservative blueprint for a better future.
They give you that as a parting gift if you don't have it already.
AskHeritage.org is the website from the Heritage Foundation where everybody is able to become a member.
So got it?
Five false answers, only one true answer.
So after the show, go there, askheritage.org, take the quiz and get the pamphlet.
Here's Laura in Erie, Pennsylvania on Open Line Friday.
Great to have you here with us.
Hi, Rush.
Thanks for all you do.
Thank you.
Thank you very, very much.
You bet.
Well, especially, well, the last caller, I'm a retired veteran, and I would like to contribute $5 up front to her cause.
I think a lot of your listeners might do that if you put her information.
Well, we've got her phone number.
We can't do any of this stuff.
Okay.
We're on it.
We're looking into this.
Laura, I just wanted to call and give you an update on how that health care bill, that nobody knows what's in it, how it's affecting people in our local area.
Don't tell me you're about to be kicked out of your house.
No, we're very blessed.
But Representative Kathy Delkamper is one of the 40 that signed this health care bill with SPUPAC, and they were ones that were supposed to get assurances from President Obama with that executive order he signed that none of this new funding would go toward abortion.
Right.
Well, the provision that kids under 26 can get on their parents' health care.
My husband works at a local school district, and so I'm covered under him, and we can add our 25-year-old son for another year.
And I called the Blue Cross policy, and they said, well, abortion is covered, too.
So I said, well, if I had a daughter, then she would be covered with abortion.
And she said, yes.
And I said, well, would she have to pay anything extra, you know, because you're supposed to separate it out with the new provision.
And she said, no, that abortion is covered.
Well, wait a minute.
They said abortion wasn't covered.
It's covered under our my husband's, which we didn't know.
Oh.
Health care.
Okay, I've got 15 seconds.
So what is the point?
The point is, these girls are now going to have abortion coverage with this new mandate.
And I'm upset because I didn't know that abortion was even covered under our bill.
So I'm having the local newspaper look into it because I think a lot of taxpayers...
Who told you...
Who told you there was no abortion cover?
Democrats?
Okay.
Representative Kathy Dalkin and on local radio and said that.
Right.
The Democrat, they lie.
I mean, everybody knew abortion is going to be...
So yesterday, remember, there was a guy who wanted me to take the day off today.
Walter Williams would come.
Aren't you glad that I did not listen to him?
Okay, if you've got the guts, Family Guy on Fox Sunday night starring El Rushbo.
Have a wonderful weekend.
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